We are spirits having a human experience in the physical world. Often we forget that our true essence is *energy.* We forget that we have more control over how and where our energy is directed than we think we do. This isn’t simply about self-control; it is also about what kind of influences others have on us, and where we have decided to use or not use boundaries with people who affect our energy negatively.

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Do the people in your life provide actions or moments that uplift you?

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Do you allow positivity in and accept it?

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Are there people in your life that are consistently needy and negative?

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How much access do these people have to you?

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Think of a time in your life so far that you have been a sponge for other people’s emotions. In cases where someone else’s happy mood or optimism rubbed off on you: 

Did you recognize it and/or give thanks?

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In cases where their frustration, sadness, or anger affected you:

How long did it take you to notice that you were carrying another’s energy burden?

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Have you developed any ways of switching this negative energy off?

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Much like we may fence in our yards or lock our doors at night to keep safe…

Do you have proper emotional boundaries to keep sane?

Above is the only existing photo of both my parents and I together.

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Before we are connected as souls into bodies, i.e. born, we have done a great deal of planning to get ready for the lifetime. We make choices, as souls, so these are highly intelligent and deliberate choices about what lessons we will learn in our upcoming incarnation.

One very important choice we make is our parents, and therefore, the family we are born into. Because our natural state is that of a wise soul, the parents and life situations we select are literally perfect to set us up for the major lessons we decided to learn this time around.

Taking this into consideration, and perhaps viewing your selections of your parents as deliberate... 

What lesson(s) do you believe they have helped you to learn?

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Could you have become this unique and wise version of yourself had they not been involved or if you’d had maybe the parents of one of your friends?

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Remember, all adversity results in perspective, strength, and greater empathy - all goals of a learning soul.

This little guy right here, a praying mantis, hung out on my fan at work at the clinic today throughout the whole day. For hours, he slowly crawled around the front of the fan, probably excited for the breeze.

Every hour or so I’d peek my head under the table to see if he was still there. He was. I realize he is an insect and he has a teeny weenie little brain, but I kept feeling astonished at the fact that he seemed completely content doing the same thing all day. Just hanging out. I thought to myself, “Why can’t I do that?!”

In this “age of distraction,” we spend nearly every waking minute with our brains occupied by *something.* Either we are watching television or streaming media, scrolling on our phones through all of the offerings of social media - engaging in micro-moments with old friends, strangers, and family, agreeing or disagreeing with opinions of others, and using hours upon hours of our lives this way. At some point, when our eyes are bleary and we can’t keep them open any longer, we crash into oblivion and sleep.

The world: our lives, our routines, our work, all of our responsibilities…can be a pretty heavy weight to bear. The emotional task of keeping our “self” together is taxing even on an easy day. We have been conditioned and socialized to answer the simple question “How are you today?” with one word: “Fine.”

“It’s all fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

But how can it be if we use SO MUCH OF OUR LIVES distracting ourselves? How can we truly be fine when our phones, i.e., the small powerhouse of a computer in our pockets, give us hundreds of reasons a day to disrupt any semblance of calm, relaxation, or peace that might have been possible?

So, this week I’d like for you to think about what you do, if anything, to find a moment’s peace.

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How do you take a step back from distraction?

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Do you make time to meditate or pray?

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Do you ever even turn off your phone, laptop, or tablet?

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And, more importantly... 

Have you tried to sort out why distraction seems like a better alternative to finding and dealing with the real causes of pain or stress in your life?

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Have you defined what it is you’re distracting yourself from?

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Once you take enough time to state clearly what the problem is, it’s much easier to deal with the emotional issues and get through them versus constantly being on the run from them.

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And then, maybe you can just chillax by the breeze!

This week’s task is inspired by several real-life mediumship readings I have done with clients lately.

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One of the things that is so devastating about losing a loved one who dies is the loss of communication with them. You miss the talks, the laughs, and being able to tell them about your life. You want to have that back. It’s why people use mediums like me!

It would be impossible to count the number of times I have explained to a client that their loved one in Spirit form can “hear” or in fact knows all that is being said to and/or about them by the living. At the end of a reading clients will say, “Is my mom still there? Tell her I love her.” When in fact, Mom understood it as soon as the client thought the words in their mind. Mom understood it as soon as it became a feeling.

Spirits try to drive home this point by asking their loved ones to write them letters. It’s the loved one’s way of saying…”Hey, even though I’m in Heaven, I miss our chats. Will you write to me? If you do I promise I’ll know every word your mind writes as you say it to yourself.” Really, you wouldn’t have to write it down. Really, you could just sit in silent meditation and form the words in your mind that you might like to say…or that you would say if you suddenly had your loved one who has crossed over at your side.

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So this week’s task is easy peazy.

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Write to your loved one in Heaven, who you miss very much, a heartfelt letter. Say ALL THE THINGS that you want to say, that you wish you’d said, or that you think they’ve missed.

 

Get it all out on the paper. Write until your hands ache if you need to. (If your tears stain the page, it’s okay!)

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I PROMISE YOU that they WILL hear every word.

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For bonus points, ask for a sign from them when you write and watch what happens.

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For even more healing, buy a notebook and dedicate it to Heaven. Write as many letters to as many Spirits as you wish.

 

It will lesson your burden of grief as you keep writing. There is magic in expressing ourselves on the page.

This week’s prompt is also inspired by guidance from a recent reading I did for a friend. Like many of the directions I receive from Spirit Guides for clients, I thought this one was worthy of sharing with a larger audience!

I want you to think about how you spend your days.

Many of us have routines we are focused on, many of us go to our workplaces to do our jobs for a good chunk of the day, and for some of us, our days can be so similar or our lives so busy that it’s easy to lose track of what day it is.

One of the ways we spend our time is to constantly do things for other people, and deny ourselves even the smallest amount of luxury “me” time to do what makes us happy.

Some of us are living our lives according to a formula we believe everyone else will be satisfied with and are not reaching beyond that to explore whether there is anything else that could bring us joy, because we don’t want to upset the Apple Cart of Approval from significant others in our lives.

Now I want you to imagine that you’ve been told you have 24 hours left on this Earth, and when that time is up you’ll leave your body and go to Heaven. There is no choice about it.

Let’s assume you are well rested and have no need for sleep, and have enough money to do what you need to do.

WHAT on Earth will you do? Will it be something that’s only for you and your own satisfaction or will it be the same old same old…fitting between the lines you drew or doing all those things for everyone else?

YOUR life should be lived *for you* and not to simply satisfy the status quo in your family or group.

Should you just go ahead and live all your days with this in mind and break free of the guilt that keeps you in line?

I’ve fallen in love with a song by Harry Styles, called Golden. Harry, a former member of the boy band One Direction, has enjoyed success as a solo artist. Enough success to get a 47 year old such as myself to add him to my writing and running playlists. Since the boy band of my youth was NKOTB, it’s amazing that I even know about Harry Styles.

I like several of his songs, but Golden stands out. Because to me, it’s as if he is singing this song straight to GOD. Perhaps Jesus. Buddha? Spirit. Spirit Guides. Angels. Loved ones in Spirit. Anyone you think of as a higher power.

But I’m pretty sure he isn’t really singing to his deity. I don’t think Harry was thinking about God when he wrote Golden. It’s certainly not gospel-sounding. And it is more evocative of a boy-girl relationship than anything, but all I can see when I sing this song in my car, is Spirit.

Let’s press rewind. On my life.

When I was 20, I was a Sophomore in college at the University of Georgia. I had lost track of my boy band phase. I wasn’t listening to much of anything except the silence in the Main Library as I studied. College is when we try to understand the world. We break free of our (maybe) sheltered lives, and we see if we can make sense of how we might like to fit into society. We wonder what interests us. We search for the thing that lights us on fire. We release things we never liked during our childhoods.

I never much liked church. First there was the dresses and panty hose and pointy-toed shoes. Then there was the preacher who loved most of all to talk about Revelations and fire and brimstone. Things in my childhood were already far from ideal. And then, after my 17 year old cousin was fatally injured in a car crash, succumbing to his injuries several weeks later, I decided that everything I’d learned in church was basically wrong. Was I going to Hell or already in it?

We did all the prayers. We had hundreds of people praying. My aunt told me that if more than one person was praying for the same thing then it just had to be answered by God. It never occurred to me that Chip would actually not recover. Let alone die. When he died, he took a piece of my innocence with him.

So by 20, I had decided that there most definitely was a God, and that he *did not* like me at all, if he even knew I existed.

BOY…haven’t I come a long way since then?! Now I’m so in love with Spirit, I think pop songs are about God. Because I see God everywhere I look. There are other songs too, that I analyze for any God-like meaning.

This is kinda new for me, and I like it.

The dropping of boxed-in, man-made religion happened a long time ago, but that’s when my real, Spiritual journey began. It’s when I started to understand the mediumship dreams I was having (the visits from my own loved ones, like Chip), and when I began to have “understandings” of things I shouldn’t have understood just yet. I had to walk down this crazy road in order to be where I am today. I will tell the story, in memoir form hopefully, but this is enough for me to prompt your writing this week.

Now that I know that God/Spirit has got my back 1000%, I’d like for you to consider how your faith has evolved over your lifetime.

Has anything ever knocked you down so far you lost faith? Has anyone ever given you reason to hold onto faith? If your faith was tested, have you bounced back?

Tell me.

Many years ago, (like a quarter century, lol) a very close friend from childhood went through an ugly breakup with her boyfriend. I cannot remember all the details now, but it reduced my friend to a heap of struggle and tears. We were in college together at the time and the situation threatened to derail her grades that quarter. After a couple weeks of crying and suffering through the emotions, she decided to go to therapy.

Now, she and I had been close for years. We had known each other since childhood. We had talked about ALL the things girls talk about: boys and homework and parent’s crazy rules. We had helped each other study for tests and get good grades. She was quirky and misunderstood in my view, but SO WAS I. And so I adored her even when she did things I didn’t understand and even when her quirks grated on my last nerve. I was always quick to defend her honor against the ever-present teenage-girl gossip at school, and I gently told her things she needed to hear.

I was as true a friend as anyone could have been to her. And I had been for nearly a decade when she suffered the nasty breakup.

One day after class, she handed me a xeroxed piece of paper, of which there were several copies. On it was a list of DOs and DON’Ts from her therapist about how her friends should treat her while she healed from her breakup. I read the list alone in my bedroom later that night, and silently fumed. How dare she assume that I, the closest person to her in her life at that point, could somehow get it wrong when it mattered the most? How could she think that I would mishandle her tears? Her fears? Her emotional truths? I had always listened to her. I had always been kind to her. We had been friends for half of my life. I was devoted to her success almost as much as my own. I loved her!

What I should have done in that moment, all those years ago, was get in her face and tell her how that made me feel. Instead, because I knew she was struggling, I bottled up my own emotions about how she had flippantly assumed the worst about me, or even more treacherous, she’d not even cared to think about how a xeroxed list telling your friend how to truly be your friend was going to hurt me to the core of my soul.

It felt as if nothing I had said or done in all those years mattered. All those times I had been present for her, had empathized with her tears and frustration, had talked on the phone until two in the morning…none of it counted. If she did not know my character by then, would she ever? It was a gut punch I still remember painfully.

I hate to say it now, but I believe it changed our friendship forever. We are still friends. I would give her a kidney if she needed one. But there is a crack where there shouldn’t be one because she hurt me so badly that time and I never spoke my truth.

So…your prompt for this week is a deep one.

When close others in your life act carelessly towards you, when they hurt you to your core, how do you respond?

Do you internalize it and believe the lies about yourself they’ve presented to you or projected onto you?

Do you speak up and say “whoa wait a minute, you completely misjudged me?”

Do you go overboard defending yourself?

Can you build back trust in the relationship after this kind of wound?

Tell me.