Month: July 2020

Hardened Heart?

It has been an intriguing time quarantining during this pandemic.  I have had quality time with myself… everywhere I go there I am.  The conversations have become monotonous, drab, even repentant and mournful.  I have read an array of books.  Currently, I am reading several about women warriors, feminine mythology, and Toltec teachings.  I am also listening to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., and watching a new horse training series out of Europe.  What else… oh, I have cried and wept out of the blue, researched prejudice and systemic racism, delved into my own bias and learned behavior, and took a few naps. 

In the middle of all of this, I have discovered some things about myself.  One of these things is that I have a hardened shell around my heart.  At first, I thought it was a solid shell, like steel or platinum.  That is not accurate, it can be permeable and pliable.  I know this because when my pup smiles at me and makes eye contact, I can feel my heart lighten and expand.  It feels as though my heart takes a deep soft breath, and a smile rises from the expansion as it fills my cheeks and eyes with happiness.  Or, when my mare leans into my hand with her body and gently breaths me in with her eyes half-closed. These moments are visceral reminders of the loving resonance I share with these beautiful sentient beings. 

Let’s talk about humans.  I experience an expansion of my heart when I teach or facilitate people.  I often do my work with people through horses and the lessons I have acquired from horses.  The work is with people, and the resonance occurs with those people, and my heart feels overflowing in that environment.  I am fulfilling my purpose and passion while supporting others in growth and healing, and that feels good from the inside out.  I can hold space for them, share my experiences and learning, be vulnerable, shed a tear, and listen with a depth of focus and attention that blurs the world around us.  I feel deeply, and the feelings are broad strokes of vibrantly colored emotion dancing through empathy and caring.  That heart beating inside my beautiful being is ever-present and expanding. 

©crionsinlife.com

The hardening seems to be with romantic or intimate partners.  I have discovered that the permeable bubble shield around my heart turns to a solid.  As I reflect on my past relationships, I can see a pattern.  With each partner, I have opened my heart, lowered my shield, thinned the veil of protection, and allowed them to enter my heart.  With each occurrence of joining my heart with someone, I have also experienced levels of pain and sorrow—disappointment in outcomes.  The tearing apart of hearts and lives for varied reasons has left my heart broken with jagged, sharp edges slashing my soul.  The deep red blood has pooled at the base of my heart space where it thickened and became sludge.  The pain and disappointment of broken dreams, the sadness and grief that has accompanied the devastation, the mourning of said loss has come with pain and crocodile tears.  Early on, my heart opened easily to romance and love.  With each passing loss of intimacy, my heart became less permeable.  Once light showed through and refracted all the rainbow’s glorious colors; now my heart casts shadows that are dark and cold like the depth of winter during an arctic blast in Calgary.  The effort it has taken to warm and soften my heart in my most recent relationships has been challenging and fleeting.  I have found my way to opening only to have it frozen and shattered yet again. 

Here is the truth of my heartfelt enlightenment. This did not happen to me, I created it.  My heart did not come with a handbook or directions.  I have looked inside, and there are no instructions carved into my heart, or on the walls of my heart space.  There is no loudspeaker calling out to me with the next steps.  I must figure it out.  None of this has happened TO me, I have defined and chosen my emotion, or lack thereof in each situation and ending.  I decided to compartmentalize the painful arguments.  I opted to shift to hardened inflexible neutrality when conflict and emotion escalated with my partners.  I dropped my internal temperature to a state of frigidity that forced the shattering of my heart.  I stopped the fluidity of emotion running through my being.  I allowed myself to bleed out and become stagnant.

 Why?  Why did I make these choices? Quite simply, I did not have the tools or understanding to choose differently at the time.  With each new foray into pain and discourse, I turned away instead of facing it head-on.  I honestly thought I was creating better coping tools. Instead, I was destroying myself from the inside out.  I get to own my choices and the role I played in the destruction of each relationship.  There have been times when I have pointed my finger at the other person and refused to own any of our implosion resulting in the end.  It could be called a childish or selfish response. However, I simply did not know how to do it differently. 

Today I have a new awareness.  I see the balance in my emotion.  The depths of pain and despair that I can touch is balanced by the depth of love I can experience and gift to another.  For example, my father has been gone half my life, and the cavernous grief I can still access today when I reminisce about our time together is unending.  I know that I loved him as deeply as it hurts.  As painful as that can feel, I would not trade a single moment or memory to lighten the load.

 So now, I choose to shift my perspective of LOVE and loving another.  I choose to embrace the softening and opening of my heart.  The last blog I wrote was embracing Love as the reason.  Today I choose to embody that concept.  I know with each new awareness; I open the door to possibility.  I open the door to expansion.  I open the door to vulnerability. I open the door to both pleasure AND pain.  There just cannot be one without the other.  I want the experience of loving another as deeply as it might hurt.  I am choosing to focus on love instead of pain and disappointment.  I believe that I will be a better partner, spouse, and lover because of this shift. 

I choose love.  I choose acceptance. I choose me, and in doing so, in genuinely loving myself, I open the door to loving another in ways I have only dreamed of.  What I have to offer through my soft open heart is a love that bridges time and space.  A love that can change the world.  What we focus on we create, and it is time for me to soften the shell and focus on giving AND receiving LOVE.   

What if Love really can conquer all…

 I am going to admit something; for many years, I have not fully believed in Love.  I have questioned and doubted the power of Love.  In relationships, I have openly stated that Love could not conquer all.  I believed that there had to be more than “just love”.  I am not sure where I began the shift away from Love in all her glory, but I did none the less. 

 When I was a kid, I deeply LOVED my animal friends, especially my dogs and horses.  I spent all my time with them, and we adventured together.  I was fearless with the horses and loved every minute of it.  I rode them, hung out with them, even had conversations with them, and there was almost always a dog by my side.  I even had a dog that would jump up on the saddle and ride with me.  I have never lost or questioned my Love for the 4 legged’s, just with humans.

 As a teen I dated, but nothing compared to my horse time. Maybe if some of them had been “horsemen” it might have been different, maybe not.  I just remember that going to horse shows was more important than dates.  I worked my dating life around my horse time and horse shows. 

 In my 20’s, I entered the horse world as a professional trainer.  I experienced conflicting worlds when I began exploring relationships as an adult. I dated plenty of people during this time; some I loved deeply, some I just liked, some were great lessons in what I did not want in a relationship, I broke some hearts, and I had my heart broken.  As time marched on, I began to embrace the limiting belief that Love could not conquer all, Love was just not enough. 

 On the other hand, I have always been present and supported others in their relationships.  I listen, I offer a perspective that supports them when asked, I encourage patience, and I suggest that Love of one another can be reason enough to find the other side of pain and conflict.  Unfortunately, I did not believe that to be true for me.  In one of my relationships, when it came crashing down, she shared with me that she had always believed our Love could conquer all.  She said that she believed we could get through anything because of our Love, and I stated that there had to be more than just love.  I broke her heart, and in truth, I had been breaking my own for years. 

 Recently I started a class on Conscious Transformation, and the question was posed, “What limiting beliefs do you hold? What might your life look like if you let go of that belief?”.

 For 24 hours, I danced around limiting beliefs that I have dealt with for years; I am not worthy, I have to pay my dues first.  I was avoiding the big one, that Love can conquer all.  What if Love is the source, the why?  What would it mean if Love could conquer all?  What might my world look like if this were true?  What might be possible?

 It hit me like a fully loaded semi-truck and trailer barreling down the highway at 75 mph, and I was the little bug that splattered all over the windshield!  I had withheld the gift of Love, not only from others but from myself. Everywhere I have been looking to help heal myself and grow has been telling me, in a multitude of ways, that I need to open and soften my heart.  I just could not see the forest for the trees, until I could.  Now I am amazed at the variety and depth of the shades of green in that forest as I begin to see again.

So, this year I started with myself, and through my therapist and tons of books, became open to the idea of loving myself.  First, I began to embrace my soul, my gifts, my differences as positive needed attributes;  I began to embrace my passion and purpose with horses in an expanded way.  I gave myself permission to mourn, to really grieve the horses I had loved and lost in my life.  In doing so, I began to soften and build a stronger relationship with my current horse.  We were missing that core heart connection because of me.  Through listening to Clarissa Pinkola Estes Ph.D., I experienced an epiphany, that my body is my consort.  Forehead slap!  Everything I am, I do, I feel, I experience, is done THROUGH my body!  The importance of treating her with Love and compassion unconditionally and unapologetically suddenly became a necessity, not a choice.  And finally, I find myself at this juncture; Embracing the idea that Love of self and others is the only way…

If Love were my reason, what would that mean to self and others? 

I will be there in the hard times because of love.

I will rest and rejuvenate because of love.

I will laugh because of love.

I will dance because of love.

I will cry because of love.

I will listen more because of love.

I will try harder because of love.

I will stand taller because of love.

When the going gets tough, I will soften and become flexible and pliable because of Love.

I will give of my heart without expectation because of Love.

I will forgive because of Love.

I will rise and protect those who need me because of Love.

I will reach out my hand to help others because of Love.

I will be present and witness because of Love.

And when the time comes, I will leave this world a better place than when I arrived, because of Love.

 Today, I acknowledge the possibility that Love might truly be the way and why.  Through Love, maybe anything IS possible.  With a loving heart leading the way, my journey has already become brighter and clearer.  I do not know what the future holds for me, but I do know that Love will lead me forward into a higher calling and contribution. 

Today I choose to love unconditionally, and I know I will have to focus on this action indefinitely because LOVE is a verb.  I will be tested, challenged, questioned; If I continue to return to the belief that Love comes first, then maybe, Love really can conquer all.