Living life in full colour
alcohol ink on yupo paper
5 x 7″
2019 Louise Gallagher

My heart is full.

After five days in the Choices Seminars room, I feel grounded, peaceful, whole.

Stepping into the Choices room felt like coming home. It felt so effortless and easy. So life-giving and fulfilling.

There is something miraculous about being in a room with people intent on finding their path out of the darkness — even when they walked into the room scared and full of trepidations that they don’t belong there, they don’t fit in, they are not welcome.

There is something so incredibly inspiring about witnessing hearts breaking through the walls their human has erected to keep themselves from feeling the pain of loss, the confusion of betrayal, the agony of grief.

We all do it to some degree or other. Life happens. We get hurt. Betrayed. Griefstricken and we desperately fight to keep ourselves safe from more pain, more sorrow, more loss. In our efforts to ease our pain, we build walls around our heart believing the wall will keep us safe. And then one day we realize, the wall has become a prison and we are trapped on the other side, convinced there is no way out. To make sense of finding ourselves imprisoned by the very walls we’ve built to keep ourselves safe, we tell ourselves, it’s better this way. We don’t need to feel, to breathe freely, to dance like no one is watching or live like this one life is a precious gift. We’re safer in our prison we tell ourselves and then we name it — our comfort zone, our safe place, our doing our best to get through the daily grind that has become our life.

The label is important to us. It has to be for us to make sense of the limiting beliefs that are holding our lives in check and our walls intact.  I’m okay in my comfort zone we say. I like it here. At least I know what to expect. At least no one can hurt me if I don’t let love in.

Imprisoned by our limiting beliefs we convince ourselves not to risk change, not to dare to try to fly, not to even breathe deeply. We’re safer that way.

There is no need to live imprisoned by our pasts, trapped in our belief we are not good enough, or too small, too big, too loud, too weak, too stupid, too much, too anything other than beautifully, exquisitely human.

But we do it. We convince ourselves our beautiful, exquisite human selves do not measure up to the expectations of voices from the past, the chaos and pain of the present or the fears of an unknown future. And in our pain and grief of having lost connection with the magnificent, exquisite human being we were born to be, we act out. We rage, we lie, we hide, we crumble beneath the weight of our sorrow, we strike out at the one’s we love, we beat ourselves up with our disappointments.

Last week, I got to witness the miracle of hearts breaking free, of minds awakening to the brilliance of their true selves and of human beings stepping into the truth of who they are when they let go of the past to live fearlessly and fiercely in the present.

I am so blessed.

Namaste.