POP! What was that? The ice on my heart melting.
www.grateful4.org
Gratitude
Intention
First
Things
The G.I.F.T. Today
Grateful: for the beautiful mystery of life. I truly don’t know what is going to happen during any particular day. Perfect.
Intention-focus on breath and processing today, slow flow
First-short list 20
Things-touch base with Gavinator on visit!
Morning Meditation from The GratiDude
Something profound happened to me yesterday and I am still having trouble articulating it. Here goes.
I heard a little pop or a crack coming from my sternum yesterday morning at about 8:15 am after I hung up with my buddy Rich Katz. I was recapitulating aspects of the weekend, mentally mining my experiences for highlights and moments that reinforce the beauty and magic of my life experience.
Then I remembered a kiss.
I don’t do a lot of kissing these days(by choice, don’t be sad for me) and this was a memorable one because I didn’t see it coming.
It was like a flamethrower on a last, tiny chunk of ice still stuck to my heart from Michigan and the early 1980s.
I stumbled on the little memory, and it was like a FLASH, that I almost forgot to shine a light on. It happened Saturday afternoon when I was dropping off my 14-year-old “The Bean”, at the mall to meet up with her best friend Cyanne on Saturday. It was a spur of the moment social trip for her that wasn’t planned the day before and I could tell you she was super happy to have had an opportunity to get out of the house and be sociable and look at some crap in the mall.
I remembered distinctly what it was like at that age when you have 1 foot in the adult world at least as far as your mind and body go, and 1 foot still back in the kid world where you don’t have the ability to do what you wanna do all the time when you want to do it. Especially when you don’t have a driver’s license yet and many of your activities are not within walking distance and require transportation and coordination.
Why I was thinking back on this drop off experience was because something unexpected happened right before my kid Willa got out of the car.
She said thank you and told me she loved me and then she leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. It was a spontaneous real expression of love and appreciation and something.
She hadn’t given me an organic little peck on the cheek since she was eight or nine years old. It was reflexive for her, and it was from the heart, and let me tell you it was fucking everything. EVERYTHING when it hit me what I had to do to get to that point where that kiss was possible.
I felt like something cracked open yesterday. It was the most surreal physical, feeling of an emotional release.
Yesterday I had times where I had to lay down because I was dizzy, and I was feeling so much emotion coming out of my body that it was debilitating from a functioning standpoint. My body was taking over and shutting down for chunks of time so that I could release trauma from my past. I had finally gotten to the point where I was really leaning in deep to some of the feelings and experiences of my junior high years, which were unbelievably cold and confusing for lack of better adjectives at this moment.
I have just been sitting in the wintertime of 1982 feeling my family breaking up, my body changing and nobody explaining to my brother and I what was happening and nobody reassured us at all that we were going to be OK. We really didn’t know if we were going to be OK, did we?
Nope.
I’ve decided I really must read into these healing opportunities so I can better understand my own personal path of how I got into a situation that almost became unimaginable in terms of my addiction to alcohol and my path of self-destruction. I don’t want to stay there on the learning or the dwelling of my personal experience too long in some sort of self-flagellation or feeling the need to give myself a certain number of lashes, however, understanding the trauma that went into the emotional state that allowed me to be self-destructive is highly informative.
I feel that if I can more deeply understand these processes that I went through, I will be creating valuable tools in my toolbox to help other people for the rest of my life.
I had to have a day like yesterday to have a rest of my life like the one I’m going to have.
When the body releases deep emotions, such as trauma, it can experience many physical symptoms, including:
Muscle relaxation: Muscles that have been tense from trauma may suddenly relax, which can feel like relief or heaviness.
Breathing changes: Breathing patterns may shift.
Heart rate changes: Heart rate may slow down, blood pressure may decrease, and heart rate variability may increase.
Warmth: Hands and feet may feel warmer.
Tingling: Tingling sensations may occur in certain areas of the body.
Nausea: Nausea is a common symptom that can feel like a vague discomfort in the upper abdomen.
Headaches: Headaches can be a physical symptom of trauma release.
Dizziness: Dizziness can be a physical symptom of trauma release.
Sweating: Sweating can be a physical reaction to emotional stimuli like stress, anxiety, fear, and pain.
Changes in appetite: Appetite may increase or decrease.
Changes in sleep patterns: Sleep patterns may change, such as insomnia or sleeping more than usual.
Energy level changes: Energy levels may fluctuate, resulting in periods of hyperactivity or restlessness, or sudden drops in energy.
Increased sensitivity to stimuli: People may become more sensitive to environmental stimuli, such as sounds.
It was a gradual, melting and falling into place of various circumstances and processes in the finalization of my divorce and even coming to the end of the calendar year.
I’m not sure about all the variables that went into yesterday, but holy shit am I grateful and thankful for allowing that to happen, which was totally alien to me and it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before in my life.
I’ve had short emotional releases, mostly during yoga when certain poses just release stored energy, and you don’t even really know what’s happening. It overwhelms you so quickly, however, yesterday was a long time calming and it’s amazing. What simply loosening your grip can do to allow your life to swing much easier.
It’s a weird feeling and hard to explain, but I feel even calmer today than I did yesterday when I woke up and even more certain in my path in my future than I ever have.
That right there was squeezing pus out of an infected wound and now I’m bandaged up the swelling is going down and I’m healing because I’m dealing.
The meditation and the shadow work and the consistency has allowed me to get down to the deepest depth of my history in my past so I can release anything that I’ve been holding onto even if it’s unnoticed to me until the actual physical release happens.
If you’ve had trauma in your life and never had an experience of this type of emotional release, I can’t tell you definitively that those stored emotions and traumas are in there, but I bet they are.
The only way to know is to get comfortable with the stillness that exists in the process of being connected to your breathing and just being patient for the reveal.
We have the answers inside of us and the stillness is what allows us to connect to the wisdom that we have accumulated through our life experience and through the genetic and energetic inheritance from our beautiful ancestors and creation.
I haven’t weighed myself, but I feel about fifty pounds today! That means I need a big breakfast burrito to get my day started so I can cruise into high gear and operate for the rest of the day with my attitude of gratitude.
Join Us?
www.grateful4.org
EVERY DAY:
Love
and
Gratitude
https://www.instagram.com/GratiDude_abides
KevinACarpenter@gmail.com/941.894.8030
Thank you sincerely.
IN LIFE AND GOLF, GET BETTER…..NOW!
HERE: https://grateful4.org
Every day, every way, grateful.
KC
I am here to help, add somebody that needs a “check up from the neck up”
KevinACarpenter@gmail.com
Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.