It’s raining outside on this cold February morning. It’s just about now here at the beginning of February when people contact me for counseling or coaching. They share the stories of being overwhelmed, done, tired, wanting out of the marriage, depressed, caught in the same patterns of reacting.

Some people write to me and want solutions – specific, focused solutions that will eliminate the “stressor” and end the heartache. I feel their desperation and how they’d love it if I wrote back with step-by-step solutions in a short email.

Ohhh friends, colleagues, clients…I’m glad you are reaching out! I’m glad you are saying “Enough of holding this in and holding it alone!”

And yet, YOU deserve MORE than two lines – two paragraphs – of even the most “prayed-over, from-the-depths-of-me” response.

Your soul deserves sacred space to be heard, held, and nourished. Your body deserves time to be listened to and to heal. Your heart – your spirit – deserve to be tuned into and LIVED from. EACH OF US deserves to live aligned with what is holy and true.

And we are disconnected from this. We go about our days disconnected from our inner wisdom, our heart’s deepest delights, the Holy Pulse of the Earth, and each other.

We give our prayers, whispers from our hearts, and our dear ones such little time and presence. And this cuts us off from the essence of who we are. It cuts us off from our sustenance – what truly feeds us and enables us to fully live.

Friends, we were meant to live aligned with the Divine in our everyday lives. Ignoring this, we are ignoring the essence of who we are. Use whatever name that resonates with you for that Holy Something that is bigger than us and yet includes us and is in each of us, but by God, call on it! Connect to it. Make time for it. Listen to it.

Our culture is toxic. It’s a culture that promotes and rewards productivity and achievement. We hurry, we strive, and we measure ourselves against each other. We work too hard – we override the body’s innate wisdom to eat well, to get up from our computers and move our bodies, to slow down and to rest. This causes not only dis-ease but DISEASE.

When we live in a constant state of busy, our nervous systems are so amped up that our attention becomes very myopic. We literally can’t see the bigger picture. We see everything as a threat – the tantrum of our toddler, the moodiness of our teenager, the guy who didn’t go fast enough when the light changed to green, the tired look on our partner’s face.

When we never rest, we store all our emotions, experiences, hurts, wounds and thoughts within us. We become a walking toxic garbage dump. We never release and let go what is not serving us. Our insides are like the homes you see on House of Hoarders – piles and piles of stuff blocking the light, blocking our path, blocking us from living.

And anything (or anyone) that even slightly reminds of what we have stored in our inner toxic garbage dump, we want to eliminate and push away because we are scared of the big pile of anger and rage stored within us. We can’t bear to look at the mounds of emotions within us and so we definitely can’t allow our children to feel theirs. Take the example when our child gets mildly hurt and they react with big emotions – screaming, crying, flailing – we get really scared of their intense emotions. We want to quiet them, silence them, smooth it over and make it all better – quickly. We tell them “it’s ok” and even “here’s some candy” or “oh you aren’t hurt. You’re alright.”

When we are so busy, we stop listening. We stop listening to the rhythms of the earth, the Divine whispers from within, and each other. And when we stop listening – we stop connecting. When we stop connecting, something holy and vital within us withers.

Friends, there is no “quick trip down the pharmacy aisle” to cure our disconnect.  There is a time and place for bandaids, solution-gathering, and talking.  But there comes a time when we are DONE with quick fixes and putting bandaids on the hemorrhaging ache for connection within us. We live in a world of instant access to information where if the “solution” were “out there” we would all be walking Zen masters. We do not need to do more searching and striving and looking for the right solution. We do not need more “5-simple-steps” strategies.

We need SACRED SPACES where we finally rest and be held, where we discover CONNECTION heals – deep, radically accepting, loving connection.  THIS is the difference between heady “talk therapy” and the body-centered “somatic psychotherapy” I practice; the difference between goal-focused “life coaching” and the soul-focused “compassion coaching” I offer. Rather than searching for solutions outside of ourselves, our energies are so better served, nourished, and fortified by STOPPING.

~  Stopping and pausing right where you are.

~  Putting your hand on your heart and saying, “I want to connect with you.”
(yes, YOU, your HEART).
“I want to know you and honor you.”

~  Gently and slowly massaging your body – your temples, your strained eyes, your tense shoulders, your knotted belly, your tired feet – and saying, “I want to listen to you.”

~  Pausing and connecting to the Holy Within You and saying, “I want to be so aligned with you.”

~  Calling on the Communion of Saints (your ancestors, anyone who inspires you), saying, “Please, be with me. Show me how to live.”

~  Lying on the earth, feeling your body against the earth, palms of the hands on the earth, feeling the pulse of the earth, and saying, “I want to breathe with you. I want to align my day and my life with your rhythms.”

~  Looking at your dear ones in your life and saying, “I want to know you. I want to spend time with you. I want to be nourished by you and to nourish you.”

Enough of disconnect. Enough of being cut off from an inner aliveness that is our birthright. Enough drinking, eating, and hating the aches away. Enough suffering alone. Enough 5-step easy solutions.

It’s time to stop, listen and connect. It’s time to listen to our hearts, our inner most being, each other, and the pulse of the earth. It’s time to align our everyday lives with Divine – what deeply delights (heals, nourishes) our Hearts. It’s time to feel that Sacred Aliveness and be a source of healing connection for each other and our world.

This takes loving the shadow side of us, too.  For those of you who have been following this blog, who I see in counseling or coaching, or who have been in a workshop I facilitate, you KNOW what I’m going to say:  this practice of connecting to it all — this practice of radical acceptance — is how we heal, how we realign ourselves with what is Sacred and Holy, and how we live from a place of Sacred Inner Vibrancy…for our own hearts to mend, for our homes to sacred places of compassion, and our world to be transformed from one that rewards productivity to one that nourishes connection.

Dear family, friends, clients, customers, readers: this poetic print is one of my touchstones that I have up in our home to remind me to turn inward and listen to what deeply delights my heart — and follow it.

Try this meditation, Breathing from the Heart, for a sweet way of connecting within.

Here is a beautiful poetic post about how we all have the desire to be held.