Stop Bargaining For Your Joy
Mimosa
Hello, dear listener.
Today's message is special. I am gratefully receiving mimosa's medicine months after receiving her message. Usually my exchanges with the plants are more conversational. I'm that obnoxious student who always has follow up questions. But with mimosa, as you're about to hear, I opened up to receive and she took me to church, so to speak.
I want to set the stage for this message. Mimosa came to me at a time when I was experiencing a lot of friction in my life over something I kept telling myself I should be grateful for. I had what I had asked for what I had worked for. And most people would be ecstatic to be in my shoes.
So why on earth was I so uncomfortable? After letting this discomfort build and shaming myself for not being happy with all my blessings and not being able to give the others involved in this situation more grace, I began to see the whole thing in a different light. All this time I had been forcing myself to center other people's feelings, other people's points of view.
To a point, empathy and compassion can help us build relationships. And I am all for it. But what I was naming empathy or compassion was actually just gas lighting my own feelings.
Now mimosa comes in and shares her medicine for that moment I was in, where you might find yourself. When you cannot continue to stuff your emotions down or deny your true feelings. Here's what she says,
" Baby, keep digging down. You don't need to deny yourself or your feelings. Keep digging to get to the root. Making space all the while. Make space for all the buried emotions and feelings to find their way out. Cleaver's wants you to prepare your inner landscape. I want you to dig it all up. Rage. Gardening is still effective, my love.
Dig in. Don't stop till it all comes up. Break up the clumpy hard bits. Churn it all up. Find it all, feel it, name it, take your power back. Give it to the light and take your power back. This is big work. You're digging up a lifetime of stuffed emotions of making yourself small, to make others feel more comfortable, dig it all up, acknowledge it, all.
Extract your power and use whatever is left as compost for your dreams. There's more work here for you if you want it. If you don't, that's okay. Make your decision from a place of power. Do what you do for you. Not against the others. You'll be supported in that action, whatever it turns out to be. I'll support your heart.
Don't run from this. I'll help you come out the other side. Joy is always possible. Let's travel down the spiral with this and make sure we are not bargaining for our joy. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TURN AWAY FROM ANY PART OF YOURSELF TO DESERVE OR EXPERIENCE JOY."
Whew, thank you. Mimosa. Even with the gratuitous use of gardening metaphors, this is big.
If I am centering the feelings of others and they are centering their own feelings, then I am the one left unheard. Mimosa came in and helped me see that I am no longer available for staying unheard. No longer available for feeling like I'm being made to ignore my needs so someone else can feel more comfortable.
This feels a lot like a boundary! And as a recovering people, pleaser boundaries have been a bit foreign to me. So it took mimosa showing me that in a way I am causing my own pain by not giving voice to my needs and feelings.
It is not someone else's job to center my needs and feelings. It is not my job to center theirs.
Now with mimosa's help, I am honoring how I feel. How I truly feel. Suspending judgment of those feelings, to the best of my ability, and sitting with them.
What happens if I don't deny myself? What happens if I acknowledge when something doesn't feel right to me? And instead of judging or shaming myself, I just open up to solutions. I stay in my power. and I follow my joy.
Well, so far this looks like voicing my opinion. Standing up for myself. It has raised a few eyebrows, but removing the judgment and shame has helped me speak my needs in an honest and kind way. It's amazing how neutral the whole process can be when I express my needs as they arise, rather than submitting to the mental gymnastics of denying them or trying to fit into my idea of what others need.
I have been using the mimosa hydrosol from ReSourced Apothecary to spray on my heart and anywhere on my body and energy field, where there may be stuffed emotions ready to be released. When I spray the hydrosol on my heart, I call on the spirit of Mimosa to help me continue to choose me. To help me release the baggage of judgment and shame/ blame so that my light doesn't have to filter through all of that on its way out into the world.
So mimosa asks you: Are you bargaining for your joy? Are you turning away from any part of you in hopes of following the path of least resistance? Are you allowing yourself to be heard?
Mimosa is here to support you in choosing you.
Big love my friend.