… means trusting in a new possibility.

During my meditation, I do this exercise where I practice imagining and feeling a reality I want to bring to life.

As I’ve been recovering a 10 years old shoulder injury, imagining how this part of my body used to feel before that has been challenging. Even when I imagine training pain free and healed, I found myself remembering the pain, and so I realized how much that physical damage has, overtime, seeped into my mind, to the point that both body and mind have accepted its presence as normality.

I had a big realization last night.

I was pondering about the last 8 years of my life and how almost coincidentally, there was another pain I carried around, and that one had to do with my relationship with men.

After my divorce, my interactions with men became quite poor, lacking substance. It’s like I had no “training” in that field, once I liked someone (even if it didn’t happen that often) I’d quickly become attached without realizing it, and it’d run me dry. What started as fun and playful, always ended up in hurt, because I didn’t know this about myself yet: that I had very poor communication skills, that I underestimated how much I treasured physical intimacy as a way to deeply connect, that I was afraid of rejection, that all my life I led with my looks and my body, wondering why people couldn’t see past that.

So to keep this relevant to the title, I did accumulate “some injuries” in my heart, and consequently my mind accepted this reality, writing a “proper story” about it (Miami isn’t a place to meet quality men or, I must not be worthy of love or, love must be earned etc). And so last night I got a bit emotional because I felt, viscerally, how hard it is to break the story. How hard it is to believe there is nothing I gotta do, but relax and let my intuition – not my fear – guide me. That there are loving people out there, emotionally available like me. That I too am worthy of love, like everyone else. And so my meditation became not only about healing my shoulder, practicing the feeling of it healed, but also practicing healing my heart! (Insert sob here.)

“How would it feel to have two healthy shoulders?”

“How would it feel to be around someone who is loving, kind, appreciative, available – to trust that?”

“How would it feel to stretch and bend both of my shoulder and feeling amazing while doing it?”

It would feel safe and enjoyable, it would feel natural, because healthy is how I came into this world, and so health is part of who I am.

“How would it feel to be heard, understood, seen? To be with someone who is present and wants intimacy and a deep connection, just like me?”

It would feel safe and enjoyable, it would feel natural, like love, because love is where I came from, and so it’s a part of who I am.

Healing goes deep, it’s not just in the body but in the mind – and the soul too. Somehow hurt seems to be a detachment, a momentary separation from who we truly are. So with grace, patience, understanding, we can go back to the whole we always were. It really starts from ourselves though, rewriting a story at at time and feel deeply that a new possibility exists – be it of health, of love. The moment we do, we behave differently. We start talking differently. We trust. We relax. We let go of the past. When you trust, the mind finally rests, the fear ridden stories cease to run, you are here, now. You arrived where you always were, but now with a new level of awareness to see it.