You Deserve Self-Compassion

It is a very challenging world out there. There are so many conflicts, subtly and overtly, along with pressures to fit in socially. It is so hard to really understand what is true and right for ourselves when we are afraid of making mistakes or we are mired in guilt/shame or are heartbroken.  

Disappointments seem to be a natural part of life – whether with ourselves or with our relationships or dreams and goals.

How often do we extend empathy to another person, giving to good causes or volunteering our time? How often are we there for another during a difficult time and we see them struggling and we just want to help but feel powerless to do so?  I know I do it all the time – it’s the sensitive and empath in me that wants to see people alleviated of their suffering and sadness so they can feel the presence of love in their life.  But how rarely are we there for ourselves?

I will share with you a personal story. When I was 8 years old, I was living in Jamaica and our house got robbed in the middle of the night. My sister and I laid awake, frozen and terrified.  Luckily, we didn’t get hurt physically, but mentally and emotionally this has affected us for the rest of our lives, feeling unsafe in the world and in our homes.  

Not wanting to build resentments, I actively learned about social justice issues in developing countries and could understand better the motivations of the robbers – poverty and economic inequality leads people to do desperate things to balance the scales.  I came to see there was no right or wrong on anybody’s part and in fact had a lot of compassion for the people who did this, including understanding that those who commit criminal acts are humans in pain and haven’t had support and nurturing in their lives or society. I was great at understanding the other side.  So when my therapist said, “Well, Heather, what about that little girl? Can you have compassion for her?”, I started crying as I never thought that I needed to extend that compassion to myself. I didn’t have parents who comforted me after the incident and I never knew that would have lasting emotional effects on me. Because I was able to return safely to Canada, a privileged country compared to Jamaica, I believed I didn't have a right to complain. I thought I was the lucky one.  

My therapist invited me to look at incidents on t.v. where the child is an innocent victim and how sad that is in order to get in touch with my deservingness of compassion towards myself and others.  It was like a truck of awareness had hit me on how I was denying myself on a greater level the experience of divine compassion for myself. I can dish it out but can I take it in, truly?

This understanding has made me have to look at all the ways I’m hard on myself or denying loving support. I hold back in a weird cycle of self-shame and pride, believing that I should be stronger than I am. But that’s not how it works.  In my sessions, I see and feel how deeply loved we are by the Universe and how we make everything harder for ourselves, wearing us down with stress and obligations.  If only we could each tune in on a daily basis and feel the presence of compassion within, then we could set healthy limits, make goals that are fulfilling and create a world that can extend that true understanding to others.  Then it takes it away from feeling offended or righteous by others, removing the need to even have to forgive, other than our own selves for allowing ourselves to get hurt (this applies for our adult wounds rather than our childhood ones where one has no power).

In honour of this experience in Jamaica, I wrote a poem to the young boy who was part of the robbery gang:

Breaking in

I'll never forget that boy
they hired to 
climb thru the window   
to rob our house

that moment in time
that made me feel so
dreadfully unsafe
for the rest of my life

he was 8 years old, maybe
a young felon--
we were the same age

I could have held resentment and anger
joined racist KKK gangs 
to get even

But I knew it was more complicated 
than that

I knew he's the kid who slept in a shanty
with a family who smokes weed 
for breakfast

dreaming of playing baseball 

with paper-stuffed milk cartons

while I had the 
luxury of laying inside a 2-storey home, 
on summer vacation
dreaming of what's on t.v. tomorrow

None of it was ever fair...

What is one area of your life where you feel you are overly critical of yourself?  Where do you pretend to be strong and block others from understanding you?  Can you see your own suffering in the world?  What can you do to bring more gentleness and compassion in your life?

If you would like to receive any guidance or soul coaching so you can honour yourself, please consider booking a FREE Sharing Our Hearts Session with Heather Embree at: www.blossomingheart.ca

Embrace Being Weird

I recently did a “Becoming Truly Free Retreat” with IrinaBenedict. One of the exercises is to write a letter to someone who you feel angry with, knowing they won’t read it.  Thinking I had done a ton of emotional processing with people in my life, I wasn’t sure if I’d have anything to write, but was willing to give it a try.  I decided to write a letter to my stepfather who passed away a few years ago, because I knew he was the one who I had the most anger about.  

As I wrote the letter, I came to realize that all of the grief he put me through, all of the verbal abuse, was because he was afraid of my courage to stand in being different – and this was a result of him being terrified of being different.  You see, he was a Jamaican man who lived during the time of racial segregation and came to Canada when it was mostly white people living in towns and small cities. 

 He was taught in school as a child that it was better to be a white person than a black person. So he tried to do whatever it took to fit into the white world. So when we would go out and I wouldn’t behave “properly” according to British manners, he would scold me. Or if I had friends who didn’t fit into the box of “normal and upstanding”, such as friends who were from the LGBTQ community (Jamaica is known for having one of the highest rates of homophobia) or non-white friends, he would yell at me and demean me to the point where I would be curling up on the kitchen floor.  I would be terribly confused because I would see that I was loving people and I was somehow being shamed and attacked for it. I learned from a young age that it was unsafe to be loving in my home, but I had the strength to do it anyways. This is what made me be considered a rebel in the family, and I’m proud of it.

My nature also has an artistic and spiritually-seeking bent. I’ve always been a bit odd, different than the rest, strange or “weird” as my stepfather would say.  I would take this as an insult, where I felt like no one would ever understand me and my fate was to always feel this loneliness within.  

So when I discovered in this writing exercise that my stepfather actually felt different, too, and he was terrified of it, it made me realize that being weird is my greatest strength.  I released so many tears of sadness, and reclaimed who I am in my heart. I could see his suffering in a racist world and have a profound sense of forgiveness, beyond understanding. 

Because I am weird I have:

• Lived in a treehouse 
• Lived in Oaxaca City, Mexico and took art classes 
• Expanded my skills as a psychic/medium and energy healer 
• Avoided working too many soul-sucking jobs 
• Learned Spanish 
• Dated and fallen in love with people outside of my own tribal roots 
• Started a drum circle for women 
• Danced many a late night 
• Not had kids, which I’m happy about 
• Not gotten married and instead chose to get to know the person better 
• Honed my writing skills 
• Did readings in Washington, DC 
•  Started a business so I could choose my schedule
• Sat in an art library in Mexico for hours on end studying the great works 
• Memorized poetry in Spanish 
• ...and so much more…

So weird, essentially makes me an interesting, well-rounded person. Yes, it makes it hard sometimes to find people who can relate with me, but what I find is I’m one of those renaissance people who can find common ground with many different people.  This is what makes me a great coach, intuitive healer and psychic reader – because I hold no judgments, have an understanding of the human condition, and see that behind all of it is a desire for transcendence, love and adventure so we can leave our suffering behind.

So I encourage you to embrace your weirdness.  It could be the very thing that sets your heart free, to open up to a whole new world of possibility for you.  Ask yourself: What makes you weird? What areas are you trying to fit in that mis-aligns your heart with your life?  Have you ever been mocked or bullied for being different?  

Please, bring out your maverick self and dance with me…life is so much better when we learn to live from that place of wild and loving abandon, letting loose the joy of life’s many adventures. 

To book an appointment to start living from to your own heartbeat, visit: www.blossomingheart.ca

Living Closer to Your Soul

Oh how easy it is to go off-track with our soul. We live in a world that is dominated by money-making, stress and everything fast paced. It's no wonder we end up feeling dissatisfied and something is missing, and try to find ways to fill that void.  Tuning into our soul is an ongoing practice, beyond listening to intuition.  It's about finding the things that bring more joy, well-being, love, connection and peace into our world.  And sometimes that means making some really hard decisions.  Liking quitting a job you hate and not having anything lined up. Or having to end a toxic relationship. Or setting strong boundaries with family members.  Although it's tough, the soul knows that it needs to survive because otherwise the consequences of misery and illness are too much to bear. 

So how can you live closer to your soul?  Here are some ideas on where to start:
1) Surround yourself with people who "get you", where you don't have to explain yourself in order to be understood

2) Examine your food choices and eating habits. Are you eating with consciousness and considering all the people who are connected to growing and making your food? I just found this awesome website for cruelty-free eating: www.onegreenplanet.org  They have awesome and easy recipes and alternatives to meat and dairy.  

3) Find a spiritual practice that you love and enjoy.  Lately mine is dancing and I'm moving towards mindfulness meditation

4) Release your emotional baggage. Find a therapist who gets it and you, someone who you trust and can open up some of your deepest fears and concerns so you can become more in tune with your feelings and truth. I offer Find Your Authentic Truth Sessions which are great for making heart-centred choices in the face of difficult decisions

5) Examine how you spend your time.  Are you expanding your heart or shrinking it? Are you watching t.v. and staying on FB or actually going out there to make your life happen?

6) Find a Creative or Good-hearted Outlet-- crafting, volunteering, journalling, making music are some ideas to start with -- starting and completing something is so nourishing in many ways.

7) Spend time in Nature -- Mother Earth really wants us to connect with Her and she is such a beautiful sounding board for everything we're going through.

8) Send out Kindness and Appreciation to at least one person each day.  What goes around comes around and the amount of love and kindness you put out there definitely returns...try it! It will only bless you!

If you feel you need more support in aligning with your soul, consider booking a Soul Reading with Heather Embree.  She can provide deep insights into the nature of your relationship dynamics, your lessons, your life direction, physical health and what spiritual support is available to you.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO