Hi Cheryl,

What a powerful interaction you had. To choose love over fear to create authentic power in the moment to see it as it was happening and make a choice from love. That is beautiful.

Love, joanne

Hi Cheryl,

Much of what you said is very familiar to me – particularly seeing possibilities of responding differently after the fact. When I react in anger, there is often a brief glimmer of thought to respond differently. Then another frightened part leaps and whisks me along, convincing me that pausing to feel the pain and think about choosing another path would take soooooo long…just finish it and move on. When you decided to do the “opposite” of responding in anger, the word “opposite” struck me. If I notice that I am in a reaction, I will experiment with using the word “opposite” as a mantra to help me focus on pausing to make a different choice.

Thank you for your post.

With love,

Jenny

Hello Cheryl and Jenny, your discussions have been helpful to me to remember to stop when feeling the anger and donthe opposite of whY I want to do. I have been working this sin e before my first journey and Cheryl’s experience and reaction to do somthing different is usually what I do. I am finding that dealing with my Mom and her dementia is really showing me deeper parts of my anger that have been stuffed and suppressed. I find that when exhausted and rumning on low sleep and energy, that even though o am consciously aware that I am in a reaction that i am still experiencing difficulty not expressing it and when I do something that I think is opposite it really isn’t that I am stuffing it for later tonkeep the situation from escalating. I have also become aware of a new thought pattern in this situation,y thoughts are well she has dementia and she wont remember or willl forget onba few minutes or by the end of the day and this is where my loving parts dont want me too, but innthe exhaustion inreach a place of not caring and I do not want to do this at all. It doesn’t help the situation at all especially when I have to be firm with Mom when she is getting ready to do something dangerous.

Any suggestions to help me challenge it then? Thanks!

Cheryl,
It feels good to be back on a real computer instead of a smartphone keyboard.

Let me clarify for you “stuffing” in my sentence above. At times I find that my Mom’s mood and emotions can shift dramatically and quickly. In order to attempt to keep up and remain grounded and focused, I am not always able to really “sit” and fully allow myself to feel and lean into the emotion that has come up because I had to get back to Mom. So I did an abbreviated version of moving through it and letting it go, without fully doing so. My mind told me I was letting it go, roll off my back etc and that I fully dealt with it and it was gone…..rather than fully honoring and accepting that was going on. The best I can describe is because the pace was moving it was more like I took the anger I was experiencing and sweeping it under a rug or placing in a closet or a hole in the ground until I could come back to it later. I never fully let go of the anger, I made an appointment with myself to come back to address the issue and then never came back to it until triggered it again. This was a quick shift for Mom’s sake so I thought and maybe it really was a full release, yet it felt like I was “faking it until I make it”. I realized it was so that I wouldn’t upset my Mom so that I would not have painful consequences or a sleepless night later. So I was trying to control my environment and hers to keep us both happy from my perception and perspective only.

The challenge of acting and living lovingly and consciously with someone who is not fully able to do so in return due to a physical deterioration of the brain has had some very intense and challenging moments, filled with opportunities to choose love over fear.

I think that I feel that when I am stuffing I am allowing myself to trade off one indulgence of fear for another one……this just came to me as I was typing the above. This is a pattern and fear that has controlled me since I was a child in my relationship with my Mom and I am ready to no longer allow this fear to control me.

Love, Pamela