Writing prompts sometimes arrive unbidden. Today’s inspiration showed up while I was on the table of my friend and chiropractor, Darin Mazepa. He is a a practitioner of a modality called Network Chiropractic. While I was lying face down, he asked me to lift both arms and allow him stand in front of me to support them. As was to be expected, I attempted to lighten his load by holding them aloft.
He laughed as he said, “Your arms are an expression of your mind and heart.” What he meant was that my typical way of being in the world was to hold them up on my own and everyone else with them. On a physiological level, I have been working them at the gym so that my biceps and shoulders are in a condition that would do Michelle Obama proud. For most of my life, I had believed I needed to carry the literal and figurative weight of the world. I was afraid to let people down, so I didn’t let my arms down and as such, I did what was expected of me. I took care of people, anticipating their needs before they could think to ask. In service to my co-dependent fear of abandonment, I learned how to inspire and uplift.
I wondered what people would think if I asked them for their support. Would I be trusted? Would I still be the go-to person? That role is a mixed blessing, since it is a responsibility that I would sometimes like to forgo. My friends have told me that it is a gift to them to allow them to be there for me as I am for them. I am taking baby steps in that direction.
Tech challenges fall into that category too as I was having difficulty locating a file I needed, so I had to re-write the copy for spots for my radio show. Sighing through the detours and re-directs in my life.
Still God-wrestling as I woke up this morning to more shifts that call on me to engage in attitude adjustment. If I wasn’t worried about finances since a major job change, how would I be feeling about my life? Pretty darn good, since I have loving family and friends, vibrant good health since a series of bumps in the road in that realm in the past few years, creative work that I love, travel, adventure…. much to be grateful for.
I am learning to surrender arms and embrace life fully as I breathe~