Streets and Deep Holes
Ever stop to think of all the wrong streets you walk down and all the deep holes and cracks you fall into? Then, do you scratch and claw your way out, all while blaming someone else for your choice of streets and subsequent potholes?
Streets and deep holes, in this instance, is metaphor of the choices we make that lead us to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Often, these choices follow the same destructive patterns we have made throughout a lifetime.
When you get right down to it, our lives are full of lessons and wondrous opportunities to learn them. Free beings that we are (if, indeed, that’s true) we choose to walk down the same streets we’ve traveled before, and often fall into the same/similar holes. When we do so, we have another opportunity to learn that lesson again. We can choose to learn it now, or we can wait until the same lesson comes around again (and it will, I guarantee you!) giving us another opportunity to learn to make different/better choices.
I don’t know about you, but over the years, I walked down the same pothole-filled streets many times, and yes, been given another opportunity to learn the lessons I came into this world to learn–lessons about streets and deep holes. (i.e. relationships that aren’t good for me, jobs I don’t enjoy, over commitment of my time, social groups or churches I don’t care to participate in, overly needy friends that ‘drink my blood.’
In time, I learned that these streets and deeps holes are there to teach me the same lessons, but each time I learn them at an even deeper level, until finally, I get it!
If I refrain from blaming others and take a deeper look inside, I recognize these are the same streets and deep holes (read, lessons) I’ve traveled and now I can decide not to spend all the energy it takes to avoid the potholes, but rather to choose a different street!
What about you? What streets and deep holes have you walked down over and over again, and over and over again gotten caught in the same lessons you thought you’d learned but evidently hadn’t, else you wouldn’t get caught in them all over again. What lessons keep coming around for you to learn? What does it take for you to learn them? What does it take for you to not only avoid the potholes, but to choose another street to go down?
Streets with deep holes don’t have to control our lives.
There is a life before life that most often goes unrecorded and even unrecognized in the human journey. It is life in the womb; a space for incubation often treated as a pre-history of no special consequence to the life narrative that follows. As technology has sharpened our gaze into this ambiotic existence, human experience has been irrevocably altered. Such gains in insight can also create losses, unexpected twists and turns of ante-natal life that can carry great significance.
The novel you are about to read impels us to confront such a dilemma. A woman, pregnant, seeing her first ultrasound image can see the outline of two babies. Then, a follow-up appointment, a second ultrasound, and the twin has vanished. A precious child is gone, a sibling lost, and so is a unique parenting experience.
The fate of the Vanishing Twin remains enigmatic. Was it an apparition, an aberration of imaging, or a legitimate loss, a being leaving no trace of its existence apart from a searing image in its mother’s and often its womb-mate’s mind?
It is not uncommon for people, seemingly ignorant of this ‘loss’ to develop fantasies about “being with someone else,” or needing to live their lives for two. Is it a personal memory of womb life or an intuition of an unexpressed part of their mother’s mind? If told later in life about the loss, there are often feelings of relief at not being “crazy” but sometimes too, anger and distress at not being told all along.
Sylvia Dickey Smith‘s novel makes an important contribution to womb-twin survivors by raising awareness of this phenomenon and educating others as to what can be its long-term possible emotional effects.
“…..I used to feel guilty for being alive,” observed one survivor who lost her womb-mate early in her mother’s pregnancy, “I thought my parents hated me because I was not it……I often feel very alone and low.”
We know that multiples (twins, triplets etc) are aware of each other in utero. Hence, when womb-mates fail to survive, a rent in the fabric of identity can be the result for the womb-twin survivor. Being with another at this formative stage of life can surely leave a lasting impression with reverberating impact. How to grieve a life that in many ways wasn’t? How to mourn a Vanishing Twin when there is no one to validate its life? Here, we have a baby of technology, an image on a photo, a welcome addition whose existence remains un-named.
New technologies are also creating new losses that society has yet to fully acknowledge. The culling of fetuses following in vitro implantation when too many take hold is a prime example. A necessary step to improve the chances of survival of the other babies, it can nonetheless complicate post-natal life for parents and for those babies who survive. A major hurdle is that a loss must be recognized before it can be grieved. Such losses, therefore, can pass under the radar of what society views as a legitimate loss. A loss unnamed, of course, is not necessarily a loss unrecognized at a deeper emotional level.
Sylvia Dickey Smith‘s work is an important opportunity for remembering all those lives so apparent in obstetrical family photos that then vanish without a trace.
Transitions that shift the physical presence of twins on earth do not mean that the connection between them is broken and the relationship is over. Its quite the contrary in my experience. The twinship lives on with a strong power that effects one’s life in numerous ways. When it is owned, integrated and given a sanctuary inside one’s heart, it can be a force that enhances, enriches and empowers one’s life. Though a clear ‘goodbye’ might be something that is healing for some people, for others it is the very acceptance and connection with one’s twin that brings freedom and a new ability to live. Even if one comes to a place of saying some kind of a ‘goodbye’, whatever that means for that individual, the ‘goodbye’ is often simply a means of finding a new and different way of holding the twin connection and allowing it to live on. What is important is that each surviving twin find the way that will enable them to ultimately embrace, own and celebrate their own life while integrating their twin loss. Everyone must find their own way of integrating their twin loss. Some stay actively and consciously connected with their twins; others may go unconscious and spend their life seeking to fill the void or find the one who left; while others might find other strategies that ultimately do or don’t become supports for their own growth. Twinship, weather there is loss or not, is not something that one says good bye to in my experience. It is something that one holds dear, misses, yearns for, deeply embraces, remembers, celebrates, honors and ultimately accepts and moves forward with. It is in the acceptance of one’s twinship and the twins transitional loss that one can establish a new connection with one’s own individual path as well as one’s twin(s).
Personal Response Modification
Okay, here’s the deal. Moving reaction to a minimum and developing a more proactive stance in our communication with others definitely facilitates clearer, cleaner, more positive results.
Proactive communication has more to do with our self than it does the other person. And our bodies are the best barometers in facilitating better relationships.
Example: Say you find yourself in an argument or disagreement with someone, and this discussion has gotten heated. You feel your blood pressure rise, or your chest hurts. Your head might pound. Practice doing this:
- Identify where, in your physical body the emotion or reaction is located. What does it feel like? Most people feel this energy surge in the same part of their body every time. It might feel like an elephant has taken its seat on your chest. The surge might constrict your throat; make you sick to your stomach. You might even feel the surge in your genital area. Or perhaps your shoulders tighten until they cramp.
- Just do a quick body check and identify WHERE your body is reacting to the argument. Notice if these reactions occur in the same part of your body each time, or if you feel it in one spot, and then another the next time.
- Work on that. Next, we’ll talk about what to do with that information. But before reading on, spend time practicing. Raise your conscious awareness to your communication with others, and then notice where in your body you are feeling the energy of imbalance when it occurs.
Honor The Feeling:
Identify where, in your body, you feel the stress. You have identified the color that corresponds with that part of your body–your chakra. Now, very quickly, honor the feeling, honor the color, honor the emotion. Give thanks for it. It truly serves a valuable purpose in your life. When we fail to recognize and honor, simply by acknowledging the emotion, we shut it down, pushing the emotion into a deeper crevice within our body. Over time, this suppression leads to blockage, and blockage leads to stagnation and disease. Giving thanks for our body doing its job is essential to keep the process working. Failure to do otherwise is rude and thoughtless behavior. Over time, that behavior becomes who we are. Develop the habit of checking in, identifying, and giving thanks often, at least daily! You will be surprised at the change you will begin to feel in your body.
- What does the surge of energy feel like? Do a mental assessment. Is it a churning, burning feeling, or an angry raging flow? Perhaps it is like being struck or punched in the stomach with a fist. It might only be a flutter of butterfly wings. Your head may feel like it is about to blow, or you may have that elephant sitting on your chest. If you haven’t identified where, in your body, you feel your anger, take a minute and do so now.
- Refer to the basic rainbow colors, below, and the emotions or state generally associated with them. This is something you might want to experiment with and see how these emotions and their associated colors fit for you. Sometimes a color is easy to identify with the feeling in your body. At other times, it is more difficult. When it doesn’t come easy, I have found that if I reach for the color, it helps. By that, I mean I ask myself what color do I think the feeling represents. The first color that comes to mind is what I go with. It seldom leads me astray. In other words, “fake it till you make it,” is the password.
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There are no mistakes, just lessons.
Personal growth is trial and error.
As long as we live, lessons will present themselves to us to learn.
Now if that’s not the most discouraging lesson of all! After all the work I’ve done on myself all these years, one would think I’d learned all my lessons and could coast till the end.
Not so. Very few of us receive the truth complete, unabridged and sight-blinding, because of instantaneous illumination. We learn it one tiny step at the time. Sometimes, even when we’ve learned it, we find ourselves learning the same lesson all over again, but in an even deeper way.
The experiments you try and fail at, are just as much a part of the lessons as those experiments in which you succeed.
I think we are too hard on ourselves. We make a mistake and we beat up on our self, shaming, putting down, and telling ourselves we are awful.
Since we attract the lessons we need to learn, every time we attract the same lesson, we are reminded we haven’t learned that one yet. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a part of the whole life-lesson process. We learn from it what we can and move on, not brow beating, but reminding ourselves we’re further down the road to becoming the person we choose to be. We may have to repeat that mistake, but eventually we will get there.
I work at learning to accept myself, even with all my warts and moles. When I screw up, I remind myself the whole world is not going to shun me and think I am a terrible person. That I can still love me, hold my head up, make a correction in my path, and keep going.
How about you? How do you handle it when you make mistakes?
Feel free to comment, below.
As long as we live, lessons will present themselves to us to learn.
Now if that’s not the most discouraging lesson of all! After all the work I’ve done on myself all these years, one would think I’d learned all my lessons and could coast till the end.
Not so. Very few of us receive the truth complete, unabridged and sight-blinding, because of instantaneous illumination. We learn it one tiny step at the time. Sometimes, even when we’ve learned it, we find ourselves learning the same lesson all over again, but in an even deeper way.
Life moves so fast that, before we know it, we’ve stacked up a bunch of years trailing off behind us.
One of my core beliefs is that I came into this world with a set of lessons to learn, and if I don’t, I just might have to learn them in a subsequent life. Whether that be fact or fiction, I don’t know. However, it behooves me to live my life as if it is. It makes my life better and I believe it makes life better for those with whom I come in contact. This post, and the next three, will be the basic measurements I use to guide me in doing so.
The first one is to:
SHOW UP
Make it a point, every day, to show up–be present–regardless of how good the bed feels. Climb out of bed, pour a cup of coffee or water, or soda, or juice and take a look outside and even step outside if you can. Celebrate the new day. Notice the sunrise, the trees. Listen to the birds singing their welcome of the morning. What do you see, smell, hear, feel, taste? Fill your lungs and give thanks for a new day. It is about not wasting my time and energy with thoughts of what might happen, could happen, probably won’t happen, or what I wish would happen.
In other words, showing up means to live in the present moment.
Connect with family and friends, listen, really listen to what they say and what they don’t say, what their actions tell you. Hear them. Understand them, or at least let them know you want to understand them. And if you don’t understand them, ask them to help you do so.
Listen to your own inner voice. What is it that I need to say today to be authentic. Be totally honest with yourself and appreciate all you are.
Recognize and accept that we each have both a light and a dark side. Allow the light of day to shine on the dark in order to diffuse its power over yourself. (We’ll talk more about this in the future.)
It includes allowing ourself to be vulnerable, to take risks, to know what our passion is and be willing to step out and take a risk to achieve it.
To take risks for our heart’s desire by letting go of one trapeze in order to clasp the other.
Being present also means to put phoniness aside. To not ‘act happy’ when we feel lower than dirt. To address why we’re not happy.
Showing up is not about me proving to you I am a good (or bad) person. Showing up is about listening to my own sense of wisdom and aligning my behavior toward self and others, accordingly.
What does showing up to life mean to you? What parts of that do you find difficult to follow? What parts are easier? Feel free to comment.
3 there are no mistakes
There are no mistakes, just lessons.
Personal growth is trial and error.
The experiments you try and fail at, are just as much a part of the lessons as those experiments in which you succeed.
I think we are too hard on ourselves. We make a mistake and we beat up on our self, shaming, putting down, telling ourselves we are awful.
Since we attract the lessons we need to learn, every time we attract the same lesson, we are reminded we haven’t learned that one yet. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a part of the whole life-lesson process. We learn from it what we can and move on, not brow beating, but reminding ourselves we’re further down the road to becoming the person we choose to be. We may have to repeat that mistake, but eventually we will get there.
I work at learning to accept myself, even with all my warts and moles. When I screw up, I remind myself the whole world is not going to shun me and think I am a terrible person. That I can still love me, hold my head up, make a correction in my path, and keep going.
How about you? How do you handle it when you make mistakes?
4 we come into this world to learn life lessons
he lessons you come into this world to learn will present themselves to you over and over again until you learn them. Once you have, then you will continue to the next lesson.
We are back to one of my favorite words: BEHOOVE. I am no authority on how we might come into this world with a set of lessons to learn, or even if we do. But I do know when I CHOOSE to believe that we do, and practice learning those lessons the first, second, or third time around, my life is SOOOO much easier. Therefore, it behooves me to learn each lesson and be done with it.
How do we know when we’ve learned one of those lessons? By making different choices the next time the same situation presents itself.
One of my lessons has been to not put my foot in my mouth by saying something about someone I wouldn’t want them to know I said. I did that once in an email to an employee I supervised, and then realized I had hit Reply All instead of simply Reply, like I intended to do. Wow. Took me a while to get over that flub. Of course another lesson in that example is to be very careful before sending email.
I also learned:
I am not responsible for another person’s feelings. However, I am responsible for choosing to be considerate of another’s feelings. Not because of who they are, but because of who I am. (read, who I choose to be)
And I choose to be a person who is polite, courteous, kind, thoughtful and respectful to all I meet.
4 redux
The lessons you come into this world to learn will present themselves to you over and over again until you learn them. Once you have, then you will continue to the next lesson
Thinking about this lesson later this morning I thought of one of my lessons that I have learned that I do not have to repeat. That is allowing people to talk to me in a way that I do not deserve.
When I encounter someone who speaks to me in a rude, abusive, or controlling way, giving me orders when they have no right to do so, I learned to say to them, “I do not talk to people that way, and I will not allow you to talk to me that way.”
Once, I was walking down the street of a small town when a stranger yelled at me, saying, “Stop. Do NOT walk down that street.”
I didn’t know the man from Adam, and turned to him and said, “Is that a please?”
“Oh, please, yes, please, ma’am. We are filming a movie and you were walking right into it. But that was rude of me. I should have asked please.”
My husband marveled at my immediate response. I hadn’t even stopped to wonder who the man was or why he didn’t want me to walk that way. I simply knew I deserved to be asked in a polite, courteous manner. My husband has bragged about that so many times over the years.
I don’t know where my response came from, but it did teach me that is one lesson I have learned. That I deserve to be treated with the same courtesy and respect I give others, and I do not have to settle for anything less than that.
When we know we are worth more, we have learned that lesson well.
5 learning lessons orver again
As long as we live, lessons will present themselves to us to learn.
Now if that’s not the most discouraging lesson of all! After all the work I’ve done on myself all these years, one would think I’d learned all my lessons and could coast till the end.
Not so. Very few of us receive the truth complete, unabridged and sight-blinding, because of instantaneous illumination. We learn it one tiny step at the time. Sometimes, even when we’ve learned it, we find ourselves learning the same lesson all over again, but in an even deeper way.
