by Patty Manning Lennon

I have a really inspirational story about my life.  I tell it often in presentations to groups of women.

The summary of that story goes something like this:

From the outside I looked like I “had it all” but inside I was dying.  The day I admitted the truth about my life – the truth that the “all” I had wasn’t necessarily the one I wanted – my life changed in an incredible way.

I abandoned my post as a Vice President is a huge bank and started my own business.

I lost 25 pounds.

I took up kickboxing, rock climbing and I resuscitated my social life.

I fell more in love with my husband and children.

And on and on the list goes of the glories that came from finally being honest about who I was and what I wanted.   The story is 100% true.  I’m thrilled to share it.  I’m overwhelmingly grateful to have taken this journey.

But I have been noticing something lately.

I’m not sure we need inspiration as much as we need honesty.

The story I tell leaves out most of the dark moments.  Someone recently commented to me how great it must have been to stop worrying what other people thought of me and embrace life without that constraint.

Huh?

Where’d she hear that?

That is definitely not the way it went down.  I spent many sleepless nights worrying about what others would think of me.    I cried huge pitiful tears of self-loathing and existed in angst most of the time.  I wondered over and over again what was wrong with me.

Although inspirational stories are peppered with pithy references to the darkness before the dawn they rarely describe in detail the snot-filled moments that come with life transformation.

So what’s my point?

Well I guess I just want you to know that if you are going through your own particularly snot-filled, ice cream binging, self-loathing period of time you are not alone.  You are on the journey that will lead you to your own inspirational story.

And by the way while I was going through that “dark” period I never thought it would end.  I was in incredible pain most of the time and I wasn’t sure I was headed in the right direction.

So if you are feeling any of this I want you to know it will end.  The pain will transform to joy and you are headed in the right direction.    And all of this will one day be a pithy reference to your period of darkness in your own inspirational story we’re just waiting to hear!

Patty Lennon is a life and business coach, mom advocate and CEO and Founder of Mom Gets A Life at:http://www.momgetsalife.com. Her mission is to help every mom fall as deeply in love with her life as she is with her kids.  She also writes a blog for female entrepreneurs at www.gettingintheflow.com.

My most awesomely wise mentor, Joanna Lindenbaum of Soulful Coaching for Busy Women has a saying that’s resonated through me since the very first time she said it to me. I’m not sure who originally wrote it but she uses it all the time and it’s become a part of one of the ways I check in with myself.

How you show up for THIS (this moment, this job, this relationship, this conversation, this challenge, this joy) is how you show up for EVERYTHING.

What does this mean?

Think about the person you are in groups. Are you the loud one? The funny one? Are you the person who motivates and leads the rest of the group, or are you the person who stands back and is so easy going that you’ll fit in with anything the group comes up with?

Think about the person you are in relationships. Are you the person who chooses your battles and lets some things just get swept under the rug, or are you the person who articulates very clearly and verbally when you have something you need to speak up about? Are you the optimist and the cheer-er upper, or do you rely on the other person to take your hand and make things better? How much energy do you need from your partner/friends? How much energy do you give back to them?

Think about how you show up in your work. Are you the kind of person who sees no point in doing anything if you don’t do it exactly right? Or are you more likely to take on a task, lose interest, and run out of steam halfway through, leaving it barely finished? Do you tolerate your work, or do you take on each task joyfully and enthusiastically? Are you the workplace complainer? Are you the one who makes everyone around you laugh? Do people come to you with issues and problems or do you sometimes feel like the one left out of the huddle?

I’ve had an opportunity to think even more than usual about this piece of wisdom in the past few weeks as I vacationed with a group of friends in the woods of Maine. We get together every year to create a gathering where we spend time leading and taking workshops, cooking together, swimming in the river, letting the kids run free. However, with the group dynamics, different energies, and tasks associated with running, in essence, a mini-society for a week, I had some things highlighted for me about the ways that I show up that honestly made me squirm a little bit.

It’s hard for me even to write some of this out to you, but I want to be really clear and transparent about how effectively the things that bother us about ourselves can teach us about where we’re ready to grow.

Here are some of the things that I noticed about the ways I showed up that week.

1. When my buttons are pushed I go very quickly to anger. And when I’m in a place of anger it’s very difficult for me to get perspective and access my inner wisdom. So I show up not completely present and disengaged from my inner wisdom.

2. I’m extremely sensitive to other people’s energies. So when there’s turmoil, anger around me, drama, and conflict, if I’m not doing the work to ground myself, listen inwards, and hear my own wisdom, I show up as easily both energetically and emotionally swayed and vulnerable to what’s swirling around me. Not a good way to show up if you’re practicing leadership.

3. On a positive note, AFTER I get angry and have a chance to vent, connect with how I’m feeling and what I need, the way I show up is as a peace-keeper- someone who is always, ultimately, coming from a place of love, respect for others, and motivated by joy.

So here’s what I learned from this fruitful, sometimes uncomfortable, but ultimately really enlightening week.

I need to practice staying balanced daily so that when issues come up for me I know that they’re MY issues (not simply energy I’m picking up from others), and I’m grounded enough to know what I need in the moment (time alone, a friend to vent to, a walk, some journeling) — and I had some great examples from the people around me of ways that I want to shift into in terms of how I show up. My friend Alex always brings humor and warmth to any situation. My friend Sonia always manages to think of others while still fiercly standing up for her own personal boundaries. My friend Jonah always is able to see things fairly from everyone’s point of view — he seems always able to keep perspective on the larger picture. My partner Pete always comes to every situation cheerfully, full of energy, thoughtfulness and generosity.

I’ve come back from our weeks away with so much more than beautiful memories, clothes smelling of campfire and burnt marshmallows, and beautiful color from lying in the river half the day. I’ve come back with the parts of me that need healing mirrored back to me in a most loving, gentle way — and amazing models in my heart and mind of how it is that I need to shift and grow to show up in every moment from my heart-center.

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Are you ready to really dive deeper into this crucial topic? Are you ready to be supported in making powerful changes in how you show up in your work, your personal relationships, in how you show up for yourself?

I have three new spaces opening up in my private client program — is one of them yours? Call today to schedule your complimentary Intention: Connection call with me — a 40-minute look at the powerful ways private coaching can support you in manifesting magnificant success, abundance and happiness in your life. Call today at (917) 971-5347 or you can email me at britt@InArmsCoaching.com to claim your space right now.

Last week my 5 year-old daughter had her first school performance. Her class had been studying insects and she was a praying mantis, who did a dance with a boy praying mantis and then bit his head off. She thought it was hysterical. And she was amazing. There were more performances than just her class, however. And the one that brought more tears to my eyes than any other was a series of little vignettes the dance teacher called “Mini-me dances.” In my daughter’s school they do a lot of pairing up of little kids with bigger “buddies” from older classes. The buddies have reading time together, game-playing time together, art and music classes together, and more.

For the mini-me dances, there were about 5 sets of girls — an older girl who was getting ready to graduate the elementary school and move on to middle school, and a little girl buddy who resembled her –and the two were dressed identically. The dance teacher explained to us that the little girl, as the mini-me, had spent the whole year with her older buddy learning from her, bonding with her, being brought into the school as a new kindergardener, being taken under the older girl’s wing. And now the older girl was getting ready to move on to middle school and was leaving the little girl in her place, passing on the torch.

Even writing this brings tears to my eyes. I started crying as soon as the dance teacher explained the dances and continued as the dances went on in front of me, bigger girl swirling little girl around the stage, flowers in their hair, big girl lifting little girl to soar up above her, little girl running and leaping into big girl’s hands, and finally, all the little “mini-mes” swirling on the stage together with their older girls, getting ready, after a year of being cared for and nurtured by these big girls, to take over the stage as the big girls moved on.

I’ve been thinking about the impact this performance had on me…and haven’t really been able to stop thinking about why it was so powerful and elicited such an emotional response for me.The dances brought up an intense sadness about who I had been as a little girl.

As a little girl I was lost. I was confused, depressed, intimidated, stressed, frightened and angry. There wasn’t much that was healthy and nurturing that I was interested in and I had a tendency, in desperation, to turn my anger and despair inwards. I can think of a few older girls that I looked up to and when they paid attention to me I emulated and followed them. Sadly, they had walked the same path that I was on and what they were doing involved early sex, drugs, and other self-destructive behavior. The girls I spent time with had absent or unstable parents, ran away from home, lived on the street. I spiraled downwards in their path and it took me many many years of healing to re-balance and find the place I had lost so early on.

What would my life look like if I had had even one healthy, loving and nurturing older girl as an example, to hold her hand out and teach me things, to encourage and exemplify healthy interests and activities, to take me under her wing?

Our culture swallows girls whole. Things are worse now then they were when I was young — now we hear about older girls in high school selling younger girls desperate for group inclusion into prostitution with college men. We hear about older kids giving younger kids free drugs to hook them and create clients. We hear about bullying that destroys lives.

In contrast the beauty of these 9 and 10 year-old girls loving the little 5 and 6 year-old girls, holding their hands and leading them through their first year of school, leading them in celebration of their bodies and small, sacred selves broke my heart — for every bit of that that I missed. And I realized that my reaction to seeing it — to the tears that trickled down my face, was that there was some healing still needed of MY inner little girl who was led only in self-destruction, the shredding and shrinking of myself, the hiding of my heart and the carnage of silencing my inner self.

In honor of this message that I’ve uncovered I’ve started writing a short note to myself almost every night from a wise older person –things that I want to hear, need to hear. Information for healing. Witnessing of the bravery I’ve shown in my own healing work, shout-outs and gratitude for accomplishments. And I sign them with fierce love to myself, from myself.

What messages did your inner child, your little you get as you were growing up? Were you nurtured, swung through the air, led to skip through flowers and climb trees? Were you treated as if you mattered? As if your very person was sacred? As if your ideas and feelings mattered?

And moving forwards, what messages does your inner child NEED to hear now? Write a letter to your little self telling it all the things that you wished you had heard back then…all the things that you wished someone older and wiser had been there to tell you.

Britt Bolnick supports women in connecting with all the ways we hide our inner selves, and guides them through the work of building big, brilliant, joyful lives that we love living!

Connect with her at www.InArmsCoaching.com, and sign up for her mailing list to receive more articles, tips, and exercises to support you on your heart-centered path.

Dear Friends,

I snapped at my life coach the other day.

Well, in my head I snapped at her. I’ve been working with her so many years now and I know her enough to know that anything that she says to me is fairly precious…no matter how little I want to hear it.

Let me first just say — in general, we want the easy answers, right? I’d rather hear that my marketing plan sucks than hear her point out some deep, unresolved issues with (fill in the blank) that are blocking me like an entire FOREST of downed trees across my path.

My marketing plan I can fix — without getting dirty in the muck of my mind, the sad corners of my heart, the cobwebbed and clutter depths of my long-neglected inner wisdom.

But the inner work? Sigh.

So what she said to me, after I confessed that I felt like the roof was falling in on me, was that she sensed that the deeper issue here was about how I was managing my energy (and that’s when I snapped at her in my head).

“My energy?!?!” I wanted to yell. “My ENERGY?? How is my energy supposed to be when it feels like the building is crashing down on my head??”

And we worked a little more (and of course I didn’t snap at her at all) and then we got off the phone, and I’ve been working on this, chewing on this, since that call 4 days ago.

And I realized that I’ve been working so hard to manage the clean, outer parts of this work — the marketing, the newsletter content, hiring staff, writing clever promos, reaching out to potential business partners…that I was avoiding the work that required thigh-high rubber boots, a box of tissues, the dark, sad parts of myself, the turning inwards and really finding the leaky, drafty spots that needed attention and caulk.

So I rolled up my sleeves. I set the intention to open up to whatever my inner wisdom, whatever my inner child, whatever my inner mama wanted to say to me.

And it’s not pretty. But it’s me. And opening up to the unsaid, the unexamined, the sometimes-shunned has caused such a perspective shift for me that I’m inviting you to try the same.

Here are some questions to sit with — and remember, a next-best-step might look like simply OPENING to these questions — just allowing space for the various voices and parts of you to begin to speak.

1. What is it that I’m really wanting in my life right now?
2. WHY am I wanting this?
3. What’s standing in my way of moving forward into this?
4. What inner pieces are calling to be seen, to be heard right now?

This is just the tiniest first step. But isn’t that how the greatest journeys begin?

Want more? Check out www.InArmsCoaching.com

much love and light,
Britt
britt@inarmscoaching.com

I’d be lying if I said that I couldn’t connect with my joy today but to be honest, at least on a superficial level, today my joy is definitely being jump-started by (if not directly linked to) a huge, 4-shot-mint-kiss-latte at my coffee shop/office.

Which brings me to the question: does fake/artificially-induced joy count?

When I google “benefits to faking happiness,” I get titles like: “Sparkle and Glitter,” “Happiness May Help Protect Against Heart Disease,” and “Fake It Til You Make It.” One article explains that “even faking it has its benefits as the prolonged practice is habit forming and you start eliciting positive vibes from people (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life/health-fitness/health/Make-happiness-a-habit/articleshow/5913122.cms) –in other words, make it a habit even if you feel it’s not genuine, because your brain adapts to repetitive behavior and thought patterns, and will actually begin to respond to your happy behavior as if it were coming naturally, and not being worked at. In addition, whether you believe in the power of energy attraction (whereby the positive energy you put out will be reflected back to you by others around you), acting happy around others will have a positive affect on their mood, thus affecting you.

In addition, there’s some proof that just our expressions alone can have an affect on your physical well-being. From Berkeley.edu we learn that “facial expression alone, without first feeling the corresponding emotion, is enough to create discernible changes in your autonomic nervous system.” So we’re learning that if one makes an angry expression, the body can begin to release adrenaline and your heart rate may speed up as if you were actually angry. Conversely, fake a smile (even by simply holding a pencil between your teeth) and your body will begin to release a small stream of feel-good chemicals into your system.This alone can be enough to produce a calm feeling, and a general sense of well being.

So, what to do if you’re having a day where you are finding it hard to connect with any joy? Here are some tips that I go to when I want to shake off a funk and reconnect with the bounty of happiness and blessings in my life.

1. Reconnect with myself
I do this in a variety of ways, depending on where I am and what’s available to me. My favorite is to stand barefoot on the earth, hug a tree (yes, even in front of people), lie in the grass, and if it’s available to me, swim in salt water. Other ways include deep breathing exercises in front of our alter at home (including meditation, repeating affirmations, burning sage, etc), Or simply closing my eyes wherever I am, breathing deeply a few times and exhaling through my mouth, and imagining myself standing barefoot on the earth.

2. Laugh
Any way you can. Look up animal bloopers on youtube, read a favorite comic, call a funny friend. If you have a dog, try tying a balloon to their collar and watch them have a blast trying to jump up and bop the balloon. That always works for me, but not with my dog, sadly.

3. Make a list
Sounds simple and I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but one of the easiest ways I connect with my joy is to acknowledge the ways in which I feel blessed (and it takes me two seconds to make at ten-item list) and offer a silent little prayer of gratitude for the items on it. Some of us forget how blessed our lives can be, at least until we hear a sad story from someone and think, “At least that isn’t happening to me.”

4. Extend myself to someone else
Again, simple, but feels really good. I’ve gotten a lot of internal grinning from offering an arm to an elderly person crossing the street, writing a supportive letter to someone in a grave situation, giving something away to someone, being an anonymous angel to someone in need.

5. Last but not least: check how I’m nourishing myself
Often when I’m unhappy, something is missing — there’s some self-care that I’m neglecting. Am I feeling lonely or touch-deprived? Single people need to pay attention to this. I have a work-trade with a masseuse friend to keep my touch-needs met. Am I feeding myself healthy food? Drinking enough water? Taking time to ground and center myself? Paying attention to my visions and intuitions? Feeling heard by friends? Giving myself enough down/play time? Often one or more of these things are missing when I’m feeling disconnected from my joy, because when I really stop to think about it, joy is my true state of being. So to lose touch with it generally signifies some disconnect with my SELF.

I’d love to hear from you. Do you fake joy? How do you fake it? How does it work for you?

Thanks for reading. And may you connect with your joy in more ways than one today. For more information about how to connect with the joy in YOUR life, call (917) 971 5347 for your FREE 40-minute “Intention: Connection” session. This taste of life coaching with me will bring you clarity about where your needs for more joy are. Life coaching is a great way to be fully supported and guided in finding your way to the life you LOVE to live. You can also check www.InArmsCoaching.com for more info…
And please become our friend on Facebook for more Joy writings, workshop announcements, and more!

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“There are two vibrational streams around us. We can choose the lower one of struggling…or the higher one of joy. Joy is our natural state of being. It is what we are when we act in accordance with what is natural and truthful in us.

Some people object to feeling or expressing joy in the face of such conditional as war, crime, child abuse…is it right to feel joy when our brothers and sisters are suffering? The best way we can serve the world is to be in touch with our inner joy…when we are connected to this inner teacher, we know exactly what we must do. When we act from our center of joy, we serve humankind in the highest way possible.

We choose joy when we feel good about ourselves even though another puts us down. We expand our capacity for joy when we recognize the need for love in those who criticize us, when we let go of our self-doubt and self-criticism, when we accept new ideas, things, and people; when we let go of all expectation….”

-Peggy Jenkins, “The Joyful Child”

Dear Friends,

I’m having community-withdrawal. It’s leaving me sad and off-balance.

We spent the last week immersed in our Portland, Maine community, and every time I leave to come back to NYC I’m sadder than the last time I left. It’s led me to think a lot about the different kinds of community in our lives, and the meaning of community.

In NYC I have community. I have physical community — the people I see everyday, some of whom I’ve known since I was a child, some of whom I know from the restaurant I work at, some of whom I know through my 4 year old’s connections. Some from the coffee shop where I sit and work most mornings. Some just from the shops and parks we visit and the streets we walk. But they are people with whom I share very little other than geographical location.

There are also friends, some of them really GOOD friends. But in NYC everyone is so busy struggling to make a living, get the rent paid, get ahead a little for some breathing room, that even my best friends and I sometimes go for two weeks or more without spending time together. And I’m the same way — most of the time every hour is scheduled – I’m running somewhere, trying to get something done, working all morning and most nights. Very little time for a social life, for quality time spent with people I love, etc.

In Portland, everything is different in beautiful ways. Most of our friends are what in NYC would be called “poor” — but none seem to be really struggling. Most of them do work they love, have roommates or communal households, spend lots of time involved in activism, community work, thinking outside the box, raising kids together, having potlucks, spending evenings playing music, talking, meeting, communing, being outdoors. Everywhere I go in Portland I meet people I know, friends, doing things they love — holding skill-sharing workshops, having clothing swaps, pitching in to build something for someone, creating open-mike nights at local cafes, sitting in the sun, teaching neighborhood kids to hula hoop in someone’s yard, planting stuff, having cooking-together nights.

The more I get to know myself, the more I realize that one of my biggest joys is the creation of and existence within community. Joy to me includes authentic communication and interaction with like-minded people. Sharing of ideas and values and passions. Feeling included in something beautiful. Feeling heard and understood. Being a part of something I believe in.

Here’s an example of a beautiful way to be in community.

How do you create community where you live? How important is it for you to feel included in a community?

I would love to hear about your joy. I lovingly encourage you to leave comments.
Please email Spirithouse@gmail.com to get on our mailing list, and check out www.InArmsCoaching.com for more ways to celebrate your joy and build a life you LOVE to live!!

Dear Friends,

I learned something really neat yesterday. Rather, I had something scientifically confirmed that I knew all along. Even before our brain gets information, our HEART registers new info and experiences, and actually processes them BEFORE sending them to our brain.

I think that part of the happiness of this Daily Joy experiment comes from the fact that by following my joy, I’m actually coming from my heart in the everyday, instead of my head. I’m honoring the innate wisdom that told me that everything comes from the heart, and my intention to connect with my Daily Joy has actually supported a shift within that allows me to live first from my heart, and THEN from my head. And now there’s science to back this all up.

How are you tuning in to your heart wisdom today?

Check out www.InArmsCoaching.com for even MORE possibilities for tuning in to your heart….

I lost a little of the joy this past weekend. A little traveling, a little franticness, and no time to myself knocked me off balance a little. I’ve realized that when I’m around a lot of people in a constant sort of way, with no time to ground, to return to center, to quiet my mind and re-focus, I get knocked off balance. Some of the ways I know I’m knocked out of the center of my joy are:

-fatigue/drinking too much coffee
-feeling overly sensitive to the people around me
-feeling overwhelmed, breathless
-feeling scattered, making a lot of mistakes
-feeling very externally focused, which also goes with being overly sensitive

So Monday morning, I re-focused on my joy. It turned out to be amazingly simple.

First of all, while Bella was eating her oatmeal, before we left for school, I sat in front of my altar. And the reason that I felt called to sit in front of it was that while visiting family this weekend in Pennsylvania I made a real effort to visit the town of Media, which is America’s FIRST declared fair-trade town. Most of the stores has committed to carrying only items which are certified to be fair-trade.

I always visit two stores there: Ten Thousand Villages which carries stuff from all over the world (most of it supporting women in small cooperatives in other countries) and my all-time favorite store, Earth and State which is FILLED with art, pottery, and other items hand-made by local and non-local American artists. For real: I spend MONEY in this store, and there are things all over my room that come from that store that I’ve had for YEARS and still make me smile whenever my eyes pass over them. It’s a heaven for people who are easily amused by bright, sparkly things, as I am.

Anyway, at Earth and State I treated myself and Bella to two hand-made circle pillows just for sitting in front of our altar with, and that’s what caught my eye Monday morning as Bella was eating breakfast. The new, beautiful pillows reminded me that one way of connecting with my joy is sitting in front of my altar. So I spent just 5 minutes meditating on a few things there, chanting a few repetitions of two different affirmations I’m working with, and doing some hand mudras from the book Healing Mudras.

After I dropped Bella at school, I took the laptop to “my” coffee shop and sat to re-write a letter to my friends and family about In Arms Coaching and my visions for it that I had been struggling to write for two weeks. It had become a real bang-my-head-against-the-wall exercise, and I had hit so many dead ends so far — in a way that is really unfamiliar to me.

But that day, being back in my coffee shop with at least two hours just for me, with a cup of hot coffee, the rain coming down outside, my laptop, and the connection to myself that I had nurtured just half an hour ago, all of a sudden the letter just wrote itself. Effortlessly. And it was perfect — it was JUST what I had been trying to say for two weeks.

Finding my joy this week is about making 5 minutes to connect with myself in front of my altar (or outside somewhere in the sun, up against a tree or sitting in the grass) and WRITING. More specifically, writing as a means to communicating with others about my joy. Writing as a way of CONNECTING with others about my joy.

How are you finding joy this week? I can’t wait to hear…..

(Intro Note: This post talks about New Moon circles. Some of you might not be familiar with them. The new moon (the dark of the moon each month) is traditionally a time of introspection and planning for the new month ahead. Each new moon is in a different sign of the zodiac, with different characteristics and strengths. We use the characteristics of each new moon to form an intention for some piece of work we want to do on ourselves in the coming two weeks. We do this in a sacred space we create as a small circle of women. There are candles, and sparkly things, and we laugh and make art and sing and listen to each other tell our stories. We support each other and sometimes cry. We meditate and visualize and dream together. Women’s New Moon Circles happen in all different ways all over the world. )

So here’s what happened.

Yesterday I facilitated a New Moon Circle for women. I’ve been doing them every month since I first facilitated one at Burdock Gathering in Maine last August. It was so magical and it made me long for the women’s circles that I used to attend. For about 3 years I attended the most amazing, powerful sister circles (miss them, Dawn and Joanna!), and then they stopped. For over a year I had no spiritual community that I saw regularly and although I tried to make an effort to celebrate and observe the new moon each month, it just wasn’t the same.

At Burdock, ideally, everyone who attends offers something that they’d like to teach or share with others in the form of a workshop. I offered a new moon circle for everyone there. And it was just so wonderful, and so grounding for me, and so fulfilling. As a wonderful bonus, people loved it. And wanted to join my mailing list. And there was talk about my doing one at another time in Portland. And I was full.

When we got back to the city, my best Mama-friend/wise witch, Alex (who was in Maine with us) and I were with the kids at a playground. I was talking about how joyful it was for me to facilitate the New Moon Circle, and how badly I missed having New Moon Circle here, in my daily life.

In her infinate wisdom she said, “So start them here!” And I started to get warm and light filled. “Hmmmmm.” I said. “The next new moon is ____,” she said, thumbing through her datebook. “What night around that could you do it?” “Ummm, ____?” I said. “YEA!” she said, and immediately texted the date and invite to 5 of her friends. “Now you can’t back out,” she said, laughing. And the In Arms New Moon Sister Circles were born.

That was last September, and I’ve done them almost every month since. There have been between 3 and 10 women at each one, and they’ve been so wonderful for me and I’ve been so touched by the response of the women.

So for this last one, on the evite only two women RSVPed. And I went back and forth about whether or not to do it, especially since I now rent a little room to hold it in and with only two women donating I’d be paying out of pocket for it. But then one of the women emailed me and said, “Since there are only two of us who responded, are we still going to have Circle?” and I thought, we’re worth having Circle for! Who cares if there isn’t a whole crowd. It will be a lovely, intimate Circle, and every one of us deserves to have this time. I also thought one or two women might show up unexpectedly.

I spent Sunday morning working on the Circle and came up with a plan that made me feel really good and that I thought the women would love. I lugged three heavy bags through the rain and picked up a few fun art supplies for one of the exercises. I arrived, got upstairs, and set up Circle with 15 minutes to spare.

And sat.

And sat.

At just before three pm one of the two women texted me to tell me that she was running about 20 minutes late and that the other confirmed woman (who was a friend of hers) had food poisoning and wouldn’t be coming.

So there I sat in this rented room that I had set up carefully and lovingly for our Circle, with the altar in front of me, candles lit and flickering, alone. With one person coming, 20 minutes late. Nothing to “do” for the next 30 minutes but wait. And I tried to connect with how I felt.

Part of me felt like I wanted to pack up and go home, and then frustration that I couldn’t because of the one person coming. Then there was the level of emotion that wondered if no one was coming because the circle I had been doing wasn’t good enough, wasn’t fun enough, wasn’t meaningful enough. There was the frustration that I had put out money that I wasn’t going to get back. There was the loneliness. There was the fear that what I was doing wasn’t of value, wasn’t supported, wasn’t of service in any significant way.

And I sat with all those feelings. I didn’t try to make them go away, and I didn’t try to rationalize them, or make myself feel better, or brush over them.

And then something happened. I flashed back on the frustration that I used to feel that I wasn’t making the time to observe new moon. That I wasn’t working towards creating a spiritual community for myself. And then I remembered the joy I felt when I made the commitment to begin honoring new moon by CREATING that space, that circle: FOR ME. And that was the key – that’s what shifted the energy. I connected with the memory and realization that at the basis of my creating this space for new moon circles for women, was simply MY JOY at observing new moon. At creating a beautiful, meaningful altar that reflected each new moon. At designing activities and exercises to help me connect with each new moon’s unique gifts.

And all these things were at the root of MY joy. It was such a bonus when other women joined me and benefitted, but look what planning this circle had given me? 30 minutes to connect with the new moon in this beautiful space, with candles flickering. Silence in which to focus. 3 different divination stations that I had set up around the room with various tarot decks and other divination tools to sit in front of and work with. Other stations with blank paper and art supplies to vision with. And I had 30 minutes to concentrate and dream ALL TO MYSELF, without having to lead other women, or focus on anyone but myself. My Self.

What a gift!

I realized my ego gets in the way of my joy. When I have a thought along the “what if I throw a party and no one comes” line, I become detached from the reason I threw the party in the first place. It’s my fear speaking, my insecurity, my self doubt. My inner critic. All those things come from a place of fear….not a place of joy. But if I connect with something that I joyfully want to celebrate, I win even if I wind up celebrating it with myself. Other people are a bonus.

What are you doing in your life that is more for other people than you? Can you connect with the joy it holds for you? If not, you might want to examine why you’re doing it. It completely SHIFTS your energy to look for the joy in anything you have committed to doing.

I would love to hear about your joy. I lovingly encourage you to leave comments.
Please email Spirithouse@gmail.com to get on our mailing list, and check out www.InArmsCoaching.com for more ways to celebrate your joy and build a life you LOVE to live!!