Happy Belated Valentine’s day! 

Do you dread these holidays? Days like like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and my birthday have been fraught with challenge for me.  The first few years we were married, I truly feel bad for my husband...and I was pretty miserable too. By putting the pressure on him to give what only I could truly give myself, I set him up for failure and me for disappointment.  Honestly, he tried. 

For decades I’d felt like a victim struggling to get what I truly felt I “needed”--to be loved, validation, to be seen, heard and understood--in the way I desired. Holidays could be a mess of expectations, disappointments and frustration.  No fun for me OR those in my life! 

It felt disempowering, needy and hopeless.  Because even if THEY showed me love as best as THEY could.  It was never enough--like this song:  The Greatest Showman singing Never Enough. I hated that song because it hit too close to home.  

Ever felt that way?  Can you relate?

Finally, an on-going situation with my son made everything crystal clear to me.   He’d been struggling and I’d been trying to fix him like the mama bear I can be.  Yet it didn’t help. The more I tried, the worse things got.  This dynamic wasn’t working.  Since I really love him, I dug deep to figure out a different way.  

Instead of fixing, I stepped back and told him he was capable.  I asked him what HE wanted to do.  As I did so, the locus of control shifted and his demeanor and behavior changed too.  We shifted the power:  instead of OUTSIDE OF HIM (disempowering), The locus of control shifted to INSIDE him (empowering!) That empowerment changed everything and it struck me. 

I was placing the locus of control outside myself for love and validation. 

No wonder  I always felt like a victim--because with the locus of control being external, I was not in control of if/when/how much I felt loved, validated, heard, seen, worthy.  It’s a very disempowering state.   

The solution?

Place the locus of control inside myself--to love, understand, honor, hear, validate and assign worthiness to myself. 

Then, I am in a place of freedom and empowerment.  I can be filled up and then show up feeling whole and relaxed and at ease….and that spills over into other relationships. 

 It’s important to note that it doesn’t mean receiving love and affirmation and validation from others won’t ever happen or that we shouldn’t ask for it or receive love.  It just shifts us from a place of neediness to a place of soft openness to receiving AND giving--a much healthier dynamic.  

So, how to change this?

We can have a lightning bolt moment, but it doesn’t undo years and years of programming and habitual thoughts and feelings.  Knowing is one thing, shifting a lifetime of practice and taking back our power is another.  

You guys know I love my oils.  Here’s a bit of why and how you can use them to support this process.  If you are newer to oils or need a reminder, oils--aromatherapy--work directly through the olfactory nerve on the limbic system starting with the amygdala. That’s the more primitive, reactive part of the brain that regulates and processes emotions and threats, rest and alerts.  Mine was on overdrive for many years.  I lived and breathed fight-or-flight. It was my norm.  

When I started using oils, what I found was an incredible, immediate resource to shift out of panic and start to train my body and energy over time to down-regulate to calm, peace, stability.  

They can also act as an anchor--we can use them in therapy or journaling or when facing difficult things to give our body information to keep calm, open or even to feel safe enough to bring up things we need to face so we can work through and clear it.  I use these oils for emotional support, processing, and shifting every single day.  (My family loves it too.)

You can start Invoking the Lover Within using the blend we put together--DoTERRA’s Forgive and Passion.  Diffuse them, put them in a roller bottle and wear it like a perfume.  

I started using the blend last week and it rocked my world.  First, I experienced a few days of awareness of some unhealthy dynamics in my past--memories just kept coming up and I with the support of the oils I was able to see them for what they were, recognize the patterns, journal and then release and forgive those involved...that’s what the renewing part of the blend does--it helps us let go of what no longer serves.  Then I was energized, felt super creative and was able to begin to feel and be more productive at home, with my family and in my work--that’s what the oils in the Passion part of the blend do--they help us get unstuck, out of a rut, creative and feel more alive and inspired.  Together, they have been very supportive for me as I dive deeper into Invoking the Lover in my own life. 

On Wednesday February 24th at 6pm PST, Isabelle and I are hosting a 1 hour virtual Gathering of Women (sorry guys) to Invoke the Lover Within. We’ll follow that up with a series of short emails where I teach some of the practices that powerfully help me make the shift in locus of control and learn to reparent and love myself to wholeness.

Life is a journey to wholeness, a spiral not a straight line.Women’s circles and gatherings have been a beautiful, safe place to explore and develop these insights and new ways to be in the world.  Zoom has made it even easier for us to gather from all over the world.  I’m grateful for these opportunities to revisit these themes in new and deeper ways with women doing their own work and being mirrors and “sistering” for one another.  I can’t wait for the 24th to go deeper again together. It’s going to be such a sweet and supported time.