Category: TinaOLive

I Needed a Voice to Remind me I Exist – VIDEO

April 3, 2018
I’ve just come out of a pretty raw weekend.
There is so much moving through me these days I’m reminded of my dear friend Miel Bernstein‘s approach to emotions. She says: Feelings are like the weather, storms will come. They will blow through. We don’t control the weather, nor do we become the weather. We simply adjust and wait for it to blow through. My marriage ended this year and it has rocked me through to my very core. I know it’s supposed to. A friend said to me as the undeniable end was coming and I was desperate to hang on: when a marriage ends, a tearing happens. It feels like you’re being ripped apart. She’s right, and the edges are jagged.
 
I wasn’t sure I would ever share this video because the moment is so personal. What you don’t know is minutes before, I had been gasping and crying so hard I stopped breathing and threw up. It was the first time in my adult life, the pain took me out so far I couldn’t find the surface and I was drowning. I couldn’t feel my life or my body. I knew I was in trouble so I just kept dialing until someone picked up. My friend Liz Powers was heading out on a roadtrip that day. She had a car full of women with her and while it wasn’t the best time to talk, something told her to pick up – so she did. I’m eternally grateful.
 
I needed to hear another voice to remind myself that I exist, that I was more than the pain I was feeling, that I was here – in my body – on this beach. She didn’t tell me things would get better. She didn’t tell me I was going to be okay. She didn’t tell me her own story of pain, of her marriage ending too. She just stayed with me repeating: I hear you. I got you. I see you. This is hard. This is so hard, and I got you. She stayed with me until I came back into my body and could see my feet on the sand again.

I hear you. I got you. I see you. This is hard. This is so hard, and I got you.

 
I wasn’t sure if I would ever share this video (I captured this moment last July 2017). I just knew I needed to shoot it because if I didn’t, you might think because I have a website about ”life”, and a workshop about ”living your best story”, and a calling I am following, that I am different than you.
 
I’m not.
 
This Easter I think I got a bit more about the Jesus story, his death and his resurrection. And I don’t think you have to follow a religious path to be touched by the power of that story. We all die at different times in our life, and what a blessing it is to be able to live again. Something about this moment on the beach from last summer makes more sense to me now and I’m not afraid to share it, in fact, I think it’s even more important to.
 

 
Please know you’re not alone. No matter how dark your moment is, how far from the surface you may feel, or how isolated you think you may be, as long as you have breath in your body, inspiration is still moving with you. Jillian Rutledge I owe that last line to you my friend.
Much love…
xxT
TinaO is a Writer, Story Coach, and Host of the TinaOShow, collecting and telling Stories from the Core. She’s the co-owner of The LEAP Learning Lab with Gina Best, and the other half of The Writer’s Compass with Meribeth Deen. She says: Stories are like toddlers, they will follow you around, tugging, hanging off of you until you listen to them.  TinaO is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening using writing, storytelling, nature, nourishment, art and connection as a way to listen to the personal story within. The retreat is held in various locations around the world, and is always offered 3x/year in British Columbia where she lives. All are welcome.
As always… let me know your thoughts. They’re always welcome.

Two Stories Collide – VIDEO

January 4, 2018

This is the feeling we all avoid: dangling. Caught between two worlds. Transitions. Good-byes. There’s something about shifting from one world to the next that causes us all (and yes, I am going to be so bold as to say ALL) of us to go unconscious, like taking your eyes of the road to change the channel. In that brief second anything can happen, and it does.

Think about it. There’s a reason we can’t find our keys, our phone, or where we took off our shoes. Copious amounts of books have been written about how to be ‘present’.  Why? Because transitioning is a challenge on multiple levels:

  1. THE BRAIN. Our circuitry doesn’t do blended thinking. We’re not a margarita, we’re a seven layer dip. We stack one thought on top of another, piled onto another one. We may have multiple thoughts all at once, but it’s seriously, despite what you may think, our brain doesn’t mash together like pastry dough. You can’t gently knead it from one form into another. It doesn’t work that way. Did you know your capacity to have a ‘mix’ of multiple thoughts isn’t even physically possible until you’re five to seven old? Seriously… so all of us parents have to chill out a bit with our Kindergarten expectations. Our kid’s brains can’t hold two thoughts at the same time for awhile.  Those of us seven years old and up reading this, barely can too. We don’t blend our thinking, we switch tracks.  _____________________________________
  2. OUR FEELINGS. Enough said. While feelings are also a bi-product of our physical body in connection to the imprints and neuro-pathways we’ve created in our brain, they have been known to swoop in, dive bomb us with mini explosions, sometimes flooding us with a challenge to learn how to swim in the waves. They feel all mixed up. They do not seem like a seven layer dip, they feel like the aftermath mess of a holiday party. _____________________________________
  3. OUR EXPECTATIONS. We arrive home. In one moment we are turning our car off. In the next moment we are reaching to remove the keys from the ignition and we already have a thought in our head. Right? It’s probably something like: Did anyone think about dinner or do I have to? or Damn, I forgot to…, or Yay!!! I’m home!!! I’m so tired… or Okay, don’t forget to do this… this… and this… before you go to bed.  There are other, harder thoughts you may be having too. This thing called life is one long list of to do’s and measure-ups and our expectations keep us moving. It’s not just our body which is tired when we hit the pillow, our brain is too.

These are the everyday reasons why transitions can challenge us, and there are bigger, more dramatic ones too:

  • Grief
  • Anxiety
  • Exhaustion
  • Detachment
  • Panic
  • Despair
  • Emptiness
  • and many more.

There are multiple reasons why we choose to slip away from one moment into the void of a next one without acknowledging the micro-transition we are in, and that’s what change is, a series of micro-transitions.

One breath to the next.

One feeling to the next.

One noticing to the next.

One pang.

One swell.

One wink.

One tear.

One thought.

One impulse.

One step.

One one one one one – on to another – one one one one one – to another one one one one one. That’s what change is.

Some days like New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Week, we enter a forced transition. One year closes and within a micro-transition we are thrust into the fireworks of a new one. Some of us don’t like being told what to do so  time becomes a ‘construct’, others of us love structure and in light of the New Year, we’re on the hunt for the best day-timer ever, some of us choose to not invest at all, in any of it and we just go to the party.

Not right.

Not wrong.

Not attached, nor detached.

It’s something that happens every year on this human plane called our life – two stories collide called New Year’s Eve (and week) and some of us get lost in it for very personal and logical reasons.

Here’s what I want you to know: You’re okay. You’re good. You’ve got this. You are not your feelings, or time, or your thoughts. You are YOU, and there’s a hell of a lot of shit going on inside of you during a transition.

I got you right now, which means you got you too.

Happy New Year.

Because given a choice between saying:  Shitty New Year! or Unconscious New Year! or Scary New Year! I am choosing, in this micro-transition to wish you a HAPPY one.

I got you.

xxTinaO

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TinaO is a Writer, Story Coach, and Host of the TinaOShow, collecting and telling Stories from the Core. She’s the co-owner of The LEAP Learning Lab with Gina Best, and the other half of The Writer’s Compass with Meribeth Deen. She says: Stories are like toddlers, they will follow you around, tugging, hanging off of you until you listen to them.