The Rise of Personal Power

We can learn to harness our power, just like waves in the ocean hold great power to create or destroy

The world around us is in chaos. We are overwhelmed by what is happening in the world and at times we feel powerless. What can we do to lower our levels of stress and make sense of our emotions? We take back our power.

So what does this mean? Society has conditioned us to give away our power. Whether it is our government, our religious institutions, our educational system or our family, we enter this world relying on others to help us navigate and survive. As a child, we are told how to behave and, guided by well meaning parents, to choose what will please others. Our teachers tell us how to think and perform to get good grades and earn their favour. Religion guides our behaviour to curry favour with the gods or earn our place in heaven. All of this teaches us it is in our best interest to make choices based on what we are told, based on factors that lie outside ourselves. But what happens when we begin to question what we've been told or what we've come to believe?

My doubts began with religion. I was raised in a strict Roman Catholic household. I learned the 10 Commandments and our family lived by Jesus' teachings "Love the Lord your God with all your might” and “Love thy neighbour as thyself". We constantly heard "Treat others as you want to be treated” and I still carry these values today, although my idea of God has changed. We attended church every Sunday and being a very observant and curious child, I soon began to notice the hypocrisy. If we were all made in God's image, why was the priest the only one that could absolve me of my sins? What made him better or closer to God? We should be equal. Why did people treat each other poorly in the parking lot and then somehow be good Christians once they walked through the doors of the church? Why could the nuns at my school use the strap to punish kids that "broke the rules" yet still somehow be holy and dedicated to Jesus' teachings? Never mind all the other hidden goings on with priests and the Vatican! Yes, people in the church heard all the same stories as everyone else! This didn't sit well with me. That God was a punishing white man to be feared, yet was full of love, except when you were bad? It just didn’t make sense!

I stopped going to church once I left home and could choose for myself. I gave up religion but I didn't give up my faith. I believed in a force beyond what I can see and always felt protected. I knew from the time I was little that angels existed and I'm sure they spoke to me. I definitely felt their energy and do so still to this day. This was the start of my journey to question what the world was saying that didn't fit with what my faith or what my heart told me. 

I believe that love is everything and is unconditional, so wherever someone presents fear,  anger or control as love, I know it is simply their underlying trauma speaking. I noticed this in myself as well. I had a strong need to control my surroundings to feel safe. I eventually realized this was because I had underlying trauma from my childhood related to feelings of abandonment and a sense the world was not a safe place. Don’t get me wrong, I had a really good childhood and my parents were wonderful. We had everything we wanted and needed and they did the best they could - after all, there is no parenting manual! This was deeper than any one specific thing I experienced, but rather a combination of a number of messages from the world around me that told me the world wasn’t safe, as well as different experiences where I felt fear and didn’t have the proper tools for dealing with it.

I was a highly sensitive and emotional child and this was very difficult for my family to handle. The lessons from my religion taught that information was dangerous and we shouldn’t speak of certain things. This had the result of pushing things under the rug and taught avoidance rather than conversation. I learned to push my fear down and find a way to mask what I was feeling because no one knew how to address these things head on. I learned to play piano when I was 5 and found a way to express my emotions through music. This really helped me in many ways to manage my emotions, but it led to the creation of a lot of trauma energy being stored in my body. This, combined with a belief that my emotions were too much for people, led me to hide a lot and become a people pleaser to keep the peace and avoid being judged.

I carried this throughout my life, until I was ready to really begin dealing with my trauma. I came to this point because of the work I began doing to discover who I really am and address the urge I felt to know why I was here. I have been on a spiritual journey for over 40 years, but it has been a slow process, with many detours, and I’ve finally reached a point where I understand that in order to heal, I need to find my center and my power to keep me stable enough to clear all of the stuck energy from my trauma. Now that I’ve been able to do that for myself, I want to share what I’ve learned in the hope it might help others who are beginning to ask the same questions or are having the same experiences.

I started this blog to share my journey and the lessons I’ve gathered along the way. If this resonates with you, I invite you to join me. If not, that’s OK too. When the student is ready, the teacher appears, but sometimes it’s really scary to begin. If you feel triggered, that is your body’s way of sending you a gentle nudge. Don’t worry, you don’t have to say yes. The universe will keep sending you gentle nudges until you are ready. There is no time frame, and there is no destination. It will all happen when it happens!