My Front Row
Everyone Can’t Be in Your Front Row
Life is a theatre – invite your audience carefully. Not everyone is healthy or
Loving enough to have a front row seat in our lives. There are some people in
Your life that need to be loved from a distance.
It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you let go, or at least
Minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going-anywhere relationships, friendships and fellowships!
Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention to:
Which ones lift and which ones lean?
Which ones encourage and which ones discourage?
Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill?
When you leave certain people, do you feel better or feel worse?
Which ones always have drama or don’t really understand, know and appreciate
You or the gift that lies within you?
The more you seek GOD and the things of GOD — the more you seek quality
The more you seek not just the hand of GOD, but the face of GOD– the more you
Seek things honorable
The more you seek growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you, the easier
It will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the FRONT ROW and who should
Be moved to the balcony of your life.
You cannot change the people around you…but you can change the people you
Are around!
Ask GOD for wisdom and discernment and choose wisely the people who sit
In the front row of your life.
Letting Go by Judy Burnette
How do you walk away from someone you love And take the road of friend; Can you reroute the course you have taken And start over once again? I don’t really want to let you go But inside me I know I must; The times we’ve loved . . . the times you’ve left My heart says stay . . . but it’s my mind I must trust. We have shared so much together Laughter . . . fun times . . . tears; Yet sometimes we can’t turn back time We must walk away, and allow ourselves to heal. I know one day you will be happy And your soulmate you will find; I know we each have one out there Even if for now . . . only in our minds. May life be gentle with you May God’s best come your way; And on some quiet tomorrow You will realize things were better this way.
Sometimes goodbye is a second chance….
Have you ever noticed when you say goodbye to someone….and really mean it, it can either be liberating or consuming. It’s always one or the other. Why can’t we just say goodbye for the sake of throwing someone the deuces?
I feel like everytime I have tried to say goodbye to someone whether my fault for the end of a relationship or the other person’s, I still get shafted. I never get a goodbye that is constant. It could be my inability to let go, or it could even be that I have lost too many people and try to find a way to keep as many people as I can. It’s never really over.
My decision to move is the best decision I will ever make. I feel sometimes you can have too much of one place, and sometimes getting away for a few years is the best way to let go. New places, new experiences, new people. Fresh start. I can’t wait to disappear from this life of a quarter century and finally go to a place with a new everything. I can leave and erase my trail.
Liberation I tell you. It’s the best feeling in the world, maybe even better than love.
Who’s afraid of commitment?
So this issue was brought up to me the other day……and I thought, wow…am I one of those people who freaks out whenever someone gets way too close into my comfort zone? HECK YES I AM! But what I never realized was that this concept in particular may have been a main issue in many of my relationships over the years, so that got me thinking……
Why am I so scared of commitment?
Well, I have a lot of maybe’s, but never a definite. Maybe it’s because my heart was broken so badly all of 6 years ago that I just don’t know how to pull it all back together again and trust in all things good. Maybe I became a pessimist. Maybe it’s because my whole life I was taught to internalize my emotions and this resulted in never being completely open and honest with how I feel about people, circumstances, and situations. This in turn backfired when I started to attempt to open up and reverse how I dealt with internalization.
Although commitment still makes me freeze and retract into a shell, my ability to openly communicate has improved, but that’s a whole different subject. Why is it so hard to learn how to communicate as an adult? Sometimes I find myself opening up and telling someone how I feel and a minute later I have completely confused every word that came out of my mouth and both I and the other person leave the conversation with question marks on our foreheads. ::sighs and smh:: Communication is so hard, but learning to love fearlessly in God is even harder, especially when the first person you ever loved and had a relationship with is jerked from your life in God’s will. Truth be told, my first boyfriend has left a scar on my heart and mind. I never uttered the words “I love you” to anyone before I met him…..and then tragedy took him away. Can anyone really point their fingers at me and blame me for being the recluse that I am?
Commitment is hard. Love is harder. Communication is the hardest. I guess now that I’ve taken the first step in admitting that these 3 things are fear itself for me, maybe I can slowly learn to deal with it and grow……
You got me.
Uh Uh Uh,
Got me like.
Wooo-hooo
When I think about you
That’s the first thing that come to my mind.
I’m like
Wooo-hooo
Baby you can get it all,
You can get it all
You can get it wooo-hooo
When I think about you
That’s the first thing that come to my mind.
I’m like
Wooo-hoo Shawtie you can get it all
You can get it all
I know you heard my reputation
You don’t think I would ever do right by you
You think that if you and I was in a relationship
I would never be true (be true)
You think that anything I say is straight gang
And to me your just another new name
But what I’m tryna tell you for every man
There’s a woman thal make him change
And I believe you the one thatl make me
But any time I try ta show you you shake me
I know I make it real hard for you to take me serious
But baby girl I am (I am)
And I ain’t stoppin right here, I’m a keep going
And I’m gona make sure everyday tat you keep knowing
Weather if I have to send you flowers
Or talk to you on the celle-phone for few hours
I’m yellin like…
Wooo-hooo
When I think about you
That the first thing that come to my mind.
I’m like
Wooo-hooo
Baby you can get it all,
You can get it all
You can get it wooo-hooo
When I think about you
That’s the first thing that come to my mind.
I’m like
Wooo-hoo Shawtie you can get it all
You can get it all
(One, one, one, one)
One minute you act like you like me
And then the next you don’t
You still sending me crazy emails
Like I know it’s just sex you want
I can’t lie the sex is truly incredible
And every part of your bodys so edible
I get tears from just thinking bout it
But that ain’t the reason why I’m stuck and can’t let you go
We got a serious serious bond
And when we kick it we have nothin but fun
I feel a whole lot of L-O-V-E between you and me
Even though we still younge
Just your company ain’t gota get none
Talk the same lingo, understand where I’m coming from
And if anybody ask me a question about you
I’m a tell em you the one
You got me like
Wooo-hooo
When I think about you
That the first thing that come to my mind.
I’m like
Wooo-hooo
Baby you can get it all,
You can get it all
You can get it wooo-hooo
When I think about you
That’s the first thing that come to my mind.
I’m like
Wooo-hoo Shawtie you can get it all
You can get it all, you can get it
As long as you know that
I can have any girl I want to
Baby that sexual infectual
But still I coose you to be
With me and were gona
So you better not break it up
You got me like
Wooo-hooo
When I think about you
That the first thing that come to my mind.
I’m like
Wooo-hooo
Baby you can get it all,
You can get it all
You can get it wooo-hooo
When I think about you
That’s the first thing that come to my mind.
I’m like
Wooo-hoo
Shawtie you can get it all
You can get it all, you can get it
Friendships
I love my friends. Everything has gone wrong for me in life, and I was just dealt a really bad hand. But through it all and over the years, I have been so very blessed with strong friendships. That’s one aspect of my life that God was very gracious in, because I have more best friends than I can count. Anytime that I have been down, or going down the wrong path, unable to sustain the pain or hurt by myself, I have always been cushioned with heaps of love from my friends.
Everytime I look up and question why I am always chosen to beat the odds, I realize it’s because God gave me the strength to face obstacles. My strength isn’t just from within, it’s all the hands of my friends always ready to be there for me, and I’m eternally grateful.
Learning how to unlock tissue memory
by Nicole Cutler, L.Ac.
Many scholars believe that pain and trauma are incidents prevented from being completed. These can be single damaging events such as a car accident, continuous bombardments requiring emotional defenses, or over-training of isolated muscles that lock the body into a recognized pattern. Traumas can be considered anything that keep us locked in a physical, emotional, behavioral or mental habit. Recovery from trauma is the process of the body finding balance and freeing itself from constraints. All too often, the recovery process is halted, preventing the traumatic occurrence from completing.
There are many reasons traumatic incidents cannot be completed, creating stagnation and causing a cascade of physiological protective mechanisms to separate the trauma from affecting everyday functioning. Because our bodies and emotions can only safely handle a limited amount of stress, trauma results whenever an experience exceeds our abilities to handle and cope with its consequences. The energy of the trauma is stored in our bodies’ tissues (primarily muscles and fascia) until it can be released. This stored trauma typically leads to pain and progressively erodes a body’s health.
Feelings
Emotions are the vehicles the body relies on to find balance after a trauma. Feelings represent the accumulation of incomplete events and the body’s attempt to complete them. By strengthening our inner resources, we are capable of processing these feelings, releasing stored traumas, and increasing our ability to handle stress with greater ease.
Protection
When trauma occurs, our bodies activate a protective mechanism. A stressor that is too much for a person to handle overloads the nervous system, stopping the trauma from processing. This overload halts the body in its instinctive fight or flight response, causing the traumatic energy to be stored in the surrounding muscles, organs and connective tissue. Whenever we store trauma in our tissue, our brain disconnects from that part of the body to block the experience, preventing the recall of the traumatic memory. Any area of our body that our brain is disconnected from won’t be able stay healthy or heal itself. The predictable effect of stored trauma is degeneration and disease.
Memory Beyond the Brain
There is ample scientific evidence proving memory storage in locations other than the brain abound. Three examples of the body containing extraordinary memory capabilities are:
1. Immune system response is enhanced by memory T-cells maintaining information about previous attacks by specific foreign antigens.
2. Muscle memory improves the ability of top class sports people and musicians to perform optimally even under extreme pressure.
3. Genetic research has demonstrated that the matrix composing our body’s cells (DNA) possess a complex information storage system.
When considering the vastness of our body’s intelligence, it is no wonder that our muscles and fascia are capable of holding memories.
Unlocking Memories
Three things are necessary for the body to release stored trauma:
1. The inner resources to handle the experience that were not in place when the experience originally occurred.
2. Space for the traumatic energy to go when released. Being full of tension and stress does not allow space for the stored trauma to move into.
3. Reconnection of the brain with the area of the body where the trauma is stored.
Combining bodywork with verbal therapy can successfully bring a trauma to completion. Many types of verbal therapy are ideal for the development of a person’s inner resources for handling a traumatic experience. Certain bodywork styles effectively reduce stress and tension levels making room for release as well as function to reconnect the brain with the stored trauma.
Bodyworkers play a key role in bridging locked memories with the physical body. The techniques known as myofascial release or myofascial unwinding are hands-on methods for initiating traumatic memory release. Myofascial work locates and physically frees the restrictions in muscle and surrounding fascial tissue that house traumatic memories. As a skilled therapist holds and unwinds these tissue tensions, memories may surface and release, causing the body to spontaneously “replay” body movements associated with the memory of the trauma. This release initiates relaxation, unlocking the frozen components of the nervous system. Such a shift marks the reconnection of the brain with the tissue housing the trauma, allowing transformation and healing to ensue.
Seeking Support
Bodyworkers utilizing myofascial release techniques practice within the illuminating space between physical and emotional health. While developing the emotional resources to cope with a traumatic experience is best reserved for those specifically trained in verbal therapy, bodyworkers can effectively fill the gap of total health in traumatic recovery. As psychological counseling is beyond the scope of practice for most massage therapists, it is recommended to practice release techniques with a client who has sought, or is currently seeking support from a mental health professional. Meeting all three of the components necessary for unlocking and healing from stored trauma combines the work between client, mental health professional and bodyworker. With this holistic approach, traumatic events can go to completion, allowing the body to once again find balance.
Time.
I’d like to take a minute to apologize
For not taking advantage of you
Through all the years you’ve passed me by
Honestly I really wanted to be mad at you, yes
For so many hours waiting, yeah
I finally know what it means to be patient
And everything has its place, yeah
And reason and I’ve learned that
Time waits for nothing
And everything is gonna take its time for it to happen
Time waits for nothing
And everything is gonna take its time
Time waits for nothing and no one
Cause everything has its time
I used to think that if I tried
Then maybe I could change the things that
I regretted in my past life
But through all the lessons that you taught me
I have learned my experiences enhanced my character, yes
Now as I look back with what I know now
I can say that I wouldn’t change a thing
Cause I love who I became, yeah
And when it’s all said and done
I can only live for today
Cause I’ve learned that
I used to find it hard to believe
And almost impossible to conceive, yeah
Everything I do revolves around you
And knowing that, its kind crazy to me
Now if I had a dollar for every moment
That I spent watching my days go by
Doing, doing, doing nothing
I probably never be penniless or hopeless.
So for a while now, I’ve kept in mind
Cause what they say is true
That you are of the essence
Down to the very last second
And I’m so glad that I’ve grown to
Respect you
Taking down the rearview mirror…
Isn’t it funny…..we all seem to do it at some point, to sit there and dwell on the past. Whether it’s a grudge held from a bad friendship growing up, to despising an ex that broke your heart, to drowning in the pain and sorrow of a lossed one, we all stare into our rearview mirrors. For some, we look long enough to realize that there was a lesson to be learned and we take it and walk away. However, others get so lost in what they are looking back at that we often times forget to watch where we are going.
Sometimes we find ourselves in the same picture, but a new picture frame as my friend Cory once said. That’s when it clicked to me. I find myself in cycles and the only person I have to blame is myself. The question is, can I not let it go or am I missing the lesson? Or maybe I’m missing the big picture altogether. Maybe I just got so used to feeling pain and sadness that I’m afraid to be content and happy. Truth be told, I often find myself avoiding happiness so that it won’t be taken away from me again. I rather be miserable than to let things go right only to get messed up repeatedly. I’ve convinced myself that if I am just numb and only allow myself the occasional sadness and depression, I’ll never feel the pang I experienced before. Who am I kidding at the end of the day? Myself.
I’m so busy staring in the rear view at all the pain and sadness that I’ve experienced in my life because I thought maybe I could find away to never feel those feelings again…..and it’s brought me to a dead end. Not only have I started to shut down again, I find myself in a dark world with a single strong arm reaching out to me to keep me above water. Am I always going to rely on someone to bail me out when things get so bad I can’t handle it by myself? That’s not the life I want, and that’s not the hand I want to grab. I have one chance to make things right, and if there’s anything I’ve learned from Stella, it was to do everything to make that one chance right.
So I’m making a very public vow to stop looking in that rearview mirror. The past is where it belongs, along with the people I left there.
Six years doesn’t erase the pain of loss….
It’s almost as funny to me when I think of being 14 and having my life planned out. Had I known back then that this is where I’d be at 25, I am pretty sure I would’ve done things differently. Who wouldn’t have? We’d planned to get married when I turned 25, our future plans, how my Mom would take care of the kids for us….being together until we were old and gray rocking on our porch chairs. Lol, the past 6 years have been a blur. I lost my entire sense of self this day six years ago. All of a sudden I didn’t care about my future, getting married, having kids….everything I had wanted growing up suddenly went to hell and beyond. I’ve never recovered….I never wanted that future again.
I just wanted you to know I still think about you all the time. The memories of our 4 years together and all the ways you shaped me have not left me. Sometimes I still hear your laughter, smell your cologne, feel my hand in yours….no one knows heartbreak until the one person they care the most for in life is taken from them.
I’m thinking of going to your parents house tonight for the vigil….but my heart may stop me. I can’t go down memory lane forever, and at some point I will have to let it go. But I just wanted to share with all my friends and yours….that today more than other days, my heart is saddened by the aching memory of the phone call that changed my life. I miss you.
