At age 15 I abandoned my NEGATIVE EMOTIONS. In doing that I lost myself, who I truly was.
This was a VERY strange situation because it happened directly after I believed I had FOUND myself. Looking back, I see the universe had a brilliant plan. What better way to get me to fight for my true self than to show me a taste of it and then have me lose it? My greatest life lessons have been to embrace, love, accept, express, and integrate ALL parts of the Self. When we are conditional with who are truly are we cannot BE who we truly are.
Since that day I have gained priceless wisdom about how to remain in the flow of who we truly are. I came up with the name “the authentic thread” around this time when I was still in high school and learning some pretty harsh lessons about being “authentic” and breaking old childhood patterns of perception. I now own a website that is completely dedicated to living to breathe and being our authentic selves. This website is called www.theauthenticthread.com and I encourage you to go check it out.
If my life is my teaching, I would say that I have learned the same lesson over and over again without a shadow of a doubt. The lesson is to LOVE your shadow, without doubt, it is part of YOU. Love your negative emotion and in doing this, remain whole.
I can remember the day as if it was yesterday. I was sitting in the lunch room at York Community High School. This is a day I talk about often and it is because it changed everything about my life. A simple pattern created a chain reaction of what would be extreme pain, confusion, and loss of self. Ultimately this pain and experience was the BEGINNING of my life’s work. The beginning of reclaiming, learning, and allowing the true self to lead.
I talk about this now in great detail because I can FINALLY not only understand what it was that had happened but I also see how that pattern has followed me my entire life. The freedom from this pattern lives inside a single awareness. Awareness is a shift in perception and therefore consciousness. You cannot do things as you have previously been taught and come to new conclusions. It is wrong to abandon your negative emotions and judge yourself for having them and furthermore create a mental idea of what the negative emotion is saying about you.
You see LIFE is both negative and positive, I don’t love those names or labels but it is true. Everything is perfect. Your negative emotion is as much or more of a divine guide for you as your positive emotion. Your negative emotion is an indication that you are hitting on something BIG. An opportunity for a shift, change, healing, and expansion, expansion of humanity not just yourself.
What we do wrong is JUDGE, when we judge our negative emotions as bad we cut ourselves off from our wisdom (true self) that guides us forward. We first judge ourselves forever HAVING this negative emotion. When we do this we are denying our divinity, You are denying YOU. Your negative emotion is not a separate part of you, it IS you. So with that said, when I felt I had LOST MYSELF that specific day in high school my junior year it is because I had. I had done what I felt was done to me my entire childhood. . . punished myself for having negative emotions. What is even worse is that I was fully aware that I was doing this BUT I did not know another way. I was so angry for not knowing another way and for not having anyone around me to show me another way. But you see this was the whole idea, to learn and gain my own wisdom through experience.
We all have some deep misinterpretations of some of the things that happened “to” us as kids. I say that lightly because I truly see and believe that everything is really always happening “FOR” us and our highest good. For me, a ruling impression was that my negative emotion was an indication that there was SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME. In fact, that would make perfect sense to me. At 7 years old I was put on medication (Ritalin) because I was too emotional, out of control with my expression, extremely sensitive, and unable to focus on school work and I would ACT out. For me, the clear message was that your negative EMOTION was wrong and that is what is wrong with me. My dramatic expression and keen sensitivity to others’ feelings and thoughts were what was wrong with me, or so I thought. So this day in high school when I was once again feeling a sense of potential “rejection” I immediately believed I had been too much of who I really was. Because when I was just being my authentic self I get REJECTED. That was the patterned message. What a scary, harmful, painful, and tragic internal message for a young person to live by. Let me be clear, no one told me these things, this was my own perception as a young girl.
So as we often do…. We begin to treat ourselves as we believe we were treated. We begin to numb or cut off or punish our own negative emotions (in my case). I decided I would try to be my BEST self at all times or better yet . . PERFECT. In order to sideline any and all rejection (that I perceived) was a result of me being who I truly was because who I authentically am is dangerous and creates rejection . . . I will just be perfect, fit an image so that I know I am safe. I will look perfect, and if I don’t know what to say I will say nothing at all. I will stop expressing myself and become an observer so that I can SEE what is safe to say and do to be accepted and not rejected. Becoming a model was a perfect option, lots of fertile ground there for living up to an unattainable ideal and being seen but not heard (LOL). Too bad there is also a lot of rejection even when you are perfect in that industry but you see that was all part of it….there is NO perfect.
Soon after becoming a model, I fell into ACTING. My agent at Ford told me I was much more than just a model. At the time I really didn’t know what she meant but I got it pretty quickly. The first audition she sent me on I booked. It was a movie called “SOUL SURVIVORS” shot in Chicago. An interesting title wouldn’t you say? To be an actress you must have immediate access to your truest and deepest emotion. I was being asked to express myself, and even being dramatic was a good thing. At that moment I saw that LIFE is always supporting our healing and things began to become almost humorous to me. It was all making sense, BUT why? Why did I have to ever go through that pain of losing myself in the first place if “the universe” was actually supporting who I truly was?
I was being asked to reconnect with my deepest gift which was instinct and feeling, raw emotion. This was painful, challenging, and threatening road for me BUT the more I would open up and allow myself to BE, feel and trust what was coming through me, I would heal a little.
So as you can tell I was learning that life WANTED me to be EXACTLY who I am. But why did I have this strong internal message that who I truly am is wrong or somehow flawed? As I did a LOT of deep healing work over the past 4 years I have come to see that “the universe always has our back”, it is humans that might not get it yet. It is our conditioning that creates blocks and misinterpretations that pinch us off from our TRUE SELF.
My life has shifted drastically in the past month. This may seem like a SHOCK to you, but it was certainly OUT OF THE QUESTION FOR ME, but I decided to walk my talk to a whole other level. I had been experiencing a continual sensation of needing expansion. There was something for me to look at that I had written off but what was it? I decided to just allow whatever messages came up without judgment. The messages kept directing me to VERY specific places, people, and ideas. Ultimately I was guided back to my acting roots. To put into action all the emotion and self-mastery that I had just reclaimed. What better way to actually BE the example of what you have learned? LOL, sometimes the universe cracks me up. I found myself face to face with such intense synchronicity I could NOT deny the path. After three years of thinking I was done, I am back at acting and I am ALIVE in ways I cannot explain. I am taking more risks, allowing my creative self to run the show, and every day I encourage my every emotion to the surface. I am living the lessons of my own life. I am walking the talk, living through my heart to the best of my abilities, and hopefully encouraging others to align with their true self as well.
I do not know where my journey will lead me and I don’t have to know. What I do know is that I have found the KEY. The key to living a FULL, truthful and honest life is to love, allow and express each and every feeling you have. This is being true to yourself and it is all the universe ever wants of you. Never abandon, ignore or numb ANY of your feelings because your feelings are YOU, your feelings are your wise guide and will take you on the most incredible ride.
I Love You All!
For coaching info with Candace go to the CONTACT section of this website.
Namaste
