How are you doing Lovely Souls? I ask this question as the open-ended
multiple choice question of life. My
hope is that you feel safe in being honest, at this point, and get REAL with
your answers.
It’s okay to be human.
It’s okay to FEEL.
It’s okay to not have the answer to this question and say “I
just haven’t fully processed it yet.”
THAT is your NEW NORMAL reality and it is 100% valid.
Our lives are changing not just weekly or daily – they are
now changing HOURLY… and in some cases BY THE MINUTE.
I could ask you – “Are you prepared for the deep excavation
and introspection?”
You do have the time now.
First, do what you need to do and what you are familiar in
doing what you do… if that is your ‘go-to’ – but take note of the TRUTH – none of
us are going to be exactly the same after this.
We’re not.
We will be changed as
to how we LOOK at LIFE… again.
When I asked you these varied questions four years ago or
even two years ago about being vulnerable, raw, dealing with your truth,
linking to the ‘unknown’ and sitting in the ‘void’ – now over 100+ videos I
have recorded and shot and 200+ blogs I have written – these questions may have
been super-low on your priority list to answer.
You may have thought about joy and happiness, peace, and gratitude from
certain places of the known.
But how do
you look at them NOW? Will gratitude rise up and swell up around you for what it is you DO have right now, even though it is scary and overwhelming?
When life was happening, you were ‘making things happen” – busy living
in the fast lane or the mellow slow lane, taking that ‘selfie,’ --- maybe you didn't give yourself the gift of love to self-nurture in a way that is so imperative right now. Or maybe you were too busy to even muster up the energy to find that space to
FEEL. Feeling was something you ‘put
off doing’ until you had to confront it.
But NOW – here we are … and you have time to FEEL.
And YES, I know it is OVERWHELMING, eh? It is, if you denied yourself time to think,
feel, process, express, cry, scream, laugh at yourself, and be frustrated with
too many overloaded emotional rollercoasters at once.
Everyone is feeling a sense of loss, grief,
and a buffet of emotions based on whatever their root triggers are, past
traumas are, and also what their current circumstances are – in the present
moment that is an ever-changing landscape, that is not pleasant to see. The only pleasantries are the acts of kindness
you see, the gratitude you feel for what it is you do have and no longer taking
for granted what you once did. In
essence, this is a shake-up and a wake-up and it makes many uneasy and queasy with
life changing on a dime.
THIS IS A LOT. I understand if you have had to be the ‘brave
face’ and ‘strong warrior’ out there for everyone else for oh-so-long. Whether you are a parent taking care of a
child, a child taking care of an elderly parent, an employer trying to take
care of all of your employees and their individual livelihoods, and a business
owner with your lifelong labors now gone in a dash, or if you are someone on
the front lines or in the foundational spine of existing necessary services
still expected to show up to serve the rest of us. I SEE ALL OF YOU.
For some, this is a bigger adjustment if they are juggling
all of the above at the same time (!)
For others, they may feel the inconvenience of having to adjust to
working a different way, and many of us have to adjust to not working at
all. It’s a time of resurrection and reinvention
and it is not easy this time because lives are at stake in doing this – and any
risk taken now, has its own list of grave consequences in a terrain of
territory we have not seen in a very long time.
Meanwhile, everyone has questions. I understand if everyone
had to come to you for answers and support, but you are now in your isolation space
and it is time for you to be your own anchor for the moment.
For many people, being there for themselves feels like a
guilty-spot, or a selfish spot, but it is imperative if you are to continue
onward at this point. We all need
cocooning periods in order to emerge stronger, and better and more capable of
being of service. This is particularly
true for anyone in a service industry.
It’s okay to admit you do not have all the answers.
Does anyone? If they say they do…you cannot fully trust
this, for no one is presently alive today that has lived this scenario before.
Take a deep breath. I’m
sticking with you at this time. YOU ARE
NOT ALONE.
I am here still to help guide you into your own realization and
to help you LINK to your human side of the unknown as you learn to embrace the
SOUL SPACE of what you are feeling, seeing and realizing about yourself.
May I request one thing?
Don’t forget your ‘awesomeness and your ability to learn’ in
this process. Pat yourself on the back for making it to this point and give yourself the kudos once arrive on the other side and use this energy in reshaping your existence for the better to help in a way you could not see to do before.
We are all equal in our being; but it is in our uniqueness
that we can take stock in seeing we have our own rhythm and way in the world
and we can see it clearly in our aloneness, our isolation – because it is HERE
we do the soul work.
Last year I presented a series of homework assignments that
I had you go through if you were experiencing the ‘dark knight of the soul’
warrior exercises. It was here sifting
through your “rising to the next level” in that series of exercises and INNER
HEALING were to link you to your own awareness so that RIGHT HERE AND NOW – you
could access those magical strength tools within you to USE to navigate this
process of what we are all going through right now.
This is the time to shed ego and attachment to controlling
outcomes of things we cannot control.
Can we grieve the process?
Oh heck yes! It is necessary to
purge your emotions so they do not fester within you manifesting a compromised
immune system of suppression.
We can grieve the process, but we must not drown in the
process. People are counting on us. And while that is daunting at a time when we
ourselves feel like that drop in the bucket, but the bucket is gone…. Well, we
have choices and what we choose will ultimately be important from here, yes?
We need to work through it TOGETHER and realize everyone is
floundering, fumbling and finding their way.
We must be patient with ourselves and each other at this time, and offer
help where we can.
This is the time to let go of ‘old tapes’ in your brain, you’ve
procrastinated getting rid of… you know the ones… the ones that criticize, the
ones that defeat you.
This is the time to NOT JUDGE ANYONE, including
yourself. Because RIGHT NOW – We are
literally all being given the Universal lesson of being on the same page,
having the same NEEDS – and that is compassion, respect, patience, love,
kindness, and putting ourselves in restoring faith, hope, and truly confronting
every darn TRUST ISSUE that exists in your body, being and cell system memory.
Based on WHAT we discover and find here…. Is how we’ll end
up showing up at our very worst and our very best and at the end of it all, if
we’re lucky to come out the other side, we’ll all be looking at life through A
VERY DIFFERENT LENS. We need
forgiveness, we need open minds for learning and patience in the process.
How do I know this?
I’ve done it. Not once, not
twice, practically thirty-three times in ‘resurrection’ – for that is my name
Stacey’s actual Greek meaning…. Resurrection. At this state of the juncture,
while I am familiar with resurrecting, I will tell you, my soul is tired…. Not just
my human. But I must still be present.
It wasn’t until I understood who I was, where I came from,
why this ‘destined’ card hand I had been given had absolutely NOTHING to do
with me, but for something bigger than myself that I was able to deal with this
hand better.
Did I fumble? Yes.
Did I have to get hit on the head with a ton of bricks and a cast iron
skillet? Yes.
Did I have to battle cancer a couple times and an autoimmune
disease alone by myself? Yes. Did I have to endure back-to-back deaths of
all of my networking colleagues, my parents and double digit numbers of family
members? Yes. Did I work 18 hour days 7
days a week compromising my own health in fear of dreams not coming through to
fruition in time while facing mortality?
Yes.
Did I have to finally learn that life wasn’t only always
about living out the Chumba Wumba song of “I get knocked down, but I get up
again?” Oh. H-E-double hockey sticks-
YES.
What did I learn?
Distraction (as tempting as it is for your own sanity in
isolation lock down) is like a Band-Aid….
Then eventually you’ll have the uncomfortable space of
having to deal with things for real because that is all that there is LEFT as
you start to look at your ‘unknown’ and decide what the heck you’re going to do
next and if you are satisfied with how you lived your life with the tools you
had at the time.
Then you’ve gotta do the work, and just when you think you’re
done - you have to do it some more.
We are CONSTANT works in progress. This is a fact FOR EVERYONE.
This is why I created tools…. Many of the exercises in last
year’s videos and blogs gave you tools to figure it out on paper, see it,
confront it, learn from it so you can be strong RIGHT NOW to endure what is
going on in the fight for your life in this aftermath.
YOU CAN DO IT.
I believe in you – you can finally declutter that overload
of old habits that compromised your real living with a deeper grasp of
intention. You can finally remove ‘negative speak’ that doesn’t help you or
anyone else and instead choose better thoughts to be supportive and helpful at
this time.
We all need it.
Don’t underestimate yourself. While we are all sitting in the void, and all
sitting in the unknown – we don’t have to let this defeat us, rather we can
instead look at our blank slate as a way to get things on the right path of how
we can do things differently when we come out of this.
So I ask you, Lovely Souls:
- · What patterns have you seen within yourself since the first of the year to this present moment that you would like to change?
- · How do you presently deal with your feelings and what prevents you from feeling them fully?
- · What fears can you let go of right now?
- · How are you presently coping and what can you do better in your habits of doing so?
- · What are your BIG QUESTIONS right now – and in what order would you place them?
- · What can you learn from this ‘list’ you’ve made with your prioritized choices in terms of who you think you are vs. who you have been working on becoming?
- · What do you have left to reconcile internally with your soul?
These are good starting points --- we need to examine what
we are going through in order to fully comprehend any anxieties, fears,
worries, concerns, questions….. AND THEN we can in turn flip this around to
finding answers. When we are in ‘answer
mode’ – suddenly we are strengthened to call our cities, our governments, our
service centers and feel proactive to get in this groove of solutions.
I have spent the last couple of weeks doing this. I had to ask myself, “If this virus gets me
and I die, wouldn’t I rather leave the planet knowing I made calls to help my
neighbors and my community instead of binge-watching a TV show?” YES.
That is the only way I would have peace and could reconcile my own bucket list
of things I could not complete should this all go down.
I had to be an adult and think hard about this reality while
balancing that tightrope walk of optimism, hope and warrior fighting forward…not
to merely live in that space, but to prepare so I can have that be one-less-thing to dwell
upon and move forward with what I have, with where I am and not judge how ‘little’
efforts are in making the difference my bigger dreaming soul wishes to
accomplish.
Thus, I made phone calls. I had to find out answers. I
gathered information to pass onto older people who didn’t have the access to
these answers for our local space. I
found resources for certain small businesses who didn’t think they had options
and I’m doing what I can with what I have with where I am, even if it is to be
a ‘neighborhood watch’ on lock-down to get help for the people coughing profusely
in the hallways (!); reporting to management that I have SO MANY symptomatic
people in my building so they are aware of our community needing to ‘get ready’
in a bigger way --- both in safety as well as their need to make calls to check on people that
none of us are allowed to have access to - so they don’t end up dying alone in
their apartments.
I am literally surrounded ---- coughing, sneezing, everyone
around are all outside my front door. They are NOT adhering to the stay
isolated and stay home indoors mandate.
I keep standing in my trash can pushing it down with my feet like a
human compactor because I don’t know if there will be any clear air for me to
go outside to take out my own trash…. That is what I am facing right now.
But I have to allow myself the ‘out-of-body-experience’
to laugh at this sitcom of a moment of inconvenience now not allowing fear to
override all this hard work I have done to stay grounded --- because in a
couple of weeks this could be tragic consequences all around me. It’s all I can
do in this moment.
But it all starts with humanizing your own link of the
unknown – INSIDE OF YOU first so you know what it is that you can do and how
you will be able to show up with your new normal and new sense of purpose in
the coming days, weeks and months ahead.
We’re all being asked to SHIFT. Things are not the same and we won’t be
either.
But it is here – we are together and we can shift together
to adapt and be agile in what we shape tomorrow to be and to be grateful for
each day as it comes.
Stay safe, stay healthy, stay centered and know you are
loved and you matter! I am humbled with
gratitude to be able to be here right now, to share, express and write, right
now.
Taking things day-by-day WITH YOU...
In strength and support, with love and prayer, hope and compassion,
Stacey Kumagai
