Reflections on the year lived…isn’t that what December 31st was all about before it was about party horns and too much champagne?
For me, sometimes it’s good and hearty reflections…satisfaction at goals reached and lives touched. Other times it’s sadness, frustration or confusion.
These past two years have been all of that for me…hearty and hell…so many of your lives touched and yet so many in my personal life gone–taken–dead. When you lose someone so close (my mother, my pet therapy dog, and Cody my foster son) it makes this life so much more real.
I don’t know if YOU see your life as real as I sometimes see it. Do you see what I see when I read your letters, hear your stories, and imagine your relationships and pain?
Many women want ‘The Promised Land.’ To them that could be healing or maybe that’s being with him…but so many are always looking for happiness and thinking ‘The Promised Land’ is just around the corner.
~ “The Promised Land always lies on the other side of the wilderness.” ~
(Havelock Ellis)
Oh…the wilderness…the path of pain–that road that requires that you leave him–that you face your own fear or loneliness. The street that makes you wonder if you’ll ever find another one to love, have sex again, or feel real joy in your heart with.
The wilderness that meanders through all the places you have been this year…the valley of truth, the river of denial, the desert of lies…
Don’t spend time regretting whatever 2009 was for you—if you couldn’t leave him yet, if you picked yet another pathological, or if you’re still not over him yet. Regret is so wasteful of human energy.
A wise man said “Humans grow thru the metabolism of their own experience.” What you lived through was not wasted. It’s part of how you will grow and how 2010 will be a healthier and healing year for you.
Women ask me all the time, “What can I do to help other women in the area of pathological love relationships?” Your own self growth and healing is the greatest service you can give the world and other women. What you invest in yourself is never wasted or lost. God is the God of Economy–He recycles everything–even your pain. Your pain heals the next woman.
I believe that which is why we created the Coaching program so you can recycle your own pain and help the next woman.
(Our last and final coaching training is Jan 26-31 in Clearwater, FL. )
Many therapists are also survivors too and have made entire practices into outreaches from their own pain. They stopped circling ‘The Promised Land’ and moved through it to a place of helping other heal. (Our Therapist Training is Jan 29-31 in Clearwater, FL).
To stop the circling of the promised land and to help you actually get there is why we developed our retreats and phone coaching–so that your pain recycled becomes hope to the next woman. Nothing is lost. Pain that is not actualized–that isn’t converted into wisdom is just pain. It was useless suffering that did not manifest itself into something larger than itself.
In 2010, I believe many of you will stop circling ‘The Promised Land’ and will come out of the wilderness you’ve been in. And when you do…we’re right here celebrating with you–your rite of passage into a new life. May 2010 be the healing year you have been waiting for. Let us know how we can help you begin that!
“I believe that what it is I have been called to do will make itself known when I have made myself ready.” (J. Phillips)
