*~*

A Life of Honest Connection

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Shattering the Unknown, Scary, and Mysterious "Feelings".

A beloved member of my family posted this on Facebook, "Is it possible to describe feelings? If so, how do you learn?" 


Which got me thinking, how do you describe feelings? How can you eloquently describe the pain, happiness, loss, freedom or bliss that you feel inside? There are plenty of descriptive words in the English language, but do any of them actually describe what it FEELS like or what you're GOING through?  What is a feeling?


The dictionary definition of feeling is: 
1. An emotional state or reaction 
      --feelings, the emotional side of someones character: emotional responses or tendency to respond.


SEE NOTE AT EMOTION  . . . which is . . .
A feeling can be almost any subjective reaction or state; pleasant or unpleasant, strong or mild, positive or negative, that is characterized by an emotional response. 


An emotion is a very intense feeling, which often involves a physical as well as a mental response, and implies outward expression or agitation.


So, order to feel one must emote and in order to emote, one must be in touch with their feelings. There has been a lot of exploration in my world about this precise subject lately. I have been in an acting class since January and one of my biggest challenges has been reconnecting with my emotions and allowing myself to truly experience the way I FEEL. I don't know or remember WHY I learned to push my emotions down and in, instead of letting them come up and out. I DO remember that when my Grandpa died I made a conscious choice to remain "the rock" and the "strong one". I remember being at the funeral and barely crying at all, including through my Grandma's rendition of "Wind Beneath My Wings" which she SANG at the services to the love of her life, the wind beneath her wings. EMOTIONAL is an understatement. BUT, at the age of 14 I didn't let myself walk through it. I did eventually break down months, maybe even a year later, at youth group, finally allowing that feeling to rock my body and soul and release in true emotion. 


I was in a relationship about 18 months ago, the first "real" relationship I have had in my short life. And before you get angry, Bateman, I mean "real" in terms of length of time and the fact that we lived together, met one another's families, etc. Not whether or not our feelings were real, or the connection real. . . there it is again, that word, feelings. How do you have feelings for someone? Can you adequately describe what love is, loneliness? I'm getting ahead of myself though, rewind, back to the relationship. We had a great relationship, it was fun and exciting and full of lots of adventures. We both knew from the beginning that we didn't want the same things out of life, i.e., I wanted kids, he didn't. BUT we were having so much fun that we just kind of kept brushing things under the rug, we can deal with that dust and grime later, for now, WINE TASTING! Yippee. What I learned is that if you're brushing issues under the rug, chances are that your feelings are also getting shoved back under there as well. No matter how much you love someone, or share with them, if you know deep under that rug that they don't want to experience life with you, fully, in the way that you want to, you can start to resent them and your feelers get hurt. It doesn't even matter if you can logically understand in your brain that it is not personal, they just don't want that, its not that they don't want you, they just don't want that. Your little, or big, heart will ache and hurt and bleed (which in reality is good, because it means its still working) ; ) and in order to continue having fun and moving forward, we shove our feelings back under the rug too. 


The problem lies in coming out of it, realizing that you haven't allowed yourself to feel the sadness, loneliness and pain that comes from ending a relationship, a friendship, a connection, a love. I could blame my lack of emoting on my former Lovah, but that wouldn't be honest, nor reality. Because, in truth, no one can DO anything to us. It is all a choice. We are the only ones who can dictate any part of our life. If someone has "done" anything to us, it is because we allowed them to. It's just easier to point the finger at someone else and say, why would you hurt me in that manner, than it is to look at ourselves in the mirror and say Why would YOU hurt YOU in that manner? Yikes. That is intense. Writing that sentence made me feel like I kicked myself in the stomach.  Nothing that my ex and I experienced was "wrong, or improper, or anyone's fault" It was simply the journey that we had to go on, and continue to go on everyday.


Its not like I've always been emotionally shut down or restricted in relationships! Just ask Ryan P. my first love and boyfriend from the 3rd through the 5th grade. I don't know if he remembers this but the drama queen inside of me sure does. I was upset with Ryan once in the third grade because I believed he liked my friend and was acting inappropriately. We were in separate classrooms, but my teacher had asked me to deliver something to his teacher and I felt this was an ample opportunity to express my emotions. I walked into that classroom where they were watching a movie, handed the papers to the teacher, turned toward Ryan, removed the rings he had given me and threw them at him. Stormed out. I am so awesome.  :)  Don't worry. We made up and continued our innocent love adventure through 5th grade. 


When I'm in acting class and a scene calls for emotion, I panic and get in my head about how I am going to create this emotion?! I am learning that I simply can't create emotion, that I must step into the experience and open my heart in order to move into emotion. My brilliant acting coach, Dee Wallace, can simply stop the scene, ask me to open my heart, guide me to an experience I have had, and the entire emotional life opens up, simply, truthfully in an honest and connected way. The beauty of it is that it never feels the way I expected it to. It's always SO much better. 


I have been reading a book called, "Women, Food and God" by Geneen Roth that was given to me as a birthday present by my sweet friend, Amber. The title of this book makes it seem like its very specific to women, people with food issues and those that believe in God. However, the subtitle of this book is "An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything".  Geneen has developed a retreat and her life's work is with women who struggle with food, over eating, under eating, bingeing, etc. Her philosophy is that if we can understand how and why we eat the way that we do, that we will be able to understand our lives and why they are playing out the way they are; that " Our relationship to food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life itself."  She asks the women in her retreats to stop, take a moment and breathe into whatever feeling they are experiencing when they eat. Are they doing it to get lost? to forget? to disappear? What does the feeling FEEL like? Is the loneliness a large pile of ashes sitting on your chest? and if you breathe into the ashes, what happens? IN almost all of the cases, breathing into the pain and loneliness isn't as bad as they all thought. "The simple fact that her pain can be touched and it it won't destroy her means that all is not lost or hopeless or unredeemable." 


If we allow ourselves to feel, understand and experience our feelings, if we have a "willingness to engage with and unwind the suffering rather than be its prisoner. . . the exquisite paradox of this engagement is that when suffering is fully allowed, it dissolves." 


I have never associated myself with an eating disorder or a problem, but I have definitely spent the last 7 years focused on it, losing a lot of it, gaining some of it back, forgetting about it, focusing on it, not being comfortable in my own skin, being a size 8! a size 8! and not knowing who that person was??! Who am I at a size 8? I must be a different person than that one that was a size 16?! The real bitch of it is, is that I'm not. I am who I am no matter where or what or who. I am me. I have spent the last few years expanding my life, raising my vibration and being in touch with just WHO AM I? Who is Elizabeth Mihelich? It hasn't been and its been a breeze all the same. A continuing process, that as Geneen says, " "If these women could unpack their pain (beginning with allowing themselves to use food as a way of supporting rather than punishing themselves) and tell the truth about their lives - (paraphrasing poet Muriel Rukeyser -- the world would split open." 


"When you sense yourself directly, immediately, right now, without preconception, who are you?"


Geneen's main lesson is that its not actually food that we are hungry for, but a spiritual life, a connection with the soul that we are starving for. The life force that sustains us, gives us our intuition and knowing, our empathy and ability to LOVE someone. 


Do you realize everyday what a miracle life is? That we can wake up every morning and simply DO anything we want to?? That we can choose to lay in bed all day entangled in passion with someone we love? Choose to explore our being-ness in art, singing, dancing, photography? Celebrate the AMAZING, BRILLIANT, living, breathing thing that our BODY is. Remember anatomy class? all those crazy systems working together to keep us standing upright, walking, talking, DANCING??! It is mind-blowing. THEN add in our ability to connect with other living things, humans, animals, people. . . wow. just wow. There are almost no words that can describe that incredible miracle that life is. You know if you workout on a regular basis, your body WILL get stronger, and your muscles will change? How about today, when you look in the mirror, instead of saying, "You're fat, I hate you. What's wrong with you?" you look at that mirror and say, "I love you because you CAN change. You are amazing. You are strong and sexy and healthy."


Life is for living and emotions and feelings are a gift. So, no matter how you choose to describe them or understand them, just choose to let them in. Open your heart and experience everything. You could experience a great love, one that you never knew was even possible, and then you could experience the crushing realization of the loss of that love. At least you will have experienced it and if you're aware enough, you will learn from it, you can shatter the facade and step into the reality of being.


Why not? What have you got to lose?? Everything and nothing.


Open your heart and step into the experience of your life.








*All quotes above are from "Women Food and God" by Geneen Roth. 

Friday, September 3, 2010

Dating Woes and Failing to Shatter . . .

Lately I have been off and on some dating websites, only the free ones, because I just didn't want to put $ towards that right now. Well, I suppose the saying, you get what you pay for is glaringly true in this case. I have noticed that guys on Free dating websites are usually in it for one thing and one thing only. . . hooking up. AND this usually includes dudes who are already attached!

The latest and greatest is the texting vortex. This occurs when you meet online, send each other a few messages and then exchange phone numbers. Since we've become a disconnected society who seldom use our voices, you then start sending texts back and forth. Now, if you don't actually meet the person within a week or so of texting back and forth, in my experience, it ain't never gonna happen. So, I am currently stuck in this vortex of texting, but with a twist. Current dedicated texter is very nice and supportive, sends me messages asking about my day and how its going, wishing me luck before auditions, etc. . . with a twist. Twisted Texter loves to try to get my to SEXT with him. . . you know naughty texts, send me naughty photos of you, etc. I am so confused about what on earth would compel someone to naughty text a person they've never actually met in person? There are a few things that bother me about this.

1. Security/ Safety reasons:  I don't know you. How do I know my naughty pic isn't gonna end up on some random website, or being emailed around ala Venessa Hudgens?

2. WEIRD. This screams weird and it makes me incredibly hesitant to ever meet this guy. I feel like once you sext, there is going to be added pressure on the date to put out or get out.

3. What if, after all this crazy sexting, we meet and then there is no chemistry? But we've already shared these intimate, crazy sexts and now all dreams are dashed and spark has fizzled and its back to the drawing board?

Do you think its possible that Twisted Texter has just been dating super young girls and THIS is the result? That because of the way the younger generation SEXTS and makes out with all their friends, at the same time, that this is now bleeding into the entire world of dating? I don't want that.

Which is where the Failing to Shatter part comes in. Have I told the guy that I don't like it? Not outwardly. Where is the year of honest connection? Should I tell him, or just stop communicating and let him figure it out? It begs the question, if I am honestly connecting with myself first and foremost, does it even matter if I tell someone that I don't even know that I'm not feeling respected because of the "joke" text he sent me?

I woke up this morning with an anxiety about something and I'm not sure what it is. I seem to be going through a phase that I find myself in every so often where I try and try and try to find connection with someone and can't seem to work it out. I panic and check Facebook a million times to see if anyone has written me, or I try and text my friends to get a response. This bothers me to no end because I KNOW that I am always connected to everyone and everything, because it is all energy. I constantly struggle with seeking validation from others instead of knowing that I am enough myself.

In this phase, I seem to panic more and more about NOT being in a relationship and NOT having a man to complete or save me, which is complete bullshit. I know that it is, yet it keeps sliding back into my world.

Remember in Jerry Maguire when Tom Cruise said to Renee Zelleweger , " You complete me." and all women took a sharp inhale of breath and went, "Yes! That's it! I want that! I want someone to complete me."  Here's the thing though, no one can complete you, no one can save you, no one can validate you, except for YOU. If you look to someone else to complete you, you are NEVER going to be happy with them, or with yourself.

This is an old pattern and an old story in my life that holds me back from living the amazing life I know that I can. I'm stuck in the "story" of always picking the wrong guy, putting myself out there and getting crushed, rejected, and allowing someone I don't even know to dim my light and make me small. For an actress who deals with "rejection" in the business everyday and just lets it roll off my back, it would make sense that I could deal with "rejection" in romance and let it roll off my back but some part of me prefers to stay in the woe is me, I'll always be alone, no one understands me, blah, blah, personal emergency, blah. : )

Enough. We end it now and I know that I can only validate myself and complete myself.

The following three statements were made by Dee Wallace as I listened to her talk show on Voice America while I was typing this and thought they were incredibly fitting. . . imagine that?!

Have a beautiful day!

I am my light. I am secure in this world to let it shine.
I am the energy that discovers itself.
I am whole around all energy that I am connecting with.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

A Facade of Happiness?

On my 31st Birthday this year I made a promise to myself, to honestly connect in every moment with myself, whomever I was with and to truthfully feel and experience everything. Sounds simple enough and almost as if it were something you should do without having to think about it, right? Ahhh, if only it were that easy.

I fancy myself a person who knows who she is, stays in the positive and consciously watches her thoughts, because I know that the thoughts I think manifest the world I live in. I want to consciously create my life in every moment. We have discovered lately that it is not simply the words that manifest the world we live in, but more importantly the feelings attached to the words. You can get on a treadmill for a year and repeat over and over, "Freedom, Bliss, Love, Happiness" and all that will change is your butt, as my spiritual guide and acting coach, Dee Wallace so lovingly shares. If you can't FEEL the experience of what you want how can you expect to create it in your life?

Imagine my surprise when I was talking to a friend about how I thought I was feeling pretty happy and experiencing a pretty fulfilling life and she came back with, "You have a facade of happiness, but you don't really FEEL happy." Sit with that for a moment. . .  If I sit and embrace that truth there is a vast pit in my stomach and a pain in my heart. I don't want that. I don't want to be that girl. I wan the FULL experience of life, love, pain, sorrow, joy.  So, what happened? How did I get to this place? When did I experience such pain or love and opened my heart only to be crushed? Shattered? When did I build a facade? As I write this there are a million and one thoughts running through my head, I could say this, I could say that, but the reality is that there is no one to blame, no one experience I can pin it on. I can say thank you to my ego for trying to protect me from the extreme joy, love or bliss that could result in pain, loss and torment and then move forward or I could lament over the sadness, all of the ride I have missed out on. I choose the latter.

So, I promise to be honest with myself in my everyday life and to share my "honesty experiment" with you all as honestly and connected as I can.

Who am I?

I am a girl who picks up her popcorn and soda after a movie and throws it in the trash, because I think you should and because I think everyone deserves respect.

I am a girl who can walk into a room, be inspired by an artist's photography, introduce herself to the photographer and feel a connection that she's never felt before, and KNOW that this is not the first time our soul's paths have crossed. I can send him a FB request, write an intelligent and inspired status about meeting him, "Isn't it great to honestly connect with someone and dance around them with sparks of interest and laughter?" Be thrilled when he replies positively and pick up and visit New York because he asked me to. I can have a romantic adventure with someone I just met and know that it was exactly what I was supposed to do. I am a girl who can completely give in to the connection, trust and know that he feels it to. Fly home and imagine a life together that is fantastic and amazing, full of travel and adventure, love and romance, and I can imagine one heck of a proposal fantasy. I have the whole thing planned out of how I would like him to Propose to me. . . it's a good one. . . go ahead, ask. What I can't do is process what went wrong . . . why he chose her over me. . . Is it the easy choice to date the girl who lives in NY and not the one who lives across the country in LA? Perhaps its because he's a Virgo and he is logical and practical? Because, I knew, with every fiber of my being, when he popped up on my FB chat and asked if I had a minute that whatever he had to say was bad news. It was that connection again, I just knew it. Yet, as he told me he was going to try and date a girl seriously in NY, I said I understood and that while I wanted him to be happy I hoped it didn't work out. I cried for about 2 seconds and then supressed the feelings that I was feeling. Sadness, angry, disappointment, confusion. How could he possibly feel what I felt and choose to NOT give it a go? Not even a CHANCE? To ignore the letter I had written him after my Grandma's funeral? A letter that was full of pain and deep, true feelings about death and my Grandma's life and our inherent differences. Why can't I be the girl who says, Don't worry, he's a douche. I can't. Because I believe in true love and I believe in Soul Mates and I believe in life lessons and experiences that help make us into the people we are everyday. I know that I learned something and that he is possibly learning something else by choosing to ignore this, me. What I didn't do was let myself feel the massive whole that his shotgun of rejection blew through my newly healed heart. When you open your heart to someone and it ends up getting damaged how do you move on?

You move through it, because on the other side is the love and the fantasy and the fairytale that you know exists. MORE IMPORTANTLY you must allow yourself to feel it as you move through it. If you shut your eyes during the whole roller coaster ride what's the point of even getting on the ride? I am angry at my photographer and I don't know that he even knows I am, because all i ever said was, "It's ok. I understand. Don't be sorry. It's timing, and location. Damn those 3000 miles." Why is it so hard for me to say, this sucks. I hate it and I hate you for making the choice. The easier choice. Am I not worth fighting for, trying? Putting in a little effort or some frequent flyer miles?

I saw Eat, Pray, Love tonight and loved this quote. "If you love him, love him. If you miss him, miss him. Send him love and light everytime you think of him. Then drop it."

Today I choose to connect honestly with myself and everyone I come in contact truthfully and in every moment.

Do you?