Wow. It’s been a minute. Readers, I miss you. Adulting – Second Half, I miss writing you. My spring has been a complete blur – a wonderful, happy, successful blur, but a blur nonetheless. Too much was packed into one season for my liking. I know that some people flourish from going from one event to the next, to the next, to the next, but that is not me. I need my quiet time. I need my alone time. I need my soul-searching, soul-healing solitude. And this is the first week in months, that I am able to have this experience.
It’s not lost on me that I am having a flare up of cervical radiculopathy. The common name for cervical radiculopathy is “major pain in the neck.” Cervical radiculopathy is intense pain stemming from herniated discs in the neck and the pain radiates throughout the shoulder blade into the arm and hands. (I still have a numb thumb from my first bout with this, a little over two years ago. The first bout, not surprisingly happened after another series of stressful events, one after another. Our bodies DO “keep the score.”) I’m okay. I’m taking steroids and muscle relaxers. I had a massage. I’m taking it easy. My heating pad has become my new best friend. But still, I hate it when my body has to scream at me. When you don’t listen to the whispers of your mind, or your soul, or your body, the whispers turn up the intensity, until you finally can’t help but to hear the screams.
Okay, but let’s change the subject because one of my biggest fears in life is turning into a little old lady who can only talk about her “woe is me” ailments.
I have a close friend whose life experiences are often so similar to mine, it’s almost uncanny. At the beginning of the year, she told be about this daily Touching Peace calendar and so I bought one. And I love it. And the other day (June 9th to be exact) , I liked the page so well that I cut it out and I put it in one of my inspirational notebooks. I told my friend that I had done this, and she said that she had saved the exact same one, too! Here it is:
Yesterday, I was not particularly happy. I was in a lot of pain, so I was snappy with husband, snippy with my dogs and all the way around, lowly and growly. I was not a fun gal to be around. I imagine that while ruminating on my pain, I created a little bit of “suffering” for my housemates last night. Sorry guys!!
It has often occurred to me how we so underestimate the importance of our own happiness and our own peace. We so often look outside ourselves for happiness and peace which is not a good plan. Most things outside of ourselves are not in our control. Still, we often don’t believe that we can have peace and happiness until certain things happen for us, or certain events go the way that we want them to, out in the world. So with carrying this false belief, we only add more discontented energy into the world, and then we blame other people, and whatever events happening, for our misery.
If you are one who really does not want to create suffering in others (and I truly believe that this is a mass majority), then focus on being peaceful and happy just for today. Don’t give your power away by making your peace and happiness contingent on what happens, or what other people are doing. Do what it takes to create peace and happiness within yourself, and know that this lovely energy will emanate from you, out into the world and it will help to dissolve some of the low energy that seems to swirl all around us these days. Sometimes the best thing that you can do for others, is to stop the suffering in yourself.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
