BLOGS

Be inspired and inspire the world with your resolutions! It is all too common at this time of year for people not to make resolutions but for those who do, oftentimes, those resolutions are simple ones. What are your resolutions like? Have you ever simply wondered, without judgment, why you don’t fulfill the resolutions you make? Has it dawned on you to expand your resolutions to match some of your higher ideals and dreams for this lifetime? In blogs past, I have spoken about resolutions and ways to state them and implement them so that they are successful. I have also spoken about making a resolution that helps you understand what blocks you from fulfilling your resolutions. But this year I’d like to talk about creating a grander resolution. One that fulfills, or at least begins to fulfill, some of your higher dreams for this earth and for this life.

We are all one. So the turmoil, aggression, anger, and fear that resides on this earth at this time is something that also resides in each and every one of us from the teeniest amount to the largest amount. Each of us experiences these emotions. Each of us has a deeper desire to live beyond these emotions. Most of you dream to find greater happiness, joy, love, and acceptance. If that is a dream of yours, it may be the time to also see it as a dream for the Earth. As each and every one of our days becomes filled with love and love-based emotions around us in the people, the environment, and the earth, then we find that the love within our hearts becomes much more expansive. It also happens in reverse. As The love in our hearts, as well as love for our Selves, grows we expand our love and affect the people, the environment, and the earth.

If you put this all together, what I am proposing is as your resolutions reflect your dreams for love, acceptance, and happiness in your life imagine that it is also a dream in most people’s lives. So in your resolutions what is one thing you can do to offer love to this earth and its people? What is one thing you can do to bring peace upon earth?

What if each and every one of us makes a resolution that this year, each day, we will awaken grateful for the freedom and compassion we can find within? And then, what if, each and every one of us takes that compassion into our days doing one kind act each day. How easy would it be to be grateful for our day if we pass forward one kind act a day? One person at a time we begin to change the earth!

I wish you all a year of abundant love, peace, joy, and health. May you all work as one to bring that to yourself and everyone around you. Happy New Year!!

Once there is a split in the parent’s relationship, the world of the child has been severely disrupted and usually feels destroyed. This is a time to create and maintain consistency. It is critical to the healing of your child during this time. So, at the holidays, it is a good idea to address what part of the holiday traditions and rituals are a match to your child and which can be changed. It can be tremendously healing to create a new tradition with new rituals or with old rituals to offer you and your child the opportunity to embrace this new beginning in your lives.

Create your new tradition with your child. Ask what she would like to change or keep. If there had not been a clear tradition prior, then create a tradition with your child. The process of creating a tradition with your child offers him a sense of involvement and importance. It allows him to value the tradition and rituals that you choose to change or create.

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Now that you are aware of how to create an atmosphere that is friendly and accepting where the loving emotions are prevalent and the gifts are given lovingly and you are communicating, you have the ingredients to create the experience you and your child wish to have during the holiday. What is the experience your child wishes to have? What is the experience you wish to have?

Begin by asking your Self and your child what the ideal holiday would be like. Take notes on what each of you wishes to experience and then as a team, develop an experience that includes each of your dreams. You can find that there is no part of the desired experiences that needs to go unfulfilled. It will take patience and creativity. For example, if your child wants you and your ex-partner to be together, show understanding of that wish. Talk with your child about how he would feel if the family was to be together during the holiday. Take note on the way the child would feel. Ask what the pros and cons of previous holidays were when the family was together. Then help the child to develop an experience that embraces the feeling she is wishing to have during the holiday and help her see she can have the joyousness she is wishing for even if the one family is now two!

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As the discussion of holidays for children of divorced or separated families continues, the focus is now on communication. The prior three key components to happy holidays for divorced families included acceptance, loving emotions and environment, and gift giving. Communication is inherent in all three and yet must be addressed separately. Communication is the key to all experiences in this life. Given this topic, it is important to keep your communication focused on your and your child’s needs and happiness.

Communication must begin with you. As a parent it is important that you know how you are feeling and what you need. Are you struggling with the loss of the relationship, with low funds, with anger? Or are you feeling freedom and excitement? You want to explore your own feelings and thoughts first. If you are struggling or suffering in some way, take the time to write your feelings and thoughts down in a journal. Review the writings and ask your Self what you need in order to temporarily move beyond these stressful emotions and thoughts. Do you have family or friends or a professional with whom you can trust to help you shift from your pain during the holidays? If not, then reach out to someone!

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Looking at the holiday celebration for divorced and separated families, we have looked at acceptance and loving emotionality as the foundation of the holiday. As we continue talking about the components of a holiday for a divorced family, we would be remiss to not talk about the gifts given. The joy of giving gifts at this time is intimate and lasting – for the child and the parent. For the child, it is part of the foundation of many holiday memories. A gift that is given to the child, for the child, and with the purpose of fulfilling the child’s wish, sets the stage of a joyous holiday and joyous memories. Gifts given with an agenda are felt by the child which alters the way they receive it and remember it.

Often it is forgotten that the above-mentioned emotions and expression are a form of gift giving. As a parent, your very presence is a present. Be present during the holidays. The holidays, in particular, are about the way you feel and about your experience. Those are internal. Therefore, the greatest part of the holiday is filling it with your love, acceptance and joy! The greatest gift you can give your child is your own healing, especially for the holidays!!! It is in your healing that the child — intuitively, emotionally, and physically – can begin healing as well!

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In families divided, sometimes it takes effort to keep love in the forefront of the holidays. Yet, for your child, it is critically important that you keep the love and compassion in the forefront of your heart and thoughts. So, how do you do that? Let me start with a brief comment about the necessity of love in a child’s world and then give you some ideas of how to create a love- and joy-filled holiday.

Too often when partners are split, they can find themselves warring, complaining and harshly judging. These behaviors are in absence of love. Partners can make a promise to leave these behaviors in a box until the holidays are over. It is critical that the love be expressed consistently throughout the holidays. A child will respond to the love by opening his or her self to the experience. Love is an experience that opens and unites a family. Fear (which includes anger, dislike, hurt, etc.) is an experience that shuts down and causes fragmentation. Your child can be very sensitive to the differences at a subtle level but when it is an outward expression of fear-based feelings and thoughts, the child will do what he or she can to take it upon themselves to make her or his environment good and loving. That is not a child’s responsibility. It is the parents’ responsibility.

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At a time when things can feel broken, it becomes important to find acceptance. But how do you create an environment of acceptance? Begin by finding that place in your Self that feels so accepting of your child. Hold that feeling and see if you can feel it for your Self. Now see if you can feel it for your ex-partner (you may need to remember when you first met!!) Your acceptance of your child allows you to listen to their difference in perception and feeling. It is important to allow an acceptance of the difference of perception and feelings in your Self and your ex-partner as well. During the holidays, especially for divorced family and divided homes, a child is going to have their own internal experiences.

It is critical to avoid warring with your ex-partner at this time. The fragmentation keeps the child externally focused on each parent in order to prevent the plunge into that dangerous territory of destruction (warring, arguing, hate/dislike). Further, the anger and stress that is being felt by estranged partners is felt or intuited by the child and impacts her or his emotions and stress level. A child will take a lot of the fear-based emotions personally. That occurs at many levels but an important piece to understand is that the child will personalize the absence of acceptance between his or her 2 parents. A child will do this in order to keep her or his parents good and omnipotent. A child who has good parents is a safe child. That means that if a child hears the discord he or she feels an absence of safety and then must turn it into a definition of safety. Obviously, that is not a real sense of safety for the child and the child ultimately knows this and is built upon the absence of true safety.

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How do you make a magikal holiday for your children even though, as parents, you are living separate?

The holiday season can be a challenge for the parents as well as the child when there is divorce or separation in the family. There are several things to consider and/or understand when desiring the best for your children’s and your holiday season. In brief, the child may experience such upsetting emotions as guilt and worry, anger and isolation. If those emotions are not addressed through communication and structure during the holidays, the child continues to grow with those internal experiences and skewed memories.

As parents, your communication with your ex-partner and your child are critical to the happiness and joy of the season. As a parent you too may be experiencing some painful emotions over the experience. It is important that you know how to share your pain with other adults so that you can be happy and proactive in the creation of the holiday season celebrations.

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This week marks the first week of Holiday Shopping! It opened with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. People have come to plan for these days and companies have come to exploit or extend these days. There is a craze or frenzy that surrounds these days of shopping. Yet, we hear people talk about the behavior of the people who go into these sale days with great intensity and, at times, aggression to find the items they wish to purchase at the great prices advertised!! It seems that most people agree that this “beginning of the season” does not match the “meaning of the season”.

So, why do you succumb to the seduction of the commercializing of the season?
You may find yourself “buying” into the need to purchase gifts (and many of them) because of a need to be seen as good enough, because it is expected by the other or by society, or because of the fear of judgment or disappointment if you do not. If you begin to understand your reactionary buying in response to the seductive advertisements and promises then you will begin to open and, consequently, see more intimate and creative gifts of love and acceptance. Our intrinsic focus allows for an intimate gift rather than an extrinsic focus that allows for a number of gifts.

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Are you grateful? Do you acknowledge that for which you are grateful on a daily basis? Will you verbalize your gratitude on this Thanksgiving?

Too often on this holiday, people eat, drink and gather but forget the essence of this day. It is a day of gratitude for sure! Yet, it is a day set aside to feel the gratitude of the essence of this country: unity, harmony, and acceptance! To feel the gratitude for the freedom that this country offers you! For me, it is also a time to acknowledge my gratitude for the American Indians because this day is a day that marks their loss of freedom and peace as they knew it prior to the white man’s arrival. And yet, it is a day to be grateful for all they give for they are an integral part of what makes us
Americans.

On this day of gratitude for our freedom can we each find a place in our hearts, prayers, and thoughts to also thank the American Indians for their sacrifice and for their teachings!! This day marks their gift of this land and the teachings of the symbols that abound on all of earth and speak to each of us of our lives. They teach us of wisdom or knowingness beyond the knowledge and the ego’s need to know. They offer us the opportunity to observe what it is like to be humble and to honor the animal who is to sacrifice its life for us to live. They offer us the opportunity to know the plants that feed us and heal us. They give us the opportunity to learn to honor our elders and their wisdom. And more than anything, they offer us the opportunity to know that we can all live in community, in harmony, in unity without warfare and prejudice. For it was the white man who brought with them the notion of warfare among each other and judgment that gave the right to that warfare.

I am grateful for my life and that we all are immigrants to the land that was once a peaceful land of Indians. I am grateful to be an American. I am grateful that our forefathers built this dream on high spiritual principles of unity, harmony, equality and freedom. I am grateful that our warriors are fighting for these principles. I will be more grateful to see peace and freedom abound on this earth. I will honor all of those whose lives have been destroyed by unnecessary warfare and or religious judgment. I am grateful to be a person who leads with love and acceptance.

I wish you all a very love-filled day of thanks and acceptance for all that is and for all who are. It is in the absence of judgment that we will be able to feel the freedom we have been offered!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all and your families!!

With warmth and gratitude,
Kristen