I’m trying out new FEATURES (which means new ways of getting you the answers you want in ways that are fun and mentally edible 😉 Feel free to send me your questions and each (or so) I will answer them. Just keep in mind that if you are going through it so is a quarter of the planet of women so ask. You can’t beat the price! 😉

So our very first question comes from a fabulous Mama who lives in New England. She recently lost her Mama which creates a whole shift in our reality and safety in the world as a mother. Our full LOVE goes out to both of them! Here is her question…”Safety.  As an adult I feel safe in my skin & my ability to take care of myself.  I do, however, have this child inside me who was not always safe and created this hard shell as a way to cope.  Unbeknownst to me the shell suppressed my ability to take chances, to trust myself and my judgment and to act upon the brilliance others see in me.  Now, however, I’m no longer in need of this hard shell once created to protect myself.  Unfortunately, it’s become instinctual and unlearning or bringing to consciousness this type of coping after 30 + years of “practice” is at the very least challenging.  I no longer feel scared or threatened, but somehow blocked.  How does a person reprogram?”

 First, Corinne, thank you for being the first ButterflyMom to ask a question!!! YAY!!!!!!!!! Now onto a brilliant response ;)…This is something that a lot of us who reach “middle age” grapple with. (I know that term “middle age” is about as appealing as getting your first AARP membership request in the mail!!! :)!) When we are born our souls come into a world knowing who we are because we simply are, with no labels, mindless, free! When we enter our game world (we all call Planet Earth) we are immediately stamped with a name, that almost never reflects who we really are. We are then taught to conform to the rules of whatever family we have entered, most of the time it is into worlds that believe that children should be seen but not heard. Almost every child is then MOLDED into their family’s (tribe’s) beliefs regardless if they are in alignment with whom the child is. We get punished (mentally, physically and emotionally) for not following the rules of the family. Think about how DANGEROUS it is that the people who are supposed to LOVE you the most will to these things to you if you don’t conform. We are small and vulnerable and we do what we need to do to survive which, by default, means we abandon our REAL SELF. (take a deep breath here – maybe seven!)  What happens is that as a coping mechanism we start bonding with items, places and things so that we feel a connection to something that is as strong as the connection we lost, the connection with ourselves. Throughout history people have called this the search for the Holy Grail which is traveling the entire world looking for something that is inside of us all along.

This might be hard for some to hear but an example of this bonding to things to replace the lost self can be most often seen when children have an attachment to a particular stuffed animal or blanket and FREAK OUT when they think it’s lost or someone has taken it from them. If we were to think about it, that kind of ATTACHMENT with an object has to come from somewhere. The stuffed animal is just a stuffed animal but to the child he/she identifies it as a part of themselves (MY teddy bear). Again, this is SUCH a common scenario in our society that most don’t even notice it. This carries on into adulthood when we work at jobs that don’t fulfill us so that we can get MORE STUFF to fill the whole. In the eighties and ninties (back in the 1900’s!!! ;)) especially there was a trend to link women with shopping. It was common to see bumper stickers with something like, SHOP ‘TIL YOU DROP and store would have signs that said YOUR HUSBAND CALLED AND SAID YOU CAN BUY ANYTHING YOU WANT. Most of us reading this probably remember that era. It was all about mindless buying that caused most of us to have CRAZY amounts of clothes, shoes, acessories…etc!!!! Now there are shows on TV, one is called, HOARDERS that show this in an extreme manner. The bottom line was that we were all trying to fill that empty feeling inside ourselves.

Because we have arrived at a point in our human history where we can produce goods more cheaply and ship it faster our “trying to fill in the empty hole inside ourselves” has definitely hit an all-time high but the act of losing oneself in childhood a human rite of passage for millions of years. Not many people question it because it has been people’s “normal”.  Thankfully we are in a point in human/spiritual evolution where we are not willing to accept a half-lived or false life. It’s not something you can FAKE. You can try but your life will never feel right, so, many try to stop feeling all together with the help of binging, drinking, cheating, drugging, eating, etc., etc., etc., all because they have associated feeling with pain instead of seeing it as a useful tool. (who’s with me on this!)

What you are experiencing Corinne is what many people come to realize when they hit the part of their life where they have done what society tells us to do (degree, house, mate, job/career, kids) and we still do not feel whole. We don’t feel whole because we left ourselves out of the equation. The good news is that the journey you took to find yourself (when you were right there under your own nose 😉 gave you TONS of amazing life experience that you can use. The universe has a sense of humor. 😉 YOUR FEELINGS ARE GOOD let them flow BABY(did you get that pun?)!!!! Killing your feelings is like killing the messenger. You can do it but THE MESSAGE/INFORMATION they were trying to give you is still there!

WHAT NOW? Come back to tomorrow’s blog and find out! 🙂

As always if you have enjoyed reading this share it with your friends. There are a lot of drowning ButterflyMoms out there who just need a little information so they can re-set their course to happiness. 🙂




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