Right Timing to Attract My Tribe

Rainy Day Musings

It’s rainy and dark on a Sunday afternoon. I’m turning on lights already. I’ve done a couple of chores, but there’s still at least one on my list for today. Aside from walking in a couple of hours, there’s nothing pressing on my agenda. Yesterday’s burst of energy hasn’t completely faded, but there’s a touch of ennui in my demeanor. I’m contemplating dragging my rain jacket out for today’s walk, as it’s supposed to rain harder than yesterday, and the rain we got yesterday soaked through my sweatshirt. I’d rather not court a cold right now.

Even sitting down to write this post took more effort than usual today. All I seemed to want to do was fart around with computer games. I remind myself to be kind and gentle as I move through whatever stage I happen to be in at the moment. The topic of healing seems to be popping up everywhere, so I suspect that’s part of my mood, and bi-polar energy right now.

Thinking about it, I’m not sad or depressed; just introspective. I haven’t come face-to-face with the challenge my subconscious thrust at me a few days ago yet, but know I’ll get more signs when it’s time, and opportunities to unpack what’s held me back from truly and completely connecting sooner rather than later. Why? Because it’s time.

Embracing My Multi-faceted Self

I have developed tremendous faith in Right Timing over the last few years. I’ve been polishing the lesson regarding not trying too hard through endless repetition. It’s so easy to fall back into the human desire to be accepted, and to try to fit my multi-faceted self into the next square hole. Each time, I realize, after losing a few layers of skin, I need to step back and re-evaluate what I’m doing, and ask myself some pointed questions.

• Is trying to be accepted so important I’m willing to lose part of myself in the process? My heart answers with a resounding NO!
• Have I found somewhere I fit in effortlessly? Admittedly, that’s only sort of.
• Are there places and people with whom I can be my complete, authentic, imperfect self in safety and comfort? Sadly, I have to answer; “not yet”. I haven’t given up though.
• What demons do I still need to face and release before I can attract those people? Time will tell, but meanwhile, I have to continue facing the ones who arise, realize they were scarier while I kept them hidden, and let them go.

There have been times I thought I found my forever tribe only to discover it was only temporary. Others, I thought I had, but discovered I was, once again, on the outskirts; more of a hanger-on than a member, so to speak. Looking back, it was another lesson I needed to slog through until I incorporated at least part of it into the person I’m becoming.

It’s OK to be a Work in Progress

Some people find their tribe, and settle into belonging early in life but I’m guessing they had a better example than I did. It took me awhile, but I finally discovered it was a lesson I was meant to learn on my own, taking bits of what I’d been taught and chewing through them until I separated the wheat from the chafe. It’s a work in progress. I’ve actually started retrieving a few of the bits I tossed away as I realize not everything I taught was bogus. My parents gave me some decent values despite all their brokenness and inability to allow others to see beyond the masks and walls.

Just as I finally found my way to removing the masks and knocking down the walls, the desire to do so was there for them; the masks occasionally slipped. They allowed their fears and misconceptions to keep them from trying; to make them continue to twist themselves into what they believed were socially acceptable pretzels. There are times I still do as well, until I recognize the old, familiar, destructive pattern and retreat for awhile until I can reconnect with who I truly am, and not what I believe people want me to be.

Allowing the Journey to Unfold

It’s a long, winding road; one which has no definitive end in this lifetime or any that follow. It’s a path of growth and learning with no few setbacks filled with what feels like an inordinate portion of crashes and burns. Yet as long as I continue to pick myself back up, and pull out the road map to revise my route, I’m still moving forward in a sort of drunken sailor kind of way. At least now, I have a better idea of why I haven’t been connecting on that lifelong, deep level I admire, and often envy in those I call friends, but who I know now, don’t usually see me without a mask or two.

In part, I seem to be unready, but I also haven’t managed to attract those who could handle my unedited, unvarnished, messy self. The hope I will at some point is what keeps me going; keeps me trying; keeps me learning what deep-seated protections I’ve yet to remove. For now, I’m working on those crossed wires I discovered recently in hopes I can rewire my ability to recognize signals and signs the people around me have already figured out.

Thankfully, I discovered long ago I’m neither a lost cause, nor a misfit. I am, like all of you, unique, but that doesn’t mean I don’t fit somewhere. I just have to rewire myself before I find out where that is. Knowing where the problem is means I’m halfway to the solution!

Grateful for the Lessons

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful for discovering another internal issue for me to solve on my way to finding my own tribe.
2. I’m grateful for learning I’m no more broken than anyone else. I’m just broken in different areas.
3. I’m grateful for learning nothing about me is unfixable given time, perseverance and above all, Hope.
4. I’m grateful for a quiet, rainy day to contemplate the newest route on my life journey.
5. I’m grateful for the people who allow me to hold space even if/when I’m not part of their own, intimate tribe.

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

To Read or To Write: The Ultimate Quandary

Skipping a Day to Read

Yesterday, there was no new post. Why? because between walking, work, and ballet, I filled my time reading a newly acquired book by Mercedes Lackey from her Elemental Masters series entitled “Jolene”. Without giving too much away, if you’re a Dolly Parton fan, you’ll get a kick out of this one! Since I went dancing on Sunday, which rarely happens these days, I had to finish the book on Monday, thus, no writing occurred.

I’ll make it up to you today though. The truth is, writers read…a lot. Though since I’ve been actively writing instead of only when the mood strikes, I find I read differently. Not only do I get immersed in a story, I also pay attention to how each author creates a character, or shows rather than telling. I may also key into things like plot development, and sentence structure, but mostly, I’m paying attention to the details they use. I didn’t used to read this way, but as I’ve had my own work critiqued (and not always favorably) I’ve become more conscious of the areas where I need work myself.

Easily Bored, Regularly Distracted

Unfortunately, my ADD brain doesn’t allow me to stick with the same task over time. I may get on a reading kick for awhile, eschewing both writing and TV watching for awhile. Then my mood shifts, and I’m watching TV, or playing computer games, or finding something else to occupy my free time; mostly in the evening. I often wonder if I’d actually complete something if I was able to stay on task, not for a set period of time, but just until it was done. I have a lot of respect for authors like Brenda Novak and Catherine Coulter who set themselves time to write, and deadlines to meet. If it means disappearing from the world for a little while, so be it.

I can do the disappearing from the world part, but the project completion part (unless it’s client work, believe it or not) gets mixed up in jumping from task to task, or activity to activity as my mind wanders incessantly. It makes me wonder how I was ever able to get through not one…not two…but three NaNoWriMo’s and complete at least 50,000 words each time! Two of those efforts even yielded a complete draft. Poor “Hannah’s Chair” is still mouldering on my hard drive, though it had become my favorite to write. I got bogged down in details of Gold Rush era San Francisco, and failed to do what I needed to do to move the project forward.

Let’s not even talk about my memoir. It’s gone through so much angst over the last decade and a half, I struggle to even open one of the files! I’ve learned not to force myself though. I know there’s a time and place in my not-so-distant future when I feel the proverbial book fall on my head and know it’s time to take whatever drastic measures I see fit to complete each of the WIPs on my drive currently languishing in a folder called “writing”. That time could be another year or so in coming, or it could be in the next few months. I won’t know until it smacks me between the eyes, and causes me to go into what, from the outside, will appear to be a deep hibernation. After all, I have been known to write for five hours straight and knock out 8,000 words on occasion. Editing is harder, but the ability to hyper-focus is there.

Know Yourself, and Make Magic

Each of us knows what we’re capable of, even if we haven’t yet produced that completed project. We also know, if we’ve traveled long enough and far enough with our authentic selves, that forcing ourselves to finish something without considering right timing makes as much sense as trying to swim upstream when we don’t even want to go back to what’s there, and we have a nice, cozy boat waiting to take us downstream to where the magic happens.

So while I appreciate the encouragement I’ve gotten from several quarters, no amount of pushing, prodding, or badgering is going to get me to right timing any faster. If it could, I’d have been there, done that already!

Grateful for Every, Single Moment

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful for e-books so I can get my hands on something I want to read at the exact time I want to read it.
2. I’m grateful for learning my own limitations.
3. I’m grateful for being able to choose to read, to write, or to do whatever feels good to me in the moment.
4. I’m grateful for rebooting my blog, and making every effort to write, if not every day, almost every day.
5. I’m grateful for everyone who has been adapting to the change in location of my gratitude posts, though it’s also meant I no longer share uplifting pieces I see from other people. The time I’ve gained is mostly being put to good use.

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

Intuition and Dreams Predict a Plot Twist

Predictive Dreams

I had a dream… a dream I was living the story in a book, and a friend was reading/living it right behind me. I came to a point where things changed dramatically and while sliding down a snowy hillside with nothing but the seat of my pants to insulate me from the cold, I looked back to yell “Plot Twist!” but my friend had fallen too far behind, and had missed the turn that took me off in a new direction.

Lately certain phrases have been sticking in my brain, and my daily Tarot Card pulls have underscored many. Phrases like “plot twist”, and “the unknown is an adventure” were battling with the part of me that has always slipped back into the soft, warm, boring comfort of the known. Yet I know from everything I’m seeing and experiencing the time has come to shed old ways, and take a few more leaps of faith. Maybe not as big as the last one I took, but leaps nonetheless that require a level of trust and faith I’ve found difficult to embrace on a long-term basis.

The difference is, I feel ready now, but more, I know if I fail to heed all the signposts, the Universe will push me forward and the process will neither be comfortable nor painless. I’ve gotten signs like this in the past—feelings really, that said it’s time to leave something behind and move into uncharted territory. It might have been a job, or a relationship. Either way, the Universe was nudging me to get out of my comfort zone, and even make a break for it before I was sucked back into the dull and boring.

Red Flags and Ruts

It’s clear I’ve become too complacent where I am at the moment. I’ve been following the same patterns for years in some cases, months in others. I’ve known for awhile something was missing, but I was unwilling to poke my nose far enough out of my shell to see what it was. I feel like I’ve reached a point of no return now, when the warm, comfy place I’ve been parked in for what seems like forever is disintegrating, and if I don’t want to be sucked down into the deep, dark hole that’s rapidly forming, I need to take a few giant steps in a different direction.

There’s a lot I don’t know right now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take some positive steps. Whether it’s changing my tone in blog posts, or getting back on schedule with the rewrite of my memoir, they’re steps I can and will take now. In a sense, I’ve cast off the trappings of my old life, and am standing on the precipice of the new one, naked, a little afraid, but eager to equip myself with lighter layers which will enable me to move more quickly now.

It’s almost like coming out of a long, cold winter when you’re wearing many layers of clothing, a heavy jacket, and insulated boots. The weather starts to get balmy so you shed the heavy coat in favor of a lighter one; the boots for sneakers. Soon the weather warms even more, and you no longer need the jacket. Maybe a light sweater, or just a long-sleeved shirt. I’m moving into summer now, where shorts, a sleeveless shirt, and sandals or bare feet will be sufficient protection from the elements, and won’t encumber me when I need to scramble over a few hills, or wade through streams.

Letting Excitement Overcome Fear

Am I afraid? Perhaps a little. Excitement over what I get to discover is superseding any fear. Mostly, it’s vestiges of my old fear of the unknown rising up to make a last stand before conceding defeat. I’m leaving that part of me behind along with the world I’m shedding, and the trappings that have encumbered me for too long. I’m climbing up on the stage even though I’m not entirely sure what it is I’m going to do or say when I get there. In fact, I’m feeling OK about winging it for awhile until I figure it out.

That says a lot for someone who used to spend a lot of time making plans. In looking back, all of my plans were safe and involved little to no risk, or at least not enough to set off my alarm bells. Granted, those alarms are far more sensitive these days thanks to some not so pleasant life lessons. I’m learning to dismiss many of them as they came before I recognized the problem wasn’t with my choices, but with myself. I settled a lot, believing I didn’t deserve better.

Much of my evolution has occurred in the last 20 to 25 years. It couldn’t happen at all until I realized I had to do a ton of internal work before I could alter my trajectory. Until I did the work, I’d continue to make the same choices, and realize the same results. And yes, I recognized the insanity in doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. It hadn’t happened in my first 4 decades, and if I hadn’t learned by then, the rest of my life would be just as sad and lonely.

Changes Come in Right Timing

I think the first solid choice I made was to refrain from spending the rest of my life unhappy. Filing for divorce came days after that revelation, though figuring out I had to fix myself took a few years longer. In my defense, I had to get through an ugly divorce that took 3 1/2 years to finalize. In the middle of the muddle, my mom chose suicide, leaving me with another small detail to navigate while trying to be a halfway decent mother to my then 6-year-old daughters.

I made a ton of mistakes along the way to discovering the most important thing of all. I had to stop pretending my life was perfect, and I had to risk letting people get past my crumbling walls. Frankly, the effort of holding all the pieces together was becoming more than I could handle anyway, so tossing that task aside was as much of a relief as losing my mom. I know that one sounds awful, but as unhappy as I was, my mom was infinitely worse. Somehow, as her eldest, she seemed to feel I needed to share in that unhappiness more than most.

Learning to Release the Past

Unfortunately, her own upbringing precluded sharing it with me in a healthy way. Instead, she picked at me, nagging me about everything from the way I raised my kids, to the way I kept my house, and the jobs I chose. The most hurtful of all was comparisons to my sister where I always came out the loser. It led me to block her from my life for a couple of years before my daughters were born, but I let my dad convince me to allow her back in to assume her grandmotherly duties.

It wasn’t entirely a bad thing. My daughters adored her, and she loved having them spend the night once they were old enough to take to zoos, the Tar Pits, and the tennis courts. It gave me a much-needed break during a contentious divorce, and she gave the girls some wonderful experiences.

I’ll always wonder if my refusal to share her unhappiness, and in fact, my tendency to exacerbate it at times was one of the factors that led her to take her life.

As usual, I’ve wandered quite a ways form my original topic, but sometimes, it helps to let my mind wander through all the steps that led me to where I am now. I look back at everything I’ve learned to release, and circle back to a few I still need to work on as I enter my brave, new world with a lighter load, and a more adventurous spirit.

Grateful For All the Hills and Valleys

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve taken to shed the hair shirt I thought for years was my due.
2. I’m grateful for my daughters who were sometimes the only reason I kept putting one foot in front of the other, until I learned I deserved a lot more than I was allowing myself.
3. I’m grateful for friends who’ve helped me learn to share more of my reality, and to see that trying to conceal it was not only lonely, but futile.
4. I’m grateful for a lifetime of experiences that have led me to where I am today.
5. I’m grateful for abundance; love, joy, friendship, acceptance, forgiveness, opportunities, excitement, inspiration, motivation, peace, harmony, health, balance, philanthropy, and prosperity.

Love and Light

 

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author or in her new group, Putting Your Whole Heart Forward