Blessings that hurt but heal

Thanksgiving—my favorite holiday. All of the good food and feels, and none of the extra shopping. Thanksgiving is also a typical time for intentionally recalling blessings. Another score on my books for this holiday. 😊

While I encourage you to recount every single person, place, and thing you appreciate, I also invite you to look at one painful or challenging experience that you never want to face again, and find something within this experience that has helped you.

Why do this?

Because it’s often through adversity we grow and evolve into the wisest version of ourselves. Yet our most painful moments are usually not something we consider gifts. We don’t want to revisit them. We don’t want to ever look at them again.

This creates unhealed trauma within the body and it will hold it right there as some kind of big emotion like anxiety, grief, anger, addiction, health issues, etc. until we understand its purpose which automatically creates the benefit.

When you look at the experience from this new perspective of benefit, your entire life shifts at the deepest soul level.

One of my most recent challenges of this nature came last year when one of my dearest family members told me he and his family could no longer see me because our health philosophies differed. Unless I did what they asked, I would not see them.

Man, that hurt more than I can articulate. Everything I had been actively avoiding because I feared it might happen was right in my face. This was my opportunity to fully feel my biggest heartache and worst fears—abandonment, separation, unworthy of love for being me.

It took days of deep sorrow, anger, and crying before I looked deeper. My person loved me no matter what was said. I knew this. I could feel him. It hurt him as much as it hurt me. He was operating out of extreme fear and love for his family. He wanted to keep them safe.

As I looked for the benefits in my circumstance, I came to an amazing realization. No matter what happened outside of me, within my heart nothing had changed about the way I felt for him and his family—and never could no matter if I never got to be with them again.

This was a huge aha moment for me. Nothing could or would ever change about my love for them and no one, not even my person could change it.

This brought such enormous peace. While I’d be sad if I couldn’t participate in their lives in a physical way, what they chose or not about spending time together no longer brought the same fear or heartache. I could love them completely AND honor both my highest unique life experience and theirs as well. I didn’t need them to see it my way, and I was okay with whatever they chose as well without having to agree with it.

This excruciating experience became one of my most expansive heart blessings. I no longer harbored any judgment, attachment, or expectation for anything within the relationship. I felt an enormous sense of peace and freedom. I realize now this was complete acceptance of life as it is without resistance or a need for it to be different.

I completely let go and got on with my life the best way I knew how. A week later, my person called and we talked deeper than we ever have. We moved from relationship to heart connection and found our way back to one another. I now see them all the time and am forever grateful to my loved one for his bravery to speak his truth.

Would I consciously ever choose this type of painful experience? No. But if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have received one of the greatest gifts of my life—to know what unconditional love truly is and what it looks like in real practice. I wouldn’t know the kind of internal, eternal peace I now have because of it.

All is possible. Trust your soul. It gives nothing but gifts if you’re open to receiving them in some rather unconventional ways.

With my full appreciation for you, blessed Thanksgiving!

And as always, I’m available for private sessions if you need deeper understanding, support, or guidance in the form of energy work or intuitive life coaching.