Tag: Suffering

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

Connecting to the wonder we are, Life

When Love Hurts: Keep on Loving and Living Anyway

Erin Keane

It’s inevitable that love and pain will dance together in our lives, no matter how hard we try to keep them apart.

A really beautiful woman, who I have been blessed to have in my life, now has Stage 4 Cancer. She  is a woman “full of grace” and absolutely amazing.  She is a warrior queen who rages against her battle with a softness and love for life, that breaks all boundaries of the kingdom of the “Big C,” and day by day she gently and powerfully conquers with another day of living life.  She often dresses up with a colorful scarf atop her head, that draws out the beautiful colors of her eyes, that sparkle every time she smiles. She reminds me that every day life is worth smiling about, even when it really sucks. And even more importantly, she has taught me: that even when life seems like it is trying to close its door on you, keep reaching out in open arms and gently say to it, “I’m still here. And I’m ready to receive you and accept you, even if what you are placing in front of me is not what I want because I WANT TO LIVE.”

And this is why Love and pain will always dance together. They dance together in this deeply real image of  my beautiful friend (our beautiful friends) moving in perfect rhythm to the music of life, while death keeps stepping on her toes and throwing her off balance every once in a while until it wins [in the literal sense]. It’s the deeper reality for those of us watching this happen: that at times Love Really Hurts.

Loving my friend brings with it a deep hurt: I know deep down inside that she is going to die: there will be an emptiness inside me when she is gone, and it hurts right now because her inevitable death seems so unfair because she is so good and she wants to keep LIVING.

And because I love her,  deep down inside my heart is that painful question of,”WHY?”

“Why if she is soooo good, and sooo loved, does she need to suffer? Why did she have to get sick? Why does she have to die at such a young age? Why….and the questions keep coming.

I know that I can answer these questions in a very spiritual manner…and connect to an understanding of spiritual, emotional and bodily suffering as a part of life, and a Creator and the Beloved who suffers with me, with her… and at times brings me great comfort…

But…that’s an answer that may only fulfill me, or still may not be enough…

And so I look deep inside myself and I feel it…and I listen to it. The sadness deep in my heart. The part of me that feels the grief. The inevitable knowing that one day, she won’t be here. The anticipatory awareness that others too are going to hurt. In other words, the parts of me that Love her. The parts of me that are LOVE.

And then the tears come slowly, but deeply. And then the quiet sobs, that make you hold your breath, because your body just hurts too much.

Then you get yourself back together. And you put your feet back down on the solid ground below you, and you move forward again.

And you remind yourself. She’s not dead yet. She’s still here.  And that she’s living life. And you’ve got to do the exact same thing: LIVE.

And the question is no longer Why, but HOW.

As I return to Love as a powerful force for living rather than for pain, I am able to learn from my friend. She is teaching me how to live my life by the way she shares  her love and welcomes and receives my love; and she teaches me to love life more fully by the way that she lives…

LIVING:

  • Embracing your own fragility,
  •  Being comfortable with questions that don’t have the perfect answer, or maybe even an answer at all.
  • Breathing & Smiling even when life gives you a hurricane when all you asked for was a little rain
  • Loving yourself even when your body is failing you
  • Loving others even when death is knocking on their door
  • Letting your body, mind and spirit weep from the pain with a good cry every once in a while
  • Connecting to your spiritual roots, and allowing them to nourish your spirit
  • Seeking out others to accompany on their journey, and inviting others to accompany you on your journey too

What would you add?

And Living and Loving is what makes you more fully YOU: When you LOVE: and allow all that is LOVE to touch your life, then you LIVE, and by LIVING a deeper more meaningful life—one that doesn’t stop loving because of fear of the pain—you become more fully who you truly are: you become more fully and deeply human.

—This is what I realize now that I have been able to step back from the pain, and going forward can embrace the beautiful reality of how my friend celebrates life through her ability to Love  Life and all that it is.

Below is the message I wrote to my beautiful friend, that I want to share with you.

*

May you always be blessed to know LOVE and to become more fully yourself each and every day by giving yourself the gift of Living life.

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

* If any of you would ever like me to write something for someone you love, or even for yourself with one of my images, I would always be honored.

Healing

The Healing Power of Sharing Your Story

Erin Keane

In my time here in the blogging community I have had the sacred opportunity to read people’s stories-and share my own. The stories that come from deep within our hearts…the ones that make you feel..because you know that could be your story too, or someone else’s story has already been part of your own story. There is great power in how our story—the way we make sense of our experience—effects and impacts our healing journey.

I am grateful for the healing power of our stories—by sharing them we have the ability to heal.—Until I was able to admit openly my struggle with depression, healing was pretty much null and void. But when I began to share—which happened because I finally was able to witness my story in my heart—the healing began, and continues…

What is it like for you to feel and know your own story?

I am grateful for the gifts of strength and survival that we were created with, so that even in the midst of suffering, somehow we have the courage to live—it always amazed me in my days as a spiritual counselor in the hospitals, how those who decided they were not going to be defined by their illness and instead continued to be themselves, were the ones who lived life, and those who let their fear consume them, or the disease define them, slowly or quickly withered. Your journey of healing is effected by how you make sense of and share your story of suffering, illness, loss, divorce, etc.

When I was afraid of my depression, it consumed me—I didn’t want to admit it was a part of me so my depression had control, but when I accepted that “My depression is a part of me, but I will not let it define me,” I became in control, and my healing journey continues to happen because this has become the  story I now live my life by.

  • When you are ready, put your own words in place of mine or create your own powerful statement! And if you already have one–congratulations to you!

How has sharing your story lead to healing in your life?

A Healing Blessing from Me to You:

May you be surrounded by healing love, a healing love that comes from all of creation, and gently and powerfully calls your name. And in those moments when you cry out, may the depths of your heart be heard by all the angels who are there to protect you and by the love of the Divine–who is there to carry you when you don’t have the strength to carry yourself. And may all the blessings that are good & pure and full of light & harmony be with you now and always.

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