"Hang in there" part II
My lessons during this pause period + free journaling page
In this week’s letter, you’ll learn about…
✍️ My lessons during difficult times
📝 A free gift: The Lessons Printable Journaling Page
📖 The 6 lessons
In last week’s letter, I wrote about my experience with a cancer - well, actually two scares - I had during Summer Season and which - both - required a lot of time to figure out is it or is it not, not to mention all the hospital ordeal I needed to go through. You can read about this experience over here.
In this letter, I’ll share the lessons I got during this upsetting & on-pause period which lasted almost the entire Summer Season.
In my experience*, there’s always a message and/or a lesson behind everything. No matter how painful, unpleasant, fearful, or uncomfortable things can/have become, there’s always something to learn from it.
#1 Just Breath
I can (try) to be wise and spiritual all I want but I won’t lie; I could feel the stress rushing through my veins on a daily base. As someone with a past of panic attacks and depression, and currently also dealing with a (light) form of OCD I felt that I needed to find ways to calm down.
The first step was to breathe. Yes, that simple! Yet I often needed to pause and remind myself to do it. With breathing, I’m talking about deep and mindful breathing instead of the superficial and high breathing we do when feeling stressed out.
#2 Be Mindful
Not only being mindful of my breathing but I discovered the more mindful I became in my day-to-day activities the more I got out of my head and more into my body.
This calmed me down significantly!
Instead of being trapped in my head and thought I consciously turned my awareness to my surroundings and to whatever I was doing. Every time I got “kidnapped” by my thoughts - which happened a lot! - I gently turned my awareness and focus down again into my body and into my actual world.
#3 Accept without Surrendering
As someone with a highly controlling - hence the OCD - and rebellious personality this was one of the biggest and most difficult lesson ever!
In the past, as soon as I needed to “accept anything” I’d refuse to do so!
But somehow this time around something finally clicked inside of me:
I couldn’t fight nature…I could try which would have meant losing my entire energy, sanity, and vitality I had in me and dying in the end fighting. Do I want to do that? I asked myself and the answer was loud and clear: Hell NO!
Instead, I could accept whatever was coming my way and still be able to direct myself and my story the way I wanted.
For me surrendering felt like giving up. Giving up on myself and my life at that very moment. I wasn’t and still aren’t ready to do that. This is probably what people mean when they say:
Make the most of the present moment
And that brings me to the next lesson…
#4 Living Life One Day at the Time
The previous lessons all lead down to this one!
Instead of putting all my efforts, plans, and dreams into the future, I understood that it’s all about bringing them into the present.
How I do want to live my life TODAY?
This is how I came about my 80% - 20% rule = 80% living consciously and intentionally in the now and 20% in the future.
#5 Keep Dreaming
However, I also understood that by dreaming and making plans I was choosing for life, my life as well.
I might not have my entire life in my hands but as long as I’m alive right now in this minute, I have sovereignty over my life.
There are many factors that lead to overall vitality or decay and having a strong and positive mindset is a tremendous asset in becoming healthy again or for that matter staying healthy.
So, I dare myself to dream and make plans for the future.
#6 Keep Silence
Once I understood the time frame the doctors needed in order to run all the exams, scans, biopsies, and operation I knew I couldn’t keep this a secret for the entire period. So, I decided to tell the situation to close family members and a few friends.
Why? Because I knew the more people knew, the more often I’d have been asked about it, which would have made the entire ordeal plus all the lessons above impossible to get through and it would have been impossible to follow.
I know that questions and checking in, come from a good place and loving hearts, but having to get confronted with the question and my perpetual answer(s) every single day, maybe multiple times a day would have made me go insane!
So, I choose me & my sanity and kept silent!
These were and still are my main lessons which kept my head above water while having a real yet positive mindset and made me hopeful for my life. Without it, I’d have drowned, and probably I’d needed to be medicated just to go through this initial period.
*I know this is a very sensitive topic; everything health & trauma related, and I know there are a lot of people - who have gone through similar ordeal(s) who won’t agree with me at all and what I write over here. That’s why I undermark here “my experience”, for example. Because this is my life, my reality, and I know that it is subjective and not a hard truth for everybody.
✍️ Journaling Prompts
Do you also think that there’s meaning to all kinds of lessons and experiences in life? If so, why? if not, why not? Have you ever gone through something similar and if so, what did you do? Or didn’t do?
Feel free to share your answer and reflections in the comments:
📝 Journaling Page “The Lessons”
If you love journaling, specifically intentional journaling, then please feel free to grab this free printable journaling page!
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💫 WeatherVane’s Flow
Over a week ago we got a dehumidifier and I’m so happy with it!
Since chemo-time I’ve been doing laundry like a mad woman and last year we moved into a new house which is pretty dark and cold, and with a laundry space/room that gets super humid. I won’t explain the entire story, but to keep it short; weatherwise and other circumstances don’t allow us to dry our clothes outside and we don’t have a dryer.
So tossing back and forth between buying (an expensive) dryer or getting a dehumidifier, we opted for the latter. And it has been a game-changer!
This makes a kind of daily house chore and mundane activity finally a pleasant one to do and I no longer need to be frustrated, and mad about our clothes smelling musty, sometimes stinky, putting the heater constantly on, and taking it forever for the laundry to get dry, well kind of dry...
📩 Upcoming Letter
✍️ The energetics of Autumn & how you can use it for your own wellbeing
🖋️ Autumn Season Journaling Prompts
📝 A free gift: Autumn Season Printable Journaling Page
🌬️ Sending you magic & healing your way,
-Vane