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Identifying Your Core Story – BLOG

October 4, 2016

Yesterday I started writing my book and if you’ve heard that before from me it’s because I have a few books going – it has been equally as frustrating for me, but you know how I say, “Sometimes the story tells you, and sometimes you tell the story“? – well, this is one of those times. I’ve been looking for the legs to the title of this book for a year or so and every time I thought I found it, it would sink weeks later into the sand and vanish, that is until I stumbled on to this.

My Core Story.

I won’t go into it much because it’s something you kinda just gotta surrender to. To be brief it looks like this. You have two questions to answer, and as much as possible, you have to let yourself answer them as plainly, honestly, and without decoration as possible (which is hard for us mind-centered, or feeling based people because we think we’re so beyond that, ahem… as if we could be). The one thing we all have in common is a primal need to be seen, heard and most importantly known – or as some self-helpers call it: to belong, and we’ll do anything and everything in our power to protect that possibility, including lie to ourselves, or worse, sugar coat it all so that we bare absolutely no responsibility for the possibility that someone in our 360 degree global peripherie ever feels like they might…not…belong.

From my perspective, none of us ever truly belongs and only in allowing the incredibly daunting human truth of that to be so will we ever tumble into the sense of belonging that we’re all scrambling to find. We gotta let it go because there is no proof. We can make some up, throw some names around, some labels, some arrows, some bullet points, share some aha moments and more… but the reality is, the only belonging we can every truly ‘prove’ is our very own personal sense of it, and even then only we, individually, can ever really believe it to the level that it seems real….

How bleak right? Oh gawwwwwd we’re all alone….?

Yep and in that, it’s how we’re totally not. That’s humanity. That’s where our connectedness is. That’s how our sameness shows up. It’s in our fragility matched only by our magnitude that our beauty is realized. How frickin’ gorgeous is that? And damn confusing I might add.

So I have two questions to help us identify how we don’t belong so that we can belong. At this point I’m either making you nuts or you dig my message. Wanna stay for more?

Two questions – that’s it and trust me when I say, they’re ridiculously simple to answer and insanely challenging to be known. I’ve been offering inquiry sessions with people as I develop this work and I can tell you, out of the countless people that I’ve chatted with, only three have been truly willing to answer the questions with all masks down right away and those that did let their core story tell me before their mind could (an example of ‘when the story tells you’). For the rest of us, most of the time we can tickle out some clues over the hour, like breadcrumb words we’re following to get there. Sometimes our core story shows up as expressions first before we can nail the one phrase that gives us goosebumps, or knocks the wind out of us.

It’s truly amazing when it happens. It’s beautiful to witness for sure.

So… now I’m writing a book. Forty five years of this story chasing me and now it’s ready to be given to the world. It’s not an autobiography, though it will be peppered with personal stories.

Okay, but before I do that, you’re thinking: What are the dang questions???? Well here they are, and if you struggle to find an answer, drop me a message below and we can book a complimentary inquiry session okay? I just may be able to help you out with that. Anything you post in the comments below go directly to my email – I don’t publish them. Now, if your core story does reveal itself to you and you don’t know what to do with it, also let me know and we can book a call to follow the thread together.

Here are the questions:

Question #1: What is the one thing you always give people (and the world) no matter what?

Question #2: In your deepest, darkest moments, what is the sentence you have always said to yourself ?

Here’s a clue: They are usually the opposite of each other, but not always. For example, my answers are:

Tina’s Core Story:

Core Love: You matter

Core Pain: I don’t matter, nothing matters, this is stupid, why bother.

I’ll explain more later… but for today, here’s an excerpt from the opening of my book that is all about this work and how it arrived for me:

an excerpt from You Matter – Identifying your Core Story

…So there’s this thing that you run from right? I do. I have most of my life. Even in my forties when I think I’ve stopped running, I forget, Oh yeah, I’m human, I run from everything. I think we’re master escape artists which seems kinda strange doesn’t it? Why would we want to escape the very thing we’re here to live. I suppose none of us had a choice in the matter and somewhere deep down that bugs us. Because we showed up here kicking and screaming, well some of us did, others came into the world all wide eyed and peaceful – I’m sure that I wasn’t one of them. I bet I came into the world fast – like a blow torch afraid I’d lose my flame if someone wasn’t holding me. Foooooosh, scorching the doctor as I came out.

I was premature. My mom was only sixteen when I was born. I joke about it now, well, not really. I joked about it when I was a kid. Adoption is one of those things that isn’t weird or hard, or difficult, it just is. When you’re a kid, it’s just part of the clothing you forget on the bus because it’s truly so irrelevant. When you’re a kid you don’t care how you came into the world, you’re just so damn glad to be here. Wow, look at that tree! It’s HUGE! Holy smokes I think I could climb that! Hey! I got a lemon twist for Easter! Watch me! Wait a minute how come my hair is so twisty and tangled and hers so straight? I like music. I sing all the time. Like all the time. I’m still singing la la la la la… I live between three churches and nobody in my house prays. How come? My dad is French Canadian and he likes to make home-made wine underneath the stairs. Sometimes we have fruit flies… See? Who cares if you’re adopted, you have lots of other things on your mind, at least I did. I used to tell my friends in highschool that I was a ‘back seat baby’ – I mean, where else do you have sex when you’re 15 years old right? I thought nothing of it. Of course, now I’m a mom to three of my own children, and I’m really close to my mom (biological), we’re kinda like sisters and I never, ever, ever blamed, judged or was angry with her about giving me away even when my mom (adopted) died when I was eight… Truly. I actually always knew that I was chosen some how – but still… that’s the mind, not the body. And you know, I still don’t care if I was conceived in the back seat of a car, but I do care about the rest of stuff.

The adoption thing became a traceable pattern. It was the first mirror of how this human experience was giving me exactly what I needed for who I am to expand (but that’s a whole other conversation, we’ll get there later). It was the first time I was experiencing my core story that I don’t really matter. It was the very first time, on a cellular level, that my body wasn’t sure if this place was where I was supposed to be. It was the first time my eyes couldn’t make sense of a moment, of a missing hand, of a warm chest, as I searched for the eyes of my mom, and the scent of her body. Yes I was only six months old and I could totally be making this up, but I’m not. Because we know stuff we don’t want to know. On some level, that’s what was going on for me, I just didn’t have words yet, but I understood that I didn’t matter.

More to come…

xxT

TinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

When Team Awesome Splits – BLOG

September 22, 2016

My Column was hijacked by the news…

For my column this week, I was planning to write about my 30 Days of Movement project, which started at the beginning of September. My partner Bill and I thought it was time to stop acting like frat boys on a restaurant patio as the summer came to an end. I noticed that as I squeezed every last drop of joy from the end of the summer, I was also squeezing and wrestling myself into my jeans and Bill was in the same boat. We decided it was time to move our bodies and start to treat them like beer-tasting amusement parks.
And that’s been going quite well. We’ve moved, and eaten better, and we’re sleeping better and I even took a photo of my “art” to include.

YAY FOR US.

And then I heard the news about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie divorcing and it’s all I can think about today, and the thoughts are plentiful and also jumbled.

I will preface all this by telling you that, no, I am not a personal friend of the Pitt-Jolies. (Although, I will say it out loud right now that I have a dream where I coach celebrity relationships. There.) I only know of them what I read and see on social media, and of course took a side when the relationship began in the first place, initially siding with Jennifer Aniston and wondering what went so wrong with the couple who exchanged quirky wedding vows in which they agreed to “split the difference on the thermostat” in their home.

What has shaken me:

That relationships start and take off and also fall apart around us all the time, and I think these endings make me feel a little vulnerable. I tend to hold closer to what I have and make sure that I talk about it with Bill. We celebrate and frequently acknowledge that we are Team Awesome, and he tells me he adores me about 456 times a day, so I never doubt that, and guess I just make a point of connecting with him on a deeper level. I know that relationships are built on long foundations, but that they also can crumble in the same way that we fall in love and fall asleep; a bit at first and then all-at-once. The endings of relationships remind me how fragile life and connection really are and that they must be nurtured.

I know that we don’t ever, ever really know what’s going on in someone’s relationship; they may have made agreements (with which they are both satisfied) about monogamy and what may or may not go on during a trip to Vegas, and they may be struggling behind-the-scenes, but able to put on the bravest face to the outside world. We don’t know because it’s not ours, and all we can do is witness what we do see. I don’t demand to know the truth from anyone, but this reminds me that we don’t have the whole story, and as sure as we are to vote and take a side in it, it is like an iceberg about which we know a teeny, tiny part.

It’s easy to be in relationship when there’s harmony around us, isn’t it? But take away a couple who has been in our circle for years, drinking wine with us at dinner parties and throwing their kids into the mix with ours, and it’s suddenly really close and a little harder to be with. We start to feel less sure as we hurt for them and with them. We may feel like we need to take a side, and perhaps we mentally take some revenge. It shakes us all and challenges all the rings around a relationship, much like the ripples left when a stone is tossed in a lake. The edges move when the centre is rocked.

As I research for an upcoming intensive I am running in November, I am learning that divorce rates are actually falling and now sit at around 40%, and while I know that relationships can seem fragile, they also have the capability to be strong and resilient and durable. And also supportable. A lot of the crap that does us in can be mitigated and prevented with regular care and maintenance. I’m certainly not saying that “Brangelina” could have been saved, necessarily, but that we can do things to keep ourselves on the winning side of the statistics.

I think we all want to believe in the happy endings we see, don’t we? Brad and Angelina were up to good things as a team (or so it seemed) with the kid-adopting-and-rearing, conscious living and deep philanthropy. I wanted to believe that they would make it and that they didn’t shatters some cool illusions I had been carefully building.

I quite expect to be knocked sideways by shootings and unfairness and hatred in the world, but my quaking I feel from this is surprising to me.

Tell me, please, what does hearing about this sort of thing do to you in your relationship? What has you know that you’re on solid ground? What are you going to tell your partner when you see them next to connect in with your own Team Awesome?

Get Real, Sexy Real.

Tara

Tara Caffelle is a Relationship and Communication coach. She is passionate about creating connected, almost-uncomfortable-to-watch relationships that are based in Sexy Communication and Big Lives worth rolling around in.

Tara is based in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver and offers custom-designed coaching programs. To claim your free 90+ minutes and see what might be possible for your own super coupledom (or persondom), find a time here.
Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.

September is SMOOTH like Peanut Butter

September 14, 2016

I heard a great expression today:

“September. It’s like time clicks over from molasses to wine.”

So true, isn’t it?

I had a glorious summer of working when I wanted to, on things that resonated with me, and now it’s time to hit-the-ground with it all and put things back into action. I have re-stocked the pantry for cooking and nesting and making out with my slow-cooker, I have hauled out the winter boots and sweaters and I’ve made a pot of tea almost every afternoon to keep me company as I write.

And I am not alone in my Sprint September ways, am I? I hear from clients that kids are back in school, and it’s already mayhem. Some are juggling businesses, and gaining parents, and epic exhaustion as the light seems to fade earlier and earlier as we tumble toward the shortest day of the year in just a few months.

I have been offering some simple solutions all week in these calls, and so I am here to share them with you, too. (You don’t even have to be working with me—aren’t you lucky?)

I hope you are easing into the transition to fall, and as always, if I can support you in any way, you know where to find me.

Until next week,

Tara

Get Real, Sexy Real.

Tara

Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.

Five Love Languages to Super-Coupledom

August 10, 2016

It seems to me that in our relationships, it can seem like we’re all speaking different languages and missing our connections. We can feel alone, even when we’re surrounded by people who completely adore us because we are looking to be loved in a way that makes sense to us, but the same is true for every single person and there are many ways in which we love—these ways aren’t necessarily the same for everyone.

And so allow me to introduce Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages

I spent the last week camping along the West Coast Trail with a dear friend of mine, and as we set up our home in the woods each evening and found the necessities of water, shelter and food, I noticed that he spoke the same Love Language as I did; we both performed Acts of Service for one another and it made for a pretty harmonious week. If he had been someone whose language was Words of Affirmation, we may have had some hiccups when I didn’t acknowledge him with praise and compliments. I was always very grateful for all he did to keep me safe and comfortable in the woods, obviously, but because that wasn’t the way he shows love, he wasn’t waiting for that from me.

In any case, this is an easy component to explore on the

way to SuperCouple-dom and provides an almost-guide to helping you and your partner to feel loved and seen by one another. I invite you to take the quiz with your partner and let me know what you notice about the love you feel you are receiving.

Here is the link to my video this week:

Get Real, Sexy Real.

Tara

Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.

You Matter and So Do I

July 21, 2016

I thought this was about how I matter, and it is, but… so? Yes I’ve read all of the same books that you have and I get it, everything starts with me. Right? Nothing has the juice of connection until there’s a me in the center of my own picture and until we’re rooted in the me that is mine there is no hook that can reach out and in to you authentically.

Oh gawd that word, the A word: authentic.

I bet when those three syllables resurface in another ten years I may like them again, but for now, the A-word feels like it might be part of the problem.

Why?

Because we’ve named it and now it exists like a destination, or a flag if you will. We have a word for the missing it – it’s become the ingredient we’re all hoping will bring us an audience, or a tribe, or inner peace, that our authentic self will lead us to the next step, the next place that will lead us home so we can finally arrive.

We want authenticity now, and thats why there’s all this I-engine revving going on.

Who am I?
What do I want?
Where am I going?
What do I have to offer?

Can you hear it? The I that lives in the My?

What is My purpose?
What is My gift?
Who is My tribe?

And yes… I know, like I really know, because I teach this stuff too and I can spend a lot of time spouting off about this very subject, in fact here’s what I say in Live Your Best Story on Friday night: “You can’t get there from there, you can only get there from here, and tonight, all we are doing is experiencing what it feels like to stand in our here.” These I’s and My’s are all about owning what is HERE, our here, right here, no where else but here. It’s our dot on the page, our own personal Google beacon so we can see ourselves and be seen from space. We do all of this work on our I and our My because we’ve grown into master escape artists. The last thing any of us want to do is actually BE HERE, or even harder, BE HERE TOGETHER.

So we sign up for I courses, Me weekends and My workshops. We begin to get comfortable in our ability to take up space, let our voice me known, and have an opinion. We might even roar a bit. Wooooo that’s risky. We buy into the idea that if we’re not ‘pissing anybody off, we’re not taking any risks either’. We bite into our I am sandwich, and then we keep on eating.

Why then are we still hungry and/or just a little bit sick?

What’s that about?

Because I and Me and My and Mine may be perfect, but it’s not whole. It’s only half of the story right? That would seem logical wouldn’t it? But even that isn’t accurate because I, Me and My is in fact only a third, and if you’re still with me, actually only 1/4 of the whole. Ready?

Here’s what it is:

I
You
little we
BIG WE

Following the top three, we can ask: Does this serve me? Does this serve you? Does this serve us? It’s pretty simple to stand in each of those perspectives and know what to do. It’s even easier when we can recognize that each of us has a default position that we auto-pilot. Clearly, for those of you who have followed me for awhile, know that I have a very strong and habitual “I” position. How do you know that? How many selfies do I take??? Yup… lots. I’m suuuuuuper comfortable in the I position. My back-up pilot is the ‘little we’ position as in, I remember that when I post a ‘selfie’ about me, I do it in service of the ‘little we’ – here’s where I suggest the 4th option, or a 3B if that’s easier…

I call it the big ‘WE’ (and yes I’m totally riffing on David Brook’s idea of the big and little me in his book The Road to Character which I LOVE btw).

You still with me?

See, there’s a difference between the little we and the big we and here it is:

Little we: Your team, your tribe, your community, your audience, your network, your connections.

What is the common denominator here? YOU as in ME, or I, as if we own it, or are the central character.

Here’s the BIG WE: Us, the planet, all, ever-after. What’s the common denominator? ALL, there’s no differentiation between you or me or we. There is no separation, or BOX to put us in because we ARE THE BOX.

as my husband would say: Dynamite BOOOOOOOOM! Kablammo – now what?

I’m working on a book called You Matter and so do I – and this is the theme I’m exploring. I’m taking a look at concepts like:

It doesn’t matter because I already do.
Who am I without words to describe me?
Where does resilience come from?
Finding freedom at the bottom.
What landing in your groove feels like and why.
How detachment might be a form of attachment to the BIG WE.
You matter because you are breathing, because you arrived, because you are here.

You matter and so do I is what I’m working on for delivery to all of you by October 29th 2016. There. It matters because it, as in the story that is coming, can now breathe too.

Big thank you to Meribeth Deen for nailing my thoughts to squiggles on a page. She helps me find words when I can’t see them or hear them yet.

xxT

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice: Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and with her Tall Poppy Living for Network Marketers Coaching Program, she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Beautiful Idiot

July 4, 2016

I’m not going to think about this too much because if I do, I won’t write it. 20 minutes tops… here goes:

This letter is not a letter but a rant, a rub, a flag. It’s graffiti across my 40 something belly, ragged in permanent marker so it fades slowly, my shriek with no parachute, sprawled wide, turbulent and free, the dark velvet of Guiness spilling across the bar.

Bartender smiles.

He’s seen this before.

He knows what day it is.

Truth time. The moment after. The glance back when wisdom hasn’t arrived yet. Someone sits down and tries to chat but all you can do is the no-talk-small-talk, either that or ignore him completely. I pick up my pen and flip to a new page.

Strangers think writers are mysterious but probably crazy. Sexy too, but only …over there.

Bartender smirks knowingly at the stranger, then tosses a soft smile to you.

Dear twenty something,

you write.

Dear lost and jumbled, frenetic and free, torn up and trying… so much trying…

Listen, this tearing wildness that screams through you is worth it. All your hunger and heart break and panic for knowledge, to be sure, to contain, to fret, to flee, to love, and crush and blame and run, to transform and drift… just drift, drift

to claim drama by colouring with pastels, breaking them when pushing too hard and then scratching a new image with your fingers. The purple, red and golden lines beneath your nails say it was worth it.

To plunge into the breathless race of belonging, head spinning, drunk with clamoring still – somewhere anywhere.

To recognize how little you truly know. Claiming THIS IS HONEST at 4:30am.

Oh my but you are such a beautiful idiot.

You run.

every day.

Searching for knowledge, to land, to decide to follow through, to stand for something that doesn’t change in the next second. To be anything but what you are, this beautiful…

idiot.

So beautiful.

And you just don’t know it yet.

Dear twenty something, never stop. Running. Fling yourself forever. Press on. This mess. Love. Fucking Love. Risk sounding like a crazy poet jumping rope with yarn of seaweed, be the child woman with sand in her hair.

Dear 20 something – because you’ll never know.

And that’s just so…

idiotic. yes. and beautiful too.

xxT

On July 23rd on beautiful Bowen Island, just outside of Vancouver, BC at Rivendell Retreat Centre, I am offering Writing as Witness, a one day retreat into the story and/or wisdom inside of you that wants to be heard.

The day includes: Walking meditation, Writing, baring Witness to others, and witnessing our own wisdom. The retreat time will be as private or as connected as you want it to be, which means, you needn’t share your writing or insights if it doesn’t feel right.

There will be a few ‘how to’s and offered best practices’, but mostly, the day is a guided conversation with your-self and the ‘practice’ is in the following of how and what you are wanting to have heard.

Journals are provided. Snacks are also offered however, please bring a picnic lunch to enjoy outside (weather permitting).

July 23rd 2016, 10am-4pm, maximum 16 participants.

Cost is $79 for the day.

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Tara VLOG #4 – What are your Wildest Desires?

June 30, 2016

In this week’s VLOG we’re talking about your biggest, craziest, wildest dreams and how you might make them come true – the secret *might* just be telling your partner what it is…

And here is the video:

WHAT ARE YOUR WILDEST DESIRES…?

Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.

The Love & Conversation Sandwich

June 23, 2016

Years ago, I painted a giant acrylic canvas and was never quite happy with it. It sat on my easel wanting attention until I moved, when it was tucked beside a pile of books in a storage unit. I pulled it out more than a year later when I was finally ready to complete it. On the swirling backgrounds of plums, creams, and greys, I painted this quote by Julia Child: “Cooking is like love; it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”

And I still didn’t like it. I wanted to paint over it, but was hesitant. While I waited for inspiration to strike again, I hung it in the entry of my house.

When I was visiting my parents at their mega-RV- mansion in Arizona last December, I was discussing art with my mom. I told her about this painting that I was never really happy with. I flipped through the hundreds of photos in my phone to find a shot of the painting to show her.

Expecting the obligatory mom response of “Oh, honey! It’s beautiful!”, I was puzzled when she looked at the photo and remained silent.

“Well?” I prompted.

“Um. Yeah. It’s pretty bad, honey.”

Well, at least she called me “honey.”

Earlier this year, I was at a retreat and nabbed some alone time with an actual professional artist who had been telling us about the “Love Sandwich.” That’s where we request feedback to be snuggled in love by asking first what works about a piece, then asking what doesn’t work, and then asking for more feedback of what is great about it. We’re all human and feedback can be hard to take. This seemed like a nice approach.

I told her about my mom and the Julia Child painting and she visibly cringed. She reminded me about The Love Sandwich method and invited me to use it next time I was asking for someone’s thoughts about something I had made.

Armed with this sandwich idea, I continued on with my work, and wouldn’t you know it, over the course of one week three clients were struggling to have difficult conversations with well-meaning loved ones. And thus the Conversation Sandwich was born!

The principle is the same, but instead of asking for feedback it’s about asking for what we need in relationship.

The Conversation Sandwich – Top

We start our sandwich, the bread and mayo, if you will, with delicious acknowledgment:

I am so touched that you want to spend time with our newborn and support us…

I have missed you so much and it hurts me that we haven’t talked very much…

You are such an special part of my life and it’s really important to me that we spend time together…

The Conversation Sandwich – Middle

And then we add the meat, which is the request we have of the situation so that it be different:

…and I would love your support in giving us time as a newborn family before we let the world in.

Can we talk about that…?

…And even though I’ve moved to a different city, I would love to find ways for us to stay in touch. Do you ever use Skype…?

…And it feels like we’ve both been really preoccupied. I would love it if we could make a plan to go for a walk…

The Conversation Sandwich – Bottom

The sandwich is complete when we add the lettuce (let us!) and the second piece of bread:

…Our baby is so lucky to have you as a grandmother and I’m so lucky to have you in my corner on this!

…I would feel so much less homesick if I could have regular chats with you about what I’m missing back home…we could even enjoy some wine and make a date of it!

…I have some time next week and I have been dying to ask you about your kitchen renovation!

See? Easy. Acknowledge/spackle on some sincere flattery, make a request, and throw in some sweetness. Done.

Happy conversatin’! I so love sharing these thoughts with you each week and I invite you to let me know about your riotous success as you ask for what you want. Your healthy communication is really important to me. (See what I did there? SANDWICH.)

Get Real, Sexy Real

Tara Caffelle

Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.

Writing as Witness

June 22, 2016

I’m intuitive and that doesn’t make me special or any different from you. I write to listen to what I already know but can’t hear.

It started last summer after a cancer diagnosis. I don’t call it ‘my cancer’, because I don’t choose to personalize it that way. It never belonged to me, nor do I take ownership of the creation of it. I may have ‘asked’ for a shift, or ‘attracted’ a change, but I most certainly did not ask for cancer.

That said, a black sticky-outy thingy arrived as the messenger for my particular ‘asked for’ shift.

In processing this I began to write in a way I hadn’t before. I’ve always had a journal… yawwwnnnnnnnn and as you can see, I had become rather tired of that. I’ve written poetry forever, but somehow that felt too dark, almost too intimate. Frankly too indulgent really. I’ve also written opinion pieces when I’m wrestling with things as a way to figure them out. Here’s one of my favourites, only because the sheer writing of it filled me up when I’d been feeling empty. But writing that way seemed far too daunting and frankly too cerebral a process for what I was aching for.

Nothing fit. At that time in my life, I had been ready to roll out my own life’s red-carpet and reallllly get shit done. At the time of the diagnosis, my business had just started to rebound after a self-enforced, four year hibernation, my husband and I had finally closed a painful chapter in our marriage – together, and our children were growing up. Life was ready for a new growth stage. I was standing on the precipice of right now, in the clearing, ready to act, to start, to begin again, and a stranger broke into my house. My body. My throat. Full stop.

The last bloody thing I wanted to do was write about it. I didn’t want to listen to my own self-reflecting. I didn’t want to ‘make friends’ with the cancer. I didn’t want to fight it, to ‘kick it’, to give IT any more of my life-force energy than it was already attempting to gobble up. I didn’t want to be in my own skin, let alone go into the depths of more self-discovery or listen to the words in my head. Good gawd. I’m a blabber mouth, blab blab blab blab blab. All I ever do is talk, and wonder, and question and press further to understand. Do you ever feel like you just don’t want to learn anymore?

It’s that place where entering one rabbit hole opens up another to lead to again more and more and then still more. How exhausting. I was empty. I know now, that’s how the cancer got in. I had left my post. I was too tired and forgot to lock the door. I probably didn’t even care really, if I’m truly honest. The door was abandoned open and the gate was swinging wide on it’s hinge. I did not have the energy to learn anything else. Instead,

I wanted to land.

I wanted to come home.

I wanted answers.

So I began to ask questions. I asked about the cancer, about being tired, about love, about soul mates, about purpose and work. I asked about my career and whether I had one, about being an artist, about my skills, about heaviness and healing. I asked and asked and I still ask today.

Sometimes the answers are deep like this one:

Dear Tina, what are the parts of my life that I must release to finish the journey?

…you are asked to release doubt. Between you and your call on your soul is doubt. Tina this circle is complete when the mask of doubt is dropped and transforms into the essence of what it truly is: curiosity, intrigue, fascination, perplexed, passion, drive. Tina there is shame around your curiosity and it has become doubt…

Sometimes they are informative:

Dear Tina, how are you today?

…Well you haven’t been taking great care of me these last few days. You haven’t been outside. You haven’t cooked anything and you haven’t written. These three things are your life blood and without them you will get sick, remain sick and everything else is just a measure to balance the toxicity instead of simply saying no to it. …saying no to what is not your life-force and saying yes to what is your life-force.

Sometimes it’s challenging.

Dear Tina, What is the story of this anger?

…Oh Tina, it’s before you – it’s young, it’s so young. When you are ready to go there you will.

Is it holding me back?

Yes.

This became my Dear Tina practice.

Today, I woke up in a fog and with a headache. I went back to bed to try to sleep it off. I woke up still heavy with it. I went to my desk. I pulled out my ‘to do’ list. I cracked it open pretending this is what I was supposed to do. Then I looked over at my Dear Tina Journal and knew that was the call for me. Today’s message was so ridiculously banal and perfect. Here it is:

Dear Tina, Something is wrong. What is it? Tina something is wrong. What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?

Tina you are chasing again. Chasing the money. Chasing the life. Chasing the body. You are acting out and holding back.

My tummy is upset. Why?

Because of restaurant food. That is all.

I have a headache. Why?

Because you’ve been wrapping your body up in knots.

I’m in a fog. What do I do?

You do what needs to be done. You sleep.

Why does everything seem so stupid?

Your period is coming.

Oh right. That’s what it is.

You are chasing the money. Chasing the body. Chasing the peace. You are still fighting the shift Tina.

No coffee. No, low, No, low wine. No sugar. More gardening and veggies. This fog you are in is self induced. We wouldn’t want a fog for you. You have everything you need. Your children are happy. Your marriage is strong. Your network is with you. You can rest in your Arbonne business. You have everything you need. Simply show up and do. You needn’t push. When you push, you get angry and push back. Pushing for you is counter productive.

Find the groove Tina.

Live in the groove of it all.

You got this.

This one made my laugh. You got this? Ha! Has my higher self just entered into today’s date. Who am I to judge?

The message was clear.

#1 – my period is coming. Let go of high intensity today. How ridiculously simple is that?

#2 – the insight is that I’m chasing again and it’s taking me away from my centre. It’s a familiar feeling so when it landed I knew exactly what it meant.

#3 – the take away, because there is always a take-away, ‘pushing for me is counter productive, find the groove instead.’

Why do I share all of this with you? For lots of reasons. It’s part of what I’m designed to do. I write to share and in the sharing, you all become part of my own ‘witness protection program’. When you witness me, I can hear my own voice. So thank you for being my witness today. I also do this because I want you to see how accessible your inner-wisdom is to you. I want you to see how, with just a few breaths and patience you can come home to yourself, for yourself. For some this practice becomes their prayer, for others it’s their meditation and still more, simply, their listening.

All of us are intuitive. All of us are more than our five senses. All of us can listen our way out of a fog as I did today.

Journals are provided. Snacks are also offered however, please bring a picnic lunch to enjoy outside (weather permitting).

July 23rd, 10am-4pm, maximum 16 participants.

Cost is $79 for the day.

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When Life ROCKS You

June 17, 2016

The great folks at the Good Mother Project got me thinking, when they posted an article about “Flashbangs”: the events in life that ROCK you and change life as you know it. The obvious one is the arrival of a baby and the transition into motherhood, but what else can challenge a marriage and create shifts no one could have ever predicted?

I know, right?

GOOD QUESTION.

This stuff is work talking about, before it happens, ideally.

I would love to know:

What rocked you?
How did you grow into it?
Did you grow into it, or did it leave a part of your relationship just a little fractured?

Time to spill, darling, because this is where relationship gets real, remember?

Get Real,

Sexy Real

Tara

Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.