Category: Happiness

Happy -Wise Project 2018 #TenaciousTuesday

michd742 Comments
Rolling Stones Mick Jagger Keith Richards
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards onstage in 1971.
Chris Walter/WireImage

 

Recorded in France in 1971, and released on the Rolling Stones Exile on Main St., Happy is a philosophy for life, albeit not mine particularly but I believe we all have and are entitled to our own standard of Happiness. Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the lead vocals were sung by Keith Richards who celebrates his 75th birthday today and one year of sobriety.

If you are a regular here you will notice that most of my Tenacious Tuesday posts are titled after songs and each song has some significance to me. To dive a little deeper into that I may lose some of you and some of you may want to commit me but I know that some of you will understand this on an almost inexpiable level.

After I lost my husband to suicide in June 2017 writing was a solace to me but at times it was also very difficult. For a short while I had set my intention to have my Tuesday post written by Saturday, I dedicated one hour for editing on Sunday and Monday I would schedule the post to be published on Tuesday. In theory this worked extremely well but this dedication only lasted for a short time. I started to have a lot of trouble focusing to write at night and I would end up frustrated and I would not be happy with what I created.

I enlisted the help of Kirk, my late husband. Yes, you read that correctly. Kirk left the world physically but I became aware of his spirit presence very soon after he took his last breaths. If you know Kirk, I am sure you have had similar experiences and had zero doubt that Kirk would be an amazing spirit, just as he was an amazing human. Anyway, Kirk communicates with me through music a great deal and he is extremely crafty. It used to bring me to tears frequently; however it has easily become a natural part of my life. What usually happens is that I am driving in my truck with no solid idea of what to write about and I say “babe, play me a song, I need an idea!” A song plays, there is usually a memory attached and the very title spins the web of creation and bam I have an idea. Kirk likely wants ghostwriting credits, however, “to be fair babe, you are my prompter, the ideas and writing are all my own.”  The day that Kirk is able to communicate to me in a way that I can write about his spirit experiences I am going to be stinking rich, or sitting in an asylum, one or the other.

I have been reluctant to write about any of this for a long time and I understand that people can only understand as much as they are able or willing to.

Immediately after Kirk passed away I couldn’t listen to music. Music was a huge part of our lives and Kirk never missed an opportunity to pull me into his arms and dance. Kirk really enjoyed Country music and when I got the guts to turn the radio back on I would only listen to country. That ended up being a disaster and I arrived everywhere with tear stained eyes and mascara running down my cheeks.  I was also never able to go back to my regular radio station. I was a huge fan of Now Radio 102.3 and the morning show with Crash and Mars and the Ginge, I spent the drive home with Ginge’s wife Rachel Day. I cannot explain why I cannot go back to that radio station, I really have no explanation. I started listening to The Locker Room on 95.7 Cruz FM.  I immediately disliked Lochlin Cross, Grant Johnson and James White, especially Lochlin,(mostly Lochlin)  however I was drawn to that station and that was that. I have know come to enjoy the guys and Lochlin has grown on me, I actually see similarities to Kirk in his brash sassiness.

I started hearing Trooper every time I got in the truck “We’re here for a good time, not a long time,”  would play for me several times a day. The simple message “So have a good time, the sun can’t shine everyday” has not only been instrumental in my healing, Kirk and I met at a Trooper Concert so it is completely fitting.  I truly feel that the message in the song is a gift to me, reminding me frequently that life is short and I need to live it now. It became uncanny how many times that song would play just as I was getting in the vehicle and I immediately became aware that it was for me. I dislike it when anyone changes my radio station!  My daughter is impatient and hates listening to commercials and we got in an argument one day on the drive from the South side and I made her turn back to 95.7 and as she complained and grumbled through the commercials I said ‘Kirk, play your daughter a song so she will understand and the song that played after the commercial was “Just like heaven coming down,” by the Tea Party. That is now her song and it comes on frequently, too frequently to be a coincidence, when she is in the truck.

I talk to my mom a lot about the magical happenings surrounding my new relationship with Kirk and the things he does to get attention. I have always wondered if she thought I was losing my mind even though she humored me. In June she flew to Edmonton for Morgan’s high school graduation and at the airport I went to get the truck and grabbed her bags and just as she was getting into the truck Trooper came through the speakers loud and clear ‘We’re here for a good time, not a long, time, so have a good time, the sun can’t shine everyday.” Mom and I both burst into tears and of course I thanked Kirk for showing my mom that I wasn’t crazy. It was an emotional moment for us and we knew that we were in good company.

Flashback to this morning, I am driving to work and I  still have no clue what to write about and I say “

“Kirk, play me a song I need an idea.”

Two amazing things happened. Last night an old friend and roommate from Ontario messaged me, she has been so good to the girls and me, and though we had some issues to overcome when we were young and foolish, we have remained friends for all of these years and she is someone I love and respect. This morning at the red light as Lochlin was introducing the WTF track of the day, Jacqui popped in my head and an extremely vivid memory catapulted me back to Toronto, December of 1994 and Jacqui and I rocking out to one of the most amazing shows ever, The Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge tour which incredibly replaced Pink Floyd’s Division Bell tour (saw that too) as the highest grossing tour ever.  The song that Lochlin played, as a tribute to Keith Richards on his 75th birthday was played during the second set of their Toronto show, all those years ago I will never forget, Keith Richards, illuminated in light as he sang  “Happy” and every distinct line on his face telling a story of a life lived.

It was not a huge moment or revelation, as I mentioned, this has become a natural part of my life. Though this happens frequently, it will never cease to make me smile and be remarkably grateful.  There were a lot of rumors after Kirk’s death, rumors and assumptions about our life and the truth is, if you read backwards on my blog I was always very vocal and honest about Kirk and my marriage, our struggles and our triumphs and the unwavering love and connection that we continue to share. Our connection now is an extension of that. Kirk left his pain; it was never his intention to leave the people he loves. I hesitate to talk about him in the past tense because in my reality he is still a part of my world.

I get that some people find that weird. That is OK.

Someone asked me last week if I felt that my connection to Kirk would keep me from moving on and the answer is “hell no” Kirk wants me to be happy and free and he will never stand in the way of that. I feel that the universe will make it difficult for me to walk into situations that are not meant for me and I also feel that sometimes the things that are meant for me will take patience for it to be the right timing. I know that Kirk can see that all very clearly from his spiritual perch (his high horse) however he will allow me to make my mistakes and continue to root myself in love as I grow and expand. His presence is not a hindrance or obtrusive, it is just something I am aware of, just as you are aware of the sunshine. I know that he is incredibly proud of me. Those messages have come to me through numerous earth angels.

The loss of loved one will teach you countless lessons. Kirk unfortunately spent too much time in a place of pain; it is the very last thing he would want to pass on to the people who loved him. My awareness of his spirit and my connection to him serves as a driving force to keep moving forward even when things feel tough.

We are not meant to be happy 100% of the time. It would be unrealistic and unhealthy. There are feelings that demand to be felt and unfortunately not all of them are joy. A lot of people ask me how I maintain happiness and I would say minute by minute. Life is never happening to us, it is happening through us so awareness of our choices and acceptance of our feelings and how we tie ourselves to certain outcomes is the key to understanding how and why we feel a certain way and the barrage of emotions that can overwhelm us and pull us off course.  Accountability is a word I have thrown around loosely for years while being minimally accountable for any of my actions or feelings. If we are never able to assume any responsibility for our emotions we will sit in a place of judgment of others, instead of a place of love and that UN-leveled playing field makes honest connections difficult. I find that we often get stuck in this place where we believe everyone is crazy or stupid or rude, everyone and everything is the problem and we are so set on that, that we barely take a moment to self reflect on what energy we are bringing to the table. Commonly, the things we dislike in others is mirrored back at us, and we are being given an opportunity to examine our own behaviors.

Gratitude is the number one component to living a life built on happiness. No matter what other emotions we move through with grace; anger, sadness, fear, shame, pity or love, if we remain deeply rooted in gratitude life will be easier and joy will be imminent.

I realize that we are very quickly coming to a close of year three of the Wise Project and the end of 2018. To each ending there is a beginning and I am so grateful that you continue to share in my life and my experiences and share your fears and your triumphs with me. You have lifted me up on the days that I was feeling low, straightened my crown and threw some glitter on me. Your genuine passion for life and for kindness will never be forgotten.

As we enjoy these last weeks of 2018 I would like to invite all of you slow down and enjoy the moments of your life. There is impermanence in life that can work for or against us, the choice is really ours. When we live in awareness with the fact that no life or feeling is permanent we choose to live out of fear or love. Each choice comes with a wildly varying result and neither determines a pain free life; however a life rooted in love will always attract joy.

I choose to live deeply rooted in love and richly infected with gratitude. I hope you will do the same.

Xo

Michelle

Waves -Wise Project 2018 #TenaciousTuesday

michd74Leave a comment

Related image

I had a conversation with a friend the other day that has been facing a serious health battle; she was not only facing her battle with magnanimous grace she had made the decision to live every single day to the fullest. I am so proud of her and many other of my old friends who are facing the blackness of grief and trauma and those that are struggling with their health and facing their own mortality, what I am seeing time and time again is though we have been dealt unimaginable circumstances the universe has also handed us a gift and in that gift is a wisdom that perhaps we were just not ready to see before. There is nothing like tragedy to make you see things in an entirely new way. Life itself is a gift but we rush through the most important moments, always planning for the future or stuck in those places in the past that ripped our souls out, that taught us to be small and fearful, to doubt ourselves and to obey old vows and commitments that have been handed down for generation upon generation, that keep us sick and bound. I remember as young children everything I told my girls they would say “but why?”

It was incredibly irritating and I usually gave the customary answer that had been handed down among generations of mothers “because I said so”

At some point in adulthood we stop challenging the social and political norms and we follow along like good little soldiers with a little voice in the back of our minds. “mama said be polite, mama said be a lady, mama said don’t get my clothes dirty.”

We stop asking “but why” and we allow life to move us along.

For me, when tragedy hit I was so fucking terrified. My husband was my rock and facing a life without him had me panic stricken but loss brings with it a certain understanding of the world, a thoughtful consideration of the seemingly unpredictable ebbs and flows of life; that move us, cleanse us and guide us.

There is sadness in saying goodbye not just to our loved ones but to all that we believed would be our lives,  just as there is sadness in saying goodbye to the breathtaking magic and fearlessness of youth. Moments, memories and days we thought would never end slip through our fingers; like the sand we packed in our hands at the beach as children and the tighter we held on the more it seeped through the cracks.

It hadn’t yet occurred to us that we would run out of time or that the transient nature of life came with a reckoning so we lived without a fear of dying.

The thing with being a kid is that most of us didn’t know devastating loss and we hadn’t yet been faced with the impermanence of life. We hadn’t said our final goodbyes in hospital rooms our spoken heartfelt thoughts about our loved ones in eulogies. It hadn’t yet occurred to us that we would run out of time or that the transient nature of life came with a reckoning. The beauty in that is that we lived without a fear of dying.

I remember when I lost Kirk there were days that I was overcome with an irrational fear of evanescence. I believed that if I allowed myself to heal and to move forward then his memory and essence would rapidly fade. I wish I could come up with something to say to make everyone that will inevitably face loss understand, that that fear could not have been further from reality. As I began to allow myself to inch forward I began to see Kirk in a whole new way, not his death or the tragic illness that ripped him from us but as a quintessential life, something that could and would always transcend time and space to guide and support me. My memories of him are vivid and though the moments of struggle and fear we faced have insignificance now, it is the laughter and the stolen moments of candor and abandon that live in around me and propel me forward.

The wisdom that tragedy gives us is that we should all live in the wonder of youth.

I will not follow the rules that someone else made and call it living. I will not live to please everyone but myself; I will not rush through my life as if it is a race to my death. I will not allow the death of my great love to be the thing that cripples me and drains me of life little by little until I die. I will let love and death be my teachers; those things that remind me to live big, to laugh and to always choose love. The wisdom that tragedy gives us is that we should all live in the wonder of youth. Calamity knows no prejudice, at some point it will bring us all to our knees, it will not leave us unchanged but we should never allow it to diminish us.

Life, love, loss; it comes and goes in waves.

Something more than free -Wise Project 2018 #TenaciousTuesday

michd742 Comments

depositphotos_45592167-stock-video-silhouetted-woman-at-the-mountaintop

Several months after Kirk died I was catching up with an old friend and I found myself describing this fleeting feeling that I had been having, this feeling of freedom, this feeling like I could spread my wings and fly and live a big bold life in amazing technicolor. Saying it out loud to someone for the first time felt kind of liberating, as did being in the company of someone that I felt certain at that moment wouldn’t judge me. Typing that feels rather silly but death can bring out the worst in people and rumors were rampant in my small hometown and I faced a lot of judgment for every decision I made after Kirk died, even imaginary ones. I was only choosing to live while I was alive, something that Kirk wanted desperately for me, so it seems outlandish that anyone could find fault in that, but unhappy people can find fault in the best of intentions.

We think we can never face the hard things, and often when we are onlookers to the pain or suffering of another we wonder how they are able to endure it. The truth is we either do or we don’t. They are our only two choices. No matter what tragedies and challenges we face in our lives we all have the same opportunity to move through or get stuck. Most of what we go through, we grow through.

In the past several years I have been doing some work on relationship studies. Robert Waldinger’s Ted Talk and Harvard studies on what makes a good life led me to want to improve the most important relationships in my own life and as I dug deeper into relationships I was introduced to the concept of attachment and the strain it can put on our relationships, whether they are friendships or intimate’s ones.

While studying attachment it came up time and time again our attachment to material things as well. I thought I had mastered that years ago when I sold my house in Nova Scotia, the house that Kirk and I got married at, the house we brought our children home from the hospital to, the home where learned to love each other, even during the times that we struggled to like one another. What I learned the day I stood all by myself in that empty house will never leave me, once you took the people out of the house it was just four walls. It really wasn’t that important. The memories got to come with us on our new journey and they were the most important thing.

The lesson of attachment as it pertains to relationships is a tough lesson, one that I couldn’t completely grasp or understand the relevance of. What I was about to find out is that experience would bring me wisdom that I would never find in a book. The significance and truth in attachments I would discover through my own volition.

Your identity, your self-worth, and survival should never be bound by people or things.

Attachment and fear-based love can put a lot of pressure on our relationships and the people that we love and support. When there is jealousy and possessiveness in our friendships or relationships we are not acting from a place of love, we are acting from a place of attachment. Attachment is needy, insecure and repressive. Attachment is a terrible substitute for love, but in the end, some people want security more than they want freedom.

Don’t you lock up something
That you wanted to see fly
Hands are for shaking
No, not tying, no, not tying

~ from Fell on Black Days by Soundgarden

A defining moment in my life is when a boyfriend that I had once been madly in love with and thought I would spend the rest of my life with told me that he wanted to own and control me. I had a new job and new friends and I was happy and growing as an individual and his fear at me finding my wings and his reluctance to love and support me in my growth destroyed our relationship.

Love is spacious, it should never make us feel caged. Love and friendship is an incredible thing if we can love and be loved in such a way that makes us feel free.

I have not mastered this intelligent free flow in all my relationships, but I have a good realization that not everyone is supposed to be with us for the duration of our lives. Some people come into our lives to teach us or to challenge us for a very short time and others though they may come and go are meant to be in our lives in some way; always. There is an ebb and flow to these things that will most often manage itself if we give up our need to control every little thing.

After Kirk passed away people said and did the strangest things. I felt like a lot of people tried to take a weird ownership of him, as if their connection or experiences with him diminished all his other relationships. I also saw a very beautiful thing, I saw people who genuinely loved him forging friendships with others that loved him in a very simple, loving and honest way.

I am a better person for loving Kirk and I am richer from being consumed by the depths of his love. Death has surprisingly taught me more about love than I could ever conceive of. Death ends a physical life, it does not end love. Kirk’s love lives inside of me, in my limbs, guiding me and helping me to see and experience things in ways I could never even imagine. Our love is not dependent on bonds and it knows no bounds. It is how earthly love should be.

Have you ever hiked to the top of a mountain and when you got to the top your legs were like jello and your lungs were on fire but the view from the top was incredibly breathtaking and you stood in the freedom pose with the sun on your face and the wind in your hair and you just felt so astonishingly free you wished that feeling could last forever? Imagine if our love could make someone feel like that? Wouldn’t that be powerful?

“The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, Courage.” – Thucydides (460 BC – 395 BC), Greek Historian

Torn Cape- Wise Project 2018 #TenaciousTuesday

michd74Leave a comment

I was feeling a little heavy the last couple of days, sometimes the weight of the hatred and the negativity in the world is a lot for my heart to process. I believe our fundamental purpose here on Earth is to love so when I feel such disparity between what I believe should be and what actually is I struggle. I know that it is important to keep shining my light and the candles that need lit will find me but today I gave my flame a little rest and handed the reigns over to my beautiful and huge hearted daughter Morgan. Morgan often struggles with the injustice in the world around her, with love, with overwhelming emotion and self identity. Yet I see her at the tender age of eighteen, curiosly finding her freedom, her wings and her courage to fly. To say I am proud would be an understatement. As I post this I am reminded that in life and love sometimes we are the teacher and sometimes we are the student. Sometimes it is okay to shut up and listen.

Listen. Learn.

xo

Michelle

“There are moments when you fall to the ground
But you are stronger than you feel you are now
You don’t always have to speak so loud, no
Just be as you are
Life is not always a comfortable ride
Everybody’s got scars that they hide
And everybody plays the fool sometimes, yeah
Just be as you are”

~Mike Posner

Recently I engulfed on a journey and as selfish as it may seem the adventure is all about me.

This expedition is so utterly important because there are prominent parts of me lost in the atmosphere and I can’t just stand here anymore and feel half full. As an optimist I know how extraordinary life can be and to prosper I can no longer put limitations on myself for those who say they love me.

To some this may be a tough pill to swallow but in this world our being is all that we truly have promised to us, something that will always be there no matter what.

As human beings; without even realizing, we give away abundant fragments of ourselves. Me, myself… I’m a culprit of this, but I’ve come to understand that the more I give away the less complete I feel.

There are times that I am like a thousand piece puzzle but I’m not absolutely sure where the other five hundred segments went.

I’ve spent my entire life in a cape trying to be everybody else’s hero and I often forgot about the most important person in my life; me!

Being an empath, I devoted a great deal of my energy trying to be everyone’s super hero and I unknowingly put myself in a corner.

When I love someone I give all of me to them, I’m not the type to half do things. In other words my brain is here but my heart is doing all the thinking. As someone who feels everything all at once at such a deep level; I hopelessly, fall. For me it’s so incredibly hard for me to say no. The anxiety of not fulfilling the wants/needs of others is overwhelming for me and though it would be so simple to say yes, I know I must reverse it.

On June 18th on Father’s Day my dad was swallowed whole by the darkness. I’ve now lived just about eight months without him. I’ve spent about seven of those worrying about others, putting my feelings aside, and being the hero that I needed to be for everyone. Now at the core I feel damaged and cracked.

Luckily my parents built me strong and taught me that I can get through anything. So now I am grieving, loving and breathing.

Today I am alive and I know that tomorrow is not guaranteed so I’ll walk this path and learn to love myself.

Deep down I know he’ll be walking right beside me, holding my hand.

Love has flaws. In love there is loss. Within love there is me and there is you.

Remember that none of us are broken. We all have battle wounds that turn into warrior like scars.

Loving and learning

Morgan DeBay

I’m still standing. Wise project 2017- #tenacioustuesday

michd74Leave a comment

“So what is it in a human life that creates bravery, kindness, wisdom, and resilience? What if it’s pain? What if it’s the struggle?”

― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

For the past several months after the death of my husband I have been faced with some extremely tough questions, mostly questions that I ask myself to reconcile a life that I thought I had and a future that I had planned for; with the life that I currently have and a future for the girls and I that is a little uncertain.

Knowing how short life is I have questioned whether this is it? Is this the beginning of the end or is this end in fact a beginning?

I have been tasked to face my thoughts and fears surrounding humility, loss and desire.

Do I focus on what I lost when my husband left the physical world, or do I focus on what I gained while he was here?

Will I leave my children a legacy of brokeness or an endowment of great strength and fearlessness?

Do I dare desire to move forward in my life and imagine a bright future?

Will this loss break me or teach me?

Knowing that I am a mirror for our children I have been working hard to find my footing on this new path, my vulnerability and tenderness allows me to feel all the emotions as they wash over me, yet it is my bravery and tenacious spirit, traits we do not always associate with being feminine, that allow me the audacity to dream of a big future.

Somedays I feel as soft and fragile as mountain of cotton balls but more and more often, as I drift from heartache to daydreams I find myself moving with a sureness through this great big world, rising as resolute as an old oak tree, with roots planted so securely into the earth that I know that there isn’t a storm so fierce that it can knock me down.

 

“My courage will come from knowing I can handle whatever I encounter there — because I was designed by my creator to not only survive pain and love but also to become whole inside it. I was born to do this. I am a Warrior.”

― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

 

It is really scary, yet equally motivating to slowly discover the place that you want to occupy in this world and work diligently to fabricate a brilliant and shiny future built from ruins.

I love Kirk as much in death as I did in life, my love for him has not changed, only my attachment to him physically.

I believe the human experience is such a very small part of our existence and the spirit world is more expansive than we can ever truly imagine. In life I wanted Kirk to have freedom from the demons that tortured him, and he wanted me to fully embrace my affable spirit and shine as brightly as I possibly could. None of that has changed, for either of us. I can remember vividly a conversation Kirk and I had at Easter in Vancouver about unconditional love. We talk a lot about unconditional love, while putting conditions on our love. When behaviors change or certain conditions are not met in our relationships, they suffer, some irreparably so. When our conditions are not met the love inevitably fades away. This had been an ongoing conversation for days, whether that type of love was possible in a romantic relationship. We both waivered and changed our minds countless times, settling on yes it was possible but could prove extremely  difficult. Now more than ever I realize the value and the depth of unconditional love. The promises and commitments we made can no longer be honored, yet, the love remains and always will; unconditionally.

Daily we face the unimaginable pain and trauma of our tragic loss, but our story continues. When we sift through the ragged debris of a life that once was I am finding that some important things remain, in fact all the things I need to plant the seeds of a new life. Hope, faith and love.

I know for certain that I do not want to be just lovely, I want to be love. I know that every bit of the love I gave to Kirk he will give back to me now so that I will contine to have the capability to face all of my  fears and embrace optimism and put that love back into the world so that I attract the right people and experiences to design a future of gratitude and abundance for me and my family.

I have a deep understanding of my worthiness and I know I am deserving of good things. The choices I make and the intentions I set will determine the foundation that I build a future on. I am forever changed but I will continue to live from an untamed heart, not a disenchanted one.

A family member asked me yesterday if I was angry and how did I manage to keep myself going?

The truth is pain is merciless; fighting it will neither solve nor diminish it. We need to heal our pain because if we continue to dwell in the hurt, hurt is what we will continue to bring into the world. 

Yes, some days I am angry and sometimes I cry out of nowhere but that is not the entire story. Pain cripples our capacity for love and joy. Pain is a place to visit, not a place to live. I choose mercy over misery.  That is the best way I know to honor him. 

I want to bring love into the world and that starts with unabashedly loving myself and deeming myself worthy of all of  the things I desire in life. There was a time that I believed that it was my job to hold everyones pain, that it was OK if I came last. I know longer believe those things. 

Throughout this challenging grief journey there are days I will not always feel brave, on those days when I am soft and giving and loving; other true essences of myself; I will work harder to beat down the walls of fear, as I cannot shine my bright light into the world if I constantly build protective walls around me and my heart to keep the light out.

I am courageous, yet vulnerable, I am uncomfortable yet authentic and I am showing up every day, even the days when it hurts the most, without sacrificing any of the things that make me….me.

I’m still standing.

“First the pain, then the rising.

― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

 

So when you ask how I am and I say I am ok, I am. I am not ok because I am over Kirk or I no longer feel his loss, I am ok because I know more than ever that the love we shared is still and will always be very real. It is in the eyes of our children, every song we danced too, every movie we curled up and watched and every single memory that brings me a smile. If I tore apart every piece of myself there would be evidence of him in every cell, he will never truly be gone. 

 In life Kirk was my biggest cheerleader and now, in a world that likes to scrutinize and cast harsh judgement it feels really good to know that I have the best cheerleader in the universe looking out for me, someone who genuinely wants the very best for me in every situation.

I ran into a new friend the other day that I have not seen since August, she asked how I was and her eyes immediately filled with tears and automatically registered sadness. People so often feel that it is their duty to take on the pain of others. I have definitely carried the weight of other people’s pain and it gets extremely heavy. I assured her that I was ok and I was doing well and healing. I later met a friend who told me that my good energy was infectious. If I can pass along anything to you, I would not choose my pain, or my suffering, I would choose my energy and my love.

I’m still standing and so are you. Now it is our time to rise.

 Adversity can not rob of of the opportunity to have a great life. Pain is in fact a great teacher. Many people who have faced unimaginable struggle have gone on to lead inspiring and impactful lives.

Just as Kirk will always be more than the illness that stole his life away, we will be more than the tragedy that robbed us of him. 

Holding unto pain is like drinking poison in your coffee everyday. We will continue to suffer with no end in sight. Sadness and suffering are not the same. 

Today, whatever you are holding unto that is causing you pain and shutting peace out of your heart, ask yourself…

1. Will holding unto this pain change the situation for the better? Should I hold the pain or heal it?

2. Will letting go of and moving through the pain be of benefit to me?

3. Will I choose misery or will I choose mercy? Why? 

“What if pain – like love – is just a place brave people visit?” ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

 

 

xoxo-michelle1