What is Love? – Some thoughts.

Life Tips, Spiritual Wisdom, Storytelling

How have your ideas and experiences of love evolved over your lifetime?

As a child I loved making homemade valentines for my 30 classmates. Each consisted of a white paper doily with a red construction paper heart on top, then a magazine cutout of roses or other pretty flowers glued right to the center of the heart.

It was a formulaic design, but I had to crank 30 of them. Hence the mass production set up at my dining room table. On the back I’d write to- from-, maybe even add some pencil drawn hearts or flowers. I felt an excitement in my heart, anticipation of making my friends smile. I wanted to please them and make them happy. My own heart would be happy as I folded the paper, cut the hearts and glued all the layers together. The day of our valentine’s party, I felt excited while placing them in each students’ red white and pink decorated mailboxes lined up on the long windowsill.

How would each class-mate would react? Would they like my valentine? Would they like me just as I liked them? Would they show how much they liked me by giving me the prettiest card, extra candy, gum, or a sweet note?

Of course in 5^{th and 6th} grades, I started wanting to give extra special hearts to certain boys, with the expectation of receiving one in return. The drama was pretty intense waiting for the big reveal, the opening of the stuffed mail boxes and then going through each of the little envelopes from the store bought cards, some with little candy message hearts or a stick of gum.

I have fond memories of those days, when life and love seemed easy, with only a little drama. Now many years have passed and my definition of love has evolved beyond the childlike simplicity of red paper hearts, into something much deeper.

That excitement I felt on Valentine’s day was just the beginning: a dipping of my big toe into the ocean of life and love. I didn’t know at age 11 that a lifelong journey of discovery was just beginning for me and all my friends. Now almost 60 years later, I can look back and see how my ideas about love have evolved over the decades.

Then we believed –

Your boyfriend or girlfriend completes you.

The other person will fill your voids and meet all your needs.

Love is an attraction to a person’s physical attributes and personality.

Your worth depends on having a boy (or girl) friend.

Now we know –

You are whole and complete in yourself.

You fill yourself up first by loving and accepting yourself and meeting your own needs.

Love is an appreciation, an opening yourself to the other person’s energy, their inner being, their essence, their spirit.

Your worth is a given, from birth.

Now I know that love is the the flow of life and creativity through us. It is accepting yourself and those you choose to love, flaws and all. It is respecting yourself enough to follow your heart and say yes to life. Love is standing in your light, seeing and appreciating the light in others.

Love does not seek to control others, judge them harshly, or one-up them. Love means begin honest about your own needs and feelings and taking those of others into account. It means empathy, an understanding of where the other person is coming from, what they are feeling. Love is caring enough to tune in deeply to their spirit and heart.

Love is seeing the best in another. Opening your heart to them in all their humanness..whether it be a grandchild, romantic partner, friend, or neighbor. Love is the energy that connects us all.

Photo credits: Vintage valentine cards – Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash; Child with red heart – Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash

Care for Yourself as an Empath

Empath, Empath Care, Energy Healing, Healing Touch, Health Tips, Storytelling, Wellness Tips

Are you an Empath? Do you pick up and feel the emotions and feelings of others?

While walking through a beautiful wooded park, observing wildlife and listening to the birds, I felt the calm and peace of nature. Later my route took me past a high school parking lot. There I noticed lots of trash and bits of refuse littering the ground, some of it in the woods closest to the parking lot. There were fast food wrappers, dirty cups lids and straws, smashed plastic bits, unrecognizable items, dirty COVID masks, plastic bags…

Feeling angry about the clutter, I started picking up these items, one at a time. I held them in my hands, as I hadn’t come prepared to carry such a large volume of junk back to my own garbage can.

My peace and calm of earlier dissolved into frustration. Thoughts flashed through my mind …“How could someone be so thoughtless? How could this trash continue to pile up week after week…? Why don’t people clean up after themselves?…”

Eventually I couldn’t hold any more trash in my two hands, so I had to leave most of the debris behind, and make my way home. I felt angry about having to clean up after others who should know better… frustrated by my walk being weighed down and cut short by the junk I picked up.

All this dirty, useless, and smashed stuff I carried home in my hands diminished the quality of my walk and my time in nature. When I got home, I felt more frustrated, even after I threw away my two large handfuls of non-biodegradable waste.

Later I realized, as much as I wanted to, it was not my job to clean up the woods and and parking lot single handedly. I could come back with a box full of 12 garbage bags, clean up, haul them home to my garbage can, then come back the next day to even more debris. This was not my problem to solve. Clean up has to be the shared responsibility of those who generate the trash.

How does picking up litter and trash thrown out by others relate to living as an empath? Bear with me for a bit…

Emotions are energy! Our thoughts and feelings are all energy that can be picked up by sensitive people and empaths. The auras, or energy fields of empaths seem to be more porous than the general population. In this way, empaths pick up the energetic debris of strong emotions others toss out into the world or deny in themselves. (Like litter in a parking lot others don’t even notice.)

We pick up the energetic imprints of unexpressed emotion and strong feelings, and are weighed down by them as we carry them with us through life. (Like me carrying others’ refuse home with me.)

It’s difficult to know how to release them once they’re in our energy fields. Some of us may not even realize the feelings weighing us down belong to others. Even if we know these are not our feelings, we may feel it’s our responsibility to carry them with us. We may feel that we’re helping others by picking up and feeling their strong emotions. But this is not the case!

Try these easy exercises for empaths.

Ask two questions: When you feel a strong emotion that seemingly came out of nowhere, ask: “Is this mine? Does this belong to someone else?” Notice and trust your intuition about the origin of these feelings.

Ground with Earth Energy. For best results, Make this a daily practice. You can walk barefoot on the lawn or beach, massage your feet, top, sides and bottom, or rub your soles with a stainless steel spoon. These will open the energy vortexes in the soles of your feet and help you draw in Earth energy. When you are grounded, you can also discharge energy that you discern is not yours through your feet. It helps to visualize this unwanted energy draining into the Earth.

Strengthen your Aura. To keep your aura more “tightly woven” and less porous, build energy in your hands by rubbing your palms together. Then, begin making figure eight crossover patterns with both arms, as wide as they can reach. Let this be a rhythmic motion, allowing your body arms and hands to swing in arcs back and forth in the soothing figure eight motion.

Then you can do smaller crossover figure eight patterns with your fingers and hands, paying special attention to the energy field surrounding you, close to or on the body Let your intuition show you where. I always feel better after tracing figure eights on my upper chest and heart area. Once again, it helps to do this daily.

More Resources:

If your empathic gifts feel overwhelming, book an appointment with me, either in person or distance, and we’ll go over easy energy techniques to help you discern what is yours and what belongs to others, and to set strong boundaries to keep your energy clear, grounded, and resilient.

From time to time, I offer a Self Care for Empaths Class. Watch my class page for upcoming dates. shamanichealingofames.com/classes-with-betty/

For more on living well as an empath this is a great book: The Empaths Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People by Judith Orloff, MD

The Bracelet: A Story of Lost and Found

Connect with spirit, Healing, Shamanic healing, Spiritual Healing, Storytelling

When I was five years old, Dad took me to the ramshackle Victorian house of an elderly couple he visited often as a Methodist minister. He told me they were antique dealers. The house was loaded with curios and objects of art large and small. They seemed delighted to see me and allowed me to choose several treasures from their amazing hoard. Finally, after much dithering, I chose a shiny gold expansion band bracelet with a filigree heart and a tiny diamond chip (more likely rhinestone) in the middle.

This was a precious treasure to me! It was the prettiest thing I’d ever owned, and I wore it everywhere.

Lost

One day, my bracelet couldn’t be found. I looked everywhere in my room, in the house, growing frantic at losing my treasure. It did not turn up. In the days and weeks that followed I gradually forgot my bracelet and learned to live without it.

Found

Months later, in summer, while playing in the dirt under the church steps, I found my bracelet buried there, caked with soil, and dug it out. It must have fallen off my wrist while playing. My heart expanded with happiness! “I found it! I found it!”, my dad remembered me yelling as I ran into the house with my treasure.

Looking back, I owned myself as child, feeling happy, carefree, sensitive, and connected to nature. I loved trees, seeds, dirt, grass, gardening, loved to observe other children, to roughhouse and run, wrestle and climb trees, to laugh and be silly with my brothers, to pet and hold our Siamese cat as she purred.

Soul Loss

Then somehow, over time on my path to adulthood, my inborn wild and authentic nature deserted me, my personal power and vital parts of my soul were just gone. My self confidence was non-existent leaving me with little sense of self.

I knew something was missing in me. Pieces of myself were scattered, some even seemed to be buried in the dark soil like my bracelet. I felt unreal, ill at ease in the world. I didn’t feel confident or complete. I thought I was a mistake.

How did my once sparkling and free spirit get muffled, gagged and silenced? How did I allow it to withdraw into the shadows until I couldn’t connect with my inner spark any more?

Looking back, I freely gave parts of my spirit and power away to fit in to my family or group of friends. Others I depended on demanded that I give up parts of myself to be accepted and approved of. Yet others stole parts of my spirit and personal power from me through abusive acts or words.

The worst part of this was I didn’t realize that I was giving away and denying my most sacred treasure, the essence of my spirit. I couldn’t know as a child that these losses and thefts would hinder my life and impede my development as a young adult.

After living like this for years, I realized I didn’t want to exist in this fragmented way, feeling empty and isolated. But, there was no blueprint available, no book or self help guide to reclaiming my own self and my spirit.

The path to recovering myself was unclear at first. I had to reinvent my life, starting from an uncomfortable place of confusion, feeling alone and un-moored. I finally had to surrender and ask Spirit to guide me and show me my path.

It took me several years of dedicated focus to bring back the missing pieces of my spirit one by one and weave my inner life back together into wholeness. I couldn’t do this alone; energy healers, shamanic healers, dear friends, teachers, therapists, beloved spirit guides, and compassionate spirit helpers, self help books, and listening to my body and energy wisdom all contributed to my healing journey.

Like my shiny bracelet that was buried in the dark soil, I found and reclaimed my soul again. In shamanic terms what I did for myself was soul retrieval and integration– many times over.

I tell you my story because I want you to know that healing is possible. Reclaiming what you’ve lost is possible, reweaving your life, your spirit into wholeness is possible. You too can bring back the golden bracelet, your lost soul parts, your lost power, and connect once again with your true self.

Helping others like you navigate your personal healing path is now my life’s work, in partnership with compassionate and helping spirits. I am here to help you regain confidence, to develop, own, and trust your gifts!

I am here to assist you on your journey to wholeness, to reclaiming and reweaving the vital parts of yourself you’ve lost along life’s way.

Are You An Empath? 3 Self-care tips

Empath, Empath Care, Energy Healing, Healing Touch, Health Tips, Life Tips, Storytelling, Wellness Tips

You are probably an empath if…

…you absorb the and take on the feelings and emotions or physical symptoms of others, making it hard to tell what’s yours and what’s theirs.

…you feel drained and/or anxious in big box stores, noisy crowds, hospitals, libraries, etc.

…you get sick or exhausted, depleted, anxious or angry after encountering certain people.

One beautiful summer afternoon I sat on my front porch reading. A delivery truck pulled into my driveway near where I was sitting. Immediately my body was flooded with high anxiety!

As I tried to make sense of this sudden shift in my emotional state, My logical brain decided the anxiety could be explained because I didn’t know the truck or the driver, hadn’t ordered any services or furniture… It was an unexpected intrusion into my peaceful day. Then the driver got out of the van, took a bouquet of flowers to my neighbor’s house and drove away.

The anxiety stayed with me even after the van left. After a few minutes of this, I decided to do some discernment and energy testing. I stood up, tuned into my body and stated “This anxiety is mine.” My body responded by falling toward the back, which in self energy-testing terms is a “no”. Now the anxiety made sense. As an empath, I’d picked up the high anxiety of the van driver.

Now that I knew the anxiety wasn’t mine, I asked this energy to drain through my feet into the earth for recycling. I had no more need to feel this feeling. It was detracting and distracting from my peaceful day. Draining the energy away works when you are well grounded, in other words, plugged into Earth energy.

This method of clearing yourself works because emotions and feelings are composed of energy. Each of us holds our thoughts feelings and emotions in our auras, otherwise known as energy fields. The stronger and more charged the emotion of another person, the easier it is for a nearby empath to pick it up. Our auras also seem to be more porous than the energy fields of non-empaths, allowing in energies others would easily filter out.

As a life- long empath I’ve learned some easy ways to keep myself clear of the moods, emotions, feelings, and energies of others that I have not specifically invited in. Here are 3 of the most helpful techniques I use daily.

Three ways to keep yourself clear as an empath.

1. Stay grounded

Two easy ways to get grounded are rubbing the soles of your bare feet with a stainless steel spoon, and walking barefoot on the Earth. When you feel agitated or nervous, when you can’t settle, ground yourself. Getting grounded allows you to plug into your power source, Earth energy, and pull this energy into your body.

Think of an electric lamp. If the lamp is not plugged in, it can’t light up, no matter what you do. When you are plugged in, your energy is more coherent, you feel anchored to the earth in a healthy way, and you can discharge excess energy through your feet.

2. Strengthen your aura

An easy way to keep your aura strong and less porous is to make figure 8 patterns with your hands, fingers, arms, body. First rub your palms together for a few seconds. Now, make the eights tiny, make them huge, on or off the body, in your aura, up and down, sideways, diagonally. Let your hands go to areas that need extra attention. (This technique is from Donna Eden)

Have fun with this! Kids love it! Think of this exercise as reweaving or sewing your loosely woven aura together again with the electromagnetic energy of your hands. This will help your aura filter out the energy of others and draw in the energies of health, well being, and harmony. Figure eights are also very calming!

3. Set boundaries with other people, your life energy, your time.

You may need to set boundaries and withdraw from large events, big crowds, or stay away from certain people. You may not want to hug Grandma or a church acquaintance. It may be in your best interest to stay home from a big family holiday or reunion and wait for a time you can meet your favorite relatives one on one.

Trust your intuition and give yourself what you need. Taking care of yourself as an empath is vital! Please don’t judge yourself for needing to set boundaries in ways others might not understand. Be kind and loving to yourself and tell others no when that is in your best interest.

If you do not take care of your needs, you may get resentful, energetically depleted and perhaps even sick. Take ownership of your life and your energy so you can focus on your own projects, your own life without getting sidetracked by the strong emotions of family and random people.

Gifts of empaths

We empaths can bring great sensitivity and caring into a world that needs our gifts. We are often the healers, therapists, clergy, the spiritual advisors, teachers, the plant and animal whisperers, the artists in our communities.

Tune into your purpose as an empath. Take care of yourself. Own and honor your gifts! Share them when you are ready. You are needed here!

It is not easy to go through life as an empath! But it is possible to live your life in a manner that will truly honor your gifts and your needs for boundaries so your life experience is truly your own!