For all the brokenhearted people...Let it be.

Last night I was in dance class and chose to dance to Carol Woods version of "Let it Be."  After a buoyant day I was surprised to feel some ancient sadness and grief moving through me, so ready to be released.  This song called to me.  I love the lyrics, the tempo, the feel of this song and this version in particular makes me pause and be grateful for all that I am, all that I am here to be. Somehow it moves me to deep surrender and to let it be. 

Once you click, you can skip the ad and enjoy the beauty of this video and its moving message. Let it be, let it be. May you surrender today and let it be.

Our broken hearts are our gift to the world

Our broken hearts are a gift.  This calloused piece of ourselves leads us to look in all sorts of dark places.  It leads us to learn to ask for help, to cry, to be transparent and vulnerable, to be courgeous and brave, to learn what we want and to ask for it.  It takes us to places that need love, and we learn to welcome them in, fall in love with the dark and the light and ourselves. So we can determine our values, our worth, our beliefs rather than allowing others to do so. Our broken hearts create fuel for a well-lived, well-loved life.  Our broken hearts create environmentalists, activitists, humanitarians, people who hug longer, listen better, recycle, protest, champion equal rights, create social movements, social workers, therapists, yoga teachers, nurtrionists, dancers, poets.  Our broken hearts create communion, if we are willing to share.  They crack us open so we can fall apart and become something far more human.  Broken hearts can create tenderness, compassion, caring, and empathy which is what so many of us are starving for.  The world is plenty full of wit, sarcasm, deflection, judgment, cynicism, data, science and rational thinking. 

Our hearts have a wisdom beyond words, beyond data and science.  Our hearts take us to the irrational, the sublime, the cyclical, the mystical.

They lead us away from the expected to something extraordinary. 

How has your broken heart opened up your life to love yourself and others more fully?  Perhaps today is a day to write out your gratitudes for your broken heart and all that gifts it has brought to you and the world.

Enjoy, savor and do a little dance as you welcome in the gifts for yourself and the world. Thanks for healing your heart.

Our broken hearts guide us home

After I said the prayer I wrote about last week, after I admitted my heart was broken into a million pieces and completely surrendered, miraculous things started happening.  

I realized that just because my heart was broken, which is no small thing, it didn’t mean I was broken. 

And being able to distinguish between those two, pulling those two things apart and holding them separately changed my life.

 I am Whole

You are Whole

I kept thinking I was broken.  That I was wrong.  And all the while it was my heart saying, 'I need love and compassion. I hurt.  Please take care of me. I matter.'

The very thing I hated most about myself, resisted the most: my tender broken heart that I felt kept my life so small that I judged, shamed, sobbed over, hated…yes hated with a vengeance and a rage I couldn’t fathom…well, it is in fact the very thing that guided me to the most extraordinary, miraculous, love filled life. 

Without my broken heart I wouldn’t be me.  I wouldn’t be able to hold space for others. Without my broken heart I wouldn’t be writing this, I wouldn’t know another's pain is my pain, I wouldn’t have such deep gratitude for joy, for flowers, for the sun on my face. I wouldn’t weep in movies, hug my friends longer, bake for my friends to share sweetness, make eye contact and smile at strangers.  Without my broken heart I wouldn't have created love capers, I wouldn’t have spent years working at non-profits instilling courage in young girls.  My broken heart took me all over the world to heal, to find pieces of it in remote places, under waterfalls in Hawaii, atop mountain peaks in Nepal, rivers in Maine, on the beach in California, a trattoria in Florence, my couch in Seattle, St. Patrick's in New York City, amongst the trees in Montana. My broken heart led to me finally sobbing in front of my mom last year and showing her all the pain I had carried in my sweet body and soul. My broken heart led to calling a friend over to hold me, to step away from technology for away to connect to the knowing within me rather than the noise of our world. 

Our broken hearts guide us home.

Home to the pieces we lose as we grow up in a culture that doesn't necessarily value emotions, sweetness and vulnerability.  In systems that don't know how to create, honor and sustain these vital pieces.  The most precious, magical, superpower parts of me were ready to be expressed and thrive and I kept kicking them in the face, wanting them to disappear and get out of the way of me being an executive at NBC, making lots of money, having access and power, a kickin' wardrobe, hot body and a man at my side and a blackberry in my hand.  I felt that my tenderness, my sensitivity, compassion, empathy, intuition, curves, radiance were getting in the way of me fitting in, of being loved and living the life I thought I was supposed to be living.  

When in truth, these incredible parts of me were knocking on my heart so I would wise up and pay attention to the magic inside me that was for more valuable and needed in the world than me working at NBC and having a witty few lines of success in my college alumni newsletter.  I needed to fall in love with these parts of me, own them, value them so I could show up in my truth and step into MY life, my soul, my joy, my superpowers, my fun, my pleasure and be ME.   A me that is so needed in the world to spread love, play, wisdom and compassion wherever I go.  A me who is brave enough to step off the path laid out before me (again and again) and share my experience, my journey, my truth with you; so you can see and feel it in the world. So you know you are not alone and there is love for you on your journey home.  

Because we need your wild heart to be in this world. We need your wild. 

We need your superpowers, your own personal brand of magic to infuse this culture.  We need your words, your hugs, your love, your dancing, your joy, your radiance. We need you. 

Our broken hearts guide us home. 

Tap into your heart- where does it feel broken? Where does it need your love and compassion? How can you feed and honor you beautiful, perfect heart today? Where does it want to take you?

A prayer for our broken wild hearts

In the past few weeks I've felt a huge transformation within me, another thick layer of my Sweet Vidalia onion being peeled back and ready to be shared. A part so deep and ancient within me, so aching to come out to be seen and so scared that something so personal will be rejected, scorned, disbelieved, discarded, ignored, judged.

My broken wild heart. 

For most of my life I pretended my heart wasn't broken.  It went beyond the good girl mask. It was a lie so deep it almost derailed my life and it took me years of onion peeling to get to this truth.  And I now know I am not alone. As I tell my stories I hear from you, and I know...

There are so many of us with broken wild hearts.  

Aching to be seen, to be loved, to held.  I see you. I hold you. I can feel your beautiful broken wild heart. Can you feel mine?

A few months ago I was in Montana where I always seem to find myself when I am gently peeling back a thick layer of onion. On my first night there I typed out the following. I share it with you to share my broken wild heart because that's what I'm here to do- to share all of me, so we can reclaim our wild hearts together.

'I found one of those places today, so deep inside of me that if I hadn’t paused I would have gone right over it.  A piece of me that startled me and then felt like something I had known was there for so long. This piece that is so fucking afraid of letting go of the pain.  How could I let this piece in, how could I ever let go of the sense of outrage I have, the depth of my heartache? It's like betraying myself all over again, silence before, and silence again? Acquiescence again? You win. You’re right. You get to walk away scott free…again. And this time by my own hands. This feels so fucking wrong. It feels outrageously, soul wounding wrong. It feels like betrayal. Again.

I pray on this.

"Guides, Angels, sister goddesses, ancestress, the Divine, Universe

I have a prayer for you. I pray for you to help me heal my heartache. To help me release all anger and hatred, rage, injustice, grief, sorrow I hold in my heart, in my cells, in my brain, in my energy field.  I ask you help me see that in keeping such a hold on this story I am not helping myself heal. I ask you to help me see that justice has and will happen in ways that my brain cannot believe. That I do not need to sacrifice myself waiting for justice.  And what is justice anyway?  And that I do not need others to understand or honor the pain I feel. And that I do not need others to apologize in order for me to heal. I do not need them to honor my heart or my emotions.  I need to do this and I must trust that I do not need them to understand to validate my experience, to help heal my heart.  I offer up my impassioned surrender to you divine. I offer up my upmost letting go, to transmute and alchemize this heartache.

I ask that you surround me with your love, your light, your open hearts as I delve into this deep belief, this deep pain that If I forgive, my pain did not happen, that if I forgive, I am once again being the good girl and making it better for everyone. That I am betraying myself…again. I ask for love to this part of me that has such fear in letting go. That wants justice, vengeance, understanding.  That believes, so deeply and so profoundly that if I forgive I am rolling over once again: letting the patriarchy have its way, letting the system win, that I am denying the pain, I am pretending my heart didn’t break into a million pieces, that I am being disloyal and dishonest to my sweet, precious soul and body once again.  That I am not being a truth teller. 

I light some candles, I ask for guidance.  I ask for wisdom.  I ask for grace to transmute this deep deep ancient fear and pain.  For me to believe that I can release the grip on this pain and I am not dishonoring myself in the process.

I make myself a cup of tea and the tag on the tea bag says “Empty yourself and let the universe fill you up.”

I feel my heart soften. I feel my deep heartache come to the front.  I love it up.  I open my hands toward the sky and I surrender. “I give this to you because I have no idea what do with the heartache. I have no idea how to make this right with me. show me. guide me.”

I empty myself. I empty myself and I do my best to trust that in doing so my heart heals, that in letting go I am honoring myself in the most profound and beautiful of ways. Letting go, letting the universe fill me up, this is my worship, this is how my wild heart heals.

asking for guidance

What is Wild? Part 2

"TO BE FULLY HUMAN IS TO BE WILD. Wild is the strange pull and whispering wisdom. It’s the gentle nudge and the forceful ache. It is your truth, passed down from the ancients, and the very stream of life in your blood. Wild is the soul where passion and creativity reside, and the quickening of your heart. Wild is what is real, and wild is your home. I urge you to unravel the listless, rigid parts and feed your wild, because it is the wild you, not the barely alive, embedded-into-routine, zombie-like you that is now struggling for air. For turn on. For sweet prana. Restore the wild and the warrior."                     

                                                                                                      Victoria Erickson

It's Friday- bust out of routine, shoulds and schedule and feed your wild. 

Let's dance and celebrate how your wrong make's you so right with Pink.