To Please Or Not To Please - On My Road To Personal Truth

Growing up in both New Jersey and New York I consider myself a local from both. My journey has been one of curiosity and endless attempts to be true. The greatest obstacle thus far to my truth has been my conditioning to please others as a means of feeding my own esteem and ensuring that I hold a perception of value. You know when you sense a need in another and all of a sudden you are driven to meet the need or offer some guidance. Working in restaurants for many years really enhanced this ability, “to read a room”. Whose glass is getting low, is everyone safe, who is waiting for food, who looks lonely, etc…  

Currently my roles are many: they include sister, mother, wife, counselor, woman, friend, neighbor, yoga teacher, co creator, business owner, spiritual teacher, my personal favorite steward of the earth. Each one of these hats calls a different response yet each comes from that desire to please, to serve the other to sacrifice my need for theirs. These attempts to please are to say I love you, I see you, you have value. As a younger me this was a divine plan that kept me insulated with friends and gratitude from all I could serve. Seemed golden until I started to run out of lamp oil and my own light was flickering. My first attempts were to get help, try to enlist others to my cause. I found that some were willing to sacrifice like me but they too were exhausted and often their support was at a cost. Cost such as “now that I helped you there is this unwritten tally board that says you owe me.” 

Surely all of us can relate to that feeling of owing someone something, we all have debt and the desire to be free from it is part of what drives us. In the game board of life we all get so consumed, life energy leaking all over, leaving a sensation of hunger and longing. For me pleasing used to keep a buzz around me.  The moments where I would walk away stronger after a comment like “Madeline, you are so special, thank you so much, We couldn’t have done it without you.”

I can still remember the distaste I would feel when I would receive the praise, the cards or gifts of gratitude from others.

Of course this response was complicated by my personal struggle to receive. Helping others was good, being needy or taking in did not fit my “ideal” imprint. I realized that I did not have a value unless I was serving and that I innately knew that the solutions and people pleasing was actually a way of soothing my inner experience of not feeling worthy.

Growing up the message of not being worthy was a part of my spiritual teachings and my own shy nature compounded it. Turning 50 I find my focus to be on right relation to myself and knowing my deepest needs. In my experience the universe always provides us with what we need, for me as it often does, it comes in mirrors, so in comes the mirror, this beautiful young 11 year old girl trying to be so good and wanting for everyone especially her mom to be happy. As I listen to her and say it back, her smile brightens, her awareness grows, she is heard and I am revealed right along with her. We are bonding and she is seeing and accepting herself a little bit more cause someone else can understand. Thank you for her timing and presence as I decide to please or not to please. 

It all starts with a little girl, the oldest, the youngest, the middle one who wants to be a good girl and really wants to makes the big people happy. She is trying to take care of everything and growing anger and resentment cause she is not doing enough for herself or she is being entitled and hurtful because saying no to someone she loves is so painful. No time to know her deepest needs cause the pull from around her is too great. She and I create a magic book for her to put it all down so she can feel less burdened.

In my own story, life and the challenges in it brought a web of connections. Could they all be co-dependent... Possibly, but now I know the desire to be cooperative is greater as I mature, the need for solace is stronger. The need to know and listen to the voice, the wisdom within is the strongest current. 

As a parent the guilt connected to knowing I am only offering my family a watered down version of myself, the left overs, has something to do with how the desire to please is fed. “No son, I can’t play that game with you or learn that song cause I am too busy paying my debts and making deposits in the well of not being good enough.” So here is some money, here is my acceptance but my presence well I am still looking for that it seems to be in my need to please.

So I am challenging you all to notice how your need to please, your feelings about yourself are compromising your intimate connections with your family, more importantly with yourself. Decide where you want to say NO and begin to practice it in small ways.

Take time as often as you can to just be quiet and listen for that small voice singing or speaking, we come whole and complete with everything we need.

So from my heart to yours… Be kind to each other and remember we are all funny and life is a school..               

Thank you for not pleasing me!!!

One Heart, Right Relation – the Only Way to Grow!

What sustains us?  RELATIONSHIP

In right relation, anything is possible.  Relationship fosters healing.  We are longing for a true connection from the heart.  The kind you can feel.  How do we move away from the isolated way we are living, in boxes, to a thriving community?  How do we begin living and growing in balance and harmony, just like the forest?  My thoughts…

We need to create communication and honest interaction fostering authenticity in all.  We each need to reconnect to our own true nature to bring harmony back to our homes. Children are teachers ~ if we foster their expression ~ and they will guide us.  

We are all (mostly) willing to sacrifice for family and people we love to the end of a poor relationship with self.  This pattern leaves us with an empty tank.  A relationship with self includes knowing your needs, and respecting your nature.  Caring for yourself and listening to yourself is the only way of ensuring the tank is always full.  We are so busy keeping up with the illusion of security for our family that we have fallen out of harmony with each other and  most importatantly, ourselves.  We have lost the value of a good conversation, a sharing of one’s self, or a heart to heart to help clarify and express.  Where are the family meetings, the council with elders?  Through connection we thrive, through sacrifice we survive, but at what cost?  How do you numb yourself to the sadness and confusion of our times?  Where are you hiding? Behind the computer? Watching TV?  Working?  Minding other people’s business?  Shopping?  Fixing? Reading? Eating? Trying to control your environment, your children, your wife, your husband?  Drinking?  Drugs?  Sex?   Pornography?  Why are we hiding?  What do we long for?  

I believe we all do it for family.  Most belief systems I have learned about value the tribe (the family).  The tribe is alive in our hearts and we long to thrive.  Let the conversations on truth, personal and universal truths, spark the the fire that is going to fuel our hearts and guide us towards growth.  Because if we’re honest with ourselves, how much longer can we keep doing what we’re doing and what is the cost?

Our children do not have rites of passage, and teachings to guide them because we are all too busy trying to get by.  It makes no sense.  Children are our future, we must find ways to strengthen and support them. Like a Life school!!

What can you do to be more present and aware without falling into one of your defenses, like projection, excuses, blame or an over reaction?  Be honest with yourself and don’t be afraid to share what you realize….

Way Has Opened!!!

The Shell of the old in pieces on the floor.
The most stubborn to leave is the one that believed in more,
more would be the way to make the pain go away,
It was a TRICK and almost always made me sick.

In the pile there is the need for approval, that grew me aware
and fed the way I would compulsively share.. a way to connect..
I could only survive if I made myself fit in.
“Fit in” to a world that was so different from me,
extra careful of course, not to “sin”

Now I feel new skin forming
and a foundation of acceptance and inspiration from within…
the current of creation singing, that co-creation will build a new nation!

Yes, this is bold, but truth be told,
I am no small tree, when I allow myself to be free.
Free to express my passion and song as I live where I belong.

Singing my song…
Way will Open… Way will Open… Way will Open… from Inside
cause my dahling… brothers and sisters…. we have nothing to hide

Allow the old to fall away, find your way to pray, center,
be new, be true… Way Has Opened!!

Glowing and Growing to the Sky,
Madeline aka Groweesha

My Way Back From Crazy

The story from the perspective of my heart, I began as a result of two people falling in love and their love made me. I found out real young what they liked and I tried my best to do it so they would be happy. Unfortunately the story of love can get real complicated especially if people do not communicate so they eventually were not able to stay together and that was a very sad day. Not fully understanding,  I like most children do, Imitate, because that is how we learn. SO I was part my mom and part my dad. The blend called Madeline.

I was strong, brave, loving, honest, respectful, a good girl who always kind of felt more like a boy. I did what I was told…most of the time. The sad from that day, went deep inside me as if I was split in two. I was always able to feel all the feelings around me and connect to most with my smile and willingness to laugh and play. So I played and laughed at myself and the world as much as I could to help me carry on.

There were some challenges, some losses that seemed to only deepen the way I felt split since it was so hard to find a place where I could be sure, a place where I could see the big picture so I continued to protect myself and others the best way I knew how.

I started to feel stronger and began to have my own ideas.  I thankfully found a deep connection to nature, especially trees that helped me understand relationship with self and others. I was able to make friends real easy, people let down their defenses as they felt my heart I found that as I loved them I learned to love and understand more aspects of me. I was protective by nature of all that I Loved. I was protective of myself, almost like I was trying not to get trapped. Yet I longed to belong, it has always been rather confusing. The relationships would come and go and I would be strong and keep growing.  The most trying part was getting others to get along, creating harmony, not sure if my heart was so out of rhythm that others could not follow my beat, maybe I was too intense, not sure but it all left me feeling like It had to be my fault, I must be doing something wrong. I will keep trying. I tend to be very persistent by nature.

Time passes, I grow really strong on the inside and out, I am aware of myself in a profound way, wherever I go I hear and feel from the world , love, appreciation, respect for my perspective. Comments that touch me so much and after a while I realize that I may have a place in the world, a song to sing, something to share from my story.

So I create a space and I hope with all my heart and I wait for all to come together… just like the song.

The space becomes like another child who is more than I can take care of and I compromise my needs again so I do not mess everything  up.

Sounds Golden…

I thought so too!!!

But life goes in a full circle and the though the forest around me, loves me and believes in me, they do not know how to work together. Communicate from their hearts!  I have a sensitive nature and I love to dance in harmony, but if the forest doesn’t know and understand the others, if any trees lot together and exclude another, we lose our beat, we go into protection mode, we forget we our one heart. Fear has real power over own natural intelligence. The humans tendency to project and/or blame to help lift the weight wreaks havoc. There is no flow, the music changes, children begin to be left un attended, lost, prey to the worlds messages, filled up with quick sensations that feel real and true. Stronger than what we show them cause we are busy keeping up.

The creative genius within is thwarted and squashed…magic gone….again

Now I am a pulsing connected energy, I know the mother as the earth and the sky as the father, they work in harmony all the time. One Heart!!! I am committed to doing my part within the heart of all.

Time to sing to the world about living and growing as one just like the forest

I am asking all of you to please consider sharing the hurts, unlocking the pain and bravely come back to life.

All the way from the inside out.

Cause!! Straight up.

If not Now WHEN!!!

What they hell are we waiting for?

I am not always the most patient girl…but truth be told I would much prefer to be part of a forest and just growing to sky and working in harmony with the band of others who are committed to the same instead of in some distortion of myself that says I have to keep everybody going.