FLIP THE TABLE

I've said it soooo many times, and I won't stop. Gratitude can change everything. Even sitting down to write this blog, I was feeling rushed and forced, and I didn't think it would be any good. To shift my energy, I sat down at a super hipster coffee shop, ordered my big, black cold brew, and I started to consider all the amazing things in my life I had to be grateful for. The support of my friends and my partner, the opportunities I'm creating. The path of purpose I'm on. All of it. So grateful! And lo, and behold, the inspiration struck. So here goes.

I know, first-hand, the transformative power of gratitude. I know, first-hand, a solid amount about Law of Attraction and manifestation. But, I had one HUGE hang up. Trauma. I've posted a lot about trauma this week and about releasing it, but there was more to say, and I wanted to use this blog to bring it all full circle. Releasing trauma and negative emotional attachments is super important. Rewriting your story is something you're 100% capable of. Using trauma as a tool instead of carrying it like a shackle is empowering. But, you, like I, might have a hard time getting to this place. Taking your power back from trauma can take some serious work. I've shared a couple tools this week, and I have another for you, but they can't properly be used without a sincere feeling of gratitude. All the coaches, podcasts, and books were saying over and over, "You've created every single thing that's ever happened to you." "You have manifested every good and bad thing for some reason, and you have to be grateful for all of it." "Gratitude is the way to happiness, so be grateful for every experience." I mean, I get the whole not having regrets thing. I get being thankful for my mistakes, because they brought me to where I am now. But, my hang-up? How the fuck am I supposed to be grateful for being raped? How do I begin to fathom or accept that I somehow manifested or that I created that situation? What about being hit by a semi-truck? I created that? Get the fuck out.

Let me back up and share some of my story. For as long as I can remember, I was accident prone. I got hurt all the time. I got labeled "the walking, talking Murphy's Law". What a horrible thing to be associated with! Just a reminder, Murphy's Law stated, "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." That was part of my identity. I thought of myself as always destined to screw up, be stuck in bad luck, and to only experience negative things. At some point, early in life, I subconsciously began to associate pain with attention and love. When I would break a bone, my parents would have to come get me from school and we'd go to the hospital, and I'd get a cast and an ice cream, but I would also get my parent's undivided attention. I'd get loved on. Cared for. My subconscious brain learned that there was a positive response when I experienced pain. Now, I did not uncover this association until very recently, so bare in mind, that I was ever AWARE of these connections. I was never AWARE that I had this underlying subconscious belief, but that just demonstrates the power of the subconscious mind. What lives in there, unquestioned, becomes your life. It colors how your life unfolds because it's communicating with conscious mind and the world around you that that's what you believe, how you operate, and how you are. When you hold a subconscious belief, even though you aren't aware of it, your conscious mind looks for ways to verify it and make it real. (I need to do a whole blog on this soon.) So, very early in life, I developed this belief that pain=love. Shit. Can you imagine telling a child that pain=love? How dysfunctional would that kid be? Very, right? Yea. Unknowingly, I held that belief. In THAT way, I did attract a lot of horrible situations into my life. 

I have always been incredibly top heavy. I mean, in 3rd grade I was told I couldn't leave the house without a bra on because it was distracting and noticeable how much I had "developed". In middle school, I would get in trouble for dress code violations that other girls didn't. Because I filled out clothes differently, I was perceived as being intentionally sexual. The reality was that I couldn't find clothes that fit, so my shirt button always popped open. I always joked that I had cleavage in a turtle neck, and it's not far from the truth, but it got me into a lot of trouble. I would get pulled out of class or, once, I had teachers and moms pull me out of my hotel room at a Model UN conference to tell me my clothing for the weekend was incredibly inappropriate. I was wearing a fucking pant suit and button down. Anyone else wearing this would have been normal, but because I had a huge rack, I was bad. I got the reputation as a slut because of this. It deeply hurt me. These experiences contributed to me learning that I was nothing more than my body. People saw me as boobs, not as a person with intelligence, humor, and moral standards to contribute. I was just boobs. My actions didn't matter. My feelings didn't matter. My intentions didn't matter. My body mattered. That was it. It was painful. I now can look back and see how these experiences shaped my subconscious beliefs, which shaped my reality. Looking back, I get it now. I get what the experts mean when they say you attract all things you've experienced in life: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I understand now how I manifested trauma into my life. I believed that pain=love and that my body was my value. Shit. That's heavy. That's dysfunctional. That's sad. BUT, now that I am aware, I can rewrite.

So, I've talked a lot about identifying and rewriting limiting beliefs. Sometimes, it takes unpacking the most painful events in life to get to the bottom of them and find the beliefs held by the subconscious that, in turn, manifested trauma into  your reality. This journey for me, this opening up and being authentic and sharing has given me so much healing. When I listed a bunch of my traumas down on paper, I was able to see how they all relate. I was able to say, "Ahhh, I see how those are all connected and come from the same limiting beliefs. I wonder what formed those beliefs.....*digs a little deeper* AHA! THERE!" So, this process gives you power. Yes, you have to dig into messy, painful parts of your life that you'd likely rather shove aside and bury, but that doesn't lead us to growth, does it? Nope. Give yourself the time and space to go into the painful, "ugly" parts of your story. Write them down. See what you can learn from those by tracing the events back to subconscious beliefs you hold that need to be rewritten for you to experience a reality that is joy and happiness and peace. From there, keep the lessons and release the pain. Release the energetic attachments you carry to people that have hurt you. (I covered one method in my last blog post.) When you confront the trauma and pain and find what you can learn from it, you begin to take your power back, and when you can find a lesson and release the pain, you become lighter. You start to lose the identity you had attached to you from the event. In this process, you get to reclaim who you are and not what has happened to you. You are NOT your trauma. You aren't the sum of the pain you've experienced. You're so much more, and it I want you to feel that freedom.

I always hated the word "victim". I HATED it. But, I was trapped in a victim mentality. I thought that I WAS the sum of the pain I had experienced. I used all the traumatic experiences of my life as excuses to not achieve. I was hit by a semi-truck. I live in constant pain. I can't *fill in the blank*. I'm fat, but I can't lose weight because I can't exercise or move at all. I can't have healthy relationships because of the trauma, pain and mistrust I carry from being sexually assaulted while I backpacked Europe. My anxiety was so crippling that I went through months of barely being able to leave the house. I used drugs and alcohol to cope. I felt like total shit in every realm of my life because I couldn't let go of the pain and the victimhood. It was perpetuated because, even though I hate the word "victim", I was trapped in it. After years of misery, I finally woke up and realized that I didn't have to feel this way. I didn't have to carry the weight. By not taking responsibility for my healing, by just hoping it would naturally happen, I was creating this sad reality where I couldn't get the things I wanted, I couldn't feel good, I couldn't experience happiness. So, I decided to purge. I spent weeks identifying the things I needed to release to be able to move forward, and the trauma were big ones. This was powerfully transformative for me, but I just couldn't get to the point where I was grateful for the traumatic events in my life. I had started to realize how I had played a part in creating them, but I just couldn't get to a place of gratitude. I'd released the events and the people. I'd identified the beliefs I had held that caused these things to happen. I'd found the beliefs that I needed to rewrite. I had started to take my power back. I had stopped identifying myself as a victim. I started being an active creator of my reality, but still, I just couldn't be grateful for the trauma and pain I had felt.

I've always known I had a higher purpose to serve. When I was 17, I had 2 very near-death experiences just a couple of months apart. Ever since that spring, I KNEW I had a reason for being here. But, what the hell was it? I've always felt this pressure to find it and serve the fuck out of it. My whole adult life has been me seeking and pursuing and beating into submission the things that I thought were my life's purpose. When I hired my first life coach this year, she introduced me to Human Design. I learned that I was a 3/5. I know this sounds hokey to some, but I've found a lot of truth in HD for me, and learning that I was a 3/5 made a LOT of sense. It also helped me open my eyes to see my purpose and the purpose for all the pain and trauma I'd experienced. Being a 3/5 means that I basically seek out experiences in this life to extract truth. I constantly, subconsciously, put myself into situations to learn about the world and myself. Some of these experiences are painful, some beautiful. But, I have these experiences so that I can share my findings with the world, or at least, my community. I basically exist to experiment, feel, and experience so that I can turn around and say, "Hey, this is what I've learned from this, and here's how you can better handle situations like this too. Here's how you can change to benefit from the truths I've learned." I get to serve as a mirror to people. I get to be a catalyst for change. I've always known I was meant to be, but I've felt a lot of angst not knowing how. Once I learned this and gained the courage to step into my most authentic, transparent self and share that self, I realized that I had a purpose to serve. I've been through all of this pain and saddness and trauma so that I can learn from it and guide others through the healing process. Since I figured this out, the whole Brett Kavanaugh thing happened. I knew then and there that I finally had to step out of the shadows and share my experience. I knew there were other people that have been through the same thing and haven't healed. I have. I want to be able to hold others through change. I want to guide others to find the peace and release and joy I've found. This is my purpose, and this is the purpose of my pain. The experiences were teaching me lessons that I needed to learn, because I can help others learn from these things. This is where I was able to find the gratitude. Experience, even painful experience can teach us something. Inspect, release, rewrite, heal. You can take your power back. You can rewrite your story. You can be grateful for all of it. You can experience freedom. And, maybe, just maybe, you can help somebody else do the same.

Hurt people hurt people, and healed people heal people. This world could use a lot more healed people in it. It could use more people, happy and authentic, living their purpose and experiencing good things. The ripple effect takes hold, and this, kids, is how we all can play a role in changing the world. It all starts within us. All the answers are within us. If I can help you through your pain, your transformation, or through any of the things I've talked about in this post, I'm available. I'm here. I'll hold you through it. 

As always, I believe in you.

- Mer