A hard heart

How do you let go?

Of all of it: resentment, responsibility you feel isn't yours, old attachments, draining commitments, feeling let down?

Just as I feel I am making progress, something, usually external, crops up and I feel I am back at square one. Except I don't usually know that for awhile. And I blame the external for an internal struggle.

Thank God, I have a very wise shamanic healer/counselor. He reminded me yesterday of several things:

#1 Responsibility is the ability to respond.

#2 Choices are not black and white; there is a rainbow of color.

#3 Unmet needs often color how we respond to others.

#4 The creative life requires discipline.


#1
Being able to respond implies a choice, that the answer does not have to be automatic, other- or self-damaging. It reminds me of wisdom I re-learned last fall and must remind myself of again: "IF I can't do it with love, don't do it." This week a school mother called and asked if I'd be on the PTO board. It was easy to reply with an immediate no, yet I felt I had to explain why. I did, however, stick with my no. Much harder when it's someone with whom I have a close relationship.

#2
My gut reaction is always to say yes ... no matter what. I like the idea of a constellation and varying degrees of choices. I adore color, so why not start making colorful choices, not just the dreary black-and-white yes or no. This puts a whole new spin on the feeling-compelled-to-say yes mindset.

#3
How many times have I been upset with someone else, when it was really something within myself I didn't like or had not tended to. Very, very often. I have been paying more attention to my inner children, but still forget, at times, until they grow whiny and get my attention via some thing or one external. No one else will met my needs for me. That's my job.

#4
Trying to carve out time between duties, responsibilities and obligations for a creative life does not a creative life make. Setting aside that time to write and paint, then working the others around it is a truer plan. I get fed, release that constant energy pushing me forward and can then take care of others and other things. I also believe that if I don't respect that as well as my boundaries, neither will others.

Maybe it's less letting go and more re-prioritizing to be my authentic self, the one who rages to create, yet also respond lovingly to others.

• What in my life do I need to grasp less tightly or completely let go?
• What effect is that tightness and inflexibility having on me and my relationships?
• Can I creatively see more colorful, perhaps more Spirit-led, choices?
• Are there things I should re-arrange or re-prioritize?
• What are my inner children/deep needs seeking right now?


a hard
heart is
painful

and not a
place to
live for
long

it's easy
to pin that
rigidity
on others

when, in
reality,
it's within
myself

what can
I give
myself

that I
have been
seeking
elsewhere?