I see posts from so many women that are alone during this pandemic. They feel sad, overwhelmed, and lonely.
Not only that, they were alone before the current physical distancing rules, which adds salt to a heart wound that was perhaps already gaping.
It reminds me of a time, before I met my current husband, when I was struggling through my own deep heart wound.
The heart is an amazing organ. It’s both tender and tough, keeping us physically alive and also allowing us to give and receive love. It gives us the strength we need to get up and face each day, it allows us empathy and compassion for others, and it breaks when we have painful experiences.
When we’ve been through traumas, bad relationships, heartaches, and loss the heart can get wary. It can become too tough, isolating itself in a protective armor to keep us from more pain. Or become so tender that it breaks at the slightest transgression. Or a mixture of both – armored up one minute and broken the next.
Of course, the heart doesn’t isolate, armor up, or become painfully tender on its own. We experience external circumstances, like a painful breakup, and we respond with our ingrained reactions, which signal what happens next. The process is largely unconscious.
Sometime long ago, when our first middle school romance broke up with us and it hurt (like really hurt), we responded by closing ourselves off for a while. And we felt better. So the next time something similar happened, we did it again. And again, until it became our go-to response.
When we experience bad relationships and don’t fully process and heal, those unhealed feelings get stuck and we experience symptoms like chronic sadness, overwhelm, and shame.
These are normal human emotions, designed to give us messages about the world and pass through us. When they linger, we benefit from clearing our heart energy and empowering our heart to do for us what it’s made to do – allow us to experience both strength and softness, security and hope, pain and pleasure.
In energy medicine, the lower energy centers help us with feeling safe, secure, creative, and connected to being human, while the upper centers help us use our voice, tap into our innate knowing, and connect to something larger than us. As the heart center is between the lower and upper energy centers, it helps connect the two parts of us with its healing, compassionate energy. Energetic heart clearing sessions helps keep everything aligned.
We can experience this healing even if we’re alone. It’s not the aloneness that created this situation, it’s the repeated bad relationships, traumas, and other unprocessed experiences. Empowering the heart gives us the strength to be alone and allows our life energy to flow, easing those painful symptoms that keep us stuck.
When we become unstuck and empower the heart, we glow with life force, attracting the real love we deserve. The right partner. The ONE.
I’m putting together a new program just for women like you, who are alone and don’t want to be. Who are ready and willing to shift how they show up the world, even if they feel they are too broken or too hurt to love again. I can help you heal your broken heart and call in the love you crave and deserve.
Want to heal?
I invite you to consider scheduling a complementary Heart Center Check-In call with me today. You can reach me at ashley@ashleybarnescoaching.com.
I reached out to a friend the other day to see how she was doing. Like many, she wasn’t doing well. She hadn’t slept well. She was anxious. And moreover, she was feeling understandably powerless, alone, disconnected, and scared in the midst of this global crisis we’re all experiencing.
I know many of us are feeling the same right now.
I know because I’m seeing the posts and comments on social media with people sharing how scared and alone they feel. People fearing for their families’ health and safety. People fearing for our most vulnerable populations. People fearing this will never end.
I’m feeling the collective grief and sadness. The kids who are missing graduations and proms and friends. The people who are sick. The horrific predictions of how this all could go and how many we could lose. The people who have become severely ill and those who have died. The healthcare workers and “essential employees” who are putting their own lives at risk for ours. The people who have lost their livelihoods and don’t know how they’ll survive when this is over.
And the ambivalence of waiting. Many things feel as if they’re moving faster than ever, yet we’re at home, not knowing what will come next. Not knowing when this will end. Not knowing what or who will be left when it does.
Then that terrible feeling of aloneness. Despite this shared experience with billions across the globe, a dozen Zoom calls a day, and for some, multiple quarantine buddies, there is an unbearable sense of being caged. For the many who are physically alone, the loneliness is even more raw and real.
I know, because I’m right there with you, feeling all the feelings too.
I was working at home full time, but now I’m on furlough, for up to 10 weeks. I’m figuring out how to be unemployed and I don’t have a new routine created yet, so I’m feeling out of sorts.
Although I have a job to go back to for now, I know that few of us will avoid some pain from the financial devastation that’s coming. I’ve also been battling a mysterious fever that comes and goes but doesn’t get high enough to really worry.
Nevertheless, it’s unsettling.
My daughters are feeling caged in, bored, and their raw, teenage emotions are being directed mostly at me.
And in the middle of it all, my sweet cat, Alice, died unexpectedly. Grief upon sadness upon restlessness upon fear. At times, it feels overwhelming, and like it may never end.
What we need right now is support – to feel our feelings and know we’re not alone. So, when I reached out to my friend that day, as she shared how she was feeling, I listened. I set aside my own thoughts and really heard her.
Then I asked her, How can I support you?
How can I support you? The five little words we all need to hear right now.
Yet something so basic, so fundamental to our existence as a social creature, often feels so elusive. We’re taught to be independent and strong, to do for everyone else but not to need anyone else. Until we can’t do it anymore.
That’s not going to work in this current reality. We need for our bodies and minds to be strong to get through this, and for what we’ll be called to afterwards. To do that, we need to allow all the emotions to come. We need to feel heard and cared for in the midst of the chaos. We need safe spaces to process until we can return to our Divine purpose.
So I ask you now…How can I support you?
Because despite all our collective feelings of disconnection, powerlessness, aloneness, and fear, we have access to an innate strength and power – CONNECTION.
I’ve put together a Crisis Care Package, with a collection of supportive offerings.
I’m also available and have open space on my calendar. I invite you to consider scheduling a connection call with me to support whatever is happening in your life right now.
Sitting alone
Her favorite pastime
Taking in the energy around her
The sweet, rich smell of deep red in her nose
Her throat tight against the notion
That she might be lonely
When she’s just fine alone
Cat Lady Poet 