I’m chuckling at myself today. About ten years ago I said, I’ll never want to live in Michigan again. After 9 years of living in Chicago, a year and half of traveling in many places around the world and finding more inner and outer freedom, arriving back in Michigan was like I found an earth treasure. The land and energy here feels so calming. I love that I get to spend time with my family and continue creating here. I plan to stay here and plant some more roots.

In the last ten years, I’ve worked extremely hard to heal, move towards joy, forgive myself and work through the traumas that looped me into harmful patterns with myself and in intimate relationships and family.

For a while it was rough — Many dark nights, piles and clumps of Kleenex on the floor, fumbling to communicate and getting hurt, being my own biggest bully, asking for help, repeating painful experiences which brought me to my knees time and time again, depression and anxiety, being triggered easily by life situations, physical pain, tension, and fatigue, and constantly giving my services and gifts away without feeling worthy of receiving.

Gradually, I learned to allow healing more easily and naturally. As my nervous system found more safety, I learned to be gentler and more playful and also learned to enjoy pleasure. Now, everything is falling into place:

• Loving myself and feeling inner freedom
• Harmonious and beautiful relationships with my family and friends
• Financial freedom and an easeful state of abundance
• A divine loving and soulful romantic relationship/partnership full of sensuality, growth, love, and commitment to honoring both people
• Clients that I love who are experiencing transformative healing and are happy to invest in me
• Experiencing my devotion and expression in dance, music, and being with horses
• Time and space to listen to my heart and Spirit

While many of these things are concrete outer experiences, don’t be fooled — It’s not my outer circumstances that created my happiness. It is my inner loving and resonance with my Soul and Self. The loving outside of me reflects the loving inside. This was the result of my loving myself. This and my evolving outlook that all the painful experiences, that I may have previously felt victim to, are co-created by me to serve me in the lesson to love more.

So you’d think I’d revel in it and rest in it. I earned this after all. The funny thing is my mind wanted to bypass and skip the deliciousness that I created. The last few days, I’ve been pressuring myself to step into the next thing or take on a new project. I almost fell for it!

There’s a time growth. But my heart says, Not now. I trust my heart, even if it takes me a beat. Or two.

This moving past and skipping the enjoyment, disguised as “growth and productivity” is the residue of my past ways. To feel I need to be in constant creation or expansion, that I am unworthy of pleasure and enjoyment right NOW, and that enjoyment is not an act of my inner creative.

So, I forgave myself for the judgments around all these beliefs and ways of being. And my heart and body felt relief. Some emotions moved organically.

And with this, I feel free and natural in enjoying the most beautiful relationships I’ve ever experienced. I can savor, enjoy this yummy experience of life, soak it all in and play… It’s safe to have fun and allow my heart and senses to open, to be in the flow of the joy that is here.

Life and Spirit gave me these joyful experiences and I honor Life by enjoying them. I am worthy of this love and pleasure. What’s right in front of me wants me to embrace and claim this. I honor myself, what I’ve created, and those who have supported me.

I encourage you to honor where you are right now. Forgive yourself for being hard on yourself or feeling unworthy of pleasure and enjoyment. Notice and listen to what your heart is calling you to experience and acknowledge.

Realign with the Yumminess of Life and Your Worth

❤ What pleasures do you want to SAVOR in your life? Take a moment and make a connection with one of these aspects you enjoy and feel appreciative of in your life. Feel into your body the experience of your senses as you imagine this thing.

❤ Where are you skipping your own enjoyment or feeling unworthy of joy? Notice the little moments of pleasure that you are bypassing. Give yourself a moment to not skip over right now and sense into the place of disconnect with your pleasure and TAKE pleasure now. Feel where your body can enjoy it or notice what else happens.

❤ What are the beliefs you have about enjoyment and pleasure? With the beliefs you have, forgive yourself for having them and the judgments that come with them. Try the words: I forgive myself for judging myself for____ (or for believing_____).

It takes some practice and attention to be able to enjoy pleasure, just like any other muscle you would strengthen. We are so used to being unworthy, so used to going towards pain or problem — let’s realign to pleasure. Doing so brings spaciousness and more of our joyful and present selves to whatever task is at hand for us and in the relationships of our lives.

Honor Life in you, no matter the experience, painful or joyful. Notice the little moments, even if not everything seems to have fallen into place.

 

Featured Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash.