by Chia Chia Cheng, Dip. NCCAOM, CNFM, L.Ac.
Recently when I opened my email app to write some folks back, I was horrified. I saw two typos. The psycho theme song played in my head. As a writer typos are a no-no.
Your brain has the ability to fill in the blanks and auto correct based on information it receives from your eyes. This is what my brain did while proofreading.
Your brain is adept at doing this because it likes to make sense of the world. This is also how you can finish someone else’s sentence. It’s also how you can interpret someone else’s words in a different way than what they intended to say. The stories you tell yourself. The confabulations. In short, the beliefs about yourself and others.
Do you know which stories your brain filled in the blanks for? Which beliefs are the ones that were autocorrected to fit you? So that you feel affirmed that you were wronged by another or validated to sit in righteous anger a little longer?
“Love is to be able to be free and to be held at the same time.”
While you have been organizing the closets or building a new fence in your back yard, I’ve been decluttering in an unconventional way.
These are the ways I Marie Kondo my heart during SIP:
- I’ve been writing truths. Truths that have bubbled to the surface during this pandemic. These truths I’ve held onto are easy for others to receive (my belief). Difficult fo me to deliver.
- I acknowledge all the emotions I’m feeling, even the ones that I deem irrelevant at this current time. If I had a YouTube Channel, it’d be titled “Love In the Time of Coronaphobia.”
- I am allowing myself to miss her/him/them.
- When I take Artemis for a walk, I breathe. I am loving her more during SIP.
- The physical pain I feel today is short lived compared to the emotional pain I allow to settle in my heart. I choose to let go of all pain that no longer serves me.
- I do not need to be pain free in order to feel joy and contentment. Just as death is the reality by how I live life, pain is the unit by which I measure tenderness.
Existential pondering #835: What action does my name invoke as a verb?
The answer is RESILIENCE, as in “You’re gonna Chia Chia your way through this!”
My chosen word for 2020 is REVIVE. SIP has given me the opportunity to revive my practice of telling the truth, the kind that humbles me and uplifts another.
Here’s the letter I wrote to my mom and put in the post today.
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Dearest Mom,
As a teenager and young adult, I would spend hours thinking about the ways you didn’t show up for me.
In my 30s I accepted the ways in which you were not capable to show up for me.
Now in my 40s, I am humbled by the many ways you have shown up for me, in ways I didn’t know to ask for your support.
I appreciate the ways you have shown up for me in my life. You are a badass. Fiercely loving in your own unrestrained way.
Thank you for being.
Your loving daughter,
Chia Chia
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Do something extraordinary today. Tell someone a kind thing, an unspoken kindness you’ve been rehearsing in your head for the last who knows how long. When you speak a kindness, this makes room for your heart to receive from others.
Make someone’s day–Please forward these words to three of your favorite people.
Be well. Stay connected.
