I am BRAVELY HEALING

In this blog I'd like to share some of the techniques I use to deal with the physical and emotional pain that I experience. I am by no means perfect at any of these techniques, but I am learning and getting better with them everyday by practicing them and am excited to pass on any knowledge I can.

In Meditations to Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, I've taken the meditation on pain and will share it here:

The affirmation offered with the Pain Meditation is: 

Love will always dissolve pain.

And here is the Pain Meditation:

My Higher Self shows me the way to live in a pain-free life, both emotionally and physically. I am learning to respond to pain as if it were an alarm clock signaling me to wake up to my inner wisdom. Something I am thinking or doing is not for my highest good. Am I angry at myself or my body? Healing begins with love for myself and love for every part of my body. As I move in consciousness from anger or fear to love, my situations and my health move in a positive direction. I love my body, and I love my mind, and I am thankful that they are so closely related.

Loving my body is the first step in healing.

Another meditation from that same book is on Healing.

The affirmation offered with the Meditation is:

My body is balanced, healthy, and happy. . . and so am I.

And the Meditation:

I am open and receptive to all the healing energies in the Universe. I know that every cell in my body is intelligent and knows how to heal itself. My body is always working toward perfect health. I now release any and all impediments to my perfect healing. I learn about nutrition and feed my body nourishing, wholesome food. I watch my thinking and nay think healthy thoughts. I release, wipe our, and eliminate all thoughts of hatred, jealousy, anger, fear, self-pity, shame, and guilt. I love my body. I send love to each organ, bone, muscle, and part of my body. I flood the cells of my body with love. I am grateful to my body for all the good health I have had in the past. I accept healing and good health here and now.

Good health is my Divine Right.

I also wanted to share some anxiety tips that are offered on a posting on the Healthy Place website, called Top 21 Anxiety Grounding Techniques, the article is written by Kate White. I've selected particular parts to share:

Sometimes the worst stress comes from the things that are all too terribly familiar. There are times that anxiety can make even daily tasks seem insurmountable, even though I've done them countless times before. I know it's something I can do, it's just that in that moment it's implausible.

. . .

Treat anxiety with grounding skills

If you want to stop the "spacey," or you feel your self slipping into the spiral of anxiety, try some of these helpful anxiety management techniques:

2. Breathe slowly and steadily from your core. Imagine letting fear and worry go, evaporating with each breath.

6. Eat or drink something. Is it hot, or cold? Sweet, or sour?

8. Use your voice. Say your name or pick up a book and read the first paragraph you find out loud.

13. Imagine yourself in a familiar, comfortable place. Feel the safety. Know it.

14. Take a look outside. Count the number of trees or street signs.

16. Hold onto something comforting. Maybe a blanket or an old stuffed toy.

Another article I found on Elephant Journal is called 5 Ways to Have a Ridiculously Amazing Life by Richelle Morgan.

These are the 5 tips offered in the article:

Five ways to step into your life and make it ridiculously amazing:

1. Move.

As in, move, breathe and sweat.

You can’t be ridiculously amazing burrowing a hole into your couch or glued to your computer screen. (I know this because I tried. Massive fail! And what makes matters worse, that decently successful business I ran was a fitness business. How sad is that? I was inspiring others to move but couldn’t get myself on board!)

You have to get up and get your ass moving! Get the blood flowing, muscles fired up and the energy levels inspired. And the million excuses you have will come up, shelf them. If you can walk to the fridge, you can move.

I’m not asking you to hop off the couch and run a marathon, go for a walk, dance, do yoga, something. Just move. While you’re at it, move on to number two.

2. Check in and take notice.

One thing that is consistent is that life is continuously changing—and it will pass you by in the blink of an eye if you don’t take notice of it.

Start by checking in and paying attention to the little things that happen on a daily basis. I take the same route everyday to teach and each time I notice something different; it didn’t used to be that way. I used to drive mindlessly to client’s homes or to appointments and find myself 10 km down the highway with no recollection of what just passed me by. I had created a cozy vacuum of numbness that had me periodically checking out of life.

Now, I pay attention. I check in and stay present. Even when I’m doing something I do everyday, it’s become a mini adventure. I’ve noticed that anything can and will happen, but it’s up to me to take notice. So open your eyes, ears and mind. Rediscover your senses.

When you pause and actually notice the little things, what you see might surprise you.

3. Love.

Sweet, juicy, love.

Get the love juice flowing for your friends, family, partner and pets. Basically, anyone or thing that shares your space. Try to sweeten the pot with some unconditional love. Pets, easy. People; maybe not so much so try to practice first and foremost on yourself. Drown yourself in a giant pot of love juice. Be kind and nourishing to yourself in deliciously healthy ways because when we start to treat ourselves as though we are worthy, we set amazing things in motion.

After all, we can’t tap into love if we don’t love ourselves first.

4. Play.

Remember that four letter word?

If you don’t, seek out a niece, nephew, your child or a friend’s child. Watch, listen and learn. Life has enough serious moments without us purposely adding to the mix.

It’s okay to let loose and let your inner child come out and play once in a while. Be silly, dance, sing and laugh a lot. Don’t let anyone dampen your silliness. I did that and it wasn’t fun.

Now I play, a lot, everyday, with my crazy dogs, in the beautiful sea, on my yoga mat and with my boyfriend. They nourish my quirky side and allow me to be me. Which makes me smile a lot.

As a bonus, they’re helping me develop gorgeous laugh lines… much prettier than the frown lines I was working on before.

5. Leap outside your comfort zone.

Don’t think. Get like Nike and just do it! Leap, jump or dive into something that takes you outside your comfort zone, something that scares you a little or a lot.

The final thing I would like to share tonight is a technique I am working on currently with the amazing therapist I am seeing. We are using a mantra or seed thought of "what else is true?" What does this mean? Ok, let's use right now as an example, at present I am in excruciating pain due to endometriosis. So I am able to use this technique to gently change my focus from my pain to what else is true in this moment. So, what else is true for me at this time? I am sitting with my loving kitty getting loved, watching TV, just finished eating some ice cream (which I never eat), am writing on my laptop and am comfortably resting on the couch with my cozy blankets and soft sweater. So right now even just typing that leads me to think that way and I can feel the emphasis of pain fade. It doesn't take the pain away necessarily but it does help to shift my focus, which makes it lessen -- hopefully that makes sense! I have used this technique for about a year now and boy is it helpful! I use it several times per day and there has yet to be a time that it hasn't significantly helped with pain or anxiety, whatever negative experience I am having at that time.

I sincerely hope that the techniques offered in this passage will help you in your journey. Please try them and feel free to comment with feedback, or even if you would like to share things you have tried that have helped, and those that haven't!

If we all continue to share what we go through and what we do to get by, we can only grow stronger and  even more powerful.

Signing off with love and healing thoughts,

Stephanie

Strong Inside. . . & Beautiful?!, Part One

A few years ago a very dear friend was sending me a text message, and my name 'Stephanie' kept coming up at Strong Inside which at the time i was dealing with my dad's demise and ultimate, somewhat unexpected death was just what I needed to hear. It was amazing and I think back on that message that ultimately I believe came from my dad. Lately with the recovery process I've been in I've felt I needed to draw more upon my inner strength which sometimes I doubt I even have.

One of the biggest aspects of my femininity that has been taken from me for far too long is beauty, both looking it but most importantly FEELING it. Kinda funny that my oopherectomy, which removed my final female reproductive organs has made me feel safer, more proud and almost ecstatic to explore, discover and play with my femininity, most specifically speaking: beauty.  The two contributing factors of my life that have led me to this place are endometriosis and sexual abuse.  I've decided to break it into two blogs, so tonight, in part one we will discuss endometriosis and the following blog will deal with the sexual abuse aspect of impacting beauty, femininity, etc.

A few years ago my friend and I discovered an amazing hiking trail up in the mountain so Ojai. (We used to hike on a weekly basis and once my health is back in order I hope to again). We found the most amazing trail that led to a 300foot waterfall! It was so incredible. We also, more incredibly, ran into a couple that taught us how to crawl up into and under the waterfall. We could feel the water rushing over and while taking pictures with the flash of our phone cameras we realized the caves looked JUST like ENDOMETRIOSIS. I had some very special and sacred meditations and realizations in those caves and I treasure those moments and memories. However special theses times, because of how severe my disease was at the time I felt almost at my ugliest. 

I find these caves amazing and once I'm fully healed I cannot wait to go back to these caves. I feel like I will need to do some type of special sage smudging, probably among other things there to just signify my separating myself from that part of my life, another sign that my true life might be getting ready to begin! Exciting (and kind of scary) thought.

This concept of beauty and femininity is yet another aspect of my life that endometriosis has taken from me.  When the endometriosis began (nearly 19 years ago) which is when I was 13 years old caused me to have even less respect for my body and femininity.  How did endometriosis impact my desire to look pretty or girly, you ask?  Well, actually in several ways. Most simply endometriosis takes an indescribable amount of energy with the severe pain, numerous medications, night after night of restless painsomnia, countless emotions which can be absolutely exhausting. With this exhaustion, I've not had the energy to spare on accentuating my femininity.  Endometriosis resulted in so many emotions, such as: sadness, confusion, worry, frustration, hopeless, scared, angry, etc.  Sometimes that anger had been turned inward on myself, anger towards myself for simply woman.  For yet again if I weren't a woman I wouldn't be suffering in this very painful, overwhelming way.  Further with the symptoms of somewhat frequent abdominal bloating, dark as coal under eye circles from frequently getting little to no sleep I felt it useless to even attempt to look any better than I did because I was beyond help so to speak. So celebrating or reveling in my being a woman with cosmetics or putting effort into my appearance has not my priority. 

I had experienced incredibly painful, if not excruciating, experiences connected to my being a woman. In regards to both the sexual abuse and the endometriosis, I blamed myself and my body. With that mindset the last thing I wanted to do was that was to enjoy, celebrate or emphasize my femininity. I simply didn't deserve to feel good, especially since I was to blame in the first place for the above issues. 

These bloat pictures in particular touch me because the one on the right was while I was getting ready for work, andthe other is when I got home: the difference of 3 hours!

DRUM ROLL PLEASE......................

Well today I am just a few days over a month from having  an oopherectomy and excision of endometriosis and adhesions. It has been one hell of a process I'll tell ya that. Sometimes I feel pretty darn good, lately I've been having some pain and other issues which hopefully will be rectified soon. 

After my surgery and Katie (for those of you that do not know the bloat I severe bloat I experienced I named Katie) moving out I had a photoshoot done with the daughter of a great friend of mine, I wanted to reconnect with, or maybe connect with for the first time, my femininity. I wanted to share some of the photos that were taken. I love them all so much which is something I never would have been able to say before so that must be some type of progress.

For nearly my whole life being a woman has resulted in indescribable pain; however following this most recent endometriosis surgery, these feelings of negativity I have held toward my own body and my femininity have begun to dissipate.  Not only that, those feelings have changed into feelings of almost freedom, a desire to explore my femininity, and expressions of it, and this really excites me. That is why the photoshoot was so significant to me, especially at this time.

My photographer was absolutely amazing and truly made me feel so very comfortable as I was incredibly nervous. I would highly recommend her and I look forward to working with her on my next project, whatever that may be ;)

 Then I have some photos of my own where I feel beautiful. It is a process to even be able to say that. It is exciting to wear dresses and not feel like I need to select clothes on what while hide things the best. I mean one day I went out and I cannot tell you how many compliments I had on my "outfit" and "style" which is something I've never been able to focus or put any energy towards before so it is truly a whole new world!

And another really exciting announcement:

I have started a video blog on YouTube, I even began a channel, called Brave Healing. It is meant to be an extension of my written blog. I thought I would not enjoy it and wasn't sure I could do it, but I DID and I LOVE IT. Below is my first video, my introduction to my disease and I will include the link to my channel which can be accessed by clicking here.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and to even now watch my video blog! I am SO dedicated to AWARENESS AWARENESS AWARENESS and to helping fellow endosisters truly know they are not alone and also to help others who do not have this disease to understand how this disease impacts our lives; I have yet to find an area that is NOT impacted by this disease!

WE NEED A CURE!!!!!

These final pictures are from the most recent Endo March up in Palo Alto I attended, I just love raising awareness.

I would like to end this post with an important meditation from Inner Wisdom: Meditations for the Heart and Soul by Louise Hay.

I heal myself on all levels

This is a time of compassion and a time if healing.  I go within and connect with that part of myself that knows how to heal.  It is possible.  I know that I am in the process of healing.  During this time,  I discover my healing abilities- abilities that are strong and powerful.  I am incredibly capable.  I am willing to go to a new level to truly heal myself on all possible levels.  I am spirit,  and being spirit,  I am free to help myself- and the world.