Category: Healing

Healing, Inspiration

Do You Remember when Healing Happened for You?

Erin Keane

Healing  gathers great power when we remember:

In your moments of frustration, disconnection, pain, suffering, brokenness, you can also absorb healing energy right from within your body. This energy, comes from the memories stored inside your mind, your heart, your finger tips and toes; it comes from every part of your being. For example, when  you get on a bike, your body remembers what it needs to do to keep balance and pedal, each and every time you get on. Just as easily as you can remember to  ride a bike, you can remember your moments of strength, peace, equilibrium, balance, brighter days, happiness, forgiveness, etc. Tapping into memories of times when you have overcome an obstacle can bring healing into your life in an instant.

Healing is an on-going journey, it never has a specific end date. So evoking a memory won’t heal everything instantaneously, but evoking memories of healing in your life will allow healing to begin to happen. Just think for a moment of a time when you went through something difficult in your life, but you were able to make it though. Embrace this memory of your inner strength, your body feeling peace, laughing again, feeling in balance again.

For example:

    • When you went through a break-up and were heart broken, but day by day you got a bit better, and then one day took the chance to love again.
    • When you were in pain, that seemed to never have an end, but you awoke one morning and felt peace within your body
    • When  you thought God forgot about you, but then something wonderful happened, even if it wasn’t the way you expected it to
    • When you thought that you would cry every day for the rest of your life, but one day you started to laugh again
    • Fill in your own obstacle that you over came, and how

By remembering the “overcoming” of something difficult in your life, you give yourself permission to have hope, and to believe that healing is possible because you remember when something positive came out of something negative—it gives you the hope that you can get through this present difficulty. Furthermore,  by transforming the negative, painful energy into positive energy, you also allow healing to begin to happen. Lastly, by remembering the positive outcomes from a difficult situation you give your body permission to work towards healing, instead of having your body work against you (like not eating well, or sleeping good, now you can!)

You already have these positive memories inside you. Go to them, and use them to help you be well in your life.

Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue
©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™ All rights reserved.
Please also visit my photography site: Naturescapes, Flowerscapes & Cityscapes

Discovering Strength, Healing, Inspiration

HopeFull Healing

Erin Keane

Fill yourself with hope, and abundance will overflow within you.

What does being hopeful feel like within you?

For me it’s like an ocean flowing within me, and each time I think of something I am hopeful for a beautiful drop of water falls into my ocean, making a splash, sending ripples , and connecting other drops of hope together. It’s like filling myself up with goodness and peace. And the feeling is so full that  I have to connect to things outside myself, and share this wonderful energy with all that surrounds me. This sharing comes from the healthy longing I have for something good, something wonderful…

I call hope a healthy longing, because being hopeful, actually does make us healthier. For example: Have you ever reflected on when you’ve been sick with a cold? Most of us, when we are sick, may be frustrated that our cold is getting in our way. We may do things to take care of ourselves like, resting, getting our vitamin C, and drinking hot tea with honey. We do these things because they are good for us, but have you ever realized maybe you are doing these things also because you are hopeful that you will get better?  This HOPE to get better, motivates you to take care of yourself because you want to be well.  And within this HOPE is also your ability to imagine…you are able to imagine what you will feel like when you are better. Imagining something wonderful and good for you, fills your body with HOPE.  And this HOPE flows within you, filling your body with goodness, healing energy and love. Hope allows your body to rest, by filling your cells with positive energy; i.e., your body isn’t fighting something off instead it is creating balance, equilibrium.

Hope also creates a wonderful energy within our spirit. I often imagine hope is like a flame that keeps burning even when the oil has run out. This kind of hope ignites our spirit…invites us, and even forces us to move forward in a positive way. It creates a longing within our hearts that makes all that is good within us blossom within us. Hope removes our fear and disappointment and fills us with “confident expectations”  that what we want in life will truly happen for us.

I know that being hopeful has brought me through experiences and circumstances in my life, that I would not have gotten through without it. When I was depressed it was very challenging to be hopeful. But it was the one thing that did keep me going. I don’t know how I would have made it without some kind of hope. That is why I deeply believe that “hope is a flame that keeps burning even when the oil has run out.” I kept believing that one day things would be better, even in the midst of my “valley of tears.’ And it did. It is hope that continues to keep me moving forward—and in difficult times, it is the remembering of when I have been hopeful and life has brought me into the light of goodness that gives me strength.

What has hope done for you in your life?

Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue
©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™ All rights reserved.

Connecting to the wonder we are, Healing

Healing Wonder is All Around You

Erin Keane

Children remind us that wonder is all around us. All we have to do is look.

May the world you see around you bring wonder through your eyes,

and fill your body with healing joy.

Remember that one of the gifts of life is to take the time to PAUSE and soak up life. The more often you do this the deeper the healing that will happen in your life. This “down-time”—will rejuvenate your mind, body and spirit. You need to open yourself to these healing opportunities in life…because they can easily be missed if you are too busy.  

Life already has healing available to you everywhere. It is just a matter of allowing  yourself to experience it.

Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue
©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™


Connecting to the wonder we are, Healing

Sunsets Heal Us

Erin Keane


Open Your Eyes
Soak up creation

Fill the depths of your soul
with the evening light

Become one with the earth
and be fully at home with the amazing person you are.

Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue
©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™ All Rights Reserved.

Healing, Inspiration, Life

What You Need is Right There Inside You

Erin Keane

As we celebrate Father’s Day, a day to celebrate good men in our lives who guide us, may each and every one of us be reminded of the amazing individuals we are. We all have been given gifts that we are to share with each other, so that transformation and growth can happen in the lives of those we meet, and within ourselves.


*This photo originally appeared in You are Enough with Some to Spare


Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue
©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™ All Rights Reserved.

Healing, Spirituality

Serenity

Erin Keane

Serenity flows through the natural world.

Listen and you can hear 

the beating of your own heart

and the deepening of your breath

in rhythm and connection

with the powerful tranquility of creation

that becomes fully alive in you

as you return to the roots of your being.

Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue

©️2012-2020. Erin Keane. Bella Bleue Healing and Blessings. All rights reserved. No portion of any post or photo may be copied or reproduced without prior written permission from the author, Erin Keane. Find me on Instagram @Erins_blessings and at Facebook Bella Bleue Healing & Blessings by Erin Keane

Connecting to the wonder we are, Healing, Inspiration

Calming My Soul and Nourishing My Spirit

Erin Keane

Today I was in need of filling my soul with something good, something that would nourish me and calm me. So I took my son with me to the Nursery and filled our senses with the gift of flowers. I realize more and more that nature fills gaps of emptiness in my spirit. I don’t know if any of you feel empty at times, even if your life may be full in so many other ways, or if emptiness is only a part of the deep lining of depression that likes to surface unexpectedly in my life? Whatever it is, thankfully, nature is here for us.

As my son and I walked around the gardens, I was being pulled towards the roses. I’ve been wanting a rose bush for some time. I love their fragrance and how they calm your body when they fill your senses with their scent. I had no intentions of buying a bush today, and then I saw this wonderful plant, and decided I would give-in and bring this rose home with me today. I walked all around the roses, and this was the one that spoke to me. It is called a Day Breaker Rose.

After I brought the rose home, I kept looking at it, over and over again. I know it is beautiful, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it…why I am I so taken by this plant? And as the evening light began to transcend, I suddenly became aware of why this flower was soothing my soul. It reminds me of a sunset. The kind of sunset that fills the sky with it’s yellows, pinks, reds and oranges. I LOVE sunsets. The evening sky is my favorite part of the day. I have always loved twilight. It is the time of day when I feel like the light of the sky and the Divine are embracing creation with a warm peaceful love. And as the earth is embraced, I too am being hugged by this beauty and peaceful Love. And of course my spirit is being calmed. During sunsets I also discover a serenity that transcends me beyond myself and the emptiness I feel seems to disappear as I my body and spirit are filled with this beautiful light and color.

Now I get to see my sunset every day as my rose bush blooms. And my sunset will not just be something I wait for in the evening, but will fill me throughout the day.  I imagine my spirit will be well nourished.

How about you? What fills your empty spirit or nourishes your deeper longing?  I’d love to hear what helps heal your soul.

Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue

©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™ All rights reserved.

Healing, Life

Hear Me Long Enough to Listen

Erin Keane

One of the greatest ways to connect to another person is to give him/her the gift of your listening ear. Every single one of us wants to be heard. We want our words to mean something to someone else, because the words we speak come from within our being. Just as you long for attention from another person, someone else longs for your attention. During my years as a spiritual counselor, I’ve discovered that listening, usually without saying a word, to someone’s story is most often the greatest healing gift I can offer; and within personal relationships it is the one of the greatest gifts I can receive.

When you feel listened to you are empowered to trust more deeply in the wonderful, amazing, incredible, fabulous, unique, (& so much more) person you are! -Bella Bleue

I invite you:

  •  To make an extra special effort to really listen to someone you care about.
  • After you walk away from this experience take some time to reflect on what you learned about this person that you hadn’t noticed before AND
  • Reflect on what it was like to be so fully present for another.
  • If you are the one who needs to be listened to: Ask that the other person to listen

It’s amazing how when we “Hear Someone Long Enough to Listen” we are giving an incredible gift, and at the same time receiving so much in return.

I originally shared this post in my first weeks of blogging. I sometimes return to my writings to see if there is anything I need to reflect on, or that speaks to me in a different way at this moment in life. After sharing my last post about healing our brokenness, I reflected some more…and part of  ‘naming’ what I feel is also being able to share my story with someone and be listened to.

I continue to be grateful for the supportive community of readers and writers here from all over the world.

As we listen to each other and support each other, a deeper healing is happening in our lives and in our world.

Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue

©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™ All rights reserved.

If you like to read more from Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., check out her book: “Kitchen Table Wisdom :Stories that Heal”.  The quote is from her message, “Just Listen.” I have more about her in my Blogroll. Blessings!

Discovering Strength, Healing

Transforming Your Brokenness into a Beautiful Masterpiece

Erin Keane

“I don’t need this boo-boo any more. Take it away!” So there you have it, getting rid of hurt, pain, bruises, bumps and everything else is as simple as saying, “Take it away:” and then it is gone. I only wish it was this easy!

When we are 2 1/2 we climb on play sets, jump off stairs, climb up on chairs, drive our toy cars and trucks around the yard…we bump our legs, go on our way, and think nothing of the marks that are left. We just keep moving and living life. Until we stop and notice. And then we think to ourselves, where did this come from?

This is true for us as adults too. Sometimes we let the boo-boos, and the hurt keep happening over and over because it becomes so routine, an every day occurrence that we accept as part of life. Or maybe it’s just that the painful things that have happened in our life, have become such a part of us, that we don’t know how to imagine ourselves or our life any differently. Or maybe we don’t believe that life could be any different: “I just got dealt bad luck or I don’t deserve to be happy…this is my destiny.”

But the truth is, YOUR LIFE CAN BE BETTER! and YOU CAN BE HAPPIER!

When I was finally able to name, that depression is a part of my life I began to heal. When I was not aware of my depression, and often in denial of it, it had power over me.  When depression was in control, my moods were based on the direction depression wanted to take: sad, lonely, unmotivated, feelings of worthlessness, anger, etc. Basically when depression was in control, I wasn’t a person who really wanted to wake up in the morning, and happiness was completely out of my reach.

But!

When I finally hit my lowest of low, and had to force myself to take control—for the sake of my baby and husband—who I love very deeply—I had to actually say out loud, “I have depression,” so that I could begin to heal.  There is great power in Naming* what we feel or are experiencing in life. When you can do this for yourself, you take the power away from the disease, hurt, etc. and instead of being the victim, you become the conqueror.

The more I openly admitted that I have depression, the less control it began to have over me and the way I feel. In fact about 6 months after I started my therapy, I was smiling again and even laughing out loud! I realized during those 6 months that ” I am me. I am wonderful, amazing, and I deserve with every ounce of my being to be HAPPY! I decided that depression was no longer going to define me. I now define myself and own my feelings. Depression doesn’t get to have control any more.

But, I don’t suffer from depression, so how does this relate to me?

We all have different reasons we are broken in some way or another. If you are writing about it, you already know that by talking about your brokenness or by reading about others’ brokenness– that might be like your own, you are releasing the control the hurt, the pain, the anger, the betrayal, etc. and instead are replacing these negative feelings with love, connection, peace… In other words, when you begin to accept and know that you have places within your being that are broken, you can begin to heal these places and be proactive about feeling better about you.

Can I be completely healed by admitting to myself and others that I have broken parts within myself?

I don’t know if any of us can ever be completely healed from our brokenness (If anyone knows differently please share). I know for me, that depression still tries  to sneak up on me or puts out its net and unexpectedly catches me in its hooks….but because I have become aware that depression will do this to me I can say to it, ” I don’t want to feel this way;” and then I can begin to work towards healing instead of falling into its bottomless pit. I’ve learned that to just tell myself, get over it and move on doesn’t really help me. What I need is to take some time to be gentle with myself: and offer myself compassion. If I need to cry for a bit and let out the frustration or sadness I now let myself do just that. But afterwards, I say I know I want to be happy, and I don’t want to feel this way, so I can maintain being me, and not let depression be in charge. Then I turn on a good song, eat some ice cream, go for a walk,  go outside and visit my flowers…whatever I need during those moments to take care of me.

When you are feeling broken, are you able to show yourself compassion and love? What do you do to treat yourself with gentleness and care?

As you go through each day and begin to love yourself more—to actually get to know yourself better, and be in control of your life, rather than letting the brokenness in, you begin to see this really wonderfully created individual in the mirror…and you discover that the masterpiece you were looking for is YOU.

May you be blessed with the joys of discovering yourself—the amazing, wonderful, fabulous YOU!

Blessings, Erin, Bella Bleue
©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™ All rights reserved.

Related Articles:

Emotional Literacy

*Naming feelings is something I was taught in my education in Psychology as well as in Pastoral Counseling/Spiritual Direction…it has been very helpful in my own life as well as the lives of people I have shared counseling with.

Blessings.

Healing, Health

I’m Grieving and I’m Healing

Erin Keane

Last week I wrote about how to deal with unexpected change. I was blessed with some very supportive answers from fellow bloggers…and an underlying message was to take some time and listen…which I did. I discovered that deep down I was anticipating the grief: the sadness, and pain, I was going to feel because of the change I would be undergoing.  And this anticipatory grief was getting in my way—my feelings were not being tended to, and I couldn’t make any choices because I was ignoring what I was really feeling. It was hard to discover my true feelings because what was going to happen was something good, and yet, I was feeling sad.

When I did my residency at the hospital years ago, I used to talk about anticipatory grief often with my colleagues. I worked in the ICU and Transplant Units and could often tell when death was near and I knew when I was feeling sad about losing my patient and watching the family grieve as well. I understood this grief. It made sense. I could call it by its name. Grieving death was normal…something to be expected—and the people I worked with understood it too. They created a safe place to talk about grief. 

BUT! Grief isn’t just an experience before or after someone dies—Grief  is also very normal in the every day dealings of life. Every Day Grief can happen when: we have a baby & everything in life changes, or the kind of grief we have when we finish college, or the kind of grief we have when we move out of state, or the kind of grief we have when we realize we aren’t living the life we had hoped for and so on. [This kind of] grief  is not something we usually want to talk about in our culture. Consequently, when I say, I’m grieving about some future event or something I’m going through, I notice I often get the expected response: “It will be okay. Don’t worry so much.” Yet, the response I really need is a good LISTENING EAR, that is comfortable with my feelings…that says, “I hear what you are saying, and if you need anything, I’m here for you.”

I believe that  if we, as a culture, were more comfortable with grief, we all might be a lot happier & healthier in life: We could talk about what we feel—and feel listened to—and be able to move through our grief more naturally and comfortably.

  • We wouldn’t be hiding our feelings: Our grief wouldn’t be a hidden experience in our lives that keeps us feeling down—we would be dealing with what we were feeling and give ourselves the chance to understand what we really need at that time
  • We would be dealing with our feelings while they were happening: We would be able to be in the moment instead of  misunderstanding our feelings for something else.
  • We wouldn’t be as reactive to people who are close to us: Sometimes when we don’t understand our grief we may be more reactive towards  people we are close to. For example, we may get angry with our spouse because he or she says the wrong thing, when the real reason we are angry is because we don’t feel like we are being cared for—
  • We would be able to ask for help or care more easily when we know that we are grieving—if grieving is an accepted part of life–people won’t feel shamed for their feelings or experience of grief and thus, be more in tune with themselves and what they need when feeling this way.

Do you recognize when you are grieving?
Are you comfortable about feeling grief?
Are you able to talk openly about your grief? Whether it be about death, change, loss of self or identity, etc.?
 

It is always amazing to me how so many of us talk about wanting to be happy and positive all the time, but in doing so we often forget how important it is that we allow ourselves to feel sadness, anger, loss, etc. because by allowing ourselves to be open about our feelings we actually are allowing ourselves to heal—and the healing invites the positive, happy, joyful feelings to naturally arise.

Give yourself the gift of being tender with you, and let yourself grieve when you need to. Grief comes and goes whenever it wants to show up so don’t be hard on yourself and say, “What’s wrong with me?…Just let it be: accept it and love yourself enough to say, “It’s okay that I feel this way today.” And trust that there will be better days ahead when the time is right!

But also remember that being consumed with grief that leads to depression or grief that begins to interfere with your life, is not healthy— and you should seek help when you need it! You deserve to be well!

Blessings,Erin, Bella Bleue
©Bella Bleue Healing, Health & Inspiration for Your Life™

*photo from Wikpedia: Angel of Grief