Exploration instead of Expectation
Dec 30, 2022
It's been a season of reflection, recharge, and recalibration since my late husband passed in May.
Giving myself the proper time to process the grief and trauma of his death has been crucial to my healing journey. But unfortunately, when losing a loved one, secondary losses come with it; for me, there are too many to count.
To get through it, I needed to move through it. And it meant taking each day one day at a time—each moment, one moment at a time, as best as I could.
Listening to what speaks to my soul, not so much my survival mind.
Asking myself regularly what my heart needs today and what will be medicine for my soul.
Today, it's writing to you.
Yet, before I could do that, I needed to deal with my inner self calling me to love and accept all parts of myself. I'm grateful I have those tools to pull out of my toolbox to aid my recovery.
Losing a loved one opens up a lot inside you and losing them to suicide makes it a bit more challenging.
While there were many days early on, I wanted to numb and dissociate from the pain. I confronted it instead. Yet some days, I dealt with my pain by going into busyness to avoid what I felt.
Even knowing better, I'm human. So, I gave myself grace and remembered it's one day at a time. Course correct to get back on track. It helped me to be gentle with myself yet be intentional with my journey to go through the process in a healthy way to recovery.
And putting boundaries to what didn't fit my healing journey was necessary. It matters what we bring into our inner circle, our inner world.
Often, a significant life crisis will bring you to look at what is buried deep within you to the surface to heal and love. It did this for me, and while it's been a challenging year, I can see what God is doing in the midst of it all.
I've taken a few trips over the past few months to connect with myself and God, exploring mother nature and getting grounded in the direction I want to move towards with more clarity.
The direction I'm leaning into moving into the new year, which came to me from my recent trip this month to Sedona, is Exploration. So instead of having expectations, why not go into everything with Exploration?
I'm shifting gears to flow into what is aligned and trusting.
I know.... easier said and done, yet like everything, the more you build muscle by doing, the easier it becomes.
Before we became these overly domesticated humans with all kinds of conditions and beliefs - we explored! We lived in the "what is" moments - not overly concerned with the "what ifs."
It's good to have dreams and desires, yet the magic happens when we open ourselves up to all possibilities that will align with what speaks to the heart.
Expectations of how we think things "should" happen usually set us up for disappointments.
It's a delicate process. One that takes time and can be timely. Yet, each day, we get a new canvas to paint.
A new day to explore.
A new day to move around and do something different if we choose.
Explore with love. 
Francine
