I don’t know about you, but 2022 was a year of whiplash and vertigo, great highs and low lows. Disappointment. Joy. Everything else in between. Somebody smart once said that “all great things are proceeded by chaos.” Well, say what you will about chaos, I find it fertile ground for perspective shifts and insight. 2022 did not disappoint. Here are a few of my aha moments from last year…
I can give people “negative” feedback.
As an approval addict in recovery, last year I noticed a pattern that had thus far escaped my awareness: conflict avoidance. I will spend an entire afternoon listening to channeled messages from the Archangel Metatron and inhaling salted caramels, all to avoid even having to think about confrontation.
Until recently, I’ve done well avoiding it. But back in 2021 I took on a new role as a mentor to life coaches. And over the course of 2022, I’ve had to give feedback to my mentees, not all of which has been butterflies and rainbows. At first, I found this part of the job alarming. Would my mentees get pissed? Would they give up on themselves? Would I scar them for life?
I had to swallow my fear of confrontation and sometimes give negative feedback and sometimes ask people to do things over. I learned that life coaches are incredibly humble and willing, that I’m a damn good mentor and that confrontation doesn’t have to be a negative. And most of all, that It’s incredibly rewarding to see people take what you have to offer and get better.
I’m not here to avoid confrontation or attack; I am here to master myself within it.
I’ve gotten really disenchanted with social media. People shaming, blaming and buying into polarization hook, line and sinker. It’s part of the reason I went into hermit-mode. Now that I’m being guided to be more front and center again, I realize that, yes, mean people suck, but it’s not my life purpose to hide from assholes. It’s my job to know myself and, despite the meanies, share my wise, quirky, often counter-cultural ways from a place of service. Period. No running. No hiding.
It’s time to be visible again.
For the last two years I’ve been on an entrepreneurial elimination diet (Thank you Nina for the metaphor). For years, I’d been running my biz the way I thought I “should” do it and, in the process, abandoning the heck out of myself. Like any good elimination diet, it’s time to start adding bits and pieces back and see how it feels to the God pod. As you can see, I’m starting here, with this blog.
When I’m not in integrity, I get sick. Duh.
Holy shit, this. These days the number one way that I abandon myself is momming. I put those kiddos first. As women, that’s what we’re supposed to do, right? Wrong. This year, on a trip to Mexico with my daughter, I fell ill. Really ill. It just happened again, a mild cold this time, after spending hours taking down Christmas by myself. I’m not sure how to balance this one yet or if that’s even possible. But I know I’ve got to do a better job of making myself a priority even when my kids need me and especially when they should be helping me take all those damn Santas down.
Surrender. Trust.
I haven’t had a drink since 2013. You see, I come from a long line of addicts. And part of my job here on the earth plain, I have decided, is to break this line of ancestral addiction. So you can imagine my frustration when I learned that the ONLY thing that has thus far been able to help me get a decent night’s sleep (I’ve got a bladder condition called interstitial cystitis) has been cannabis. I spent most of 2022 feeling like a complete recovery fraud. I’d try to sleep for a few weeks without my tincture or vape pen and sometimes I would but other times it meant getting maybe two or three hours a night. Until I finally just threw my hands up and said fuck this. Right now it’s what helps. Right now, I’d prefer to be substance free. Right now, I’m not and that’s okay. No more self-imposed shame. Instead, I choose to be grateful for the plant medicine until Source guides me to a different solution. I trust it is all unfolding as it should.
I gave away my power to a map of consciousness, damn.
Last year I paid to have my vibrational frequency read. If you aren’t familiar with David Hawkins and the Map of Consciousness, go now and purchase Power versus Force then thank me later. His Map of Consciousness is a thing of beauty that illustrates the divine union between spirituality and science. I found an organization that measures consciousness and had mine read. I fell into the frequency of willingness at around 310. To some of you this won’t mean a damn thing, but you can google the map of consciousness if you want to understand. I became very attached to this being my frequency. Then I had another reading six months later. To my ego’s profound shock, I came in at the very low frequency of 50, the energy of apathy. At that time I was in despair over something traumatic going on with one of my children. So on top of feeling the very normal emotion of apathy during this painful time, I fell into shame around this frequency reading. After a few days of processing, I realized my identity was a needy little gremlin that had been feeding off those silly numbers. Like a true whack a mole, this was yet another sneaky way to metaphorically beat myself over the head with a mallet. Eventually, the whole shitshow led me into deeper self-acceptance and compassion. Count it as another ego death. How many are we on now Fran? (Fran says too many to count.) I’ve seen this meme floating around the internet and now, thanks to 2022, I get it, I get it!!!
I learned that when I trust and surrender, I am provided for.
The very cool thing about being in the flow state of trust and surrender is that little by little you start to experience the miraculous. Like the time when Ron and I went to Sedona for his birthday and the restaurant I really really wanted to book for his birthday dinner only had one time slot left at five pm – who eats at five pm?!– and they could only seat us in the bar – the bar???!!!. Well, five pm in the bar turned out to be the exact perfect time and the exact perfect spot to get a front-row seat for a stunning sunset over the Red Rocks that neither of us will ever forget. It’s just one example of how the Universe wow’s us when we let go of having to control everything all of the damn time. The more it happens, the more we trust. See how that works?
I have spiritual gifts.
2022 was the year a learned to trust in my spiritual prezzies. 2023 is the year I start learning how to use them. Stay tuned and fasten your seatbelt. Psst: we all have them.
I learned how to handle adversity from my parents and my go-to response hasn’t been pretty (book forthcoming).
My earliest lessons in adversity were from my parents. God bless them. So it’s no surprise that when things get hard, I want a large supply of dark chocolate covered peanut butter cups, my vape pen, to purchase another five candles here, to binge watch the latest update from the Galactic Federation of Light and, if you cross me and your name is Ron, tell you all about how rude and inconsiderate you are for never folding your pants when you put them into your drawer. These are all mild response patterns compared to me twenty years ago so progress. This pattern really came into the light after reading my book all the way through. I was like, dame! of course! It’s all I knew! My hunch is there will be plenty of opportunities over the next year to find ever more constructive ways to handle adversity now that the pattern can no longer hide from me.
Lower frequency relationships will fall away and make space for higher frequency ones.
Anytime I lose a friend, it guts me. I go through all the feels – anger, shame, sadness, confusion. What I realize now is that many of the friends I’ve lost had to fall away. We were no longer an energetic match. A person anchored into fear will see the world through the lens of fear. A person anchored into acceptance will see the world from a place of acceptance. An accepting person is, frankly, going to annoy the shit (perhaps even appall) a person who wants to see and behave from a fear state and vice versa. There’s no judgment around it. Remember me? I was just anchored into deep apathy, an even denser energy than fear. It makes sense why some relationships fail to thrive — the expectation that they should is the opposite of flow.
It’s fucking arrogant to expect other people to see the world as I do.
For years, I became very attached to my viewpoints, and that my viewpoints were “right” and other viewpoints were “wrong.” If I came across a family member or someone on social media or a member of the community who did not share in my viewpoints, I would either try to get them to see things my way or talk shit about them behind their backs. I thought somehow this served the greater good, after all, my way of seeing things was the right way….
Now I see how arrogant I was. How could I possibly expect someone else to see the world my way? We have lived different lives, loved different people, been hurt and traumatized differently, had our hopes dashed, been lifted up by others, been let down, lied to, laughed at and embraced unconditionally under infinitely different circumstances.
The lens I look through now allows me the awareness that we are all traveling on a path and that path is leading us, eventually, back to love. Some of us are sprinting, some of us are on a casual stroll, some of us are stopping to get a burrito. I honor your path and trust that wherever you are, there is a lesson there for you that will fortify you for your journey. Damn the road is bumpy sometimes, isn’t it? Get yourself a burrito.
I am a spiritual teacher.
I remember, 13 years ago now, when I embarked on a new career as a life coach, the hardest part was for me to tell people. I was so afraid of push back of the “who does she think she is???” variety. (I never got any.) Nowadays, I realize that my number one interest in life is my connection with source, spirit, higher self, God, whatever you want to call it – what I learn on this path and how I can use it to help other humans. It’s just who I am. What’s the point of denying it?
So there you have it fellow travelers. I hope you learned something here or at least had a laugh at my vulnerability bloopers.
What was your number one aha from 2022? Maybe I could learn something from you too.
