“Sometimes Reclaiming Your Life Means Giving Up The Fariy Tale”

Posted in Divorce, Dreams, family, friendships, Love, Marriage, Psychology, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by Carol Medlock

Have you ever felt that you walked the path of your life alone? That you were the only woman who has ever made a painful, stupid mistake? That you settled for less than you deserved? Did you desperately desire love above all else? Did you yearn for a real partner so much it hurt: Have you ever thought “Why is every woman but me in a great relationship? “Why can’t I be that happy?” Or found yourself rejected by the person you loved and it left you feeling that something was wrong with you?

When a devastating breakdown of a relationship ends it can feel like a wild boar‘s tusk ripping through your heart. You can become convinced that you are the only woman who has ever made a complete mess of your life. You feel alone, rejected, and furious that you had deceived yourself for so long. That you had given up on “yourself” to keep the love of another for years, only to be left with a heart torn to shreds.

What women learn shortly after the initial blow of their relationship’s end is that, they failed to understand above all else, is that they needed to honor the most important relationship of all “the one with themselves.” The ending of a relationship becomes the beginning of a journey for women to learn many things about themselves and how to love and honor themselves.

The journey of being a woman can seem crazy and confusing but for better or worse, women have many of the same stories, heartbreak, obstacles, and expectations. The good news is that women don’t have to remain captive to the limiting beliefs swirling in their psyches and in society, which keeps them far from their dreams. We always have a choice. Along life’s path, we all have the opportunity to gain wisdom from our mistakes, the self-awareness that comes from healing our wounds, and clarity by claiming our needs.

If we are lucky enough to wake up to the immense power that is available to heal our hearts and teach us how to love ourselves, we have a responsibility to share our stories and insights with others. Otherwise, the true power of our realizations will be lost. Sharing allows us to see ourselves in the words of others, gain witnesses to our personal journey, and broaden the possibilities that lie before us.

I, too relied on the wisdom and support of many women, some of them total strangers, to progress through my journey to wholeness. By watching others and listening, I learned that to fully and wholeheartedly love another I first needed to fully and wholeheartedly embrace ” myself.” This realization is a major source of inspiration in my decision to share my knowledge and experiences with other women. Women need to share the wisdom gained on their personal path as they went from being a person they thought they had to be to be loved to being the one they actually are.

In them I gained wisdom while on my personal path as I went from being a person I thought I knew and loved to being one I actually do know and love. We shared our stories about living ordinary lives, raising children, creating a safe home life, the ups and downs of stay at home moms to the working moms. Some of us were married and some single. We talked about many issues like paying bills, being young, and getting older and the list goes on and on and lets not forget divorce as well. We also talked about trying to find sources of love and happiness but often looking in the wrong places. When we stopped and took a careful look at the life we had created and honesty answered this question “Am I honoring the most important relationship in my life first? The one with my self and God.

We discovered reclaiming our lives meant giving up the fairy tale that we had created about ourselves and instead finding out what reality was. The new path may did not seem clear at the beginning to us and we felt like we were fumbling in the dark grabbing for something to hold to, then one of my dear friends said, remember this is a normal feeling and keep moving forward and don’t go back. During this time we discovered within ourselves the spirit of survivor and a deeper faith we never knew existed.

We also learned that loving ourselves is knowing ourselves, enjoying and valuing the women that we are, and understanding that getting to know ourselves and God is a lifelong personal enterprise. It meant that we needed to appreciate ourselves as much as we appreciate the ones we love. Loving ourselves is recognizing our gifts and talents and then putting them to good use, acknowledging our flaws and forgiving ourselves for them. We learned that loving ourselves was reaching for more, it was reaching for the best, in ourselves. We discovered that our hearts can only hold as much love as we believe it can. So often women put up with shabby treatment in love because they don’t believe they deserve better or they are still stuck in fairy tale thinking. So treat yourself better, believe you deserve to be treated well, and you will get treated even more wonderfully in love than any fairy tale woman has ever been.

Carol. M.

16May2012

Clearing The Cobwebs

Posted in Life by Carol Medlock

How do you let people know you are mad? Some gals holler, some are cupboard door slammers and others get very, very quiet.

Emotions are interesting things. We all have them, we are all affected by them, and we all try to hide them, at one time or another.

Those who cannot hide them well are subject to comments like “she wears her heart on her sleeve” or “it was written all over her face.” Twitching eye brows, clenched jaw, blushing checks, and pursed lips are telltale signs of our inner fluttering hearts, churning stomachs, indignant sensibilities, or raging hormones.

But emotions don’t like to stay hidden for long. In subtle, or not-so-subtle ways, we broadcast our feelings to the world. Our emotional vocabulary includes some pretty interesting phraseology. We talk about our stomach dropping out, our heart stopping, or blowing our stack. We are down in the dumps, hoping mad, in a tizzy, all choke up, in a funk, sick at heart, swamped, and at odds with ourselves.

And when it’s time for these emotions to come gushing out, they take many forms: temper tantrums, endless ranting, sleepless nights, mood swings, critical attitudes, blind rages, constant complaining, pity parties, and hissy fits. Unfortunately, the popular clichés people say about us to describe how we react when we are mad contain words that are not very flattering are they?

The next time you lose control think about this statement: Only a fool vents all his or her feelings, but a wise man or woman holds them back. But that doesn’t mean we should bottle them all up. No, it means you need to release some of that inner turbulence carefully to someone you trust.

Do you have someone you trust, someone who will never tell what comes up during an angry spat, someone who can listen with understanding, someone you vent to? Even though it comes most naturally to let off steam in the form of angry words or bitter complaints, laughter is a wonderful alternative! Remember the advertising slogan: Don’t get mad, get glade! Have you ever turned a frustrating event into a funny story? If you haven’t try it!

We can sigh about things, or we can laugh. Both these responses release pressure, but which one is the most fun? We laugh so we wouldn’t scream. Whatever is probably wouldn’t go away, so we might as well live and laugh through it. When we choose to release some of our frustrations with laughter, we allow others around us to relax and join in the chuckle. A woman or man who is willing to find the funny in their day is unmistakable more pleasant to be around than the one who is angry and venting about how their day went.

The truth is that every day has its share of stress. When you feel like an aerosol can because you are under too much pressure, find a listening ear to act as a safety valve. Throw a pity party for your friends so you can all get it out of your system at once. Drown your fears in compassion for each other and then rise up and give yourselves a great big hug. Encourage each other, pray and hang in there!

28Dec2011

Time Is Marching On

Posted in generational changes, Grandparenting, Movies, relationships, Time by Carol Medlock

One of my favorite cinematic scenes is in the movie Steele Magnolias.

Truvy Jones (played by Dolly Parton) is standing on the porch of beauty salon talking with young Annette ( played by Daryl Hannah) “Honey” Truvy says, ” Time is marching on-and it is marching all over my face.”

No words were truer than this time is marching on and not only is it marching all over my face but it has taken over my whole body. As I recognize this phenomenon of aging I’m reminded that I’ve earned every wrinkle. Every year their numbers increase. We’ve been together so long, that we are becoming good friends. But not such good friends, that I wouldn’t agree to have them removed. Like un-friending a friend on Facebook.

I’ve always wondered if wrinkles could talk what they might say? Perhaps the lines on my forehead would say? I waited up for my children when they missed their curfew, started driving or went out on their first dates.

However, there is another way to look at these characteristic indention. Maybe the lines on my forehead show how much time I’ve spent thinking about those I love or studying the world around me and finding it good. The lines around my mouth might come from the many times I ‘ve stood in awe and smiled at a beautiful sunset over the ocean. Or smiled at a flower as it began to bloom as I walked through the rose garden in Balboa Park in San Diego and smiled at how wonderful creation is. I’m sure that some of the lines around my mouth and eyes are from the gift of laughter. Anyone who knows me knows I laugh a lot.

Perhaps the lines around my eyes are laugh lines memory boards that hold the experiences of my life that I have enjoyed and participated in the most. Occasionally my girlfriends and I would get together. We use to laugh and joke with each other about ageing.

Now many decades later we wish that the beauty secrets in ” Grandma’s Little Beauty” remedy books would do the trick. But the reality is it takes money, money, money, to remove all our lines. What is a girl to do these days with all the choices we have?