Those Memories Are the Opposite of Finding Money in a Pocket

Last week, while we sat around the table with our pants unbuttoned after Thanksgiving dinner (maybe it was just my pants that were unbuttoned...) we started sharing funny stories, and then one story that was funny to one person made another person cry.

Not a funny, we're-laughing-so-hard-we're-crying kind of cry. A legit, tender, revisiting of the memory and the emotions that came with it.

I hosted my mom and dad (who have been divorced since 1982), my kids, my brother, and my nephew. Aaron was there for a bit, but then he left to hang with his extended family who'd flown in that day from the East Coast.

It was literally just my family. People I'm related to by blood, and no one else.

We started telling stories about magical things, like how my mom and I both received pretty fun and profound messages from my step-dad from the other side (he died 11.17.23). He bought her a pillow. And he delivered a beautiful gold watch to me through my dad and daughter, along with the message, "It's time." Which is a story for another time.

Then we moved into stories about when we've peed our pants while driving. (I was the only adult who has fully peed her pants while driving, through a neighborhood in Los Angeles on my way home from work. It had to be done because I could feel myself start to stroke out.)

And then we shared stories from our childhoods, and some about our kids.

This led to a story about a road trip where a kid peed in their seat on the off-ramp to a rest stop. That got cleaned up, and minutes later, that same kid ran down a hill and slipped in a slick of mud, dirtying the clean clothes they'd just put on.

And that was the moment that had the table laughing (including the "kid," who brought the story up in the first place), and it had the parent suddenly revisiting that muddy kid memory from their side, and it wasn't funny.

The parent was "back there," hopping into that memory and feeling exactly the same as they did in that moment. It was a feeling of grief at how quickly they snapped at the muddy kid from overwhelm and fatigue and all the other life stuff they'd been carrying.

They stole that moment of joy from the child so fast that it grieved them to feel it again.

Because it isn't healed.

Time isn't linear, and your life experiences are all stored in your subconscious, nervous system, emotions, and energetic field. The past isn't separate from you. You carry it with you, always.

So when you have one of these gorgeous (although painful) memories revisit you, it's like the opposite of sticking your hand inside the pocket of a coat you haven't worn in 6 months and finding money. It's like finding the sharp end of a tack with your finger.

The experiences where we still hold something against ourselves are dense energetically, and they aren't separate from us just because we're not thinking about them.

They're with us, just hidden behind more life that we use to keep them out of sight.

We think the further we get away from the things that hurt us (childhood, family dynamics, the person we divorced, etc.), the better off we'll be.

And then we're given reminders.

Triggers are the easiest reminders to recognize. Revisiting the same patterns you've been in for longer than you'd like to admit is a close second. What you avoid thinking about because you don't like the way it makes you feel is next up.

Being reminded of things that feel heavier emotionally and doing nothing but getting yourself through those moments doesn't heal them. They can be fully healed.

I talk a lot about Soul Forward Method in these emails, and it's not a marketing tactic. It's because the effects of creating and experiencing this modality of healing are present in every hour of every day of my life. The same goes for those who have come through it.

It's incredible what can be healed completely. But that pales in comparison to what it feels like to have it healed.

Life kind of goes from being black and white to full-blown Technicolor. You become so awake and alive. There's nothing like it.

Let's get all healed up so we don't pass the unhealed heavy to our kids and our partners and humanity.