Official blog for the book "Just Behind the Door"

A Flower Grew Overnight

Yesterday was ‘Octoberfest’ in Sun City Grand located in Surprise, Arizona and I had rented a table to display my book, Just Behind the Door. I knew it would be a long day but a good one since I would have the opportunity to connect heart to heart with people who had experienced a loss. The eyes of a person are the window to their soul and just looking at the eyes of those who came up to the table let me know where they were on the grief scale toward ultimate healing. Some, after 5 or 7 years were still stuck in the cycle of ‘why did this have to happen.’ Anger, denial and disbelief can be paralyzing emotions. They can freeze frame your life and cause you to become simply a shadow of the person you once were. One woman gently guided her friend over to my table and said, ” You need to talk with her.” What an act of unconditional love and concern for her friend, I thought to myself.

When we are finally able to heal and accept the loss that has happened in our lives and realize that the Universe doesn’t make mistakes, it opens up a deeper level of seeing and knowing. A level of peace envelopes us and we are able to continue on with our own life lessons.

A follow up from someone I talked with yesterday appeared on my email this morning. A gentleman had lost his wife in a traffic accident. They were simply walking, enjoying the experience when hit by a car. In an instant, it changed their lives forever. This spring he went out to water some rose bushes and he said in his email, “I looked down and saw in the hot, dry, barren soil next to the roses a most beautiful white (petunia or pansy) flower with a pink and purple “butterfly” design in the center. It was on a small plant about 3 inches high… We had never planted this type of flower in our garden before… Just the day before I had tended to this tiny garden patch and I never saw any plant like this there. In amazement I asked myself, ‘how did this plant get there …and overnight!”

He took a picture of the plant and forwarded it to friends, had it framed and was gracious enough to send the picture on to me with his email. He accepted the sign with gratitude and love which opened his level of consciousness to receive even more of these messages that are heaven sent. I have had similar experiences and know that birds, the wind, and other environmental factors carry seeds from one location to another. However, when a plant appears overnight (and in this desert environment) to me, it is a sign from our loved one that they are thinking about us and wanting us to live our lives to the fullest.

As we recognize these signs with gratitude we allow ourselves to become more in tune to seeing these messages from our loved ones as a reassurance that, all is as it should be. The psychic, John Holland was taking about messages Friday on a webcast. He emphasized, once again, that the more open and accepting of the belief that it is possible for our loved ones to give us signs from the other side the more you will receive.

We are, after all, simply energy and we know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed in form. The physical body may be gone but their soul energy remains. No wonder, then that our loved ones on the other side can send us these messages. They may be pennies, butterflies, flowers or many other things but they are meant for us. Enjoy your next ‘a ha’ when you see it – it is a gift from your loved one just for you.

Have a great few days!

Tell Someone You Care

How many times have you thought about telling someone how important they are to you or giving them a compliment? In the last few days, I have received emails and a phone call thanking me for something I had done. Four people mentioned a recent blog that had made an impact on them. At first I was humbled and appreciative of the feedback and then I thought more deeply about the affect those messages had on me. I felt more positive energy around me. It changed a good day into an exceptional one for me. It made me think of the importance of ‘paying it forward.’

We often get so involved in our daily lives, the hustle and bustle of it all, that we may think, momentarily, of a kindness or help from someone and then let it slip from awareness as we quickly move on to the next item on our ‘to do’ list. Yet, when all is said and done, what really matters in life is our relationships, our love, concern and recognition of self AND others. People really don’t care how much you have or how much you know until they know how much you care.

Tuning into a T.V. program last night entitled, Undercover Boss, the message was, once again, so apparent. As CEO’s from various large companies disguised themselves so they could walk a mile – or in these examples – a week in the shoes of their employees, these CEOs were humbled by the passion and concern their employees brought to their jobs. All were shocked by the family challenges that so many of their employees endured. Yet, they came to work each day and did their jobs well. At the end of each vignette, the CEOs met with the employees and literally with tears in their eyes thanked them for a job well done. These folks beamed as their ‘top gun’ took the time to recognize them. The CEOs changed the lives of these employees as well as their own.

Conversely, during this election season, the T.V. adds are filled with negative messaging, and some are even designed to instill fear in us. I refuse to be entangled in this web of fear-based programming and will not accept the negative energy from these adds. Negatives just don’t get to me anymore. I will continue to search out truth, listen to the ‘fact checkers’ on the news and remember that I haven’t walked a mile in someone’s shoes. I will make up my own mind based on the facts I can discover and consider the amount of positive energy I feel when listening to a candidate. How incredible it would be if they decided to concentrate on hope rather than fear, on the positives of tomorrow rather than the negatives of yesterday. They could learn a lot from the CEOs that went undercover.

We all do the best we can do each day considering the challenges we face. I can’t believe that anyone wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, ‘I am going to have a very bad day’ and then purposely surrounds themselves with a negative mind set.

Positive energy is something we all need to survive. If we each take a moment to tell someone how important they are to us or how appreciative we are of a kindness shown or a lesson learned we will create a better world.

Maybe you can find an extra 2 or 3 minutes tomorrow to ‘pay it forward’ by complimenting someone, showing appreciation or just letting someone know you are thinking about them. It may help lift their spirits, walk with a little more confidence and have a better day. What a gift you have given them!

I’ll commit to making the world a little happier each day by taking the time to connect with someone for something. Will you?

Have a great few days!

Forgiveness and Moving On

Do you ever think about a particular person and feel anger, resentment, or even rage? Be honest with yourself and really think about it. If you feel that you have been hurt, rejected or even emotionally attacked by another in your past it is hard to let go of it. Each time the person’s name comes up or you even think of that person, you may feel tense, hostile or even a seething inside you. Check out your body language. Your eyes, face, even voice intonation says it all. When that person’s name comes up it is easy to see if you are still holding on to negative energy surrounding the situation.

In my book, Just Behind the Door, I talk about past hurts as if they were a backpack we are caring around. Every time we think about a particular event or person and feel emotionally stressed by the remembering, it is, as if, you are actually experiencing the event again. It adds another rock to your backpack making it heavier for you to carry. I can visualize a person hunched over from the weight of past hurts struggling to put one foot in front of the other. The weight of the world seems to be on their shoulders and they seem to be a magnet that attracts more negatives in their life day after day.

Forgiveness releases the hold, the weight we are carrying. It doesn’t mean that we don’t remember past hurts. But rather we remember them without emotionally getting hooked into the negative feelings associated with them. You might be thinking that what happened wasn’t right or fair. In reality, what you lived through was PLANNED by YOU for this lifetime to teach you some valuable life lessons. When you can look back and release the anger associated with the experience and forgive yourself AND the other person you will have learned the lessons you set out to learn. It is not easy to emotionally let it go but it is extremely important to do so. Until those particular lessons are learned and your mind and heart lets go of the anger, similar situations will continue to surface in your life. When you accept responsibility for the choices you made for this lifetime and let go of the anger towards others, you exhale deeply, your shoulders relax and you view the person or situation in terms of ‘life lessons learned.’

The noise in our minds fueled by negative remembrances drowns out the sounds of love and forgiveness from the Universe. It keeps us locked on, like a GPS, to a path that will attract more of the same. Our minds and hearts can be filled with either love or fear. If you find it impossible to forgive a particular person, force yourself to look at what you truly feared most about the past circumstance involving them. Fear is the operative word here. That fear is your lesson in disguise.

We can live a life of love, acceptance and abundance or remain stuck, reliving the hurts of yesterday and attracting more negative energy into our lives. The choice is always up to us.

Have a great few days!

Abundance or Limitation

The law of attraction is exact, precise. What ever you have in your life you have attracted it through continued thought. Have you ever watch a particular person and thought, they have the Midas touch. It seems like everything they do just turns out right, or in the case of Midas, it turns to gold. Actually, if you dig deeper you will find that this person works, plans, and refuses to accept anything that is not in their best interest. They believe in themselves and put the effort in to make their dreams a reality. If they have a set back they view it as simply a small hurdle that they will get over.

I have had the opportunity to watch a few people in my life that fit this category. What a ride they have had – against all odds they have succeeded. When you talk to them you discover that they have had their trials and tribulations like the rest of us. And yet, they refused to give in.They just made things happen it seems, at times, through sheer will.

What I have learned is that success truly does breed success. Small doses of reality, small events that enlarge one’s comfort zone, does make for a happier, more secure person. The world can be as small (limiting) or as large (ever expanding) as you so choose. The Universe will deliver what is foremost in your thoughts.

No one achieves peace, love or success without paying their dues. There are simply no ‘free passes.’ Life, love and loss is about lessons. Simply put, we chose the lessons and we, consequently, have to live out the experiences until we ‘get it.’

If you feel a change is necessary in your life, look first to what you are saying to yourself. Is it a message of fear, lack of … or any other limiting thought. If so. You might think about the energy you are giving out to the Universe. Remember, you will get back more of what you give out. I choose to give out the thought of ABUNDANCE.

What thoughts are occupying your mind – lack, fear or abundance?

You Decide

Don’t you just love a day when everything just seems to work! You may get to your job or meeting early, enjoy a conversation with someone that gave you food for thought and learned something new or saw a different perspective. You seem to accomplish more than you ever expected and at the end of the day when you reflect back it with a smile on your face you think to yourself, today was a GOOD day.

Other days, however, seem to be more challenging. It may start out with misplacing your keys, causing you to run late and get stuck in the rush hour traffic. At this point you are feeling so frustrated you might even say something to someone that, in retrospect, you wish you hadn’t said. The whole day just seems to be off and as you begin thinking about the issues they become magnified in your mind. By the end of the evening you may be thinking, well that’s my life, if I didn’t have bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all! You are exhausted as much by what happened but, more importantly, from the amount of time and energy you spent ruminating about them.

In the book, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, there is a worthwhile suggestion by Bob Proctor that might help you the next time your day starts out a bit off track. He suggests that to stop the cycle of negative thoughts that you have about events from going out into the Universe and magnifying the negative effect back to us, we stop ourselves in mind midstream and think. Since we are all made up of energy, each time we allow ourself to be in a negative mindset, the Universe ‘hears’ the message and delivers more of the same back to us.

Basically, you interrupt the cycle of negative energy by shifting your thought frequency. Proctor suggested that we make a mental list of ‘secret shifters.’ Those are things that can change your feelings and attitude in a minute and put gratitude and love back in you thoughts. Maybe it’s a certain song or a special memory that brings a smile to your face or a absolute howl of laughter from deep inside you. It could even be the thought of a future event or holiday that you have planned. (There is a logical reason why people plan way in advance for a fun break in their schedule). Do anything that can short circuit the negative flow of energy from your mind and body which causes you to catastrophize, and get you back on a more positive track. We don’t have to have an entire day of bad. Maybe we could try to reduce it down to an event or moment until we reduce those negative times to such a short period that you don’t ruin the rest of your God given day.

I really do believe that anything our minds can believe we can achieve but it takes mind and heart work. I’m not talking of simply a wish but something so important to you that you are willing to plan and work to achieve it. Once you have this goal in your mind, any set back you experience in attainment is simply viewed as temporary. I choose to believe in myself and the beautiful gift of tomorrow. If I have a problem or two along the way, okay, life happens. But I refuse to allow those events to ruin the gift of today that I have received from the Universe.

Are you with me on this?

Decide on Happiness

Some of you may remember the children’s song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands.” Having spent over 38 years in education, I can close my eyes and actually hear the melodic voices of little children singing that song with accompanying giggles and enthusiastic clapping of hands.

As we become adults, the melody may slip away, even the words may be forgotten but the thought is worth keeping around to examine from time to time. Ask yourself right now, “Am I happy?” After really thinking about it, if you are genuinely NOT happy, it is time to do something about it. It doesn’t count to say to yourself, “I’ll be happy when…” as if it is a condition of your life that is dependent upon achieving something you don’t presently have.

What will it take to make you internally happy? What is the major sticking point that is keeping you stuck in unhappiness? Is it resolvable? Obviously, the death of a loved one is something that cannot be changed. But, the way you look at it can make all the difference. They did not desert you because they didn’t love you anymore. It was simply their exit point – their time to move on. They did not disappear forever. You really will see them again on a soul level, and in the meantime you can reconnect with them through the help of others if you choose. If you have stopped living and are simply existing since their death that is not what they would have wanted for you. Life is to be lived and a big part of living is to decide to be happy.

Yes, that’s right, I said DECIDE to be happy. It takes work and a concerted effort to make lemon aid from lemons but it can be done. What I do know is that there are no awards given for being, “The Most Unhappy Person in Show” category. When you see your glass consistently as half-empty rather than half-full, it drains you and those around you of the positive energy needed to live your life.

There are some things you really can do to improve your perspective. First of all, be the person you would want to be around. Smiling helps, laughing is even better. Find humor in the mundane and ridiculous – if you just look around it’s everywhere. Next, decide on a plan to work through any issue you are dealing with at the moment. A counselor or best friend could be of great help by being a reflective listener. Talk it out, verbalize your feelings and don’t allow yourself to let the issue ‘eat away at you’ from the inside or out. Until the real issue surfaces you may find yourself generalizing that your entire life is simply not good.

Exercise, meditation and spending time giving to others really does boost your physical and mental well being. Visualize yourself as a person who finds joy in life. How does it feel? Good, right? You may, at first, have to ‘fake it ’till you make it,’ but be patient with yourself. It will manifest itself in your life. When we hear that we have to believe it to see it, it’s true.

Give yourself permission to be happy. You deserve it!

Have a great few days!

What is Truth?

Self improvement is something we seem to naturally just choose to do while on this earth. It makes us who we are- always planning and striving-to use the skills we were given by the Universe to become a better person. A big part of self improvement is dealing with truth. This truth is both about others as well as ourselves.

In the movie, “Something’s Gotta Give,” Harry says to Erica, ” I’ve always told you some version of the truth.” She responds, “The truth doesn’t have versions!”

Wow! That statement burned into my brain. The truth doesn’t have versions. It is either truth or not. What are you telling yourself about others or yourself that is only a partial truth? We all do it from time to time. As we become wiser we realize that truth is the most important thing you can give yourself and others. I don’t know another persons’ truth because I have not walked a mile, or even a step, in their shoes. Sometimes we think by not speaking our truth and masking our true feelings, everyone may be better off in the long run. Not so! You may have to mentally rehearse how to say something so that it is not hurtful – that’s a good skill to work on – but to avoid saying the truth hurts everyone eventually. This magnificent world that we are a part of inhales peace and exhales tension when truth is spoken.

Truth comes back to your own self worth. Do you believe in yourself enough to speak the truth about a situation? If you find yourself falling into the trap of comparing yourself with others, remember the issue of truth. Comparison is a violence against yourself. There will always be someone better or worse off than you. That is the path they have chosen for this lifetime. It is not ours to question. We all have our own unique journey. Your truth is your journey. The privilege of our lifetime is to live our lives in truth, to be our highest self and make the world a little better off by doing it.

So tomorrow when you start the day, remember the issue of truth. I believe truth is, simply and completely, an essential part of the Universe. I choose truth and love from this point on, how about you?

Have a great few days!

Being Authentic in Grief

We often hear about the importance of being positive. Seeing your glass as half full rather than half empty is a mindset involving both a skill and an art. It is something that we work on continuously throughout our lives. We like ourselves better when we are positive. Others want to be around us because we have an energy field that is welcoming and uplifting. An important part of being in a positive state involves being our authentic selves. When we recognize and honor our true feelings about something that happened to us, we are being authentic. We are strong enough to show others that we are the same, emotionally, on the inside as the outside.

Being authentic, especially through personal loss is both the hardest and most important thing we can do for ourselves. Challenging or catastrophic experiences involving loss (death, divorce, separation) or other wounds or scars can easily become deeply buried in your psyche because the pain seems so great that you feel unable to confront your own feelings. You may be afraid that if the floodgate holding back your feelings is opened, you may never be able to get it together again. I understand, I have been there. I can tell you that those buried feelings just fester inside you and the anger and hurt you feel can become toxic in your mind and body. The choice between being authentic and verbalizing your true feelings or burying them cannot be overstated. I truly believe it is the difference between simply existing or a life well lived.

Finding a trusted friend who is willing to take all the time YOU need to work through your loss is critical. A good listener just listens and does not rush to tell you how you should handle something or how you should feel. These people are rare to find but are out there and will be of immense help to you. Grief counselors are trained to listen well and can also be invaluable in your search for peace. Send the intention out to the Universe to deliver someone to help you if you are emotionally stuck in a quagmire of anger, blame or discontent. You know you have found that great listener when you explain your situation and they respond with, “How do YOU feel about that?” And they listen with love and grace…

The importance of taking the time to process through your loss and express your authentic feelings about the situation can help you immensely. It is like putting salve on a wound. Eventually, the wound doesn’t hurt as much. Will it ever heal? Maybe not. But it won’t continue to hurt or bleed so profusely. We will live long enough to see the lessons we have learned from our losses and eventually the bigger picture of why those things happened.

Ultimately, we either choose to process through our emotions and arrive at an eventual peace about the situation or we will be dealing with the residue both here and on the other side. Lisa Williams in her book, The Survival of the Soul, talks about the importance of resolving our emotional issues on the Earth plane before we cross over. We will have to deal with the issues sometime, someplace, and it is better to do it now.

We can ultimately be more positive in our life if we choose to be our authentic self and live our truth, surround ourselves with love – of self – and others and remember that as difficult as our lives may be from time to time, we wrote our life script to learn specific lessons. It is no one’s fault, the world is not out to get us, we just chose a difficult path this time. Quoting from my son in the book, Just Behind The Door, “All is as it should be.”

Have a great few days!

The Rest of Your Life

Today really is the first day of the rest of your life. What plans, what aspirations do you have for the rest of your life? Will you allow yourself to be controlled by fear of the unknown? Or will you look in the mirror and realize, as my son has told me many times from the other side, “all is as it should be.” It takes time to really process that thought. Even though we may have experienced loss, disappointments and challenges in our lives everything really is ‘as it should be.’ You may be thinking, ‘ but why did I have to experience this.. What did I do wrong?’ You did nothing wrong. You are simply living out your prebirth contract to learn certain lessons you have chosen. Remember the thought… ours is not to question only do. It’s true, questioning, even railing at the injustice that you feel you have experienced will not change things. In fact, it will only made you less ready, less of who you are, to face tomorrow. Show me a person who has not experienced loss and I will show you a person who has never really lived. It doesn’t need to make sense. It just needs to be absorbed into your very soul.

As the Taoist say, ‘we are constantly being born to the future and dying to the past, yet we remain what we are. In the whole of history there has never existed a single person whose conduct was always perfect. Understanding this, the wise don’t try to be perfect.’ There is no fear in dying only fear in living an unfilled life.

So tomorrow, look at yourself in the mirror and say, ” I can do this.” – whatever it may be – because you can. You are part of the unity of this incredible Universe. You are a part of the Divinity of all that ever was and all that ever will be. Be thankful that you have learned the particular lessons that have been presented to you. You have survived, you have learned and will thrive from both the lessons of yesterday and today. They have made you even stronger for tomorrow. Make it a great one!

Have a great few days!

Greater Clarity in Life

It is said that when a person is near death they have a greater clarity of purpose as they reflect back on their lives. We are also told in our Hospice training that people die as they live. The first time I heard that I was a bit puzzled. Now, a couple of years into my volunteer work it has become clearer to me. I have the opportunity to hear this clarity first hand as I listen to them relive the important moments in their lives. What I hear is about love of family and friends and the times when something happened that just took their breath away. It’s about whether they feel they made the world a little better off by being in it. Basically, it is all about gratitude for being a part of this experience we call life on planet earth. I don’t hear people worrying about how much they have accumulated or how much, in real dollars, they are worth. They seem to realize at this life changing time in their lives that what we do and think on a individual level really does affect not only ourselves but the entire world. Their hindsight is, indeed, 20/20. They seem to just know that we are all made up of energy and what we think and speak about most often comes back to us triple fold. Our thoughts really are the key to life and open or close all doors for us. If there is a yearning from these wonderful folks, it is to help the world understand the importance of loving others and lending a hand to someone in need. I am so fortunate to be in this classroom of life called the Hospice experience. It makes living that much more meaningful. You can see first hand that the entire world really has a very deep energy connection.

Our lives can be about so much more than just getting by or getting ours. Do you know of someone that has recently gone through a life transition or is struggling? If so, did you take the time to show them that you are concerned about them. If you don’t know what to say, that’s easy… simply, ” I care and I’m here for you,” is enough. It could be the lifeline they need at that precise moment to make it through another day.The Hallmark people are right, it’s never too late to show someone how much you care. Sooner or later we will all be at the end point in our lives on earth and will see with greater clarity what our lives represented. Let it be about compassion, gratitude and love. As I said in my book, love is the Alpha and Omega of the Universe.

Have a great few days!