The Dismantling of Our Rights

I have a medical issue that I have been trying to completely clear for a very long time. Over the years, I have looked at it from every direction / every angle I could think of (clearing emotional root causes as well as trying to address it nutritionally, etc) yet still not seeing the lasting results I was hoping for. The discouragement I have felt over the years, each time it flares up, has often brought me to the point of frustration (bordering on depression). 

With my most recent resurgence of symptoms, I decided to try approaching it in a new way. Rather than trying to figure it out myself, the other night before I went to bed, I told my guides that I would love the issue to be healed while I slept, if that was possible and if it was something I needed to work through myself, I asked that I at least be shown what I hadn't been able to see on my own.  

When I woke the next morning, I kept hearing "TSA. TSA." At first I felt frustrated by that - saying to myself "What's TSA got to do with it?" and then giggled to myself as I heard Tina Turner singing "What's TSA got to do with it, got to do with it" in my head. Then like a movie playing in my mind, I saw my last experience with TSA and with it, a flood of memories from a pretty awful weekend I had many years ago. As each piece of that weekend came back to mind, I thought "Oh, I forgot about that" and "Wow, I forgot that happened too." 

I liken it to finally dealing with that closet in your house - you know, the one you stuff all the things you don't know what to do with or where you stow things away when you have company coming, to the point where you can barely close the door anymore. After laying there for a few minutes, recounting all the details of that weekend, I felt the way you might if someone had emptied the closet and strewn the contents all over the floor (and you are wondering how all 5,000 of those items could have possibly fit in that tiny coat closet). LOL

It was the year that my best friends from college and I were all turning 40. When I was in college, there were a group of 8 of us that were absolutely inseparable. Four of us girls and four guys. We did everything together and a party wasn't a "party" until all of us were present and accounted for. In the years since then we still managed to get together a lot, usually requiring me to fly up north since almost everyone had settled in the same general area. With everyone but me married and having children, we had drifted a bit but I had managed to remain in close contact with almost everyone. 

On that particular weekend, I was invited to attend the 40th birthday bash of one of the gals and much to my disappointment, she had only invited me and one of the other girls from the old gang to her party. Several of the other members of our group lived in the area but weren't invited, which I understood was her choice, but it put me in an awkward position. I could fly into town and either tell them why I was there and risk them feeling uncomfortable / upset that they weren't included or lie to them about why I was in town, which felt equally gross. I decided to go with the third option which was to fly up there for the party and not tell any of the others that I was in town (which didn't feel good either but it felt like the best of the unpleasant options I had).

I reached out to a guy I had dated briefly about 5 years earlier to see if I could stay with him while I was in town. He had just moved there and didn't know many people, so I figured I could bring him with me to the party and give him a chance to meet a bunch of new people. Well, I had forgotten what it was like to be around him until I was there and in less than 24 hours, I deeply regretted the choice I had made. He was one of those people who would switch back and forth between being the kindest, most thoughtful person to being insensitive and borderline mean, then back to thoughtful and kind again. The pendulum of his behavior never stopped swinging so being around him threw me off kilter so much I didn't know which way was up. It left me feeling increasingly raw and out of balance.

By the end of the weekend, all I could think about was how much I wanted to just get home. The time I had spent around him pushed just about every button I had. The party wasn't all that much fun. The music was so loud you couldn't carry on a conversation and it was raining so hard that you couldn't step outside to talk. The birthday girl was so busy being the host of the party, we didn't even get a chance to visit. I felt guilty about being in town and not seeing my other college friends. It felt like a whole weekend of bad choices on my part.

As I was making my way through security, TSA decided "something" in my luggage was a threat to national security but they wouldn't tell me what. I said to the guy a couple times, "If you can tell me what you are looking for, maybe I can tell you where it is" but he just ignored me. With the line of people waiting to go through security growing longer and longer while the TSA agent haphazardly pulled everything out of my neatly organized carry on bag, I could feel the frustration of the travelers waiting to get through the check point and to their gates. 

Being a seasoned traveler, I had a pretty good system worked out for packing at the end of a trip. Clean clothes were neatly roll up to keep them from wrinkling, dirty clothes were folded on the other side of the bag so it was much easier to unpack and know what needed to go straight into the laundry basket. But as I stood there helplessly watching my dirty clothes being tossed into a pile with the clean clothes, feeling a growing sense of violation as my bras, underwear and other personal items were pulled out of the bag and thrown on the conveyer belt for all to see, I felt my own frustration as well.

On top of that when I was packing that morning I couldn't find the rubber band I used to secure the lid on my little box of jewelry, which concerned me as I had about 15 different sets of small delicate earrings in there along with a myriad of rings, bracelets and necklaces. I had rolled it snuggly inside a pair of slacks to keep it from spilling out inside my bag. so when he unrolled the slacks with the little box of jewelry, I instinctively reached out to touch the box while saying "Ooh, please be careful with that, the lid isn't secure and it's my jewelry." He freaked out because I had "touched him" in the process and he began yelling at me about how I needed to BACK UP, that I wasn't allowed to TOUCH HIM, etc. At that point I lost my temper, yelling back, "I just don't want you to spill my "#^&$%*" box of jewelry!" The next thing I knew, TSA agents had swarmed the security check point and were threatening to not allow me on the plane. Fighting back tears, I couldn't wrap my head around what was unfolding. All I wanted was to go home. 

He finally found what he was looking for . . . Apparently, I had put a lighter in the pocked of the pants I had been wearing the night before and didn't realize it. After removing that "incredibly dangerous item" from my bag, several security guards pitched in to shove all my belongings from the conveyer belt back in the bag, once again handling all of my undergarments, balling up my clean and my dirty clothes, in a rush to "get the line moving."

As I sat there in the waiting area, I felt all eyes on me as I dissolved into tears and attempted to repack my carry on bag. Was it really worth it? The aggravation of following the rules, along with the violation I just experienced, all in an attempt to find a lighter, which was going to "keep everyone safe?" It was in that moment that I vowed to never get on another plane. Granted I was feeling very raw and unbalanced because of the weekend I had just had, but I was sure that it was time to stop participating in things that felt so out of alignment with my soul.

On the flight home, I tried to process all that had occurred over the weekend as well as the frustration I felt over the TSA requirements that kept coming out . . . rules and regulations that kept changing and made no sense. I couldn't bring water on the plane, I couldn't just throw a shampoo and a conditioner bottle into my bag, I had to transfer them into small bottles under a certain amount of ounces, I couldn't have eyebrow tweezers in my carry on, etc.  And it was all meant to keep the world SAFE?? I was sickened by what we had accepted as the new "normal." None of it made sense to me and I couldn't understand why everyone just kept accepting the new "rules" and carrying on with a "business as usual" attitude.

Well, being true to my word, that all occurred 16 years ago and I haven't been on a plane since. My own little protest of one, which obviously hasn't changed anything in the grand scheme of things but it was the right decision for me and it does show how determined I can be to respect and honor myself and my own beliefs. I refused to bend and mold myself to meet requirements that offered no real value, while infringing on my personal freedoms. This feeling has once again been growing in me for the last year so it's no wonder the medical issue is back again as I have felt much the same way as I did 16 years ago.

While sitting with this "remembrance" I could see a pattern emerge . . . "something" occurs and we are encouraged to be very fearful as well as hateful towards a select group of "others". Then we are told we will be "safe" if we just follow along with some new rules. Meanwhile more of our freedoms are stripped away. If people question the new rules or express concern that our freedoms are being lost, we are encouraged to shame them with new labels like "unpatriotic" or "selfish and uncaring."

The parallels between then and now were hitting me squarely in the face and for a while I wasn't sure what to do about it. I just kept breathing into my heart and exhaling deeply. Then some of my own words, from my own blog posts began coming back into my head . . . the importance of being compassionate with ourselves and what we've been through (so I spent a little time "chatting" with my 40 year old self, offering some much needed empathy about how cruddy that weekend truly was) and offering compassion to myself for the number of times I have been told I was a bad sibling/friend for refusing to get on a plane. I reminded myself how important it was that I still find ways to be ME and honor my own soul. (Song lyrics played in my head . . . "I want to thank you for lettin' me be myself, again." 

Then I looked at how this applies to now. Maybe I need to be more forthcoming about why I haven't been participating in things that are out of alignment with my soul. Maybe it's about finding ways to more courageously enjoy MY life regardless of what everyone else is choosing to do. Maybe it's also about honoring and appreciating myself for choosing to love myself over pleasing (or trying to fit in) with others.

I acknowledge that this started out as a post about another option for healing something that keeps recurring and it seems to have morphed into a post pointing out that we are once again having our freedoms taken away from us. At first glance they may not seem to be connected and yet, in many ways they are. Things will keep showing up in our bodies (and in our reality) until we really look at them and decide if it is something we want to continue to experience. From there the choice is ours. 

I heard Tina Turner singing "What's love got to do with it, got to do with it" in my head and I smiled, as I thought "It's got everything to do with it" because it really comes down to how much we love and honor OURSELVES. It is about how brave we might need to be when we question things that don't make sense to us, how kind we might need to be to ourselves when others malign us for following our own hearts. I could see that when we stand up for ourselves and honor ourselves, we are showing ourselves LOVE. Then almost as if on cue, I heard the Beatles singing in my head . . . "All you need is love, love, love is all you need."

And I don't think that it is any accident that while working on this blog post, I received an email from one of the "gang of 8" from college, sharing his favorite song in response to an email I sent a few days ago with a link to my new favorite song. And his song just happened to be: "Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way" by U2.

We All Have "Wounds" to Heal

I personally believe that we all have wounds to heal - to varying degrees. i.e. things that trigger us into a bigger reaction to something than may seem appropriate at the time.  People often think that we have to have had terrible things happen to us in order to have "wounds" . . . so if they had a great childhood and didn't experience any kind of abuse then they don't think they have any wounds that need to be healed. Maybe it comes down to how we define the word "wound." 

To me, a "wound" can be a belief that we are holding onto (consciously or unconsciously) that limits us or makes us feel "less than" who we truly are. (i.e. Not smart enough, not pretty enough, not tall enough or thin enough, etc). It can be a belief based on experiences we had, that we keep seeing "proof" of as we get older (i.e. people not listening to us or not believing us, or constantly being interrupted when we are trying to speak, etc).  They can show up in so many ways . . . . those are just a few examples to give you an idea of what I am referring to. 

In our world right now, I see so much judgement and so much blame flying around. When I see someone judging the heck out of other people, it makes me sad because I know that it often indicates they are someone who was judged a lot when they were young and they likely judge themselves as harshly if not more harshly than they judge others.

The "beliefs" we hold about ourselves (again, it can be consciously or unconsciously) carry energy so we can inadvertently "pull in" experiences that match those beliefs, like a magnet pulls metal towards it. If we believe we are unlovable, we may attract partners who don't treat us very well or if we believe we will never catch a break in life, we may find that we keep having that particular experience over and over again. 

These "wounds" can show up in so many ways. Typically we have been living with them for so many years that we don't even think of them as "wounds" . . . they are just "things that happen" or "the way things are in the world" or whatever. 

I believe we have a choice if we want to keep holding onto these old beliefs and therefore having these experiences over and over. We can "heal" what's underneath them, let go of the beliefs and be free of them once and for all . . .  if we want to.

As a starting point, you may want to pull out a pad of paper and write down all the things that trigger you (things people do that have frustrated you / upset you lately). Then spend a little time thinking about each item on your list. Can you identify the "belief" underneath it that you might be holding? Get curious about yourself and what keeps showing up in your life that you'd prefer not to keep experiencing. Have some fun with it. 

Once you have familiarized yourself with your triggers and what beliefs may be underneath them, there are tons of possibilities for how you can let go of them. One simple thing you can do as a starting point is to ask yourself "Do I want to continue to believe this? Do I want to keep having this experience? Or would I like to be free of this once and for all? Sometimes it can be as simple as making that conscious choice. You can use your imagination and visualize "letting go" of the belief any way you'd like. You can write down what you'd like to believe instead and keep repeating that in your mind (often referred to as an "affirmation") every day. There is no "right way" to do it.

If the belief is a little more "embedded" in our system, it can sometimes require a little more effort on our part to set it free - once and for all.

Sometimes I look at the item and ask myself "Have I ever done this? (Often the answer is "yes" which allows me to have a little more compassion for the person who has triggered a reaction in me). As an example, I struggled with the "not being heard / not being believed" experience for much of my life. One day, it occurred to me that there were times where I didn't listen to myself (either ignoring my own gut feeling about something or doing something because it was expected of me, not because I wanted to do it). Once I realized that, I forgave myself for the times I treated myself that way. After doing that, it was easier to make sure I was doing a better job of listening to myself. Right away, I noticed that I was having less experiences of other people not listening to me. 

Sometimes I need to offer myself compassion for having the experience so many times. I treat myself the way I would treat one of my closest friends, and say - even if it's just in my mind - "Wow, that really sucks. I can only imagine how cruddy that must have felt to have people not believe you when you were telling the truth. I'm so sorry you had that experience." Often the act of offering myself some compassion for an experience is all I need to let go of the underlying belief.

Remember there is no "right way" to let go of or change a belief that doesn't serve us or support us in creating the life experiences we want to have. Have a little fun with it and see what results you get. If you don't feel you let it go completely, play around with it some more, let your imagination come up with another technique for clearing it out and see what happens.

The important thing to remember is that we get to choose. We get to decide if we want to let it go. We are free to change how we feel about ourselves anytime. We are free to have a life filled with the kind of experiences we want to have. The trick is to remember that it all starts with us. We can't change other people but we can change ourselves and the thoughts and beliefs we are holding inside us.

ps:  I chose this picture - of a Stellars Jay - for this blog (that my super sweet neighbor took for me because she knows they are one of my most favorite birds). They symbolize freedom and independence, as well as energy, curiosity, vision and determination. All of that seemed to connect with what I have written here, plus I just adore them and love seeing pictures of them.  :-)