My loneliness is not for lack of dozens of amazing people in my life, nonstop opportunities to hang out, or relentless avenues of support. My loneliness is not a reflection of an inner void where spirituality belongs, nor is it a need to learn self-love, master relationship to self, or find higher purpose.

There were times before I became free of the clutches of addiction that I would write about being “lonely in a crowd”. That kind of loneliness was about the feeling that maybe we all know on some level of “the void”. The inner void that I have learned can only be filled – for me – by connection to something greater than myself that I call ‘Great Spirit’, which, in my estimation, is synonymous with intuition. That “void” of loneliness existed before I learned how to love and accept myself as I am. Before I came to know that I – and my life – are whole and complete as they are. None of this learning came easily and I have spent hundreds of hours pursuing therapeutics of all sorts, including group and one-on-one counseling. I have beat the drum of self-exploration and self-acceptance so much, that the skin is thin and spent, longing with its deep, exasperated sound to create concert with other instruments in a band of human connection – to be the pulse for other sounds in a song of reciprocity and accompaniment. What good is the sound of a drum that isn’t witnessed? This question is similar to the old adage about a tree in the forest that falls without anyone around… is it even heard?

Despite the incalculable hours I’ve spent learning to love and accept myself and my life, it’s no secret nor a point of victimhood to mention that my life hasn’t turned out the way I imagined or desired that it would. I utterly love and appreciate my life. I am blessed beyond measure and am truly happy. Loving my life and acknowledging that it doesn’t look the way I imagined can co-exist. Gratitude and longing can co-exist. Both matter. Longing for more does not negate thankfulness for and satisfaction with that which is.

When I was a little girl, the one thing that – more than anything else – felt like wind beneath my wings was the idea that one day, I’d find a partner to live and love with – to begin and end my days with, sharing the minutia of day-to-day living , comparing and dividing grocery and task lists, cooking and caring for children together. Someone to laugh with, to be periodically annoyed by, but to return to each and every night, knowing that despite our quirks and mistakes, love is an unconditional container, and ours would hold our relationship just as our arms would hold one another: sustainably, gently, and relentlessly, in a spirit of collaboration, collective growth, and acceptance.
In my life’s quest to find such a sacred connection, I’ve written a resume of so-called “failed” relationships longer than most people’s arms. I get that none of them are actually “failures” because I’ve learned so much along the way, feel affectionately close to myself as a result, and have a deep sense of wholeness.

Over the years, as I learned to love and accept myself in the absence of partnership, I discovered endless satisfaction with being in my own company – it’s easy to spend time with someone you love. But the novelty of self-love – that I’m certain, while it has been deeply authentic, has also soothed the space in me where I long for partnership – has surely worn off. Loving and being with myself, unquestionably, is not the same as loving myself and sharing that love with another person. As I continue to know that I’m loved and loveable, whole and complete in and of my Self, I experience a whole new flavor of loneliness. A loneliness that extends from the inner conflict of learned patterns versus knowledge and wisdom. A loneliness that is locked in by the progress of capitalistic, colonial patriarchy that extols the false virtues of individualism, toxic “independence”, and the marks of so-called “success” within a hardened structure of white supremacy. All of this runs contrary to the wisdom of relationship that whispers from the ground beneath my feet – the knowledge of the Indigeneity of this land that beckons me, amplified by my connection to plant spirits, my ever deepening relationship to Mother Earth, and my continued decolonization efforts.

It’s increasingly ironic to me how the wellness industry does its part in upholding colonial ideology, contorting individualism by edifying self-love in a way that over-privileges the aphorism that one must learn to love themselves before loving another. Those of us who earnestly took that maxim to heart have found ourselves in a vacuum of self-love that swirls with the confusion of having done everything “right”, grounded in true affection, respect, and regard for self, while feeling lonelier than ever. In my efforts to not be codependent, I conflated interdependence with independence, misunderstanding the valid science of attachment, which reminds us that the organic warmth of togetherness that we were born into is a survival necessity. The wellness industry has left the word “attachment” as though a pejorative, and so I shoved the idea off to be a “good practitioner” that clients would want to learn from. God forbid I not be accountable for my own happiness, my own sense of satisfaction, my own experiences of love. How ridiculous to suggest that someone be accountable for their own experiences of love without unity. Unity that is as though the crescendo of a joined heart song – one where the sounds of two or more, when blended, create harmony that pleases and elevates all who are touched by it.

There’s something about having to create togetherness as a self-directed initiative every time loneliness arises that is defeatist. My loneliness is a yearning for innate, in-home togetherness as a built-in, culturally sanctioned, daily reality, not a project that proves I’m “self-assured”, “not a victim”, and “the creator of my own reality”. I’m tired. I’m tired of being misdiagnosed as not loving myself enough when the true prognosis is chronic, unmet attachment needs. I’m tired of feeling like I have to be in action all the time if I want to feel connection. I’m tired of the echoes of the wellness industry, cacophonous in my head , encouraging me to “love what is”, reminding me of manifestation mantras like “you can’t get there from there” (I truly do love you Abraham), gaslighting me with spiritual principles – suggesting that if only I would do gratitude “right”, I’d inevitably create what I truly desire, pegging me as the reason for my own loneliness via trite accountability slogans, telling me that “anything’s possible” as though these frazzled scripts are equations that go as follows: internalized spiritual dictum + energy of the Universe = desired outcome. It doesn’t work that way. The Universe isn’t the mystical version of patriarchy, endlessly and simplistically keeping score. If studying social work has taught me anything, it’s that it’s ignorant and childish to hold everyone accountable for their un-manifested desires without considering the whole of each person’s context. In this case, some of the context happens to be the mammoth impact of internalized, colonial ideologies, and seemingly innocuous “wellness” applications that, as I always feared, can be a fluffy as they sound.

I find it stupid beyond belief that while hundreds -thousands – maybe even millions of people out there can relate to my flavor of loneliness, we’re all probably doing the same thing: sitting by ourselves, wishing we could have alone time AND connection without ever having to leave our homes, but not totally knowing how to create that. Wishing we could just go to the store, walk to the mailbox, watch an episode, or share a quick snack together with someone without having to officially make plans.

I’m starting to see partnership as a well-being asset equally as spiritual practice, proper hydration, and community involvement are predictors of health (at least for me). But how does one create this asset as readily as the others? As far as I know, you don’t, especially if you’re chronically in lack of it. I have been on every dating website, used all the APPS, went for speed dating, went on blind dates, have had friends try to set me up, received dating coaching, read all the books, and was in a collective working towards gaining partnership through mutual support and honest self-exploration. I have done sets of 12-steps on this, have explored it in counseling, and have applied every alternative modality under the sun. And trust me, I practice surrender on this front every. Single. Day. My desire has become an ongoing practice of trying to hold a posture of trust in spiritual orchestration and higher purpose in a balancing act of unconsciously trying to tamp down my longing, lest it defeat me, leaving me fixated on the same thing that I’ve always wanted, but have only fleetingly experienced in my adult life, or, God forbid, lest I seem ungrateful around what I DO have.

Today I’m not going to pretend and I’m not tamping it down: I feel lonely. A lot.

The post The Flavor of Loneliness appeared first on rawberta.

I once loved a man differently than anyone else. This man was called David Brown. 6 years ago, David took his own life. Since then, he comes to me regularly, offering support, reassurance and guidance – through dreams, visuals, feelings, intuition, in my prayers and meditation, in my Reiki practice, and once through the gifts of a medium. Recently, he came into a guided process I pursued at Lifestyle Meditation (my workplace). This time was impactful in a different way. David was a disciple of Self-Realization Fellowship, of whom the founding guru was Paramahansa Yogananda. During the process, the teacher suggested that we flank ourselves with loving people from our lives, past or present. On my right was my lovely and loving son, Caleb, and on my left was David. I always wear an angel pendant around my neck that David gave me, which has taken on extra significance now that his spirit has departed this earth plane – he most certainly IS an angel that I call on frequently, consciously and otherwise. At the front of the meditation classroom on the shelves above the teacher’s head is a small, framed picture of Paramahansa Yogananda. In a moment, I felt a dynamism moving around and through me: David through Yogananda – David in spirit, beside me – David in me and as represented by the angel pendant – a triangular pattern of power and impact.

I remembered how angry I was at “Guru”, as David called him, for taking David away from me when we were 23 and he’d decided to follow a monastic life in California. I remember how angry I was at God back then. How could you take him from me? How could you rip this love from my grips – just pluck it from my life with such ease? Do you not care about ME oh God? I was heartbroken. It was my first conscious experience of deep heartache. I thought I would die from the gravity of the emotion and spent 2 days in bed, crying to the somber sounds of Pink Floyd and getting high in between in an attempt to subdue my despondency. As Gilmour & Waters crooned the words “comfortably numb” into my ears, I longed for just that state. I was sure the pain would last forever. I was sure I no longer had a reason to live, having lost what I thought was my grandest experience of love.

What I didn’t realize back then is that true love does not assume a holding pattern, isn’t exclusive, doesn’t hoard, or stow itself away in a preferential connection. True love is synonymous with freedom and with God – God is Universe and the Universe cannot be captured in a single embrace or arrested into a private moment. Rather, the Universe weaves its energy infinitely into the present, never living in the past or future. The Universe is present in each lesson that brings us closer to God – to love – to ourselves – and sometimes those lessons are painful because that particular pain is necessary for our highest soul evolution.

Trying to hold on to love is like trying to hold on to the ocean. An exercise in futility that leaves you a constant “failure”, even while the ocean itself beckons you at all times to come into it and be surrounded and supported by its majesty. The reason I experienced so much pain back when David left for a monastic life is because I thought I was entitled to hold on to the ocean, as though splendor can be possessed.

Today I flail around almost as equally as back then inside of lessons about romantic love. I am NOT actualized in this arena, but I know that love does not belong to me. Today I know that God didn’t “take” anything from me when David left. In fact, quite the contrary is true. There are 3 poignant, holy and auspicious occasions that really stand out to me with relation to how God GAVE to me in relationship with David:

First, God gave to me by David in the flesh, imparting for me lessons about the unconditional nature of love, for which David was a vessel of delivery unlike any other I’ve known. Then, God gave to me by David’s absence, imparting for me, once again, lessons about the unconditional and omnipresent nature of love – could I set David free, thereby expressing love in its truest form? Finally, God gave to me by David’s departure from this plane of existence, imparting for me lessons about the limitlessness of love. Love energy, much like energy itself and as we all learned in science class, can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed in form. Like the ocean, mine and David’s love never began or ended – it always was – our physical beings afforded the manifestation of this love that’s inherent in all of us. David’s departure from his body only served to expand our love because his expression is no longer contracted into physicality. I now connect with him on a wholly spiritual level, which, in itself, is completely limitless.

In consideration of these momentous lessons on love and freedom, I find myself perceiving once again a triangular dynamo of power and impact.

To say that I “loved a man differently than anyone else” at the outset of this piece is a bit of a fallacy because love is consistent and persistent, like the ocean. It’s only the form of love’s manifestation that changes. As humans, we tend to prefer one form over another – our attraction to a particular form is the recognition of our own selves – a mirror image of love made manifest – AND an opportunity to go deeper. Going deeper involves being triggered into all the places inside of us where we have blockages to love. These triggers show up as our struggles and challenges in relationships. So here we go peeps: EMBRACE THE STRUGGLE for it is an invitation to truer, deeper and freer love.

My invitation that came in the form of one David Brown was always an invitation to true love: the kind that assumes no holding pattern, but rather the kind that is interchangeable with freedom. Even while it’s taken me until far beyond the expiry of what I knew our love to  be here on earth, I am eternally grateful for that invitation that reverberates through time and space.

May love always set us free.

The post Love is Freedom appeared first on rawberta.

I’m in a romantic relationship that’s only 4 months old. Despite all the inner work I’ve done, I still find myself somewhat jaded by a past of so called “failed” relationships that have lent themselves to the formulation and maintenance of deficient paradigms. Sometimes, my head tells me that I’m a dejected, rejected, 2nd rate woman – “the fuckable one”, not the long-term relationship one. Sometimes, these false paradigms cause me to flail around in desperation inside romantic connections. Whether I’m flailing inwardly or outwardly, it always leaves me lacking because I’m seeking on the outside of myself for fulfillment, and that’s a clear recipe for emptiness.

I recently started praying for “discernment” with relation to my current romantic connection – I put that in quotations because if you were sitting across from me while I told this story, I would be using air quotes for that word. The reason for the air quotes is because while I was consciously praying for “discernment”, what I was really wanting, in the recesses of my unconscious mind, was a “yes” or “no” answer from the God of my understanding. Because, you know, spirituality is black and white and God operates within duality. I’m being facetious – just in case that wasn’t obvious.

After one particular morning of “praying for discernment”, I got up off the meditation cushion and started my day with flair. On the way to work it hit me – “I feel shoved into a box by him! Whenever I’m around him, he always wants me to reel it in! I’m too passionate for him and he’s too conservative! Ra-ra-ra! Roar! That’s it!”, I thought, “that’s the answer I’ve been looking for. It’s no! It’s clearly no!” I barged to work with resolve. I’ll fix him for not having a container that I deem big enough for my passion! Who does he think he is being himself and trying to meet me where I’m at to the best of his ability with gentle presence?!

Um, yeah, so that’s not how my thought process ended, but with some gained perspective, I can definitely express it as such.

That afternoon, as I shared my fiery thought processes with my sponsor, I felt embarrassed just hearing them come out of my mouth. Undeniably, I heard the judgment and intolerance. It’s ME that’s reeling myself in, keeping my passion under a bushel for fear of further rejection. And then, angry at myself for not being authentic, I lash out, blaming him. Ugh. Later, my sponsor sent me this beautiful poem by Shel Silverstein that, when I read it, brought immediate tears of recognition:

That night, I had a lovely conversation with said lovely man. The next day at work, I meandered over to the retail section of our common space and picked up the book A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson. Would you believe I opened it to these precise words?

“Pure love of another person is the restoration of our heartline. The ego, therefore, is marshaled against it. It will do everything it can to block the experience of love in any form. When two people come together in God, the walls that appear to separate us disappear. The beloved doesn’t seem to be a mere mortal. They seem for a while to be something else, something more. The truth is, they are something more. No one is anything less than the perfect Son [“child” is a more inclusive word for me] of God, and when we fall in love, we have an instant when we see the total truth about someone. They are perfect. That’s not just our imagination.

But the craziness sets in quickly. As soon as the light appears, the ego begins its powerful drive to shut it out. All of a sudden, the perfection we glanced on the spiritual planes becomes projected onto the physical. Instead of realizing that spiritual perfection and physical, material imperfection exist simultaneously, we start looking for material, physical perfection.
…And so no one gets to be a human being anymore. We idealize one another, and when someone doesn’t live up to the ideal, we’re disappointed.”

These words were a spiritual gut punch. The only kind of gut punch I like. I haven’t been able to stop reading Williamson’s section on “Romantic Love” in this book ever since! Here are some other segments that stand out to me:

“Rejecting another human being simply because they are human, has become a collective neurosis. People ask, “When will my soul mate get here?”

…Our soul mates are human beings, just like we are, going through the normal processes of growth. No one is ever “finished”. The top of one mountain is always the bottom of another…

…The idea that there is a perfect person who just hasn’t arrived yet is a major block…

…Thinking that there is some special person out there who is going to save us is a barrier to pure love. It is a large gun in the ego’s arsenal. It is a way the ego tries to keep us away from love, although it doesn’t want us to see that. We seek desperately for love, but it is that same desperation that leads us to destroy it once it gets here. Thinking that one special person is going to save us tempts us to load an awful lot of emotional pressure on whoever comes along that we think might fit the bill…

…Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation because there is no Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right because there is no Mr. Wrong. There is whoever is in front of us, and the perfect lessons to be learned from that person…

…We sometimes fail to work on ourselves in the relationships that are right in front of us, thinking that “real life” begins when they get here. This is just a ploy of the ego once again, making sure that we’ll seek but not find.”

Seriously – Marrianne Williamson: are you walking around in my head and now you’ve written a book that is the anodyne to all my insanity in the arena of love and intimacy?

These passages speak right to the core of my mental commotion upon the landscape of love. Especially that last part about “…thinking that “real life” begins when they get here.” I’ve done this in such a protracted way ever since my first heartbreak when I was 23. This thought process dooms whoever I’m dating to a fixed audition for the position of “the Right One” in my life. This also keeps me in constant withdrawal – withdrawing my love, my presence, my full attention, my vulnerability, my closeness. Withdrawing it from everyone and anyone I’m dating until they become worthy of the position, which, they never do because this is an obvious projection of my own insecurities – I’ll never be “the Right One”, so nor can you – or you – or you… and it ceaselessly rolls out as such. Or at least it has…

After reading and re-reading Williamson’s inspired words, I decided to show up to the relationship instead of putting a kibosh on it. I channelled my passion into verbal sharing with others and physical movement. I decided that pigeonholing him into the position of “the Wrong One” is unfair. That withholding love – from anyone – is unfair. Such withholding is conditional love. I decided that maybe, he’s JUST the human I’m intended to be in relationship with right now, or I wouldn’t be in relationship with him. I decided that clearly, our connection is bringing the right lessons at the right time and is actually quite “right” – for both of us. That maybe, the pressure of searching for the “Right One” causes inevitable emotional crumbling and sabotage. I deserve to be loved, and so does he. We all do. I’m an equal contributor to the loving atmosphere of any relationship. And maybe – but more than likely quite certainly – redirecting my newly acknowledged passion into loving my own damn Self is the ultimate remedy to my attempts to overthrow romantic love in my life.

The post Lessons on Passion, Love & Romance appeared first on rawberta.

5-Flower-Formula can be taken as often as needed. It’s totally safe and reasonable to take 4-6 drops under the tongue every 20-minutes until symptoms of intensity and fear subside depending on the situation. 5-Flower-Formula can also be pursued as a full cycle of Flower Essences if and when appropriate. For example, some people may find it appropriate to take a full cycle (approximately 28-days) of 5-Flower-Formula if they’ve had an extremely stressful and life-altering experience that will take time to recover from.
Click here to learn about how to pursue a full cycle of Flower Essences.

*Dr. Edward Bach is the founder of Flower Essences. Click to learn more about him and his legacy, as presented at the outset of my piece, What are Flower Essences?

The post 5-Flower-Formula appeared first on rawberta.

There was a time in my life that I worked 3 jobs, 7 days a week. And for what? Surely not for personal joy or fulfillment. Hell no. I did it for money because society tells me that the more of it I have, the more valuable I am. Concurrently, my familial paradigms told me that having lots of money meant that I would be arrogant. And so, equipped with a stifling work schedule, my hard-earned and learned martyr syndrome and addictions, I drank and smoked all the money away, on a miserable hamster wheel for years, slowly killing myself as I tried to align to polar paradigms.

Fast forward to about 6 months ago, when I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. Accustomed to working 5 days one week and 6 days the next, this schedule was normalized, and a noble expression of popular culture’s standards – having 2 consecutive days off felt superfluous. I had myself on Olive Flower Essence for burnout – nervous exhaustion from excessive slogging. I didn’t feel burnt out as of yet, but was getting there and figured that taking Olive would help me achieve deeper rest. As it turns out, Olive FORCED me to slow down by near burnout, which came to a head in a precise moment. There I was, sitting across from my fourth client of the day, distinctly aware of something rising inside of me – like a tidal wave coming up to drown me with its pleading swell. Something was screaming inside – it’s miraculous that I heard each word my client shared as this scream intensified. What was the scream saying? And then I heard it: “I’M GONNA LOSE MY SHIT!” Shortly thereafter, I wound up in my doctor’s office asking about a stress leave, to which she said no, it would cause me more stress than good and I should reduce my working hours instead. Since then, I no longer work Thursdays. Permanently. And I refuse to bend on that even while my paradigms flare up telling me that I don’t do enough – that I’m lazily hanging out at the pit stops of the rat race, a joker of a participant who walks while everyone else runs.

It’s time to make my life look how I actually want it to look, not how I think it should fit with the expectations of our society. If slogging doesn’t equate financial freedom in my case, then why slog? Life is fleeting and full of beautiful moments that are worth being shared, not missed because I have too much to do.

And so here I am, working on these deeply rooted, insidious paradigms around joy and money.

A couple weeks ago I had no clients, which means I didn’t get paid. Previously, I would have slunk away home, isolating myself to bathe in this idea that I must not be good enough or have any value to offer this world. But instead, I decided to function within the law of opposites. Feeling like a blight on the fabricated prototype of professional success, I took a pile of posters I’d had printed with a Reflexology offer for Edmonton service professionals and I stomped around downtown, stopping in at umpteen businesses to ask if they’d put my poster up in their staff area. And do you want to know how that felt? Terrible. It felt terrible because I felt terrible. I was sure I’d show up and express my request only to be laughed out the door because obviously, I’m a pointless contributor to this unremitting urban sprawl – do my insecurities not precede me? Apparently they don’t, because 23 of my posters got hung up that day. And you know what happened the following week? I was almost fully booked. Why? Because success actually has nothing to do with how busy I am, how much money I make or how much I sacrifice myself – success is a mindset. If I continue reacting in the face of perceived failure the way that I always have, then I can expect more of the same results. So I took those feelings of failure related to old, shitty paradigms and I stuck it to them! I let them know, by my action, that I heard them, but that they are not allowed to direct the show of my life! “Move aside false failure”, I said, in an unpretentious inner voice, “we’re doing this anyway!” And I did it anyway even though I didn’t want to.

Here’s a video I shot on that day in the midst of my discomfort:

Here’s the thing – something that I am FAR from integrating, but which I know damn well to be true: financial abundance AND enjoyment of life can coexist. In other words, no one need work – even at a job they love – 6-7 days a week at the expense of the finer things in life, like relationships, connection, travel and rest. The only way I’ll ever be able to achieve this reality is by changing my mind. And that’s what I plan to do. One of the ways I plan to do this is by the law of opposites – whenever my mind tells me to do what I’ve always done – to slink away from the limelight of my life – from my wildest dreams and aspirations including the potential for a luscious professional practice, I’m going to act in opposition to that. In so doing, I change the energy and challenge my inherited belief construct. Money, contrary to what I learned in my life (“must be nice”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, “the meek shall inherit the earth”) is NOT “bad”. Nor is downtime and enjoyment. So move aside shitty paradigms because you’re being re-written. Right now.

The post Rawberta’s Diaries: Sticking it to Shitty Paradigms appeared first on rawberta.

The post Why Flower Essences? appeared first on rawberta.

Also, my boobs look super big in this video! It’s an optical illusion!

Giddy up folks! Do what you want! You have the right to choose, so exercise it, and tell your meddling mind to move on over!
FREEDOM!

The post Freedom! appeared first on rawberta.

My smashy car kind of reminds me of seedy bars, which I also have noted appreciation for. When I was a drunk, I enjoyed the seedy bars way more than the classy ones. You know, the bars that stink of sour, skunky beer from years of spillage and that have your token wallflower patrons whose best friend is the bartender. I never much appreciated clubs that dripped with pretentious hook-up vibes, where stiletto shoes and bulging biceps were like the unspoken entry code. I liked rubbing shoulders and sharing drinks with folk whose clothes and skin were a little dirty, hair unkempt and beards too long.
There was this seedy bar I used to attend regularly back in the day called Mona Lisa, right by my apartment on 118th avenue. The bartender was a woman who looked like she washed her hair in olive oil, her smile comparable to an old picket fence. My buddy Dan and I would go, drown in Pilsner and sing karaoke, much to the enchantment of the handful of patrons, who were otherwise gathering dust. I would sing Daniel by Elton John as a lyrical memento to my friend and my favorite karaoke song of all time, White Room by Cream.

Here’s the parallel: character. My smashy car and seedy bars are both brimming with character. But more than just character – REAL character. Raw character. Rough around the edges character. To me, these are the celebrations of life. The stinks, smashes, dirt and grime are indicative of wear and tear, and wear and tear is indicative of living. A type of living that doesn’t always go well, is unpolished and messy, ugly, but serving a valuable purpose and getting from point A to point B anyway, despite appearances. Smashy cars and seedy bars are symbolic of vulnerability and the coarseness of humanity. They don’t fit into any conspicuous or grandiloquent mould and sometimes, they are unabashed in their crudity, which is my favorite expression of all. Because that expression of unabashedness, is an expression of humility. And humility, a spiritual principle, is what keeps us on an equal playing field with one another. Humility is the glue of connectivity.

Seedy bars are not my scene anymore – I’ve found healthier ways of celebrating mine and others’ authenticity. One of these ways is to unabashedly ride around in my smashy car. Doing so is one ordinary attempt to stay mobile in that which is real and raw.

The post Smashy Cars & Seedy Bars appeared first on rawberta.

Jackie: “Have I told you how much I love my job?”
Me: “No, tell me.”
Jackie: “I love my job.”
Me: “Me too. I love what I do.”

I really do. And I love that I get to share what I do with Edmonton via the Lifestyle Meditation community.

In celebration of this new venture, I am offering an Introductory Special:

Receive 15% OFF your first treatment with me at Lifestyle Meditation through the month of July. This is applicable to all Flower Essences Initial & Follow-Up Appointments, Reflexology & Reiki. Please quote my “Introductory Offer” in order to receive your special, reduced rate.
Click for more information about my services and pricing

Please contact Lifestyle Meditation to book your appointment on 780.761.3620 or you can contact me directly via email at info@rawberta.com

I look forward to serving you.

The post Introductory Special at Lifestyle Meditation appeared first on rawberta.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – 
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A week ago, my sister Maureen posted the same portion of poem on social media, and I thoughtfully “Liked” it. It makes me think of my life’s roads.

I regularly struggle to reconcile within myself one of the roads that I chose. I was barrelling down this road at high speeds long before I became conscious of it.

I’m a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Today, I haven’t had to use mind-altering substances for almost 4 years. Nearing the end of my attempted self-annihilation, I was deeply enmeshed in dark, destructive behaviors, many of which I was carrying out in secret. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t stop doing what I was doing.

I remember my last rock bottom like it was yesterday: I’d driven to Grande Prairie, where I’m from, for a friend’s wedding. My son was 4 at the time. On the road there, I repeated a mantra that went like this: “I’m just gonna take it easy this weekend.” I’d really had enough of my own demise and was in profound pain from being so entirely spent but compulsively and uncontrollably using drugs and alcohol anyways. But an addict, disordered by their addiction, thrives at deceiving themselves.

At that stage of my addiction, I had thrown out all of my drug paraphernalia because in the depth of my self-deception, I thought that would deter me from using drugs. And so I would constantly seek out pop or beer cans and make pipes out of them. I was grossly ashamed and would stash my home-made pipes until I’d inevitably end up angrily putting them in one or two plastic bags and tying them off to conceal the smell, then trashing them. This was followed by my robotically seeking out another can and repeating the same thing.

Arriving in Grande Prairie for the weekend that I had tried to convince myself would be one of ease and manageability, I immediately found a can in my parent’s basement. I secretly used it beneath my old bedroom window, around the corner of the house at the back, like an outcast – having outcasted myself into a pit of disdain long before that moment. Being under that window reminded me of all the times I’d snuck out of the house at night when I was a teenager – back then, this behavior wasn’t as much of a dirty secret. It was deceptively exhilarating, “cool” and fun. This time, the fun had long ended and I felt like a louse, creeping around corners, hiding what I’d become. A slave to my own decay. I stashed the can pipe around that secret corner and snuck there every 2-3 hours. This continued until the wedding ceremony. By the time I got to the dinner portion of the celebration, I thought I’d “take the edge off” with a drink. Such is the hamster wheel of addiction: not liking how I felt, I would seek to change those feelings with something that repressed them, only for the feelings to pop up later, and so I’d have to chase the repressing agents all over again. Repress, repeat, repress, repeat. A tiring and cumbersome existence. Soon I was double fisting and “taking it easy” became, yet again, a mantra of wishful thinking.

My parents arrived to pick up my son so I could continue with the debauchery. The pain that I feel even now as I recount that part of the story churns in my belly – putting the debauchery before my son. So desperately wanting my love for him to translate into action, but being a captive of my dependency instead. My enslavement had been in the driver’s seat for a long time.

I had bought a white and blue dress for that wedding, strapless and thin, the wispy fabric flowing down my legs, concealing their wobbliness – or at least that’s what I had convinced myself of. I loved that dress from the moment I saw it through a shop window on Whyte Avenue. It was elegant – like a fluent doily. The contrast was striking to me as this elegant sheath contained the epitome of crudeness. I made my rounds from one social scenario to the next, deeply insecure about my unmanageability and never quite making any sense. Soon I was spilled out onto a dirty bathroom floor. Again. I felt worried about my white dress getting dirty, but was completely unable to lift my poisoned body. The toilet seat was a cold, hard pillow. Again. I hated this existence more deeply than ever before. Maureen was also at this wedding. Having discovered me, some common friends summoned her to my rescue. Again.  (Bless you Maureen. It was never your responsibility to collect the debris of my self-absorbed downward spiral.) She made her way into the bathroom stall and repeated the tiresome routine of holding my hair back, forcing me to drink water, and soldiering me onto my feet while I cursed her ungraciously. She helped me to a camper somewhere close by and arranged me on a bed. Inside that camper, I was unable to move or speak. My head was spinning. Again. I felt ashamed – unable to do anything for myself. Again. People came in and out of the camper regularly, some partaking in drugs that were on the table, drinking, being rambunctious and crass. There was another guy passed out in the camper too, and every time the camper emptied of everyone but us, he’d try to make small talk, but I couldn’t talk. He was the owner of the camper and Maureen had earlier told me that he and his partner had a young son – somewhere in the avenue of 8 to 10 years old. Someone made mention of the boy, wondering where he was. His dad called out his name and, to my horror, a vulnerable, shaky voice answered from the bunks above. That moment shook me in a way that is hard to put into words. All the while, this young boy was being exposed to this chaotic, confusing, irresponsible debauchery – quietly hiding in the bunk in the middle of the night amidst circumstances that made it impossible to sleep, rest or feel safe. The potential of that being my son was a blessed and harrowing admonition that cut right through my inebriation. In that moment, my spirit broke in a way that I never knew before and I haven’t had to know since.

Eventually, even though there was a shuttle service for drunks like me, my other sister Katherine was called to come collect me. This intensified my shame because now Katherine was being inconvenienced and made to pick up my broken pieces too. Again. (Thank you Katherine. Nor was it ever your responsibility to gather my wreckage.) When she arrived and began helping me walk out of the camper to the vehicle, I managed to ask “Where’s Katherine?” I had no idea that she was right beside me, carrying me.

That night was gross. My unrestful sleep was no comfort to the shaken state of my spirit and the riddled state of my body and mind. The drive back to Edmonton the next day was painful. The emotional turmoil that followed is unforgettable. That wedding was on June 8th, 2013. The last time I used a mind-altering substance was June 22nd, 2013.

The way I see it, I took 2 roads less travelled.

1. The road of addiction. It seemed to me that most of my peers – especially those who had kids – were slowing down over the years. I kept thinking that something – anything – and most especially becoming a mother – would slow me down too. It didn’t. Nothing did. In fact, motherhood had sped me up and caused me to start acting out in secret. The fun had become bondage and I didn’t know how slowing down was even an option. The majority of people who try alcohol or drugs don’t turn into addicts.

2. The road of recovery. The meeting rooms of addiction recovery are relatively low in numbers considering how many millions of people struggle with addiction. Many die of or in the throes of their addictions. Working a program of recovery that keeps one away from their addictive behaviors is not only a success, it’s a fucking miracle. The majority of those that suffer from addiction don’t make it into recovery.

It’s easy to say that road #2 has “made all the difference” for me and in my life. That’s undeniable. But I’ve always had difficulty believing that road #1 “made all the difference”. I’ve often rolled my eyes at such commentary as “if you didn’t do all that, you wouldn’t be who you are today”, but that periodically irritating commentary is true. Suffering particular types of pain makes us more able to offer empathy and compassion to others who suffer similar types of pain. I had to learn empathy a really hard way, but I had to learn empathy. And I’m so glad I did. I wouldn’t take it back for a second. And had I not struggled in the grip of addiction and then struggled so much and for so long to get into recovery, I wouldn’t have learned about surrender, faith, humility, perseverance, commitment, discipline and integrity. Listing all those auspicious lessons makes me certain that road #1 made all the difference.

And so…

Three roads converged in the woods of my life, and I –
I took the ones less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The post The Road Less Travelled appeared first on rawberta.