Geriatric Wonder Woman

Yesterday, I tried to go for a run. All I could manage was a geriatric shuffle.

One conversation with one human earlier in the day had totally sapped me.

I have to be so, so careful about the energy I allow in. People’s energy and emotion can hit me like a dump truck. If I’m not on my guard, the truck will flatten me. And possibly dump old spaghetti all over my head.

One conversation and I lost an entire day. Poof!

Geriatric shuffle instead of a nice productive run and climbing into bed instead of working.

At least I notice the drain now. That’s significant improvement from my days of WHY CAN’T I MOVE WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME. I can assess the situation and understand that I’m not shaking it off because someone else’s judgment was pointing a finger at where I’m judging myself.

I can look at that judgment, decide what I want to do about it, return to my truth and trust that everything is unfolding perfectly. (While also texting a friend for reassurance that I am not a shitty person.)

(I am not a shitty person. My friend said so.)

As I was army-crawling my way through the sludge, I kept reminding myself that just because someone else has a story and energy around that story doesn’t mean it has to be my story or my energy. They can have their truth, I can have mine. It doesn’t mean anyone is wrong, it just means we all get to choose how things look and feel for us.

What helped was imagining a shield of light on my arm - kind of like Wonder Woman’s bracelets - that I could swing up to send the energy deflecting back.

Pew, pew!

Unfortunately, the second I put the shield down, the energy zoomed back in and dropped like a wet wool blanket thrown on top of me.

Honestly, it made me mad. Mad that this happens to me, mad that it still happens to me even as I learn more about how energy works, mad that people hurl their stuff at me because it makes them feel better, even knowing that I used to do the same thing - and sometimes still do, if I’m in enough pain.

But I woke up today feeling so much better. Knowing that I’m allowed to make determinations about who I choose to spend time with based solely on whether or not my energy is drained afterward.

I want to spend my time and energy with those who nourish me, not suck the actual life out of me. Which in turn helps me be someone who nourishes rather than drains.

Being an empath is weird. The interaction of energy is weird. This is supposed to be my area, but I still have so much to learn.

I find this frustrating, as I would so much rather be perfect and know everything already.

But today, after I did a few sessions - including one high-frequency star session that knocked everyone on their asses - I started to wonder about the really powerful and intense experiences my clients were having as we sat on conference calls together. Why is that?

OH. IT’S BECAUSE ALL I DO, ALL DAY LONG, IS HAVE INTENSE EXPERIENCES.

Why can’t I go to the grocery store without crying? Oh, because I’m me. Why can’t I have a charged conversation without having to take to my bed, like a Victorian heroine in a melodrama? Oh, because I’m me.

BECAUSE ALL DAY LONG I’M HAVING POWERFUL ENERGETIC EXPERIENCES.

While this sensitivity to energy is a major pain in my ass, it also helps me help other people have their own powerful experiences - of release, of transformation, of their own divinity, of their own power, of feeling so much better about whatever the challenge is - BECAUSE ALL I DO ALL DAY LONG IS HAVE POWERFUL ENERGETIC EXPERIENCES.

Big sigh for not being a normal human, having normal human experiences.

The upside is garlic cheese fries on session days (they’re grounding! really!) and Netflix. So I can watch other people having intense experiences, while I sit in bed and eat popcorn with my stuffed therapy otter.

Trust Walk Hangover

Last week, I went on a trust walk.

I didn’t know what that was either. But when someone I sort of know says, “Meet me at a random park and let’s do a trust walk!” I am the type of person who says, “Hell, yes!”

One of the advantages of the empath / sensitive situation is that knowing who to trust is not my problem.

One of the disadvantages of the empath / sensitive situation is that a simple ninety-minute trust walk laid me up in bed for a day and a half afterward, about which my trust walk guiding friend said “What? That’s not a thing.”

Things that aren’t usually things do tend to turn into things with me. I don’t really know what to say about that except that I am a delicate peony and hopefully the delicate peony benefits are worth it to the people I care about.

I keep trying to describe this trust walk thing to people and keep doing a semi-terrible job, but I’ll give it a whirl for you.

A trust walk is when you get blindfolded and led around a place with nature.

When you’re in the dark, when your sense of sight is taken away, your brain starts operating differently.

We don’t often realize how much of our time and energy is spent categorizing the things around us. Even as I look around the room where I’m writing this, a room where I live, I notice the steady stream of thoughts, “Oh, there’s my red chair that an ex-boyfriend bought me; there’s my dragicorn staring into a bowl of crystals; gosh, I’m glad I tossed that rug in the washing machine, it really needed it; there’s my tiny refrigerator, maybe one day I’ll have a real kitchen again; there’s my bowl of fruit, I hope the ants don’t find it, crafty bastards.”

When we’re out in the world this reaction is intensified. We’re constantly classifying things in our head - noticing a lamp post so we don’t walk into it, reading the energy of the person walking toward us to decide how open we want to be (smile and make eye contact or eyes forward with a quick step?), tracking where we are so we can get where we want to be and then back home again.

It’s a steady barrage of information and stimulus that, when shut off, completely and utterly changes your experience of the world.

The first thing I noticed when the blindfold went on was that my brain quieted. It didn’t have its usual obvious input and so my senses automatically softened and widened - to hear the sound of the water and the dog collars jangling nearby. To feel the energy of the trees around me and the ground beneath me.

The second thing I noticed was that when my friend tried to guide me physically, it did not work at all. I couldn’t walk in a straight line and we both kept running into things. But if she walked a bit ahead of me and I could just track her energy and her voice, my path automatically straightened out and she could guide me verbally around things like mud puddles and trashcans.

The third thing I noticed was how much my energy tends to whirl above my head or stick in my heart. When my energy started to drop from my heart down into my torso and then into my pelvis, I realized that it hadn’t really ever been there before. It was like my entire center of gravity dropped.

Grounding myself and my energy has always been a huge challenge. Getting anywhere near my body took years - the first energy healer I ever went to said she had to yank me off the ceiling by my ankle. And I flew back out the first chance I got. So getting into my heart was a big deal. Dropping all the way down into my pelvis was a major triumph.

In this entirely new space of feeling and sensing, we wandered around the park. I almost fell down a hill, met a trashcan, kept walking straight into the prickle bushes (I was wildly attracted to those prickle bushes), and got really nervous when other people passed us.

After my blindfold came off - while I was still sensing things more energetically and elementally, and less visually and intellectually - my friend asked me how I felt when I was near her energy.

“How do you feel, what do you want to do?”

What I wanted to do was run away from her and straight into the arms of the nearest tree.

So I did. Because the tree felt safe. The tree didn’t need anything from me.

WELL THAT’S DOWNRIGHT FASCINATING.

And probably explains quite a lot about my relationships.

She didn’t need anything from me either. But in that moment, I realized how generally uncomfortable I feel around other people, because I’m afraid I’ll be required to take care of them energetically and I’m afraid of the effect they’ll have on me.

There was an opening that happened in that moment, one I’m still processing and don’t fully understand yet. But, in fascinating confirmation, the evening of the trust walk, I got a barrage of messages from people. Like something in my ability to relate with other humans shifted, and now they felt comfortable reaching out again.

My trust walk experience was so intense that when I got home, I had to stumble into bed, where I stayed for the rest of the day, barely able to move. The next morning, I woke up feeling like I had an energetic hangover.

My entire system has been coming out of hibernation. I’m rebooting. I’m beginning to see how I’ve been led down a very specific path so I can get where I need to be.

It’s weird and fascinating and makes me really curious about what’s coming next.

Trees are good teachers. Especially if you can’t see them because you’re blindfolded.

Fist Bump To Anyone Else Who Struggles With Boundaries

While I don’t want to jinx myself or otherwise tempt fate by putting this in writing… I think I might be on the other side of the Great Crash of 2019. I opted out of calling it the First Great Crash of 2019 because I am optimistically envisioning a henceforth crash-free year for myself, a year where I don’t get taken out for weeks at a time because I over-extended myself.

Culprit of this particular crash was my refusal to rest over the holidays when I was encouraged to and also my boundaries.

I can state without exaggeration that I have - in the past, let’s call it the past - had truly terrible boundaries.

Having good boundaries is like having a nice sturdy bucket. When you have a bucket you can catch things. If you don’t want the thing you’ve caught, you can take it out of your bucket. You can keep filling your bucket until it overflows and then you can offer what’s overflowing to other people.

Having not-so-good boundaries is like having holes in your bucket. You pour water in but it will leak right back out again.

For most of my life, I had less of a bucket and more of a fishing net. Nothing could stay - not friends, not money, not relationships, not energy. It all leaked out until I was standing there holding an empty soggy net and wondering what happened.

Since I’ve been working on my boundaries like a fiend, my fishing net has been tightened into a sieve. Better than a net that a crafty lobster can escape but money, love, energy continue to leak out.

This is exhausting and flat-out unsustainable.

Because work is one of my greatest teachers - at least until I have kids, which will be a whole new level of Dear God Help Me - I recently burned out hard.

After spending a few days in a tunnel of despair and also bed, I finally recognized that I had been giving away way too much for free or charging way too little in certain areas of my business.

Free energy healing and channeling for people is just a bad idea. I would sometimes think, why don’t I see anyone else doing this on youtube? Why am I the only one?

OH THAT’S WHY.

Boundaries, man. Boundaries.

The way the universe gets my attention is to cut off my money. It’s a last resort, used only after all the usual avenues of nudging me, poking me, sending messages via other people, and taking me out for two weeks with a cold had been exhausted.

Finally, the universe got sick of waiting. And it whisked everything away. Clients, programs I’d run for years, money I’d been counting on, the person I was dating - POOF!

Up in a swirl of phoenix ash.

In all the years of running this particular business, that had never happened.

So I was left in a puddle of pitiful, thinking forlornly “I can’t be doing all this for people and be in a constant state of terror around money.”

A sigh of relief was breathed by the universe, and my guides and angels patiently waited.

After watching a lot of Netflix, I finally connected the dots.

I was draining myself for others because I thought I had to. I thought that was how I was supposed to help. Because I do believe that everyone should have access to this kind of energetic help and information, whether they can pay for it or not. But there’s a way to do it that doesn’t involve me destroying myself. Because that doesn’t help anyone.

So I’m reorganizing everything - how I work, what I offer, how it’s priced, how I share it. Complete foundational restructuring. So everything feels good and feels supportive, to me and those I work with.

BOUNDARIES.

Patching up the leaks in my bucket, tightening my sieve. Establishing healthy boundaries can be a challenging process, but so worth it. Mostly because who doesn’t want money and love? Who doesn’t want to give it a safe space to land and know it’s going to stick around once it does?

NO ONE, THAT’S WHO.

BOUNDARIES.

Sorry I keep yelling at you. I’m really yelling at myself. Maybe I should stop yelling. My system doesn’t like yelling - and allowing my nervous system to soften and feel supported is a big part of this process.

</yelling>

Part of me is now wondering if I should even post this because hi, lots of boring talk about boundaries. But if you’re still with me, it means this was in some way useful. Hooray! Thanks for hanging out with me, friend! Fist bump to all of us who are devoting ourselves to being healthy in the world. (BOUNDARIES.)

As a thank you for reading many paragraphs about boundaries, here’s a preview of my 2019 Christmas card. I’ve been threatening to do this for years, because the idea of sending out a photo of me with my stuffed animals to all my friends who always send beautifully shot portraits of their adorable children makes me laugh.

The Adrian family, as it currently stands. Sally would like you to know that you can best demonstrate your love by sending sardines.

Zooming Out

I have decided to accept that I am a big wooden bucket of messy dysfunction. I’ve also decided that being a big wooden bucket of messy dysfunction is 100% okay. Maybe because the wooden bucket is artisanal. Crafted by a bearded gentleman in Vermont who hand-planes wood harvested from local trees with an axe that he inherited from his great-grandfather or purchased from a different artisanal workshop. It doesn’t matter.

Or maybe because it’s okay to be messy and maladjusted and chock full of undiagnosed mental abnormalities. I’m not going to call them illnesses. I don’t even want to call them abnormalities.* Because I don’t think any of this is abnormal.

(* Let’s call them curiosities. Undiagnosed mental curiosities. That’s much better. It invites exploration and wonder, rather than strife and shame.)

So we get anxious walking out into the world. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe the world is an anxious, angry place sometimes. It’s also full of wild oceans and butterflies and kind people doing their very best in a world that’s not always that kind. Maybe the next time you walk out into the world you’ll figure out something about how to be less anxious in the midst of it and you’ll tell me about it and I’ll say, “Hey, that’s a great idea” and suddenly we are less anxious and more able to notice the butterflies floating above the fray.

Maybe not. That’s okay too. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with hiding in your house for awhile.

We’re all just trying to accept and love ourselves as the messy, dysfunctional, divine beings that we are.

Divine and human, kind and unkind, total jerks and purely loving.

In a phrase, absolutely perfect.  

I’m starting to get mad at labels. Because they’re divisive. But they can also help us categorize our experiences and accept them and learn from them. Oh hey, look! Once again, there are two things seemingly at odds with one another occupying the same space.

Maybe we just need to zoom out. Like putting your fingers on the map screen and moving them together so you see California snuggled against the Pacific Ocean instead of the sushi restaurant on the corner.

Maybe if we give everything more room - our anger and our joy, our messiness and our maladjustment - we’ll start to see the absolute perfection in all of it.

Maybe.

I keep saying maybe because I have no idea. I throw out wild theories like half-done spaghetti in the hopes that something sticks to the wall.

But every time I zoom out on my own life, moving up into the air above it to peer down through the eyes of my higher self rather than my annoyed, anxious self, everything looks very different. Beautiful. Perfect. Fun. A way to expand instead of a mistake. An experience in loving instead of a heartbreak. An opportunity to try something new instead of failure.

Sometimes it’s hard to hold that height for long and I drop ignominiously back down into my cranky human self, but that’s allowed. That’s part of it. The challenge is blending the two - the divine and the cranky - into something resembling fully embodied divinity. Grounded height. Higher self and human self into one gleaming, sweating, star-laden meat suit. I don’t know. I’m struggling with the language because I can’t quite parse this experience. Maybe because I’m still drifting between the two, zooming up and down, in and out.

Trees and butterflies are what I think of as a solution to the zooming quandary. Nature and animals help us bridge the divine-essence-in-a-human-experience gap. Zooming in on a daisy growing through a crack in the concrete or the moss on redwood bark is its own kind of perspective and doesn’t inspire acrophobia.

So when in doubt, go find some trees. Hey, at least it’s getting out of the house. Pick big trees so that if any anxious humans wander your way, you can hide behind a handy trunk.

Oceans are also helpful, though harder to hide behind.

Star Seed Problems

If you've ever found yourself in the bathroom sobbing "I just want to go home" when you are, in fact, at home - you might be a star seed.

I've been ignoring this for a long time because I'm here, I'm human, may as well get on with it and enjoy the benefits of earth (which are chocolate donuts if you were wondering) (most bread products and baked goods, really). But then I found myself crying like a child lost in a shopping mall because I had this bone deep feeling of being alone and far from home and not sure how to fix it - and I realized it's time to dig into this a bit more.

I can feel my work about to deepen again, because looking back on it, most of the people I work with - if not all of them - are star seeds. We have trouble grounding, we have trouble with 3D things like relationships and money, we tend to feel lonely and like we don't belong. Some forget to eat (that's never been my problem) (DONUTS!).

But I'm going to have trouble helping them if I don't have a lock on this myself.

So. Guess it's time to dive into that whole being an alien thing.

P.S. And I thought it got weird with the whole Jesus revelation. NOPE. THERE’S MORE WEIRD WHERE THAT CAME FROM!

P.P.S. As I feel into it, I think I came in with Jesus, decided to stick around to make sure that whole love-and-support-for-all-humanity thing got carried out, and hahaha whoops, no wonder I feel like a failure all the time.

P.P.P.S. (is that a thing?) NOW I NEED A DONUT.