Spinning and the power of shared energy…
Dancing Michelle/Sis & Dancing Dino/Bro…the power of shared energy xx
[In love with being human] Today is my 4th “In love with being human” piece of 12, in the name of celebrating 12 years in biz, sharing my story through entrepreneurship and book writing, especially as it pertains to life, motherhood, love, growth and gratitude. In love with being human…
Smartypants Rumi said, “the wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Now that’s a wisdom bomb if I’ve ever heard one. [Especially as of late, this is one of Walking Momtra's favorites, by the way. If you haven’t read the latest on the spectrum of travel, death, daring and doing on www.walkingmomtra.com or www.michelleghilotti.com, please do].
In total transparency yet again since losing my 22-year-old brother almost six months ago, I’ll share that I let the tears flow in a packed 40+ person spinning class yesterday morning.
In love with being human…
It felt amazing.
As Pharrell says in his new(ish) song entitled Happy, “It might seem crazy what I’m ‘bout to say” but what filled me was not sadness but its opposite ~ light. What we might even call happiness. I’ll explain…
The floodgates opened during that dance song because of joy. I pictured our dancing Dino and felt joy (no one knows how to groove like Mr. Dino Ghilotti). I then saw Dino’s sweet face in my mind and, again, felt joy. I thought of the depth (and dance!) that we experienced as siblings with our unique 17-year age difference and felt more joy; the hurts-because-it’s-so-pure joy…lovejoy (yes, one word).
I go out on a limb often and I’ll do it now. All of our hurts have growth gifts inside of them. They may, to use a most elegant word ~ suck ~ but if we’re aware and open to growth, of course, we WILL find them. We’ll also be given the crazy opportunity to create deeply connected lives, books and businesses, as a result.
A speaker I once heard called it “the gifts that come wrapped in sandpaper.”
Sounds about right.
Which leads me right back to Rumi’s quote “the wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Each dip of darkness is an opportunity to understand more fully the truth that we’re all more connected than we'll ever fully comprehend. As I mentioned in one of my Discoveries in Death writings (www.walkingmomtra.com), the charge in losing is that we may gain the ability and strength to treat everyone that comes into our lives as if they are the very person we’ve lost.
What’s your version of loss and how can you apply Rumi’s quote to turn it around to see the joy you may be missing? To create a life with meaning that affects those around you in the most life-giving way? Where can you add to your life experience and to the life experience of those around you? To go a step further, where can you own the energy you bring into the room?
Everyone we meet, from the airline stewardess or the cashier at Whole Foods, has a loss they’re massaging and maneuvering. It may not be your kind of loss but it’s a loss nonetheless.
How are you going to be a part of the light they’ll experience amidst that pain or darkness? Better yet, how can you be that light in your own life so that in return you can be the light they’ll experience amidst the pain?
In love with being human…
Yesterday I experienced, once again, that in this darkness we call “grief”, we can open to an intense clarity around living and living well: finding joy, creativity and connection in as much as we can, everyday. The good life.
And, yes, there’s a ‘don’t delay’ quality to it.
Time IS a finite commodity, as my family and I can connect with even more fully now. But there’s very much the realization, too, that your “spill” (i.e. spontaneous tears in the midst of a packed house yesterday) is very much the outcome of the light or opening your loss has left. [We have the choice to determine if it will truly be an opening filled with life of all kinds, as big as the sea, or a gaping hole void of it].
As I look back and celebrate 12 years of entrepreneurship, book-writing, travel, and motherhood as well as work through the grief, I realize the added resistance added to my life workout as of late has only gifted my personal development, authentic expression and relationships.
In love with being human…
It’s not in spite of but because of our difficulties that we grow into more. Be open to feeling it all. Let the light enter the wound, whatever that may be for you. And if that has you asking “how the heck do I do that?” then do this:
• When you feel the opposite of joy in your heart, tight hips or pounding head, run quickly to do something for someone else. Said another way, the way we solve a problem is to stop talking about…to stop only thinking of ourselves.
• As you wake and feel the loss as if you’re feeling it for the first time (again, whatever “loss” means to you) write down 10 things you’re grateful for. A post-it note will do. Do this over and over in the morning and in the evening until the end of your life and be blissed to call it your gratitude practice. Gratitude helps it all hurt less. And it takes all of about one minute each time. Your nervous system and joy factor deserves that minute and more.
• When you think what-if or why, realize that life is a spiral staircase and that each time we encounter a hiccup or missed step, we’re encountering it from a place higher up the staircase (ability to respond vs react). Visualize it. See that, in fact, in that moment, you have a juicy choice to respond to the situation with renewed wisdom. This will also help it hurt less. In love with being human…
Through it all, I’ve never felt more available to and for life and love as I feel right now in this space of having "lost." In fact, there’s a need to take the lessons and use them ALL for love.
In short, that’s really the connect-the-dot piece to all those things I mention in my first paragraph…motherhood, growth, gratitude, business etc.:
Just as a heavier resistance in a workout is needed in order for the heart to receive the full joy (benefits) of cardiovascular health, so, too does there need to be resistance or heaviness in life; in all parts of your life. We need it in order to ride the full wave of the 360-degree dance we’re supposed to do in this lifetime. [You can look at all the research, touch base with any guru or teacher and you will see that we are meant to feel it ALL].
See the darkness in which you may swim now or in the future at any point as your resistance training; the training that will dissolve your fear and false sense of disconnection to all those around you. See the resistance added to your life now to be that which will help the wealth of your entire person in mind, body and spirit (just as the biking class yesterday helped the wealth of my physical one).
To close, this is what I let rise to the top yesterday that probably also contributed to my public "spill":
• The power of shared energy, just as the photo here says. It's big and a big deal. Community, support and a tribe who you can share with is crucial. In fact, get right in the middle of community. Find and/or let go of any part of a tribe that keeps you in the dark.
• You can use this unique light darkness brings to find and fund your creative expression. Is it music, art, writing, dance that you’ve been keeping to yourself? Share, show, shine.
• It’s all connected…life is entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship is life. The more we can see that everything we do and put out there is connected, the more at peace we’ll feel, the more money we’ll make doing what we love, the more fulfilling relationships we'll have and the more of a living legacy and imprint we’ll leave each day.
In love with being human…
In love, so in love, with being human.
