• Typo “A” Personality

    • October 26, 2023 3:13 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    How are you doing in these challenging times? Our world is experiencing such unbelievable turmoil and unrest yet beauty and goodness continue to promulgate despite the great suffering around us. I hope you are finding ways to be okay.

    Over the years, I have been sharing with you how perfectionism and control contribute to a feeling of “not enoughness” in my life and the healing practices that enable me to be enough. You’ve heard me say this inner work is an ongoing process and I continue to wrestle with insecurity and low self-esteem.

    One of the most effective tools in my toolbox for battling the seemingly endless barrage of inner criticism is talking out loud to those negative voices (“Thank you for sharing, now f-off”) and speaking reassuringly to the part of me that needs encouragement (“It’s okay that things aren’t okay”).

    For me, having a sense of humour about a situation is the ultimate goal and, if I can get there, evidence that I am doing well.

    Recently, I re-posted an announcement for a talk I am giving at an upcoming event in my area. When I had first viewed the presenter’s original post, I noticed a pretty significant typo in the title.

    My immediate response was to panic, stomach tightening and mind racing. What would everybody think??

    Well …

    Let them think it!

    Do I actually believe I can control what everyone thinks anyway? (Okay, yes, I do. But this is an unsound belief.)

    Instead of emailing the presenter to request that she take down the announcement, re-do the graphic and re-post it without the typo, I practiced a form of detachment, in this case, separating my self-worth from the mistake.

    I decided to go ahead and re-post with the typo and make a joke about it. To my delight, many of the commenters also made jokes. One wrote about embracing imperfection and another expressed their preference for the mistake!

    I can’t always make fun myself. Because I was laughed at and criticized as a child, there remains a very tender part of me that doesn’t find these things funny. But if I can reassure the more sensitive part and strive for detachment, I’m laughing.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Glad Tidings

    • October 10, 2023 2:16 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    I have been putting off writing this letter for so long!

    At the beginning of each week, I write the letters “HJL” (short for “Healing Journey Letter”) on my to-do list. At the end of each week, I cross the letters off and re-write them on the page of the coming week.

    Talk about procrastination!

    But I am here now. And I have so much to tell you.

    After a month-long Spring book and retreat tour in BC/Yukon, I returned to Ontario having sold a good number of books, led two inspiring retreats (Being Enough and Soul Care) and connected wholeheartedly with family and friends.

    There were challenges along the way and I wrestled with a few angels and I was acutely aware of how privileged I am and what a fun adventure I was on.

    “How is this my life?” I asked myself one evening after a book talk, staring into a bank of towering trees on Bowen Island.

    While there, a woman who bought O My God sought me out to tell me she’d had a trauma flashback reading the part of the memoir where I describe the sexual assault I experienced as a child. In order to regulate her response, she had immediately taken herself into the woods to rage, cry and heal in the arms of Nature.

    “Thank you,” she said to me after sharing her experience. “Your story helped me to heal a little more.”

    As a person who has struggled with the need to succeed in order to feel worthy, I allowed myself to enjoy the kind of success that cannot be measured by book sales or profits.

    This woman’s life had been deeply touched by mine. My life, in turn, had been newly touched by hers. Nothing else mattered in that moment.

    When I got back to Ontario, I directed and acted in a play that I’d written for the first time in more than 10 years. My co-star was a man whose neurodivergence and acting talent inspired the short play, which we performed for the Port Hope Arts Festival. “This is my dream come true,” he said of the experience.

    Wow.

    In more recent days, I’ve been “chopping wood and carrying water”, working as a spiritual director, writing a novel, and doing my best to live a life of service.

    Port Hope has not had the floods and fires we are seeing elsewhere this summer, though the sudden, torrential rainfalls we’ve had feel unsettling. And it is painful knowing there are so many people who have been struck by disaster in Canada and around the world. I do my best to align myself with these fellow humans through spiritual practice.

    A few days ago, I stepped off a high stair onto uneven ground and my foot turned beneath me. I felt a crunch and went down, groaning and gasping with the pain. An X-ray showed a small, bone-chip fracture in the talus bone. Now, I am wearing an air boot and walking with a cane, hurray!

    Because I am a person who has also struggled with the need to control things, I immediately went looking for the spiritual significance of the injury. Forget about feeling this experience of powerlessness, I must understand it and figure it out.

    Here is what came:

    A meditation experience brought forth the idea that I had (yet again) taken on other people’s suffering to the point of injuring myself. (Ugh. Does anyone smell burning martyr?)

    A website about the mind-body connection gave me the wise (but pretty obvious) advice to PAY ATTENTION.

    A counsellor friend suggested I “Be Still and Know …”

    My boyfriend wondered if I was too busy (again) and needed to slow down (again).

    “How about you’re just clumsy?” one of my sisters said.

    After the incident, the perfectionist part of me was in a shame spiral. The wounded child within felt like she was being punished. I could feel myself going down, down, down into the black, squishy quagmire of self-pity and despair.

    What did I really need? A good cry.

    So I did that. I took the time to bawl my friggin’ eyes out.

    Guess what came next? Gratitude.

    Surprise!

    So often, when we allow ourselves to release the grief, the gift arises.

    What is the gift?

    In this case, for me, just getting to be here.

    I watch people die all the time where I work.

    My life will end one day.

    Being alive now, even with all of the crazy, heartbreaking madness in our world, is really something pretty incredible.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia