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January 3 - January 25, 2025
I was lonely, terribly lonely. I thought to myself Will I ever find my people?
It’s a painful process—a shedding of old skin, becoming aware of yourself in a way you’ve never been before. You have to see yourself to love yourself—and you have to love yourself in order to give yourself what you weren’t able to get from others.
No one but you can, and will have to, show up each and every day to take care of those ever-changing needs. These are efforts that must come from you, and in the process of harnessing your own power, you will create a deeper, more authentic connection to your Self.
Self-care is the act of learning to identify and care for your physical and emotional wants and needs, especially those that were denied in childhood.
The move wasn’t easy. Transitions are hard. No matter how perfect the situation is, you are still disrupting your homeostasis and at the minimum it feels uncomfortable. We are creatures of habit, and when we can’t engage in our usual patterns, we feel thrown off, vulnerable, even hostile to change. Anytime we are faced with an allostatic life event—a job change, a move, a death, a birth, a divorce—it forces us out of our safety zone and into the great unknown, a naturally disquieting place.
Soothing occurs when we act with agency and proactivity, meeting a problem head-on, which often feels very satisfying. After you’ve named and nonjudgmentally labeled your emotions, you will want to find a way to neutralize your reactions.
I get my body moving any way I can to discharge the physiological energy associated with my feelings.
As we age, it is helpful to learn how to tolerate the natural range and diversity in our emotional experiences.
Enduring requires an inner trust that soothing methods do not; we have to have faith in ourselves that we will get through this. It creates a sense of confidence that enables us to face the challenges thrown at us without needing anything outside ourselves to take away our “feel-bads.”
Emotional maturity is understanding your own emotional boundaries and communicating them to others without fear or shame.
Instead, I encourage you to work on opening that window little by little until it’s thrown wide open—and once it’s open, you will find a deep reservoir of tolerance for the entirety of your internal and external world.
You can encourage self-care and loving discipline in their lives by making sure they’re moving their body, getting alone time, getting enough sleep, and so on. At the same time, when stress does come, you can help them make sense of it in the same way that you do—by identifying sensations in their
body. Ask them what their body does. My face feels hot when Samantha makes fun of me. My heart races when I have to share my toys with Timmy. Help them name the emotion that might correspond to those bodily sensations (shame, anger, jealousy) and allow them to try different ways to actively soothe those sensations. Remember, these will not always be the same as the ways you find helpful; think of this process as an opportunity to learn about your children as unique humans.
When you come from a place of security and safety, you are freer to navigate the world around you, make mistakes, and get back up when you fall. This builds up our internal resources and helps foster resilience as we navigate all the hardships that life inevitably brings.
Emotional maturity is about combining softness and toughness when necessary—not only with the people around you (parent-figures, children, friends) but with yourself.
He made lists of the people in his life and what his needs were in his relationships with them, and he began making efforts to change his own expectations about how others showed up in his relationships.
To give us the best sense of when we are nearing the limits of our internal resources to cope with stress or what throws us over the edge, self-accountability check-ins can be helpful.
Our access to emotional maturity changes as we do, responding at different points to our environment, our hormonal state, whether we’re hungry or tired. The goal is to empower yourself with the ability to make the best decision for your emotional state as the world shifts and changes around you. Emotional maturity is not a goal to check off a list, like reaching the next level in a video game (now you’re a fully realized human, you win!). It’s not a magical state. The underlying message is not one of a state of enlightened beingness—it’s one of work and self-forgiveness that will ultimately
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As we change our mind and brain and access our authentic self, we create joy, creativity, empathy, acceptance, collaboration, and eventually oneness with our greater community. Dr. Steve Taylor from two chapters ago found similar increases in love and compassion, deep knowing, and inner calmness in all of the awakenings he studied. These elements are the essence of what is called interdependence, a state of authenticity and connectedness that is the ultimate testament to the power of holistic healing.
Whether we consider ourselves to be individualistic or collectivistic, every single person needs other persons to thrive. Our bodies and brains were built for connection. Connection is inherent in the human condition; without it, we cannot survive.
Sometimes it takes just a glance and you know: This person is meant to be in my life. It’s a fluttering in your soul telling you that you were meant to cross paths with this human.
Out of the sea of faces I gazed upon that day, there was that ping, ping, ping again. Even before she said a word, I felt a rush of familiarity, as though I had always known her, as though our souls were already in deep communion.
We can participate in this expression of collective unity only when our nervous system is open and receptive to connection. This means we have to be in a calm, balanced state to be able to connect with and care for others. When we’re in the happy place of our social engagement mode and in a stable, comfortable environment, our perceived stress levels go down, our vagus nerve shifts us into our desired resting state, and we are in a prime state of joyful expression, spontaneity, healing, and connection. To achieve a sense of true unity, our bodies must feel fully safe.
It was all there with me, all parts of who I am now, who I was then, and who I will one day become. I let the words sink in as I breathed in and out. Gratitude filled every cell of my being.
Every moment, we make a choice: we can live in the past, or we can look forward and envision a future that is different. Our tendency when we return to a system, regardless of how much work we do on our own, is to revert to old patterns. The temptation is to embrace the familiar subconscious conditioning. We can also decide to participate in the opening of an unfamiliar, uncertain door. I know now that if that path is not serving me well, I will know and can turn right around, close the door, and choose a new one to open.
Whatever path you take, as long as you’ve consciously chosen it and trust yourself in the process, whatever the outcomes, you will be ready. There are no road maps, no directions, no gurus, no sages. There are no checklists that will fix you or magical pills that will cure you.
