Reflections on happiness

My friend Toni had the sweetest comment for me yesterday. She told me that I look so lovely pregnant, that I'm glowing and seem to have this determination that I'll be happy and healthy, and won't let my pregnancy slow me down. Since Toni's known me for about the same amount of time I've been pregnant, she doesn't know that I have actually felt like this for a long time! It got me thinking about what contributes to my happiness.

I see that a lot of my personal happiness has come about as the result of gratitude. In the past few years, I've escaped depression, ended a bad marriage, discovered my own worth, taken responsibility for my choices, become a better mother, found a loving partner and more. I have so many blessings in my life!

The other thing that contributes to my happiness is an absolute acceptance of myself. I appreciate that I am here to live and love and learn. I am here to be uniquely ME. I now live with integrity because I'm connected to my true self. I think that Toni is just seeing a woman who is happy and comfortable in her own skin, someone who is uncompromising. I want to continue to grow as that woman, to live the life that's mine, and to encourage others to do the same.

Are you happy in your day to day life? Do you seek change? If you do, you might want to try the following:

1) Do less. Seriously. Take ownership of your daily choices, and give yourself permission to slow down.
2) Sleep more. If you can't get up in the morning without an alarm clock (at least in the summer when the sunlight should help you wake), you might not be getting enough sleep.
3) Go for a walk.
4) Commune with God/dess, the Universe, Nature, the One. Ask your questions and be prepared to listen.
5) LOVE yourself. BE yourself.

There are lots of great resources on the internet. From time to time I share those that enrich my life, and I trust that you will find exactly what you need at exactly the right time. Your happiness will be a beacon to lead other people to the same. I pray to see the whole of humanity radiating JOY!

Happily yours,

Choosing To Live Fearlessly

This is a post I wrote for my old blog back in November 2007. It was originally titled "Losing the fear". I've made a few minor edits. I hope you enjoy it!


Last night I was reflecting on motherhood, an amazing journey that we embark on from the moment the little line shows positive on the pregnancy test. We worry, read, talk, and worry some more that somehow, we can never give enough, do enough, be enough for our kids. We worry about giving them vaccines. We worry about choosing not to vaccinate. We worry about ultrasounds in pregnancy. We worry about the "what ifs" when we choose not to have ultrasounds. We worry about picky eating. We worry if our children eat "too much".

Our grandmothers worried for different reasons. A farming family might go hungry if it was a bad year for crops. A serious infection could ravage a child's system, or kill them. A lack of contraception or knowledge of her body's cycles left a woman with little control over reproduction: she might have 10 babies in 20 years, leaving her physically exhausted and with more mouths to feed. How did women deal with this? They had faith. They knew and understood that they were part of a greater mystery. They trusted in God, and at least if they didn't trust in God doing what was best for them, they trusted that Someone Else was in control, and they accepted it.

Despite the fear mongering that is prevalent in our society, we are living at an optimum time to have children. We have a healthy, safe food supply. We live in safe, comfortable housing. If we choose to take advantage of it, we have amazing resources like free playgroups, local free libraries, safe and engaging playgrounds, La Leche League and more. Yet our worries persist.

We have lost our faith, and misled ourselves to believe something our grandmothers didn't: that we have control. We think that if we do it all right, we are going to guarantee no scraped knees, no sickness, no harm for our children. Big business takes advantage of us, marketing gadgets and medicines and technology to guarantee that our children will be smarter, healthier and happier. We have put our faith in plastics and computer chips and manufactured foods. We keep worrying because deep down our spirit knows this is not faith at all, but delusion.

We need to find faith again. We need to acknowledge that we are not in control of all that happens. We need to let go of control in many areas of our lives, and start living with love and power, leaving fear in our wake.

I would like to share with you a prayer that is powerful to help you release control and start living with faith, no matter what personal belief system is. It is an adapted version of the "Serenity Prayer" by Reinhold Niebuhr, with the first four lines intact and unchanged as they are extremely powerful to anyone who is learning to let go of control:

God/dess, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time
Accepting hardship as the path to peace and strength.
Taking the world as it is, not as I would have it:
Trusting that I am part of a greater consciousness,
That I am learning and evolving each day of my life
Through my experiences and my choice to live fearlessly.
That I will see the beauty in each day
And connect with all beings in a journey of LOVE.
God/dess, today I give the control to you.
I trust that you will guide me in my decision making.
I trust that the best thing I can do for my family is to love myself,
Tapping into the Love of the Universe, then sharing it with my family.
I am not afraid.

Warrior Woman

Warrior Woman,

You dreamed of a glorious birth
And with a mix of excitement and trepidation you
Entered the temple of sickness and dying and
New life.

As the waves crashed over you
A rejoicing built up inside you
But
Something changed the plans

And so
You made the sacrifice
You saved yourself and your baby
The only way you knew how

Now the trust birth camp
Whispers in your ear
Twas for nought
You were duped

Your stomach knots up

The grannies and the girlfriends
Cheerfully say
You have a healthy baby
What more could you want?

You seethe inside

Don't forget
That you are a warrior
Who made a choice
A wound for your child

You are stronger now
Your scar tries to tell you
I am tough, you can be too

And you have days
Like any soldier
When you remember the fear
The helplessness
Was it my fault?
Did they lie?
You struggle for answers in a
World of greys
And pray for a different birth
Next time

Honour your scar
She is part of you
Forgive her as you
Forgive youself
Caress her and thank her
Trust her to watch over you and
Your future babies

Let the Goddess hold you as you
mourn
heal
weep
rejoice

And carry the strength of your birthing sisters
Into the temple once again.

© 2009 Amy Gow

Some of my favourite quotes

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." ~ Mohandas Ghandi

"A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed…When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” ~ Dresden James

"The feminist agenda encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." ~ Pat Robertson, 20th century televangelist

"My country is the world... and my religion is to do good." ~ Thomas Paine 1737-1809

"It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness." ~ K'ung Fu-tzu (Confucius) 551 - 479 B.C.E.


"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs." ~ Frederick Douglass, escaped slave


"If you judge people, you have no time to love them." ~ Mother Teresa

"Truth is that which does not contaminate you, but empowers you." ~ Gary Zukav

What are some of your favourite quotes?

Love Vs. Judgement

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."- Mother Teresa

We live in a world that judges people, on the spot, for pretty much everything: what we wear, our hairstyle, our complexion, the way we talk, the car we drive. Many of us so-called "enlightened" folks will say those things don't matter to us, yet we have no problem complaining about our friend's messy house, our cousin who drinks too much or our coworker who gossips all day.

For every second we focus on someone's negative issues, we give that issue power. We give it life. Our brain starts to associate the behaviour with the person, until it BECOMES the person. Our friend becomes a slob, our cousin an alcoholic, our coworker a bitch. We secretly enjoy focusing on other people's problems, because in doing so we can forget our own very real, very human shortcomings. We can say "I am better than you."

We have it backwards. Instead of focusing on the negative, try today to see the beauty in everyone else, the wonderful things that he or she is doing. You then see that your friend drops everything to help others. Your cousin is one of the funniest people you know. Your coworker is struggling to support a chronically ill partner. In short, there is a lot more to this person than the label you've slapped on them.

We have all learned a lot about tough love in our lifetimes from numerous "self-help" gurus. We have come to believe that we can withdraw our support from others until they start living the way we think they should. In contrast, I believe that people need our love in the NOW, that we need to love others unconditionally. I am not suggesting ignoring or hiding from others' problems. I am not advocating denial. I am asking that you understand we are all on a journey in this lifetime. Each of us is here to learn and grow and there are as many paths to learning as there are people on the planet. We need to respect that other people are experiencing the pain and the joy of life differently than we are. We need to truly put ourselves in another person's shoes, and try to understand that they are coping and living life the only way that seems possible to them at the time.

I'd like to share with you my personal story because has helped me to understand this concept. For a decade I lived in a relationship that slowly soured. In the beginning, my partner was a friend, funny and fun to be with. In the end, under threat of physical violence, I left. In the intervening years, my life and my spirit slowly sunk under the weight of emotional abuse. It was such a gradual process that I honestly didn't see it. Over the years, I had moments of clarity in which I tried to envision leaving, but I felt powerless to do so. I had come to believe that I was incapable of making decisions on my own.

When I recall those years, I like to use the "boiling frog" story. In the late 1800s scientists performed experiments to see how frogs sense changes in temperature. They reported that if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and very slowly raised the temperature of the water to boiling, the frog would die without ever having noticed the change in temperature. They also claimed that if you dropped a frog directly into a pot of boiling water, it would react immediately and jump out of the pot. Whether or not this story is factually true, it is the best way I know of to help people understand how I could have stayed in such a relationship for so long.

I now look back and realize that over the years I came to believe my partner's messages that I was lazy and disorganized, with poor decision-making skills and an unrealistic, impractical view of the world. Over time I actually became those things, in part because I heard often enough that I WAS them.

Friends and family could see these things happening to me, but they were powerless to stop it. I couldn't acknowledge their concerns. I would only defend my partner and then pare back my interactions with the concerned parties, convinced that I was doing the right thing. When I ended up in a woman's shelter, I realized that I had been in denial for a long time, taking emotional blows while many of the other women there had been taking physical blows as well.

The whole experience has helped me to understand how hard it can be to change the damaging, harmful things in our lives. It helped me to know that in such a situation, you often don't see a way out, that you feel unable to change it. It takes a pivotal event to spur change. Then it takes love and personal forgiveness to heal and see it as part of our soul's journey.

In the end, it's all about love. If I had truly loved myself, I would have never stayed in such a hurtful place. I judged myself harshly for a long, long time, and it only brought me more pain. We need to love ourselves and love others, respecting our individual paths. The healing will come.

Remember to be gentle with yourself. In doing so you will be more gentle with others.

Love,