Some Tough Love

  What has helped me on my journey so far, is coming to accept, we are here to learn & grow, endlessly. 

I can only talk about my own personal experience and my own spiritually myopic current viewpoints. Hey, we're here to be human, right? We're continuously encountering challenges. Going thru cycles of growth, seasons of change. Life Long Learning. 

Which for a long time, for me, felt annoying and frustrating. So there's no end? There's no pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow? There's no goal that has been reached and then I'm done and can rest? 

Well, I have found that there is some sort of yaay-points, transition points, we peel back one layer at a time, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful. I do enjoy giving myself a check mark or an internal big hug at the "end" of all that work, effort, care and time I put in. I no longer expect that positive reinforcement to come from the outside. When I do get it, it is nice and sometimes a sweet confirmation. (Like I knew I was on the right track!)  I do plainly say to people close to me, I prefer if you talk to me the same way you talk to your Cats! lol. I mean our loved ones are not mind-readers, so it can be nice to communicate what uplifts you but then respect their choices etc. I prefer that my loved ones feel safe & comfortable to simply be yourself, speak your mind, be true to your own heart and try your best to say it in the calmest way possible. But we all get angry and worked up, so that's okay too. As long as nobody's actively "out to get me." If that's the case, serious strong boundaries are needed to be drawn, with tact and grace, not emotional projectile vomiting or verbal diarrhea. Sorry for the gross visuals, but I'm sure we've all experienced at some point, dishing it out or receiving that, and how it can feel gross, tiresome, and basically unnecessary. 

This is all a work in progress of course, real change takes as long as it takes. Everyone has their own gifts wrapped up in their own suffering, in my opinion, and it is their own process that will allow them to unlock their own unique purpose and stuff. 

What has helped me the most and continues to help me. Is coming to the deep understanding that, Nobody is coming to save me. As an adult I am responsible for getting myself out of this mess. I am fully responsible for my own thoughts, my own words, my own actions, my energy, my own choices. Response-Able. 

Getting out of this Savior-Bully complex has changed everything for me, for the better! I had the tendency, as many of us do, to seek approval from others, to assign self-worth based on what other thought of me. Propping others up. Jumping onto someone's band wagon, believing that or this is going to save me, or this "new earth" is coming, or everyone's going to magically wake up to their own divine self, or "this is the way." I don't frikin think so. 

In my humble opinion, all paths lead to one, to source, to inner connection. One only asks their own higher self for help. I learned how to quiet the mind, watch, look, listen for guidance. Feel gratitude for when this guidance shows up! It can come from anywhere, we're all mirroring back to each other. A book, a magazine, a show, a movie, a video, a random person. When we ask with sincerity and connecting to our own true feelings, with clear and true intention. To me, that's when the magic/science happens. 

That's a lot I guess. lol

Let me rewind a little. So this Bully complex, at first glance, seems like I'm speaking out on injustice. Like I'm standing up for the atrocities. As if I'm defending the rights of myself and others.

Well let's get a little more clear on the difference between rights and privileges. Lets keep this very simple. Like lets look at the basic rights that babies and children need for their growth to flourish. 

• Physical Safety, like safe around adults, safe around environmental risks in the home and outside.
• Love & Family, like stable home environment, adequate finances, quality family time, consistent parenting styles, emotional needs met, extended family support. 
• Positive Lifestyle, like diet & nutrition, adequate sleep, safe behaviors, moderation of screen time. 
• Physical & Mental Health, like physical well-being, awareness of mental health.
• Fun & Happiness, like outdoor play and indoor play.

--> This is all from the internet, a quick image search, took me to link.springer.com article. 

"The Flourishing Child: Understanding how Adults and Children Perceive Flourishing from the Start of Life"

--> Or simply look up: "the effects of what happens to a person when the baby is not held lovingly by mother and or father"

The effects can vary but basically, it ain't good!

(Yes, that was as summarized and "basic" as I can get. I'm obviously obsessed and passionate about early child care/early learning.)

To me, understanding what is different from basic human rights to what is a privilege? What helped me sort of get it, is looking at Driving as a privilege. I started seeing traffic cops basically as Daycare Teachers. "You know how fast you were going? Did you see the posted speed limit? Here's a ticket, don't do it again" lol. Of course there's the more serious and possibly deadly serious infractions, like driving under the influence. Then you get your license to drive revoked, for like a year or something. It's exactly how we kind of operate in the classroom, there are consistent consequences and appropriate boundaries, that you've been warned about since you studied to get your learner's permit! 

But okay, humans like to test things out, I get that. lol

What really struck me was, driving within the safety guidelines, really isn't that hard. A 17 year old with 9 months of direct good patient adult guidance and 3 months of practicing on their own has the ability to drive. What struck me even more, was when I witnessed a 6 year old in BC, reversing his child-sized electric car with 1 hand into the "parking spot", while eating roasted seaweed with the other hand! Like what?!? 

Then I go driving on the road in any densely populated city and I clearly see adults abusing this privilege, called Driving, on the daily. It's sad, annoying but it makes sense when you look into their life story and what ultimately ended up affecting their driving style. If it was up to me, we'd all drive like the care bears, in the cloud cars, smooth operators and no traffic jams, cause people are driving with their heart, lol!

Yeah, keep dreaming, I tell myself. Time to come back down to planet Earth, get grounded, accept people for who they currently are & do my best to keep my calm so I can respond in healthy ways, most of the time. 

So lets see, my main points are coming to the inner-standing that no one's coming to save me, not a corrupt government (though there are good, hard working people everywhere that fill my heart with deep gratitude), not my Mummy, not my "Guru", no one can do the work but me. Yes others who have been there and done that, can clearly see me struggling and point at signs and assist with key tools and techniques. I can work with others like the Coach of the football team but ultimately I'm the one on the field, playing. 

Oh also, there's this very real deep sadness many carry, a deep longing for "home", a sense of total abonnement, so then an intense searching for guidance....but for me it was and still can be sometimes, so immature, in terms of stunted growth but kind of sweet in a sad way too. Imagine a child that grew up without a Father or without a Mother. This child becomes an adult then, searching in all kinds of places, substances, self-medicating, activities, addictions, basically saying "Are you my Papa?" ....or "Are you my Mama?" lol 

It's sweet, sincere but misguided & can lead to so much unnecessary pain, trials, tribulations and total disaster. 

Well, I do think everything happens for a reason, and we can gain lessons gifts and opportunities from every adverse thing that happens "to us", or is it for us? Or is it THRU US?? lol

Deep stuff. At the same time I think we can learn to choose the easy way or the hard way, we can learn to even choose our feelings. That's a whole other post. 

I know it seems like I'm jumping here & there, that tells me, whatever I'm trying to convey is multi-dimensional in nature and beyond words. 

I'll keep trying to come back to the main thread though. No one's coming to save you. Life Long Learning. Full accountability, responsibility, and most importantly forgiveness-work, grieving process for one's own choices as an Adult. Giving our own power away to anyone outside ourselves. Like the song lyrics say "give it away give it away give it away now." Basically that which angers me, controls me. There is a difference in shining a light on something, picking up a rock and seeing the bugs scatter etc. & unconsciously over and over giving your attention to a person, place or thing that simply does not deserve your attention. YOU deserve your attention. lol.

Through your own self-healing work, self-care, self-love, self-compassion! Love yourself!!! lol jk. 

But truly, you can shift within, which directly assists with your outer life & relationships You can then truly be of service, be of use, assist, be helpful to others around you. 

Like, if you're running raged and snapping at people, it creates disharmony. If you're in LaLa land and talking to others but not really working on seeing yourself or others for who & what they are, it creates disconnection. 

It's all been said before, I'm simply pointing at a sign. Like Buddha says, if your instrument is strung too tight, it won't play, if it's too loose it hangs, the tension that produces the beautiful sound, lies in the middle. 

Same thing when you are part of a family, a team at work, a friends group, caring for animals or for children. You are part of a dance, a symphony. If your instrument is out of tune, the whole symphony is going to sound discordant. 

This is not achieved by abusive perfectionism (you are already perfect beyond words, within, we came here to experience imperfection as well as many other things I imagine, though we can experience perfect moments I guess.) This is often achieved with compassion, with starts with yourself. Getting real with yourself, getting to the root. 

Your instrument, is not anyone else's job but your own, as an Adult. 

So whatever you choose, again I'll bring it home to what I observe and what has helped me....It is like an oscillating fan or a pendulum swing or the Goldilocks story. I think it is natural to go this way and that way, experiment (within reason hopefully lol), be your own scientist, test theories out, discover the results for yourself. This porridge is juuuuuussst right. Without the need to involve others in your very private and personal journey. You know, you have experienced with your own diligent inner and outer work, isn't that enough? What will "proving" your test results to others really do for you? lol. I think everyone's on their own journey & it's important to learn from each other but it's even more important to try to SEE each other, FEEL each other. Not be taken over by that feeling, but to try to lovingly put yourself in their shoe's, imagine what they may be going thru, thank your lucky stars for what you are grateful for, wish them well or at least that they Go In Peace to Their Perfect Place. 

What I've come to notice, is what I say doesn't really mater lol. It's mostly about my own inner connection, which in turn affects HOW I say what I'm trying to, with this limited english language, with my tone, with my body language, with my true intentions. Does this other person feel safe to be themselves around me? Perhaps it has nothing to do with me, and often it doesn't, it's usually a pattern showing up again and again in their own lives. But sometimes it's my own deeply long held unconscious patterns that have been pushing them away all along....

Powerful stuff. I want to end this post with a tool beyond tools & my close loved ones know what I'm going to say, it's WRITING! lol

Seriously, putting pen to paper, look it up, benefits for the brain etc. 

All I know, so far, this tool continues to help me in ways that I probably can not even fathom.

Am I over-selling it? I think not, lol.

Using Red Pen to write on paper, my anger, or something of major importance. Using color to help express, tune in and release. 

I think there are never-ending exercises we can do with pen and paper. Which someone can help guide you with or you can look up more info on and see what you are drawn to that may help you. 

Please do remember, you are not alone, you never were alone, you are always loved, you are safe. I think we all have an unseen team routing for us, guiding us, assisting us as much as they can.

Not having Physical, Mental, Emotional, Psychological safety, stability & security is something else entirely, seek professional help, if that is the case. There are free services available, phone-in helplines. Please seek experienced professional help if you need it. We all need "lifeguards" sometimes & this takes immeasurable Courage!

Loss of Innocence

 Let me start by saying, I in no way blame, shame or guilt my Parents for doing their best. I have come to inner-stand that if they knew better, they would have done better.

Besides we had many talks about their adult lives, what direction life took them in, how this led to that, and accountability and responsibility. Basically if they knew now what they knew then, they would have done many many things differently. So many things they did do very right, lovingly, with patience and it seems whatever positive role models they had growing up, they remembered and passed that down to their daughters, well, I can only speak for myself. The positives my Parents passed down to me, I see clearly, has impacted the gentle and playful way I approach children that I work with and who are under my care. What I am most grateful for, is my Parents willingness to evolve, in all the micro-cosmic ways that are beyond my limited understanding, but I feel it.

Now all that said, my childhood was bad to non-existent. I made sure I played, with my imagination and outdoors and with friends. It was as if part of me knew I needed those things, even though no one came around to really facilitate that directly and consistently. Allow me to preface this with my unique current perspective. More importantly my inner child's past perspective. I did experience abuse trauma from people outside of my family, so that's already too much for a 6 yr old. I guess they're calling that "complex trauma" now. After many years of one-on-one counselling, reading and working with self-help books, and group counselling what struck me is my experiences were objectively mild in comparison to most people. Not to down play in any way the injustices. I fully accept it was never my fault and it should never of happened. At the same time, when I heard other people bravely talk about their horrific experiences, everything within began to shift in a major way for me. 

I'll give a mild example. A woman I knew disclosed to me she grew up in a war zone, a real war zone, with bombs going off near by and everything. Right away things clicked, like Oh that's why she behaves this way and that way. After some time, compassionately putting myself in her child-like shoes, imagining what it may have been like for her, our entire dynamic changed. It was far from prefect (which I don't think exists in this world), but it was definitely much smoother and cooperative. Especially for my internal perspective, I understood more and allowed for more space and compassion, while also standing my ground on some issues that mean a lot to me. Yaa so, if that's mild, what other women and some men have shared with me, is the stuff of pure nightmares. 

What I'm getting to here is, the way I took it, any bit of neglect, of immature authority figures, of lack of frim boundaries and healthy discipline. I took it hard! My child self felt like it was the end of the world, every single god damn day! Yeah my inner reality back then was rough. On the outside I seemed pretty happy-go-lucky but we see this over and over, in different ways. When there's complex trauma, the system kicks in to protect and something gets fractured and splits. A great visual is that show, "Kevin Can F*** Himself." (show for adults only, in my opinion.)

Now as we all gather at some point or another, there are 2 sides to a coin, a light & a dark. Multi-dimensionally, there are many perspectives from which to view 1 thing. Like a rubic's cube. You pick up, look at it, play around, put it down, look at it again from another perspective, put it down, go do something else and so on. 

When I started to question why I was so intensely affected? Oh I also grew up with a Mum with special needs, so there's that social anxiety piece, it really was like the perfect storm or all the right ingredients lined up for complex trauma to occur. So yaa, as I tapped into Why I took it the way I took it,. As I spent more time with my inner-child, it was as if I came in to this ...realm, on some level, knowing that I have rights. I have the right to play and to march to the beat of my own drum. I have the right to explore and the right to learn what I'm actually interested in. (I gathered all this from stories my Parents told me from 0 - 5yrs old. Yes 0, because apparently even when I was born, I was nodding my head yes or no, before my Parents even finished their question & apparently it made sense with what they were asking?) I have so many cool stories from them, I'm very blessed that they remember so clearly and can fill in the gaps for me because I have basically no memories until I was 6. So basically on the outside I was a royal brat, spoiled rotten with too much love (what a handful!). But I was also fiercely independent, at like 1 yrs old, 2 yrs old, basically until my wings were really clipped at 6. For better or for worse, it was like night & day for my inner child. I won't go into the details of all the many environmental factors that changed, I'll simply talk about the result for me, was a complete loss of innocence. Loss of my childhood. 

When one taps into such a deep level of abandonment, of unworthiness, of rage, of confusion, all of which I had no words for & had to do tons of work to learn how to put words to my feelings, how to release this toxic energy in healthy ways, how to communicate in healthy ways, always a work in progress. But now, feels like many many lifetimes ago. What I uncovered was the sanctity of childhood. Well, it sort of crept up on me and surprised me naturally. I was 18 and just hanging out with my 2 young cousins, and we were just playing. It felt like maybe 30mins or some small amount of time had passed for me but I was shocked when the "adults" said, hey time for dinner. I said "no way!" We were not even playing for that long, and the 2 little ones also seemed like hardly any time had past too, we were in our own zone of mini-scientists and explorers and just be-ing. Plus the other adults were also surprised with me. They said " how do you have so much patience? Playing with them for so long? Kids are exhausting, I don't know how you did it?" As if it was some big accomplishment? I was really trippin out, then I went on with life and stored that experience away. 

Life again steered me towards early child care, when a job posting came to me, out of the blue, to do Respite work for an Infant with global delays. I did that for almost 2 years, in my 20s and it was the best job ever! Right away I knew, Early Childhood Education, was for me. My family was also surprised by my behavior, like what is this C-/D+ student doing, staying up all night working on College assignments and man, she cares way too much about an industry that pays very little lol. They didn't get it, at the time. Needless to say, I was the 2nd best in my class lol, Graduated with honors. When you love something, when you tap into why it's meaningful to you, when you are blessed to stumble upon your true purpose at such a young age, everything shifts! 

So that's what led me to over 20 years of working with children, parents and families. The loss of innocence, though clearly not fair, led me to my greatest buried treasures!

My 20s & 30s were no picnic, in my personal life, but I now see those times more as a dojo. A practice and training ground to let go, release, hone in on my natural skills, figure out what's truly important to me. That involved a lot of missteps, falling down, failing miserably. Also involved great teachers, guides, support and lessons that I was starving for.

I'll end this post by sharing two ways my wounded inner child began to heal. I was given the exercise of gathering photos of myself from each year and putting it into a small handheld album. Sounds simple right? It wasn't! It was a cathartic experience which helped me heal greatly. There was much more involved in that exercise, of course, with the help of my counsellor at the time. The other idea came to me organically, in my 30s. I had an "inner-child" birthday party. I kinda kept it to myself the ins & outs and just mostly put out there, with my energy, that it's safe for all our inner-children to come out and play! I thought about my favorite things, and asked my inner-child what she loves? Plus my adult self loves saving money, so I kept that in mind lol. We had a backyard party, with water balloons, which were just for playing catch! No aggression, throw it at a tree if you want to "hit" something lol. We had water guns, like tiny gentle ones, that were actually cooling and refreshing. We played Pictionary, which was hilarious, because some family surprised me with how well they could draw and we all laughed and laughed when no one could guess from my very strange drawings! Plus great eats, I made Sangria with and without alcohol back when I used to drink. And this one surprised me, when my inner child said, I want a big cake! lol. I had big cakes before but it was usually home made by my slightly older big sister, it was tasty, but she was a kid too, it wasn't like wow-looking. Well I got my big cake, I enjoyed it but I don't really need that experience anymore. A mini cake works just fine, plus I'm not that big on sweets anymore either, just little here and there. 

Hema-Spheres Introduction

 Hi, my name's Hema.

I love writing and am so grateful to be able to exercise my writing muscles here.
If this Blog assists even 1 person, then I am a happy camper.

I have a professional website as a Parenthood Consultant for helping Parents, please see: www.growyourgifts.ca for more info.

This is a more informal format, where I can get into a flow authentically & where I encourage others to also simply, come as you are. 
I will probably end of using a lot of well known music lyrics in my Blog, cause that's just how I roll.

Please keep in mind, this is all just from my limited personal current perspective.
Plus, I think generally, it's all been done before, I don't think I'm saying anything new really.
That said, Life has shown me again and again, we all have our own unique experiences which help shape our unique perspective and our unique gifts.

It ain't all flowers & rainbows here. There is gonna be some straight talk, tough love and down right incredulity. 

I love to explore rabbit holes and wu-wu things but not get trapped there.

Again my main aim is to assist others, stretch my writing muscles and maybe even share in some giggles.

Let's see....ways you can put me in boxes to judge me etc. lol
I'm 42 years of age, going on 43. Grew up in the 80s & 90s, but really a big kid now, combined with my inner senior, along with being A refined Lady, you can call me "Miss Hema" if you've got something constructive to say, lol. I live in beautiful Ontario, Canada. Early Child Care is my calling and passion. My favorite things are trees, coffee, family, real friendship, animals, plants, dancing, singing, painting, snow tubing, floating in water. So yaa, I'm a bit of a Hippy! 
I also found out gradually and in a major way since 2012 & 2020 that I naturally love a bit of structure, almost military-like self-discipline. I love open simple clean organized spaces. Also beauty, colors, practicality, functionality. So I'm also a major Nerd! With my very unique own style of hippy dippy nerdy flavor. Oh, I love to eat & cook & create but mostly eat!

Okay, I think I've provided enough ammo for all the wonderful haters out there. Hey, if we all agreed, what a bland existence that would be. I only ask, do you best to conduct yourself with a modicum of dignity. It's all generally subjective, to each their own, above all, feel free to be yourself. - This is in direct reference to the comment section.

We're currently heading into Spring here. Was freezing cold yesterday, I loved it, did my deep breathing and visualization/self-talk "the cold is my warm dear friend" - tips I picked up from Mr.Wim Hof but sorta made my own. I always say, take what you like and can use from the message, and don't prop up or put down the messenger. Because what reality has taught me so far, we don't really know that person, what they struggled with, their life journey. Plus breathing techniques are basically in every ancient tradition all over the world. It's been working for me, that past 10-15 years or so. Yaay breathwork! 

Sun is shining today, tree's are calling meeeee, I'm out.