Category: Reflections

On Shadows

On Shadows

Posted on by Dawn

One thing I like to advocate for is not standing in anyone else’s shadow. Shadows are dark spots. Why hide there in someone’s shadow, outside of the limelight when you have so much to offer the world? You have unique gifts and talents. Discover them! Use them! Nothing is more fulfilling that using than using those talents and techniques you love to make the world a better place.

But what about your own shadows? The flip-side to the light are the dark places inside. They are not inherently evil, but people act like they don’t have a dark side because of the connotation that dark=evil. It’s called your shadow self because of the things in it that you don’t want to admit to being a part of you. Things like anger, desires and uncomfortable emotions. But instead of trying to ignore it or heal it or otherwise dispose of it, why don’t we embrace it and see what it has to teach us? If there’s anger there, perhaps it can help you place better boundaries in your life. If you have desires there that you don’t want people to know about, maybe you need to see why they are so strong or what experiences in your life caused them to rise up. Your subconscious might be trying to tell you about a lack in your life you aren’t taking care of or about an emotional wound that is festering that needs some tlc. Ignoring our shadow selves causes us to be unbalanced and to live lives of inauthenticity. Go on, give yourself a hug and tell yourself that you accept yourself, dark spots and all.

So to recap, stay out of the shadows cast by others and let your own light shine. And that light can shine even brighter still when we take the time to acknowledge and understand our own shadows. Almost every person I know who is a beacon of light and a joy to be around became so after a period of darkness and learning to grow and accept all of themselves.

You can’t be a colourful person if you pretend that half the colours don’t exist.

For more information on shadow self, click here.

On Learning to Love Yourself

On Learning to Love Yourself

Posted on by Dawn

Despite our best efforts, sometimes negativity alights on our shoulders and whispers unkindness in our ears. It happens. For those who struggle with self-esteem and mental health issues, it happens more often than we’d like. I wish I could say it’s easy to overcome the negativity, especially when others have forced that kind of vibe on us during our formative years and beyond. It’s not easy but it is a worthy pursuit!

When my first marriage broke up, I was devastated and was also dealing with the fallout of leaving what many would consider an abusive church. I felt unloved, unwanted and utterly defeated in life. It was easy to dwell on the negatives while grieving my losses, but I realized that if no one else was being particularly kind to me, well, I could certainly give it a whirl. If anyone else had confided in me that they were going through a similar trial, I would have told them to be gentle with themselves, to take really good care of themselves and to rest and find ways to work through their intense emotions. Basically, I would be telling them to love themselves. It’s something many of us struggle with because being truly good to ourselves isn’t exactly an intuitive thing when you have self-esteem issues.

Self-love is not selfish, but a necessity in order to be the best version of ourselves that we can be! If you take care of you first, then you have the strength and resources to take care of others and maybe even take on the challenges of a world seemingly gone mad. So be kind to yourself. Eat good food and get plenty of rest. Remind yourself of how far you’ve come, not how far you have to go. If you’re choking back anger or hurt, give yourself permission to express those emotions so healing can come. Write them down, have a good cry, scream into a pillow. If you don’t, those repressed emotions have a sneaky tendency to surface when least wanted because you didn’t deal with them. In most everything, it is possible to re-frame the circumstances and journey with positivity and gratitude if you just spend a little mental effort to do so. And you’ll be surprised at how much better you feel day to day when you make the effort to be kind and loving to yourself.

It’s maybe not the answer to all your woes, but it sure helps to get through them with strength, dignity and grace. It takes some effort but the results are worth it. Because YOU are worth it!

On Taking Responsibility

On Taking Responsibility

Posted on by Dawn

We all know what it means to be responsible. It’s something we try to teach our children so that they clean up after themselves, take care of their possessions and ultimately learn to be good adults someday. But there are other aspects of responsibility that require a little more finesse and awareness.

Take for instance, you’ve found yourself complaining to your spouse about a mess someone left behind (which is a pet peeve of mine. Don’t leave messes for other people to clean up!) and you cast blame on him or perhaps one of your children. As parents, sometimes we just ‘assume’ certain individuals have done things because of past experience with them. But if you were to have blamed the wrong person and had gotten in their face about it, do you take responsibility for your mistake and go apologize? When I’ve been wrongly accused, I remember in certain situations how it stung even as the truth came out and no one sought to make amends. What if you let a co-worker take the blame and an admonishment for something that you did? Would you confess to the co-worker or your manager?

These types of minor injustices can be embarrassing to take responsibility for. You might even think, in the case of having wronged a child, it would make you look weak to apologize to them. But if we don’t do our part to make amends and be responsible adults in these little things, we allow others to begin to harbour resentment against us. In the case of not apologizing to your child, you give them a strong example to follow. One that won’t serve them well in the future. You might want to put the onus on the injured party and say, well that person just needs to forgive me, that’s on them. And to some degree that is true. But if you know you did wrong , or you stood by and let somebody else do wrong because of your inaction, well, that’s really on you, isn’t it?

Trust me, humble pie doesn’t taste as bad as you think it will. And that feeling of relief and reconnection is worth the little bit of embarrassment or humility it might take to set things right.

It’s too easy in our current culture to blame everyone but ourselves. Just like we’ve learned to be responsible for our bills, our possessions and our children, let’s learn to be responsible with our words and actions as well. You’ll be a better person for it!

Just Relax

Just Relax

Posted on by Dawn

I was getting down on myself as I haven’t been productive, or at least as productive lately as I generally like to be. But there have been some added stresses to my life lately, and seriously, the creativity can’t flow when you are stressed out and in a grumbly mood. Me, in a grumbly mood? Yes, apparently I’m not always sunshine and smiles although I do try to be.

Instead of getting down on yourself about all the things you ‘should’ be doing (and please note that if you are using the word ‘should’, you are standing in judgment of yourself. Not nice!) take a moment, breathe and stop it! You’re only human. We all have crap to deal with now and again and sometimes it’s more than the old noggin can handle efficiently. So slow down, relax, unwind and detangle the jumbles of thoughts spinning in your head. Easier said than done, I get that. But sometimes you really need the downtime to do little or nothing, to let your brain and body rest.

So I did that for a couple of weeks. Went to my day job but took it easy at home most days I was off instead of doing a kazillion household chores and working on my websites. I wondered to myself how I got so much done over the winter when I was doing several art videos and building websites as well as working my day job! That much work now is unthinkable! But I noticed in my quiet time today that new concepts were hatching in my mind and ideas for new projects were springing up. I realized that I had allowed myself to be agitated and had been ruminating over things I had little control over. As I sat petting my cat last night, I noticed for the first time in a few weeks that I felt lighthearted inside, and how much I missed that!

So, if you’re a do-gooder, diplomatic, creative weirdo like me and you’re not feeling the flow, maybe it’s time to slow down and smell the roses (or coffee, seeing as this is my story!), relax and just chill for a bit. Most of what we stress over isn’t going to result in anyone’s demise, so put it on the back burner and carve out some mental health time and take care of your mind and spirit the same way you take care of your body. It’ll feel good!