Living Letters...Writing life well

When I was a little girl I always wanted to write the way my mom did. She had the most beautiful writing and when she wrote or signed her name it was nothing short of a work of art. From the time I began learning to write in cursive I can't even tell you how many countless hours I spent trying to learn my mom's writing. I always wanted to be just like her and I felt like if I could just master my writing so that it could be just as beautiful as hers, I would be that much closer to being just like my mommy.

What I didn't know until I was about 37 years old is that your handwriting actually shapes your personality. By working so hard to copy my mom's writing, I was becoming more like her than I ever would have thought possible. I always believed that my writing had to be perfect. Writing for me was a very slow process because each letter had to be the “right” way. Which meant that if I was in the middle of the page and made a mistake I would start all over again. In the beginning, I would write in pencil first and then go over it with pen to make sure that everything was what I considered to be perfect.

Over the years, my writing style remained the same. Slow and methodical. That was about the only thing that was ever slow and methodical for me. Inside, my world was constantly spinning at what felt like warp speed and trying to slow everything down when I wrote made it even more difficult to have a steady hand.

When I was 37  living in the midst of my greatest nightmare something began to change and I didn't even realize at the time what was happening. My writing began to change. I didn't purposely set out to alter my penmanship, but I was able to see the connection between the way I was writing and the impact it was having on my attitude, coping, processing, and choices. I never would have believed that something like handwriting could ultimately rewire your physiological processing and responses, but I am living this proof.

In July 2009 I was beginning to tap into my heart in a way that I had never been able to do before. In the process of facing myself and learning how to take responsibility for the things that I had spent my life thinking, being, doing, planning, giving and taking, I began to experience the power of creating space. By owning the things I had done throughout my life acknowledging to myself and then others was nothing short of shining a light powered by the sun into the darkest rooms within my heart that had been shut so long that cobwebs covered the doors and the hinges had rusted the doors shut.

The light of truth and love greater than the sun burned up all of the old without destroying the structure within. What was left was an emptied room that was clean and had lots of space. As space was created, I began to experience liberation from the things that once owned me. Addictions began to dissolve, insatiable habits began to fade out and I began learning to dance the dance of love. Depression and despair began transforming into joy and laughter. It has been nothing short of extraordinary!

In the process, I began to realize things were changing my life at the speed of thought. I began to write as fast as I could in order to keep up with how fast all of the information was pouring into every place that had been so dark and stagnate for pretty much all of my life. It became a flood of ecstasy and awe unlike I have ever known. I was the one writing, but I know that the things that were pouring out of me were so amazing and life changing that I can still read things I have written to this day and become completely swept away at what the containers called words are filled with!

It wasn't until mid 2010 that I ran into a course that I was going to purchase called, "Change your handwriting, change your life." I never bought it, but it hit me in the moment that I read the title that changing your handwriting really could change your life. I thought over the times when my life had really began changing in very monumental ways when I began writing differently. 

The speed with which I was writing didn't allow me to write slow and methodically anymore. In order to get out the things that were more revelation than just realization, I had to write so fast that sometimes when it came time for me to transcribe them and type my notes onto the computer, it was really difficult to read what I had written. That was frustrating for me because I had always held a great deal of pride in how beautiful I felt my handwriting had become, and now it appears that writing with my heart rather than my mind has actually been instrumental in writing my insecurity and need for validation away!

After while, I was more concerned with being able to express everything that I was finally learning to understand than I was with how pretty my writing looked. I was growing and changing but it wasn't until I realized that I wasn't doing certain things anymore that I saw for the first time that there is a tipping point for change. 

Change never feels like change while in the process of changing. In fact, during times of greatest change and transformation it feels like anything but! It has even felt like I was going backwards and was never going to "get it" during periods of the greatest growth. It wasn't until I looked back and realized that I don't do "xyz" anymore that I finally saw I really had changed. What amazed me even more is that as my handwriting changed, I was becoming less and less like all of the dysfunction that had ruled my life since as far back as I can remember. Who knew that something that seems so insignificant has the power to change your personality, your thoughts, your ability to think and even alter the course of what we call destiny!

I'm not saying that it is only because of my handwriting that I have become who I am today, but what I am saying is that as my handwriting changed, so did I. I began to see things differently and had an edge to choose things in a way I never had at any other time in my life. It was almost like both hemispheres of my brain were in sync with each other and because of the speed with which I was pouring out what was in my heart filled emotions through ideas and thoughts, my brain didn't have any time to think and therefore all that was happening in my life was the equivalent of Lightning and Thunder. 

Lightning in the form of thought, idea, and seeking, rode upon every neural fiber and internal network with the precision of a laser as I emotionally engaged to pour out what I was experiencing. Inside I was lighting up like the Christmas tree in Times Square and I have never been so alive!

As I opened my emotions I realized that this is where all creativity is born before it is delivered into the body; which goes on to write, construct, sculpt, sing, voice, paint and express in whatever the inspired medium of choice is. Creating through the emotional conduit and power of Love has become my drug of choice! The more I create, the more I am given to create with. The more I am willing to push every envelope, the more envelopes I am given to push!

I am certain that we are powerful beyond any measure that we have ever known or been allowed to believe because God said that we have all been made in His image and His likeness...we have the strength, courage, tenacity, and strategy of a man AND the tenderness, nurture, gentleness and powerful design to create and develop something out of nothing as woman. We are only imbalanced when we war against the duality that we are. We have been created both male and female, and it is only when we stop believing that we are one or the other just because of the body we live in that we become unified within ourselves which then restores us and makes us whole.

In this process I went from being an overly dominant, “I am woman hear me roar” to understanding that as a woman my greatest strength is not in proving that I am as capable as any man. My greatest strength is my heart which is where the Lord of my life has made his home. I always joke about how I am a recovering dude, now that I have discovered what it is to be a woman who holds the greatest power that we have been given from the beginning of creation. I have been given the strength of a man and the strength of a woman. We all have. Though both strengths are powerful, they are different and a complete compliment to each other. Its amazing to me that the greatest things in my life have been realized because I was willing to be open to the possibility that things greater than we can dream, fathom, hope for, and are far beyond our wildest imaginations are possible in this life right now.

I also knew that everything I had spent my life doing and fighting against was only going to keep me from ever knowing what is possible because my way was not working. I knew that I needed to choose another way. Not just any way, but the way of the only one who made me and knows everything I dream of and desire because He is the one who made my heart and gave me the ability to dream and hope. For hope is not only an attribute of all that His Love is, it is the greatest expression of Love in action!

I am certain that the only true life that exists is not found in anything we can obtain or experience from the outside...it is from being able to dive deeply into the infinite spring inside of our heart that we pour out into our own lives and allow the overflow to pour into everything else that we do until we color the world around us with the original signature of our heart!

Imagine that if something like handwriting holds such power, imagine what else you can do if you are willing to open your heart. Let yourself feel again and remember the time when you believed anything was possible before you bought into everyone else's ideas of what (im)possible looks like. The way we feel is so powerful because it forms our beliefs and shapes all that we think that life is supposed to be about. Be open to believing again. You know, like you did when you were a child~Give yourself permission to close your eyes and remember the feelings that were once larger than life!

Along the way I have been called insane, told to come down into “reality” and how I am supposed to live life if I ever want to “be something.” Well the truth is, that I already am something because I am the daughter of the Most High God and He loves me just as I am! It is His love that continues to guide me, heal me, shape me, and inspire me to create as I never have before. I will never stop dreaming and believing. I know I am not like anyone else and I don't ever expect anyone else to be like me or do what I do because “my way is the right way.” 

I have learned lifetimes worth of lessons in my 41 years of life and the road has been paved the hard way, but it has brought me here. And here is the greatest gift I have ever been given so I live every moment excellently and to the fullest giving all I can along the way and making the differences I can make as we build this legacy together!

Truthfully, I am insane because I am living out of my mind...instead, I choose to live from my heart and along the way I found that every moment is magical...even in the pain for I am here, I am me and I wouldn't ever want it any other way! So I am not trying to become anything anymore and I am not out to compete to prove I am better than anyone else. However, I am here living with all of my heart, giving everything I am to be excellent in all I do and think, and I am walking every step of my life with everyone whether I have met them yet or not. 

I am here to uplift and let my life be the living letter of what is possible if you only believe. One of my favorite movies is One Night With the King and it is about the story of Queen Esther. In the movie she is going to go before the King without being invited, which was a death sentence. One of her servants begged her not to do it and she told him about King David and how before he was King that he did not win because he fought well, but because he believed well.

This life has become all about achieving, and from the time we are little we are made to believe that we have to grow up and become something. Instead, I challenge you to see that you are acceptable and have nothing to prove...only cultivate. Instead of trying to become something or get more so you can do whatever it is that you desire to do more than anything, I encourage you to look at what is already within you and begin to pour yourself out so that you can make space for all of the things you would like to do and experience to fill you up from inside so you can share your unique, precious and priceless treasures with the world in only the way you can do it for you are the only one like you in all of creation! I believe in you and I know that the best is yet to come!