Tag: love

This Is Everything

I had a really hard time getting pregnant with my son and tried everything. Literally. Acupuncture, peeing on sticks, boiling “tea” that stunk up the house and even allowing a giant Maori healer to “rolf” my uterus (from the outside, haha. Even at the height of my insanity I wasn’t that crazy :)). I couldn’t figure out a way to practice non-attachment at the time, I just found myself intensely missing a person I hadn’t even met, a person who existed only in my mind and in my heart. Eventually (after a year of needles, tea, sticks, tears and said rolfing session, I went to a fertility doctor who discovered my estrogen levels were a little low, and presto, the bigger kid in this picture started materializing. If you had told me during that year to try to relax and trust that the exact right human was going to show up at the exact right time, I wouldn’t have believed you or been able to do that. I really thought I had to keep “doing things” to “make it happen”, and maybe I did. Maybe he would not have shown up if I hadn’t tried everything known to woman to get there, or maybe he would have, or maybe everything was required. I don’t have any regrets because that kid seems to me to be the only kid who could ever have been my son (my sun), and that girl with him? She showed up with no help from tea or needles or giant Maori.

When I got divorced I was devastated and heartbroken. When there are children in the picture I don’t think it can be any other way. It was not the vision I’d had or wanted, but it became clear to me that it was the only path forward where there could be love and nurturing for everyone involved. It was not easy and it has not been easy. Letting go of the picture of How Things Should Be or how you want things to be for yourself and your children is so hard, and trying to trust that a new path will emerge is also really hard. I credit my yoga practice for any strength and grace I was able to muster through all of that heartache, and I know for sure that’s the thing that kept me sane and strong and able to be a good mama to these small people who have little protection in the world unless we, as parents, figure out how to move through our grief, rage, disappointment, bitterness and all the other feelings that come up (especially when they involve the other most important person in our children’s lives, namely, their other parent), without allowing it to spill over onto them. That is also hard, and for me, again, I credit having been a child of divorce and knowing what that’s like, my yoga practice, therapy (highly recommend) and great, supportive, strong and understanding friends to help me through.

I’ve been a single mom for eight years. A few years ago after I’d been trying to navigate the post-divorce, how-do-you-date-when-you-have-children jungle, I thought, “Well, maybe giant romantic love is just not going to happen for me.” It was sort of surprising and disappointing because I’ve always been a huge romantic, but I thought, “Well, that might just not be in the cards for me, and that’s okay. I have these amazing children and work I love and my life is beautiful and fulfilling and full of all kinds of love. I can be okay this way.” And I did my best to let go of that picture of romantic love, too.

Two-and-a-half years ago I met a man at a bar (feel free to laugh) and he said all of these interesting and funny things and four hours went by in a snap and we didn’t even eat. Last Friday night he proposed to me and I said yes because I am not dumb. We had talked about the idea of getting married a couple of months ago, and even that was a shock to both of us. Neither of us thought we’d get married again. I thought living with someone was as far as I’d go. When you fall in love hard, though, this is what can happen. Your vision changes again. We checked in with our kids about the idea, I talked to my two, he talked to his three. We didn’t want to go forward unless there were thumbs up all around. If someone had said to me years ago, “try to trust that there’s a 6’3″ Englishman out there who’s going to show up in your life with his giant heart and huge brain, his kindness, loyalty, affection and wicked sense of humor and turn all of your ideas about what’s going to happen in your life right on their head,” I would have laughed. If someone had said, “There couldn’t have been anyone else for you but him,” I would have laughed again. I might have even rolled my eyes. I’m sharing this because I know how hard it is to trust. To take your sticky hands off the steering wheel and let things unfold and emerge and allow people to show up and show you who they are, and to allow yourself to be heartbroken when the path takes a turn you didn’t want or expect, but also to allow yourself a tiny sliver of awareness and hope that maybe life has something in store for you you cannot even imagine.

I’ve had an insane week. An amazing Valentine’s Day, an incredible birthday. My heart is so full. Have you seen baby goats dancing around? Google that if not, that’s how I feel. Take care of your precious heart. Let it break when it breaks, but let the breaking open you. Sending you so much love and some trust if you can muster it!

 

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

Work That Doesn’t Belong to Us

There-are-things-that-we (1)Much of our pain in life comes from our inability to let go and trust. Often, we’re so attached to that picture in our heads of “how things should be”, we contract against things as they are. You may have noticed, life doesn’t feel great when we’re hunched in a little ball with our eyes squeezed shut, and our hands over our ears.

Sometimes we’re trying to do work that doesn’t belong to us. Maybe we’re attempting to save people, which is different than loving them. We might think we know what’s best for the people closest to us, and we might even be right, but everyone has to do his or her own journey. You cannot keep someone else’s side of the street clean. I mean, you can cross the street and sweep all you want, but if a person is committed to making a mess, the minute you walk away the debris will start flying again. You have to open your mind to the idea that sometimes a person has to make a mess in order to learn something essential. We’ve all experienced that.

Also, the truth is we never know what is right for other people. What seems obvious to us might not be obvious to someone else. There isn’t one path to happiness, there are about seven billion. People are complicated and messy and we all have our histories, stories we tell ourselves, ideas about things that we’ve learned from our experiences, and tendencies that help or hinder us. Most people reach a point when they have to reckon with their pain, anguish, heartache and disappointment; this is part of knowing ourselves. Some people are terrified of that work, or committed to finding ways around it, like numbing out, denying or repressing. Those are not solutions that lead to happiness, but you can’t force a person to come out of hiding. People do that if and when they’re ready, and not a moment sooner.

You might create a lot of fear, anxiety and suffering for yourself by thinking it is your job to manage the path of your children. When they’re little, of course you want to create stability, a nurturing and loving home, a solid base from which they can grow and flourish. If you start to “future-trip”, however, and think that your current choices can somehow protect them from future heartbreak, I think you’re fooling yourself. I don’t know too many people who get through life without some heartbreak along the way. Of course we want the path for our children to be full of sunshine and flowers, joy and love, and a profound sense of belonging in the world, and hopefully we give them the tools to set them up for their adventures in the best ways possible. It’s not always in your control to make everything perfect, though. Some people stay in abusive marriages thinking it’s best for the kids, but is it? Is it good for our sons and daughters to model their relationships after the one they’re seeing day in and day out, if it’s full of pain and violence?

The more you can release your grip on the story, the more life flows. It’s not just your story, you are not the only writer. You don’t get to edit out the parts you don’t like, or force the other characters to do, say, or feel what you want. This isn’t a piece of fiction, this is life, and the other characters get to forge their own stories and do things that might surprise, infuriate, delight, scare, enrage or depress you. You don’t have to allow other people’s desires to affect you at all, but if you’re close to people and you’re human, they probably will. Nonetheless, it’s wonderful and mysterious and interesting to be human, and who’s to say what the right way is to go about this thing? Obviously, we don’t want to move through life intentionally hurting other people, that would be a really crappy way to go. Short of that, following your heart seems the clear choice. We’re here for such a burst of time. There’s never been another you, or me, there’s never been another any of us, nor will there ever be. The more space we can give each other to be who we are, the more the artwork of life shines through. We all have a particular color to splash all over the canvas. Trust in yours, and celebrate the splashing of those around you. We can figure out who was “right” after we die 😉 Sending you a ton of love, Ally Hamilton

Petty Things That Matter Not

I-have-found-that-if-youThe real question in life is how do I show up with love? We can get caught up in details and heartbreak and clinging to our pictures of “how things should be”; we can make lists of ways we’ve been wronged and file them away in the space at the front of our hearts. We can pound the earth and shake our fists at the sky and ask why people won’t feel the way we want them to feel, or do the things we want them to do. We can tell ourselves stories about what has happened to us, and why we are the way we are. We can feed the tendencies and ideas that weaken us and make us feel less than, easily abandoned, victimized. Or we can get busy, and make better choices.

Life is as it is, and people are as they are, and it is not personal. There is no boogeyman out to get you, or me, there is no monster under the bed, there is no saber-toothed tiger coming after you, not today, not tomorrow. People may have hurt you, in fact, I can almost guarantee you have been hurt, heartbroken, betrayed, disappointed, and I say, welcome to the human experience. None of us gets a road map, and most of us screw things up from time to time. Maybe your parents didn’t love you well, and even that is not personal, although it feels personal. But parents are people and people have the tools they have, and they are where they are, and maybe you showed up at an inconvenient time, before your parents were grown enough to show up well. So be it.

When we get caught up in fear and anger, we block ourselves from love, joy and gratitude. You can’t just block out the challenging stuff–if you build walls, it all gets stuck outside, and then you’re left to wonder why you feel alienated and alone. Sadness is part of life. We love, we lose–we grow or we shrink in response. Loss is part of life, nature is teaching us this very thing every minute. The tide comes in, the tide goes out, you cannot stop it. The sun sets, and it rises again. People are born, and you love them with your whole heart, and one day you will die, and I will die, and eventually they will also die, but while we are all here, the thing is to love, wholly and completely. That is the only thing. Accruing money and stuff won’t stop the world from spinning or time from ticking. Covering your gray hair and denying your wrinkles with creams and god knows what else won’t stop you from aging. Celebrate your life, even if it looks nothing like you thought it would or wanted it to; try to make peace with the shape of things. There is always something to mourn and there is always something to celebrate, so do both. Feel the piercing sadness when it arises, and open to the joy when it overwhelms you. If you stop denying the shadow emotions, you will find there’s much more light than you might think. This isn’t Cloak and Daggers.

If you’re going to collect something, collect moments. If you’re feeling alone right now, surround yourself with art, with humanity. There’s so much of that available, so much to show you and assure you, you are not alone. Find the art that soothes your soul, and immerse yourself in it. Create art yourself, and don’t question it. Do that with your days, with your words, with your feelings. Maybe do it with your hands, your voice, your fingertips, whatever you’ve got. If you were an entire universe, and I believe you are, your heart would be the sun, so trust that. Your intuition would be like the oceans, flowing, rising, ebbing, sometimes calm, sometimes thrashing. Wonderful, swim with that. Your dreams, your hopes would be the stars in the sky, sometimes shooting brilliantly through the galaxy, sometimes already gone, like some of the stars you see when you look up at the sky.

The point is, don’t wait, and don’t allow yourself to become distracted with petty things that matter not. Life is precious, you are precious, and you have the blink of an eye to get that, and to shine. Sending you so much love, Ally Hamilton

Finding Peace in the Storm

allylifecolorSometimes there’s an intense desire to be anywhere but where we find ourselves, especially if we find ourselves in the middle of a truly challenging situation. Life will offer each of us no shortage of opportunities to practice patience, grace, awareness, strength, compassion and clear-seeing. The only question is only what we’ll do with the opportunities. Of course, there are some opportunities we’d rather not have, some lessons we’d rather not learn, but we don’t get to choose. In yogic philosophy, “dvesha” is defined as “aversion”, and it’s one of the “kleshas”, or five poisons that cloud the mind and lead to suffering. When we resist the reality of our current situation, we will surely suffer.

Case in point: recently I was contacted by a young man who’s sister was diagnosed with cancer. He and his mom have been with her every step of the way. It’s just the three of them. There have been ups and downs, surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation, and all the pain that comes along with the disease, and the battle against it, but he’s been showing up for his sister and his mother as best he can. Now, his mother has been diagnosed with cancer, too, and he wrote to me because he’s terrified of losing the only family he has, and he’s upset with himself for being scared when he knows he, “needs to be strong for them”. The truth is, it is terrifying to think you could lose the two people you hold dearest, and that it could happen all at once, and to deny that it’s scary and enough to make a person feel completely vulnerable and powerless, is to compound the pain. Now, not only are you scared and humbled and at a total loss, you’re also disappointed in yourself for feeling those things.

Sometimes we underestimate ourselves. You can be scared and brave at the same time. You can be scared and strong at the same time. You don’t have to reject one thing to be another.

Let’s make it less life-and-death for a moment. You can be in a committed relationship, you can be totally in love, and still feel passing attraction for other people. You can be happy, and still wonder how it would be if you were single and free. It’s what you do with your feelings that defines you. It’s how much energy you feed them, how much time you allow them, how seriously you take them. Human beings are complex, and life is wildly interesting, but it’s not easy. It’s understandable that we want to categorize things, clean them up, put them in neat boxes with clear labels, but so much of what we experience happens in the grey areas.

If you’re scared out of your wits, and the voice inside your head is yelling at you to be strong, that’s brutal. Now, you don’t even have a safe haven within yourself to feel whatever you need to feel. We’d do ourselves and each other an enormous favor if we could hold a space to feel many conflicting things at once, so that we could calmly take a look at what’s real. Facing reality as it is takes bravery, there’s no doubt about that, and sometimes reality is tough to bear, but trying to “buck up” and muscle your way through the parts that break your heart will just make the experience that much harder.

One of the greatest gifts of a regular yoga practice is that you learn to quiet the storm that rages in the mind. Seated meditation offers us a chance to create space between our thoughts, and also to identify with them less strongly. We all have crazy, strange, fleeting thoughts and feelings. Ideally, you get to a place where you choose the thoughts that strengthen you. You decide what to feed, but self-acceptance is key, it’s essential if you want to be at peace. You don’t have to feel shame about your passing feelings. If you notice a pattern, or you observe that you’re always heading in a direction that’s going to bring you down, of course you perk up and pay attention. You examine why you’re heading down a path that will bring you pain, so you can crawl out of that groove and pick a road with potential for healing. Short of habitual thinking that’s weakening you, go easy on yourself. It’s your actions that define you.

Sending you love, as always,

Ally Hamilton

Grief, Healing & Connection

fallapartSometimes we grip and cling and refuse to accept reality as it is. We reject the truth. The more we contract against our experience, the more we suffer. It’s just that sometimes, reality really hurts, and our mind isn’t ready to integrate and accept it. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say our minds and our hearts aren’t ready.

We can do this in big ways and small. Maybe we’re dealing with the pain of rejection, and keep writing a script in our heads about what’s really happening, and how we’re going to get our happy ending down the line. Or maybe we’ve lost someone we don’t know how to live without, and it’s happened so suddenly, we’re in a state of shock. The limbs work, we can put one foot in front of the other, we seem okay to those around us, but inside we’re bargaining with the universe. We’re coming up with some way we might get back the person we’ve lost, as if that might be possible.

Some things are so painful, we look for another way, a different route, a formula that creates a livable outcome. We might do this by retracing our steps. If only we’d done or said “this”, maybe these other events wouldn’t have transpired, and life would still make sense. If only we could go back in time and redo one decision, perhaps that would have all kinds of implications that would save us from the current pain, and here’s the thing. When you’re dealing with those big losses, the loss of an entire person, for example, it’s a process, like anything else. It’s not something you can rush, and there isn’t any “how-to” book. You just have to move through your pain in whatever way you can, and hope that the people in your life show up for you, feed you, make sure you get a little sun on your face. Sometimes we go through experiences that make us feel we’re in a bubble, like there’s an impenetrable film between us, and everyone in the “living world”. Regina Brett has a quote, “You have to give time, time.” Time doesn’t heal every wound, but it helps lessen the crushing, incomprehensible nature of sudden grief. That waking up, and having to “re-remember” what’s happened goes away over time, because eventually you will integrate it, you will know it in your bones. You won’t wake up in the middle of the night, disoriented, panicked, feeling as though you’ve forgotten something urgent.

We deal with all kinds of losses in life. The loss of our innocence, whenever that comes. The loss of our trust when someone betrays us for the first time. The loss of the idea that we’re invincible. Sometimes we deal with the loss of our faith in ourselves, or the world at large. Losing your keys is just a moment you get to practice not panicking. Dealing with a car that won’t start is a chance to realize the things you take for granted won’t always work the way you want them to, or think they should. The more we accept that life is really another word for energy, and that energy is always in motion, the less we’ll expect things to be stable and predictable and safe. We all know we’re going to die, but that isn’t a comfortable thought, so we don’t always live like we know that. It’s as if we know, but we somehow don’t really believe it. That won’t really happen to us, or to those we love. Sometimes we live as though we have all the time in the world. We “waste” time, or “kill” time as if it isn’t precious. Death puts things in perspective. It shocks us into awareness, but grief is so overwhelming, and we don’t create a safe space for people to move through it. We’ve become so attached to positivity and light, it’s as if we’re supposed to feel ashamed when we feel dark and hopeless, like we should stay home until we’re ready to smile again. People who are grieving and need support more than ever, are often left to manage on their own, because grief reminds people of their own mortality.

None of us is going to live forever in the bodies we have right now, that much we know for sure, and we can allow ourselves to be crushed and devastated and paralyzed by that, or we can allow that to inspire us to really be living and loving and giving and seeing and listening and tasting and hugging and crying and laughing and grieving and cherishing the whole experience, every facet of it. If we’re grieving, it’s because we loved deeply, and there’s beauty in that. Some people will never allow themselves to be vulnerable that way, they’ll never really open, or let themselves be seen and understood. I don’t believe you have to feel grateful about everything that’s ever happened to you, but I do think every experience is a chance to grow and learn and soften. I think we can become more empathetic, understanding and compassionate. If we’re going to suffer from time to time, let’s at least put that suffering to good use. Let’s help each other. We don’t do that by rejecting the uncomfortable feelings. We don’t do it when we reject them internally, and we don’t do it when we refuse to meet people where they are. Most of the time, a person dealing with loss will appreciate your kindness, your presence, your thoughtfulness. These aren’t huge things to give, and at some point, we’ll all need to lean on each other.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Love More, Judge Less

All-differences-in-thisOn Tuesday mornings I volunteer for an hour in my daughter’s Kindergarten class. It’s extremely fun. I love my daughter’s teacher. She’s very warm, but very firm, and she maintains standards in the room. The kids have to listen to each other. They have to keep their hands to themselves. They don’t have to agree with each other, but they have to be respectful. She’s really setting them up with great tools for life. Last week when I was there, one of the little girls was sitting at my table, and she crossed herself when an ambulance went by, and said something under her breath. I knew what she was doing, but she looked up at me with this little smile, and said, “I’m praying that everyone is okay.” She’s five. I told her that I do that, too, but I don’t use my hands. One of the other kids asked what she was doing with her hands, and she explained that she was asking God to take care of anyone who might be hurt. One of the kids asked what “God” was. I said it was a word that meant different things to different people, and that was a topic she could explore with her mom or dad, and we had a conversation about what it means to care about people, whether we know them or not. It was easily the best conversation of my week.

We get so caught up with labels and separation. We try to figure out who’s like us, and who’s different. We’re so prone to create an us and a them, but true spirituality doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t separate. It asks us to care about everyone, because we’re all part of the same family. I know it’s not easy, but if we start to expand that same idea to all living creatures, and the planet itself, we start to shift the way we’ve been moving through the world. Sometimes we learn things at home, like hatred. Hatred can be passed down from generation to generation, just like eye-color. When we’re little, our parents are god-like creatures, and it doesn’t occur to us to challenge what we’re being taught or told until we get old enough to realize we’re our own beings. We have our own minds and our own hearts and our own ability to discern and intuit and make sense of the world.

Hatred is a great divider, and it weakens its host. When we hate, we’re blind. In my opinion, it’s also unnatural to us. I spend a lot of time with little kids, not just because I have two of my own. I always have, because my little brother is eleven years younger than me. I’ve had a little person trailing around after me asking why questions for most of my life. We come into this world full of love and curiosity. We’re trusting and open, unless or until we have a reason not to be. Kids might ask guileless questions, like why someone has a different skin color, or why they observe different holidays, but it’s never with contempt. It’s with a genuine desire to understand, and kids do what we do, not what we say, as we well know. Maybe you don’t have kids, and maybe you don’t want them, but you were a child once, and it’s good to examine your beliefs about yourself, about other people, and about the world around you. Sometimes something we’ve learned is so ingrained, we don’t even question it. I get emails from people who were told they were mistakes. That they’d never amount to anything. That they were meant to be seen and not heard. That their parents wanted a boy, not a girl. That they’re a disappointment.

Also, you can preach compassion all day long, but if you’re hard on yourself, don’t think that will go unnoticed by your kids. We internalize everything. We’re energetic creatures, and we both emit and absorb energy wherever we go. If your mother was always dieting and scrunching up her face when she looked at herself in the mirror, even if she always told you you were beautiful, don’t be surprised if you have body-image issues. If you were taught that people who didn’t believe the same things your family believed were wrong or not to be trusted, you’re going to have some unlearning to do.

The outside might look different, and I mean this for all of us. We may be male or female, short or tall, thin or stocky, dark or light. We may believe in one god, many gods, or no god at all. We may believe in a continuation of consciousness, or we may believe we’re worm food when it all ends. We may be rich, or we may struggle to put food on the table. The bottom line is that we all deal with certain parameters. We have a finite amount of time in the body we’re in. We have the capacity to love people wildly, openly, with everything we’ve got. We have our attachments, our fears, our dreams, our heartbreaks, our nights when we cry ourselves to sleep, or wonder what we’re doing here, or flail about trying to find our place in the world. The more we look for the vulnerability behind the mask, the kid underneath the grown-up, the similarities instead of the differences, the kinder we become, and the world could really use that right about now.

Yes, there are some people who’ve closed their hearts and fed their hatred, and are so far off the grid, there’s not much hope for any kind of epiphany at this point, but that’s a tiny percentage of human beings on planet earth. The vast majority of people recognize that an us versus them mentality isn’t getting the job done. It isn’t creating a world that’s safe for us, or for our children, and it also doesn’t have to be this way.

Examine your thoughts, your words and your actions. Maybe you’re already operating from a place of love the vast majority of the time, but maybe you’re still struggling with this. Start with your own internal dialogue. Since there’s no (good) escape from the voice in your head, start to starve a loud inner critic if you have one. You don’t have to believe everything you think. Sometimes our thoughts about ourselves are so violent, so unforgiving, so relentless, it’s a wonder we can get out of bed in the morning, and if you’re that hard on yourself, I guarantee you’re hard on other people, too. Perhaps not as harsh as you are with yourself, but whatever we have within us is what we spread. Start there. It might seem like a small thing, but if everyone worked on creating a peaceful and loving world within themselves, the whole landscape around us would change. If you’re in the habit of saying things like, “I’m such an idiot” when you make a mistake, shift that thought to something like, “I’m human and I make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay, and very normal. Let me take a deep breath and see what I can do.” Find a nickname for yourself that makes you smile, like, “Chief”, or, “Sport”, or “Tiger”, and whenever you feel that self-loathing come up, catch yourself, with an, “Okay, Sport, that didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but it’s no big deal.” What I’m trying to say is that you really want an inner voice that roots you on, not one that tears you down. May we all send good thoughts and love when we hear an ambulance go by. May we all care about each other more, and judge each other less. May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be happy.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Remembering

We-all-know-were-goingFor me, like so many others, this is always going to be a day of remembering. I was born and raised in NYC, and there that morning, thirteen years ago. And I can remember every detail, including every minute of the four and a half hours we didn’t know if my stepdad was okay (he was), because he worked in the World Trade Center, and all the phone lines in the city went dead. But I don’t want to talk about the specifics. I’ve done that before. I want to talk about what it’s like to be shocked by violence, because so many people in the world right now are living that experience every day.

You might not have had an idyllic childhood. Maybe you lost your innocence too soon. Maybe burdens were placed upon you at an early age, or you had to take the role of parenting your parents, or you saw and heard things no child should have to see or hear. That’s one way of being stripped of your innocence. Once you know something, you can’t not know it. And it’s the same when we’re shocked as a people, as a culture. I believe we all thought we were invincible in that way, that we were the super-cop of the world, that we were impervious to violation. But because of the way we’ve set things up, no one is immune. And no one is innocent. When we turn our backs, we aren’t innocent. We have a cultural idea that only the strongest survive, and that we have to compete if we want to succeed. We have lots of ideas that have led us to where we find ourselves today, with too many innocent children dying, too many parents grieving in the streets, too many people suffering.

How it is within us, is how it is around us. If you’re filled with love, you’re going to spread love. If you’re filled with pain or rage, so too, you’re going to spread those things. Anything we see around us is a reflection of something that exists within us, either personally, or culturally. This is why I believe it’s essential that each of us does the healing and the work to make the worlds within us loving and peaceful places to be. Of course that makes each of our individual lives easier and happier and more fulfilling, but it’s also a gift we give to each other. We love to blame “society’ for its ills, but society is made up of human beings.

There are some people who will never do this work. They’re too far gone. Rage has infected their hearts and eaten their brains and made them capable of inhumane thinking and actions. So be it. But that’s a small percentage of the human population. And I have no doubt that if the large majority of us got to work doing a better job of finding peace and steadiness within, we’d begin to do a great job of spreading that around. It’s not the tiny percentage of violent extremists who pose the biggest threat to our well-being. It’s the huge percentage of people who numb out so they don’t have to feel the pain of being human. Because it is painful. It’s also incredibly beautiful. It’s wildly interesting and unpredictable. You never know what’s going to happen from day to day, and you can let that reality terrify you or inspire you to live fully. We’re afraid of pain. We’re averse to discomfort, let alone suffering. But we’re all going to suffer to some degree or another, and we’re all vulnerable. It’s not a level playing field as far as what happens. Some people are born with amazing advantages. Some people endure knifing, piercing losses that make you wonder how they’re going to move forward. But as far as vulnerability goes, we all get the same parameters. We’re all going to die at some point. We all have an incredible capacity to love. Everyone we love will die eventually. We don’t know how long we have, we don’t know how long they have, we don’t know what happens after this. Welcome to the human race, these are the rules of this game. How we live up to them is what defines us.

When you numb out, you turn your back on your own precious heart, and the hearts of all the people who hold you near and dear, but you also turn your back on your place in the whole. You turn your back on all your brothers and sisters. Because as far as I’m concerned, we are one huge family living on one planet. We have some members who are bat-sh&t crazy and full of venom, and there’s no denying that. But most of our family members are decent people with beautiful hearts struggling to manage their own vulnerability and fear. And we could help each other so much by simply acknowledging that.

We don’t need more people who feel alienated and alone, we need more connection, empathy, compassion and understanding. We need that individually, and we need that as a people. Everything you do, matters. You’re an energetic being, and you spread and take in energy wherever you go. The more accountable each of us is for the energy we’re spreading, the more we mindfully try to up the happiness quotient of the world around us with our small actions every day, the more we contribute to a better and more loving world. So don’t underestimate your own power. You’re one of seven billion people, and you’re completely unique. You have a spark to offer that only you can. But if enough sparks come together, we have a raging, burning fire of love we can let loose together. And I really believe the time is now. We don’t have time to keep feeding the old story of us versus them. We need to be a we. Sending you love, and sending extra love out there to anyone who’s lost a family member to an act of violence.

Don’t Chase Love

chaseloveWhenever you find yourself trying to force or control an outcome, it’s time to perk up and take a look at what’s happening within you. We’re all going to be attached to certain ideas; this is the nature of being human. For example, we’ll all want our loved ones to be happy; perfectly understandable. But if we start to assume that we know what will make someone else happy, then we’re in trouble. The minute you try to manage someone else’s path, you’re losing a chance to keep your own side of the street clean.

A lot of the time, we’re taking things personally. Maybe there’s someone we really care for, and we’re chasing. Right there, it’s a problem. You don’t chase love, you open to it. If you have to take off after it, that’s a huge red flag. Instead of spending your time and energy wondering what you can do to be perfect for this other person so you can get their attention and make them fall in love with you, you could be examining why you’re feeling so badly about yourself you’d tie up your Nike’s and chase your worthiness. You’re worthy. You’re the only one of you we get. You think you aren’t worthy of love? If someone isn’t offering it to you fully and openly, what are you doing? Have you ever talked to a couple who’s in love, and has been for thirty, forty, fifty years? I have. I make a habit of it any chance I get. I love to see couples who make it, and not once, in all the conversations with all the people I’ve met over the years, has any couple told me a story about a beginning that involved one person feeling deeply insecure all the time, and the other not treating them well. That’s not a solid foundation, and it won’t lead anywhere good. Also, it isn’t loving to race after someone who doesn’t want to be caught. If you love someone, you have to want for them what they want for themselves. If someone is making it clear to you that they aren’t available the way you want them to be, it’s disrespectful to refuse to accept that. It’s not just disrespectful to them and their feelings, it’s disrespecting yourself to keep trying.

It can hurt like hell when people we love don’t want what we wish they would want. This happens when we relate to the world and the people around us as if it’s about us, as if we’re in the center of this thing, and everything is happening around us or to us. When you can remove yourself from the center of the story and look at it from the sidelines, you’ll see it usually has very little to do with you. People want what they want. They are where they are. They have the tools they have. They may not want you, or anyone else the way you wish that they would. It’s also a bit nuts of us to imagine we can ever know what’s right for someone else. Isn’t it hard enough to grapple with what you need for your own inner peace? As long as a person isn’t intentionally hurting you or anyone else, you really have to assume they’re doing the best they can to work life out in a way that will feel good to them. Sometimes people don’t know what they want, and that can be hard to watch and hard to walk away from if you’re hoping maybe they’ll finally realize they want you, but you aren’t here to wait, because there’s not enough time for that.

When we start to try to control situations or people, when we find ourselves attempting to manipulate or cajole, or dance like a monkey to get what we want, it’s time to stop and check ourselves. Life is not about forcing the picture in your head onto the people around you–that picture of “how things should be.” No one will thank you for trying, and not many things cause us more pain than our attachment to that picture. It can be so hard to let it go, I really understand that, but grasping and waiting and hoping and struggling and doubting and obsessing….that is no way to live.

It’s brutal to have to release an idea, or another person, or a hope we held close, but you can’t cling and fly at the same time and you don’t have all the time in the world. I wouldn’t spend too much of it refusing to accept and open to things as they are; there’s so much power in that. Your self-respect is in the mix. So is your self-esteem. This is the stuff that has far-reaching consequences for your life, the way you move through the world, and the way life feels to you, day in, and day out. Let life feel good. It might hurt a lot in the short-term, but intense pain for a little while is so much better than a lifetime of suffering.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Just Be There

Compassion-is-hardSometimes the very best thing we can do for someone is hold some space for them to be where they are, to listen intently, and reflect back our understanding with love. To say, “Yes, of course that would hurt. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.” That’s often the best we can do for people, reassuring them that they are not alone in their experience, that we get it, that we’ve been there, or that we haven’t been there, but still, we can mourn with them, or just be there to make a meal, or take them for a walk. It’s very hard when people we love are suffering, or grieving, or enraged, or feeling bitter, or maybe all of those things at once. It’s natural to want to get in there and fix it, to brainstorm about solutions, or to offer our unsolicited opinions about what our friends should do. The reality is, we never know what another person needs for his or her own healing or grieving process or growth. Sometimes people are in so much agony, the people around them become uncomfortable, and this discomfort propels them to give their friend a push to “get back on their feet.” That’s really the last thing a person needs to hear when they have no way of doing that for themselves. As Earl Grollman rightly states, “The only cure for grief is to grieve.”

Some wounds are self-inflicted. Sometimes we need painful lessons again and again until we get it. That isn’t easy to watch, and of course if someone you love is harming themselves, we’re in a different territory. Then, you step in and do everything you can to get them some support, or you find some for yourself so you can honor your own needs and boundaries while you try to offer a hand up, or a shoulder to lean on. But you can’t save anyone, and if you’re confused about that, you’re in a precarious position. We can never carry the burden of another person’s pain, nor can we be responsible for anyone else’s happiness. Each of us must do our own journey. We all have to find a way to be at peace within ourselves, and sometimes the journey to that peace is fraught with roadblocks, self-imposed, or provided by the twists and turns and losses of life.

Whatever we have to bear, having loyal and understanding friends with whom we feel safe can be such a comfort. Knowing that there’s at least one person we can share our fears or insecurities or doubt or shame or guilt or jealousy with, without hearing a solution we didn’t ask for and don’t want, is really a gift. It’s hard to just listen. I think a lot of people feel like that isn’t enough, that if someone is coming to them in some pain or discomfort, implicit in their sharing is a request for advice. People will ask for our opinions if they want them. Most of us don’t listen to advice, anyway. We tell ourselves that’s the way it is or was for our well-meaning friend, but it’s not the way it is or will be for us. I’ve gotten into the habit of asking close friends when they share with me, “Do you want me to just listen, or do you want to know what I think?” People will tell you. Most people just want a safe space, and some understanding. Hoping we can all be, and have, friends like that, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Intimacy

thichloveIntimacy requires bravery, and not everyone is up to the challenge. In order to be close to people we have to be willing to bare ourselves. I don’t recommend you do this lightly or quickly; it takes time to know someone. Your heart is tender and precious, and not something you want to treat recklessly, but if you’re building something real with someone, whether it’s a friendship, or a romantic interest, or the developing and always growing relationship with your children or your parents, speaking from your heart is always the way.

In order to be seen, known, understood and cherished, we have to be real about who we are, how we feel, what we want, what scares us, excites us and inspires us. We have to know ourselves, we have to be intimately acquainted with who we are, before we can share our hearts fully, and we have to feel safe in order to do that. Let me just say that many people struggle with the underside of intimacy—the messy, in-your-face realities of being human that we must acknowledge and lean into, in order to heal and grow. Some people run screaming from that kind of work. Timing has a lot to do with this stuff. Most people don’t get up one morning and decide this is the day they’re going to face their demons head on. Most of us have to be pushed to do that, and when I say pushed, I mean we have to get to a point where it becomes obvious that avoiding this work only prolongs the pain.

If you try to force someone to face their stuff before they’re ready or able, no matter how loving your approach, do not be surprised if they lash out or take off. It’s never our job to manage another person’s path. We may want someone to be ready to get right with themselves so they can be right with us, we may want that desperately, but if they don’t want that, our job is to get out of the way. If a person wants to walk away from you, let him, let her. I know it’s heartbreaking. When we love people, and truly love them, we want them to be happy. That’s natural and beautiful, but we don’t get to choose the timeframe, or manage the way it happens. Everyone has to do their own work in their own time. We never know what another person needs to learn and grow, and sometimes in our attempts to alleviate a loved one’s pain, we also rob them of an experience that would have helped them make a shift. It’s brutal to watch someone we love as they suffer or make mistakes or pick roads we don’t understand, but sometimes that’s exactly what love asks of us.

It also hurts when we offer someone a chance to come forward, when we reach out a hand and let them know we’re there and we see them and they’re safe to open to us, and they say no. It’s so hard not to take that personally, but usually in those cases, a person is saying no to the work of being intimate. It feels like too much. Being close to people is not like it is in the movies. It’s not all fun and light and running through fields of flowers. Some of it is deeply uncomfortable. A willingness to reveal the places that aren’t so pretty, to fight back when old coping mechanisms arise that don’t serve us, to say we’re sorry when we blow it, or allow our past to come crashing into our present—none of this stuff is comfortable or easy. Love is the most beautiful, freeing feeling in the world, but sometimes you have to get on the battlefield so you can fight the barriers you’ve built to protect yourself, because those walls might prevent you from getting hurt, but they also block the love. If a person can’t meet you on that field, they don’t belong there with you yet. Maybe the timing will never be right, and maybe it will, but what we have is right now, and the least painful path is opening to reality as it is, which is not always as we’d like it to be. Nonetheless, I’ll take truth over fiction any day. I want to know the people in my life so I can love them fiercely, and I want to be loved that way, too. Life, in my opinion, is too short for anything else.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If you like the posts, you can find my books here <3

See and Be Seen

brenebFor most people there’s a struggle between wanting to be known, and being afraid of that very thing. We all want connection, it’s natural to us, but how far we go is up to us. How much we share or edit or hide or are willing to expose our most painful places, our most absurd doubts, our perceived, or very real weaknesses. The places where we might still suffer from shame or doubt. If I share this, will I still be loved? Wanted? Understood? Do I really want to be seen in all my allness?

I’m not just speaking romantically. I’m speaking about one person knowing you all the way, whether it’s your mother, or your best friend or your partner or your sibling or your ex. Is there anyone in your life with whom you feel totally and completely safe to bare your fear and be yourself? Your real self?

A lot of people say they want intimacy, but when push comes to shove, they back out. They get nervous or they run, or use humor as a defense mechanism, because, of course, if you really let someone in, you also give them the roadmap to hurt you if they ever choose to go that route. There are few things worse between people than that kind of betrayal of trust. If you were once close to someone, and they shared their real stuff with you, in my book that is off limits forever, no matter what. You do not go for someone’s jugular. We all know where that line is. Once you speak words that land like knives, you’ve crossed a line you can’t uncross.

I understand the fear, because most of us have been heartbroken, disappointed, discarded, or surprised by the hostility or indifference of someone at one time or another. You don’t have to be hurt too many times to start to build walls around your heart. How else to keep it safe? The thing is, walls keep out the joy, too. So now you’re safe but alone. No one knows you and no one sees you, not really. And that’s not the same as living.

Sometimes people have a perception that everyone else is having this great life with these amazing friends and great job and annoyingly perfect dog to top it all off, while they are just basically sucking at everything. The truth is, most of us are blessed if we have a small group of people who truly, deeply know us and love us, and I’ll tell you, that little group is enough. I wouldn’t forsake it for all the safety in the world, because the sh&t will hit the fan whether you try to make yourself safe, or you venture boldly into the world. Be particular and take your time, but when you meet those people with whom you feel safe to be yourself completely, do it. That’s the best stuff in life, being able to look into the eyes of someone you know without having to look away because there’s not enough truth between you to hold the gaze.

See and be seen, love and be loved,

Ally Hamilton

Find my books here <3

How’s Your Side of the Street?

opdramaIf you have some idea that you can save people, or make another person feel happy or whole or healed, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment, and maybe worse. Wanting to help people is beautiful; we could use more of that in the world. That impulse is the catalyst that leads someone to share, to listen, to offer support or encouragement, but thinking that you can swoop in and make things right for someone who’s in pain, just with the depth of your love and concern, is a recipe for disaster.

I say this whether we’re talking about your best friend, your new friend, your child, your parent, your partner, or your new romantic interest. Each of us must do our own work, and sometimes when we try to make things right for someone, we unintentionally rob them of an experience that might have helped them grow. It’s brutal to watch someone we love suffer. It’s natural to want to comfort and nurture, and if you can see a clear path toward happiness, of course you want to point the way. It’s fine to offer tools that have worked for you if they’re open to your ideas, but people do things as they’re ready. You can’t micro-manage someone else’s journey.

When we spend lots of time and energy focused on what someone else is, or is not doing, saying, or being, we conveniently stop paying attention to our own growth, our own needs, and our own healing. We all have work enough to do, just keeping our own side of the street clean. Life asks us to rise up every day, to show up and be present, to listen, to reflect, to respond, to engage. You have this one life, and what you do with it is up to you, but if you allow years to go by where you’re so caught up in someone else’s life that you forget to live your own, that’s time you’ll never have back.

Sometimes you have to ask yourself if you want a partner, or a project. If you grew up thinking that love was conditional, that it had to be earned, and that it could be taken away if you didn’t measure up, you probably have a lot of work to do in your current relationships, romantic or otherwise. When we don’t value ourselves, we gravitate toward people to whom we might become invaluable. “I’ll just be perfect for this person, I’ll give them everything they need, and then they won’t leave me or hurt me or betray me.” That isn’t love, that’s a project.

When our children are young, we have to lean over the plate and cut the pancakes, or halve the grapes, or put lids on the cups so everything doesn’t spill down the front of these people we love. If you find yourself metaphorically doing these things for grown adults, whether they’re your children or your friends, something is off.

Try to get very clear about what you want. If you want love and peace in your life, you won’t find those things by trying to control other people, or circumstances. Love can’t exist in a vise grip, because love needs room to move and expand.

Wishing you enough trust to allow for that expansion, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If you like the posts, you can find my books here <3

Communication 101

peacealderWhen it comes to relationships of any kind, honest communication is everything. If you want other people to know you, you have to be willing to show yourself. It’s not realistic to expect others to read your mind, and as much as you might think you have someone pegged, the only way to truly know how anyone feels, is to ask. Sometimes we repress something we need to say out of fear of hurting someone else, and other times we don’t ask questions when we’re afraid of the answers, and what they might mean for our tender hearts.

We’re taught that certain emotions make people uncomfortable (“Don’t be scared”, “Don’t be angry”, “Don’t be sad”), and many of us started editing ourselves as children. If you have care-taking, codependent tendencies, you probably really need to work on your ability to honor your own feelings, and act on your own behalf when necessary, which is pretty much every day. Saying what you mean is a gift you give yourself, but it also extends to all the people in your life. It’s so nice to know where you stand with someone, and to relax, and trust that if something comes up (and it always does), they’ll talk to you. This is how we develop a bond with another person. Being able to say what’s true for you, calmly, and with compassion, is a strength worth working on, because it just simplifies everything.

Life is challenging and confusing enough without having to try to figure out where someone else is at, or how you should act in order to elicit the response you desire. Being unable to stand up for yourself feels terrible, and it’s debilitating. Playing games is fine if we’re talking about cards or chess, but if we’re talking about human emotions, that’s really not the way to go, not if you want true intimacy, anyway. If you want anyone to know you well and deeply, you have to be able to say how you feel, and ask the scary, uncomfortable questions when they arise.

Sometimes the games we’re playing have nothing to do with hurting anyone else, or being reckless with someone else’s heart. Sometimes we don’t want to admit our own vulnerability. We cover our real feelings with an air of indifference or toughness, so no one will know the depth of what we feel, or how much power they hold over us. That’s fear. That’s a fear of trusting that anyone else could hold a space to really see you, in all your beauty and occasional absurdity, with all your strengths and all your flaws, all your history and all your mistakes, and still. Still cherish you. And if you let that fear run the show, you’ll never know. You’ll never give anyone the chance to prove to you that they can do it. Not your best friend. Not your mother. Not your partner. No one.

Life does not have to be like that, but you have to be willing to stop hiding. Everyone likes to put his or her best foot forward, but we all screw up sometimes. We all have fears, some unfounded, some based on past experience, some flowing from a sea of self-doubt. If you don’t ever admit your humanness, chances are the people around you will be reluctant to own theirs, as well. But the truth is, we’re all more alike than we realize. We all cry ourselves to sleep sometimes, or despair, or have our existential crises. It’s really okay. Show yourself and free yourself, and the people strong enough to do the same will show up in your life, and those who can’t do it will fall away. But while you’re here, you might as well be you, don’t you think?

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If you like the posts, you can find my books here <3

That’s How the Light Gets In

Ring-the-bells-thatDo you ever find yourself in a situation and wonder how you ended up there? Maybe things are happening in your life in a way you couldn’t have foreseen, and if only you’d known, you’d have made different choices? Sometimes when we’re in the heat of a thing and every path looks full of thorns, it’s really hard to imagine any beauty emerging from all the strife, but the amazing thing about most people is our resiliency. We all want to be happy, we all have a song to sing, and the drive to withstand and carry on is strong.

Yesterday my seven-year old son took my 90-minute strong vinyasa flow class. He hasn’t done that in a few years. The last time he did he was four, and about halfway through he sat down and played with his Hot Wheels. Yesterday, he took the whole class. He was totally focused, and whenever I caught his eye he smiled at me. I have to say, it was pretty f&cking awesome. At one point I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d started practicing yoga when I was really little. It occurred to me that I might have made many fewer mistakes along the way, that I might have been in touch with my intuition on a much stronger level at a much younger age. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten involved with that guy who was 20 years my senior when I was seventeen. Maybe I wouldn’t have moved across the country with a man I’d been dating for only six months. Maybe lots of things. I bet high school would have been a lot easier, and college, too. But then I thought that if my life hadn’t unfolded exactly the way it has, I wouldn’t have that particular seven year old boy beaming at me from the back row.

Every experience we have, even the most heart-wrenching and confusing, gives us an opportunity to grow and to know ourselves more deeply. I’m not saying that everything happens for a reason, or that someday, everything will make sense to you. Some things are forever hard to comprehend. I’m saying we always have the power to decide how we’re going to respond to what we’re given, and we have the power to choose how much we’re going to work with our pain, and pursue a path of healing so that we can liberate ourselves from anything that is smothering that song we must sing. Also, you just never know what beauty might grow out of your heartache.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

How to Forgive Yourself and Move On

gainpainSometimes we’re in so much pain we just act out. We find some way to ease the burden or numb it out or deny it in the short-term, and we can breathe again. Maybe part of us feels sick about it, disappointed in ourselves, ashamed of our weakness or dysfunction or poor choice in the moment, but this is a normal part of being human. None of us operate from our highest selves all the time.

When we’re on the outside of a thing, it’s so easy to see when a loved one is heading down a prickly path. When we act impulsively so we can feel better, it might work as far as instant gratification goes, but for the long haul, we’ve probably set ourselves back. As hard as it may be to witness, though, we never know what anyone else needs for his or her growth and healing. Sometimes a person needs to slide down a slick, muddy hill into a tree trunk again and again to “get it.”

If you, or someone you love is going through this, try to have compassion. Very few people consciously want to be in pain. Sometimes we’re working out old stuff. Sometimes we have self-esteem issues and things have to get really intolerable before they can get better. We might be acting on unconscious impulses to play something out in order to master it. We may be in a situation that’s clouding our judgment; being in love can do that. Maybe there are other people along for the ride with us, who will be affected by the choices we’re making and we feel overwhelmed by guilt. Basically, being human is complicated. Being a happy human takes a lot of effort, and a willingness to sit with the discomfort of our pain sometimes.

Do you ever have a day, or a bunch of days when it’s just deeply uncomfortable to be in your own skin? Ugh, that is so hard, because there’s no escape! Maybe you’re feeling abandoned or envious or afraid or angry, or you’re feeling tremendous guilt. Maybe your internal dialogue is harsh, shaming, unforgiving, relentless. Maybe you’re stuck looking over your shoulder with regret and despair. Lots of people do not want to sit with any of that, it’s not as if it’s easy or fun. Of course, there’s no way to know yourself if you don’t sit with your feelings as they arise, but many people run from that work for a good, long while. At the same time, you don’t want to get stuck in an old loop, where you’re feeling your feelings but not moving through them.

Usually being on the run gets old, and the realization dawns that if we don’t do things differently, we’ll keep “getting what we’ve been getting.” Since we can’t change the external stuff—circumstances, what people will say, or want, or do—we have to change the way we respond. If you haven’t gotten to that point yet, where you’re ready to try things a different way, try to have patience with yourself and the people in your life. We all get there as we get there, and we’re never done, we’re always in process. Try to honor your tender heart, and do your best not to be reckless with it. When you are, examine what’s happening within you, how you’re feeling about yourself, and what you hope to accomplish with your choices. Know yourself, but be kind, and have some faith that you won’t always choose the muddy, slick hill that ends with a painful collision with some raw, unhealed place within you. There are tools available so you can calm your nervous system and make it easier on yourself when difficult emotions arise. You can also work on the ability to choose one thought over another, which is often the beginning of forging a new path.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

The Upside of Struggling

struggleprogressDid you know that a butterfly needs that struggle to break free of its cocoon so it can strengthen its wings? If you were to cut open the cocoon to release it, you’d rob it of the ability to fly. Our own adventure through the birth canal squeezes the fluid out of our lungs so we can breathe. Nature shows us again and again that it is through effort that we empower ourselves.

And yet, it’s heart-wrenching to watch those we love struggle, strain, or make a complete mess out of things. From the outside, it’s so easy to see when someone is trapped in a cycle that continuously brings them pain. Freud called it the “repetition compulsion”; Albert Einstein famously said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Jung on this, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Anything within us that is unhealed will run the show. Anything we’ve repressed, denied, run from or tried to numb out will push back four times harder. It’s my belief that we’re all longing to heal, to open, to uncover our gifts and share them freely, but sometimes in order to do that, we have to lean into our pain first. A fearful unwillingness to do that, an aversion to being with what is, leads to our suffering, so sometimes a person is struggling and straining and avoiding and acting out. Brilliant people do this; it’s not about intelligence. I say that because it’s so easy to throw our hands up and say, “S/he’s so smart!! Why does s/he keep picking unavailable people to date?” Or , “Why is she stuck on her career path when she has so much going for her?!”

This is especially difficult when we’re watching our parents, partners, siblings, grown children, or close friends. Of course when you love someone, you want to save them from pain, but sometimes in our efforts to love people, we rob them of experiences they need for their own growth. In an effort to “save” or help those we love, the tendency can be to step in and try to solve the current problem, try to diffuse the stress or end the struggle, but struggle is important. It’s not until a person has come to the conclusion that what they’re doing isn’t working, that change is possible. You can’t convince a person with logic. You can’t cajole someone into wanting to take better care of themselves, or you. You can’t make someone happy. You can’t convince another person to fall in love with you, or to be compassionate or kind or caring or patient. People are these things, or they are not. Sometimes the struggle is what gets them from a place of despair, to one of peace. There’s a saying attributed to Buddha, “The obstacle is the path.”

When you think back on your life, I’ll bet you’ve learned a lot more during those times when things were not going your way, when things did not turn out as you’d hoped, than you did when everything was rainbows and unicorns. Scaling the mountain makes us strong. It shows us where we’re scared, where we have strengthening to do. It shows us the way we’re showing up for ourselves, it sheds light on our limiting beliefs, it pushes us to be our best selves. So while it’s almost always motivated by love and good intentions, trying to save other people usually has the opposite effect. You can’t save anyone but yourself. You can love other people, that’s beautiful, but you can also unintentionally enable them to continue to do things the way they’ve been doing them. You can reinforce behavior that ends up hurting them and you, by sweeping in with your love and concern, when maybe, they’d be better off weeping through their anguish, frustration, confusion and loneliness, so that they could resolve to start doing things another way.

Sometimes the best way to love people is to believe in their own ability to realize how incredibly special they are, and to allow them their own process. You can also offer tools that have helped you, and in that way you might help them help themselves. For me, healing came through yoga and seated meditation. I hear from people every day who’ve found peace by learning to open to how things are, instead of clinging to how they’d like things to be, but you can’t manage another person’s path, and you can’t know what anyone else needs for their own growth and ultimate happiness. You sure can love them, though.

Sending love to you,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Make the Shift, Part 2

The-greatest-weaponWhen you’re looking to make a significant life shift, awareness is the beginning. If things haven’t been going well, you need to figure out where you are now, and what it is that’s been driving your choices and actions. If you aren’t happy, if you aren’t at peace, if you aren’t living a life that feels good to you, my feeling is you haven’t been listening to your heart. Maybe you can hear it, but you haven’t been heeding it. Maybe you’ve been reckless with yourself. Maybe you’re feeling so badly about who you are, or you doubt that you’re lovable at your very core, and you’ve been flailing around, either trying to prove that you’re right, or prove that you’re wrong.

There are all kinds of reasons we cut ourselves off from our own intuition. It could be that you grew up in an unsafe environment, and learned to push down your feelings. Maybe you were taught that how you felt had no impact on the people or the world around you. Sometimes we’re given the responsibility of caring for other people at an age when we really need nurturing ourselves. It’s totally plausible that you could reach adulthood with no idea at all of what you want, what lights you up, what excites you and scares you, what it is that gives you a feeling of purpose, meaning and gratitude. That happens all the time.

Maybe you grew up and were taught that everything you did was magical. If your parents fought your battles for you, or stepped in to solve things every time you struggled, you might not have the tools to see things through when they aren’t coming easily. Dreams rarely do. You might look around at someone else’s life and think they’ve had all the breaks and that’s how they’ve gotten where they are. But for most people, blood, sweat and tears are involved. Persistence and perseverance, and the willingness to fail and not let that deter you, over and over again. Sometimes we don’t believe in ourselves and our ability to bring our dreams to fruition.

It could be that you’re living your life to please other people, or to fit in, or toe the line. Maybe that’s what you were taught, and you have a loud inner voice asking who you think you are to consider doing something great. You might compare and contrast yourself to everyone around you; that’s what we’re taught to do culturally. If you’re having a crisis of confidence, or your self-esteem has taken one too many hits, it’s really hard to pick yourself up and get moving. And it’s impossible if you don’t realize that’s what’s happening. Sometimes we just feel stuck and lost and hopeless, and we don’t know why.

So there are a lot of reasons a person might drown out their own intuition. Make themselves so busy there’s no time to hear it, or numb it out with drugs, alcohol, relationships, or shopping. Run from it or reject it, because to listen to it would be to acknowledge that things have to change. Fear might be stopping you in your tracks, or it might have you on the run.

Whatever it is that’s been motivating you, it’s time to sit down and get quiet so you can take a good look at it. It sounds so simple, and it is. It’s just not easy. When I started meditating, I can tell you it was anything but easy. I would sit, and close my eyes, and notice my breath, and start to scan my body. And every time I’d get to my heart, there was a physical pain. It was as if my heart was encased in steel, or some kind of vice grip. And tears would stream down my face, and I didn’t even have a name for them. I couldn’t have told you what the tears were about, or what the grip was about, I just understood if I wanted it to loosen, I was going to have to sit there and allow all those feelings to arise, and I was going to have to lean into them. This went on for months. I’d sit, and sometimes rage or frustration would come to the surface. All these months, all this sitting, and still? But at the same time, I began to develop the awareness that I was not my thoughts. I began to witness my experience, to simply hold this space for myself to release, to let go, to have some compassion for myself. And after awhile, and what seemed like an ocean of tears, the grip loosened. The feeling of steel around my heart went away. I started to breathe in a way I hadn’t before.

The combination of the physical yoga practice and seated meditation is powerful. If unconscious forces and tendencies are driving your life, you’re probably in a lot of pain. Meditation is a way to stop hiding from yourself. To bring everything into the light so you can look at it with a little distance and decide what you want to feed. Your physical practice is a place where you can do that feeding, that nurturing. You can learn to choose one thought over another when you learn to focus your mind–that’s what the focal points in your practice are about. The ability to direct your energy is key, because where your awareness goes, your energy flows. If you keep dwelling on what went wrong, you’re feeding it. If you shift your attention to what’s going well, what you do have, you start to feed that. A foundation of gratitude is a platform from which any of your dreams might flourish. A foundation of despair sucks everything down with it.

 

Make The Shift – Session 2 (meditation / vinyasa flow) **

In week 2 of our Make the Shift Challenge, (the class is above), you take what you now know about where you are, and you start to make choices. Do you want to feed those feelings and ideas that are weakening you, or do you want to focus on those thoughts and ideas that strengthen you? You use your breath to stay connected to the present moment, to stay engaged with what’s happening right now. But you do this with your awareness of your tendencies and habits, especially the ones that are bringing you down. And you kindly kick those to the curb as you feed a loving voice.

In addition to the class, your homework is to watch what you’re feeding yourself in all areas. To become more conscious about what you’re eating, reading, watching, listening to…it’s all food for your mind and your heart. And to feed yourself well. Sending you love. Ally Hamilton

** New subscribers: get the first 10 days of your monthly subscription free ($15 billed monthly after trial) when you use coupon code MAKETHESHIFT. Subscribe here.

Denial

hemingway2When we refuse to accept the truth, we set ourselves up to suffer. There’s no doubt that there are times we’re confused and things are unclear, but sometimes we know the truth of a thing, and just don’t want to face it. This can happen professionally and romantically, and it can happen internally, too. There are truths about ourselves that are not always easy to accept and integrate. Denying what’s real for you and rejecting essential parts of yourself is a prison full of pain.

Finding the strength to deal with reality as it is, especially when it isn’t unfolding the way we’d hoped it would, is no small feat. Falling in love with someone, for example, only to realize too late that you’ve fallen by yourself, is a painful journey. Trying to cajole, manipulate, sell yourself or dance like a monkey to get the other person to see how wonderful you are is the surest way to make yourself feel small and to dishonor your gorgeous heart, but we don’t always have the strength to pick ourselves up and walk away. Sometimes we think if we just stick around and accept less than we really want, we can turn the tides, but you weren’t put here to convince anyone else of your worth. Your lid isn’t going to fit every pot. Why try to force it? If it doesn’t fit for both sides of the equation, it’s not a match. Maybe you got caught up in an old dynamic. Maybe it isn’t love, maybe it’s dysfunction. Maybe it started out as something good and took a turn along the way. Whatever the case, you don’t want to let your self-esteem take a pounding for too long, or you’ll end up with some serious healing to do.

This happens in the work realm, too. People accept a position because the money is great, even though the day-to-day experience is soul-crushing. Maybe your boss lacks any sense of boundaries, or makes demands on you that aren’t reasonable by anyone’s estimation. Maybe you’re just out of school and think this must be how things are, or, who are you to walk away from a job with security? Your life is made up of moments that turn into hours and days and weeks and months, and before you know it, years have gone by. If you’re in a situation that crushes your spirit, you have to find an alternative, or you’ll die on the inside.

Anything real that you refuse to face will own you. If you reject certain aspects of yourself, deny them, push them down, or flee from them, you just exhaust yourself, deplete your energy, and sentence yourself to a life full of pain. You also put your pain in the driver’s seat. It will rule all your choices, behavior and actions, the way you think about yourself and other people, and the way you move through the world. If you deny the truth of another person, if you refuse to accept things as they are, you’re sure to suffer. And if you allow yourself to be mistreated because you’ve rationalized your way into a corner, you’d better bust yourself out.

Life can be short and precious, or long and painful. I’m pretty sure those are the options, and I say that because when you’re on fire, when you know who you are, when you uncover and share your gifts, when you love the people in your life with your whole heart and see them and accept them for who they are, when you look around every day and take in all the beauty around you, you realize you’re here for one awesome, shining flash of time, and you’d better make the most of it. You’d better soak it all in and give it all up and immerse yourself in this gorgeous life for as long as you get to be here. Option two is that you numb out or run or deny or allow yourself to believe you’re unworthy of love, and you repeat patterns that take you down paths of misery and anguish, leading to your depression and belief that you can’t count on anyone, including yourself. Option one seems better to me.

Sending you love and a big hug,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Define Your Terms

happinessgandhiI’m a big believer in “defining your terms”, especially when it comes to loving relationships, and by that, I don’t necessarily mean romantic ones, but rather any relationship that demands your vulnerability. If you love someone, you’re vulnerable; there’s a chance you could be hurt, either because we all have these bodies with unknown expiration dates, or because people grow and change, and not always in a way that merges. This happens romantically, to be sure, but it also happens in familial situations, and with close friends. Sometimes we have ideas in our heads about how things should be, or how people should be, or how a relationship should look and feel. That “should” can really bite us in the a$$, but sometimes we get hurt simply because we’re using the same words to describe different things.

My idea of what it means when I say, “I love you” to someone may not resemble your meaning. Does that seem crazy? Does it seem obvious to you what it means when you say those words? To some people it means, “I love you when you do what I want you to do.” Or, “I love you when you want what I think you should want.” It can be conditional, or about control and manipulation. For others, it’s a statement of possession, “I love you and now I own you.” It’s not so simple, and to complicate things further, sometimes what we think we mean, and what we actually mean are not in sync. Looking at yourself honestly, examining your patterns, and being truthful about what’s happening within you are essential if you want to be close to other people.

Your experiences and frame of reference and ideas about things shape the way you move through the world, the way you interact with people, and the way you define your terms. If the love you’ve known or have come to understand involves unflinching acceptance of those closest to you, you may assume your loved ones will respond in kind, and they may, or they may not. It depends on their own history and their own outlook. So many misunderstandings are the result of poor communication, assumptions and projections.

Someone does something, or does not do something, and we assume this must mean what it would if we did or did not do this same thing, and that’s just not a fair assumption. You’ll never know where someone’s coming from unless you ask them with ears that are willing to hear, and a heart that’s willing to understand and accept what’s real for them (that doesn’t mean you have to agree). Sometimes people ask questions but they only want to hear one answer, and it doesn’t really matter what the other person says or does; with enough desire, obsession and reworking, the answer will be twisted and expanded or pared down or shoved under a rug, so the “right answer” will emerge. We kid ourselves, in other words. This can happen when we fall in love, or when we have a friendship we can’t bear to lose, or when a family member is moving in a direction that scares us. Sometimes we just don’t want to accept the truth of a thing, so we intentionally reject any definition that challenges our own.

Knowing yourself is the key to knowing other people, because in order to know yourself, you have to integrate all parts of your being–the stuff that’s pretty, that you’d gladly share in a status update, and the stuff that isn’t so pretty, that you’d be embarrassed to share. If you can accept yourself without being rigid or unforgiving, you’ll be able to do the same for others and you won’t be scared to explain what you mean when you say, “I love you,” or to show it. Fear is responsible for so much that goes unsaid and undone, but what’s to fear? If you speak honestly and from your heart, you either will, or will not be embraced. What’s the point of living a lie? Knowing yourself is liberating to you, and to those closest to you. Defining your terms honestly, without trying to shove your ideas down someone’s throat is a beautiful gift.

I get so many emails from people who don’t bother to talk because they “already know what the other person will say,” or from people who are in despair because their partner isn’t loving them the way they want to be loved. If only their partner would change, they say, all would be well, but we have no control over what other people will do, or say, or want and we never know what life will put in our path. The only true power we have is to express ourselves calmly and with compassion, to face reality as it is, and to choose the way we respond to what we’ve been given. If you’ve been deeply hurt, betrayed, neglected or abused, you really want to examine what you expect from the world, and the other people in it. Define your terms for those you want to bring close to your heart. We’re part of a mystery, but you want to take the mystery out of it when it comes to your ability to say what you mean, and to share your deepest desires. The rest of it will unfold.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here <3

Intimacy

lovelistenOne of the great gifts of an intimate relationship, and by that, I do not necessarily mean a romantic one, is that it constantly offers us the opportunity to grow; anyone you’re close to will challenge you to show up as your best possible self, for you and for them. That’s part of the joy and the pain of having people in our lives who know us and see us clearly. These people may be your parents, your siblings, your best friend, your children, or your partner. The most intimate and enduring relationship you’ll have in your whole life, though, is the one you’re having with yourself.

The thing about intimacy is that it demands honesty. There’s no hiding if we want to be seen and heard and known, and those who truly love us want us to shine. This means there will be times when we have uncomfortable conversations, because no one shows up as their highest self in every moment. We all make mistakes, say things and do things we wish we hadn’t, or get ourselves worked up over imagined or real slights or wrongdoings. Sometimes we want to hide from ourselves. Maybe there’s some tendency that doesn’t serve you, some way you’re moving through the world, or thinking about yourself or other people, some way you’re showing up for yourself or not. When we love people, we also hold them accountable, not in a cold, shaming way, but in a loving, compassionate one, “I know you and I see you, and this is not the best you can do.”

When we love, we have to want for the other person what they want for themselves, even if it’s at odds with what we want for them, what we want for ourselves, or what we wish they would want, and I believe it’s also our job to kindly hold up a mirror when someone we love is not making choices in service to their highest good. That’s intimacy. Clear seeing, and the ability to communicate when things are not clear, “Help me understand what’s happening with you. Help me see how things are for you right now.”

This isn’t the shiny, glossy stuff we’re sold in the movies. If you’re close to someone, you’ve seen them crying until their nose runs, or you’ve seen their face twisted by anger or despair or frustration. You’ve seen them in the midst of struggle, when they’re triggered and trying to come back to center, and you’ve seen them at their best, too. Maybe you’ve seen them lie to themselves, or watched them lie to your face out of fear or an inability to say the hard thing. Love isn’t always pretty. For a long time now, I’ve tried to practice unflinching acceptance of the people with whom I’m closest. Just let me see the truth of how things are for them, then I’ll deal with the truth of what that means for me. That’s a practice in and of itself, but I believe it’s worth exploring. This does not mean I allow myself to be disrespected or abused, although there have been times I’ve let the lines get blurry, because compassion for someone else can turn into abuse of oneself if you aren’t careful. I’m certainly not recommending that.

Sometimes we really fight reality. We want to stuff everything into neat little boxes that are all labeled, “My Plan.” Sometimes we try to stuff people into those boxes, too, but you’ve probably noticed, since you are a person, people don’t like that very much. Sometimes we dance like monkeys and bend over backwards and try to sell ourselves or other people on the idea that, “everything is okay”, when really, we know it is not. Sometimes, as we all know, the truth hurts, but I’d take the truth over a lie any day of the week; I’d rather deal with a painful truth than a pretty lie. I want to stand on solid ground and know I can trust myself.

The only way that happens is to know yourself, too, to do your best to see yourself clearly and understand what’s driving you, what’s blocking you, what’s lighting you up. There’s nothing wrong with getting some help if you need it, because sometimes we’re so close to a thing, we can’t see clearly, and sometimes we’ve grown up in situations where we pushed our needs and wants down, and focused on survival. You may not have a clue what you want. Maybe you’ve spent your whole life responding to what other people want, or you’ve been “shoulding” yourself for so long, you wouldn’t recognize a cry from your intuition if it was in surround sound.

I really think you have to start there — self-acceptance, self-compassion, clear-seeing, and sometimes you’ll be terrified by what you want, or paralyzed by it, or maybe even ashamed or disgusted. That is totally fine. Feelings are not facts, and you don’t have to act on every feeling you have; in fact, you’ll probably create a lot of pain and turmoil for yourself if you do. However, anything you reject within yourself is going to push back four times harder. The truth wants out. There’s a drive within all of us to heal, if we open to it. Underneath the layers of pain, confusion, darkness, doubt, rage, grief, loneliness and despair, you will find love. That’s what healing is in my opinion–it’s a return to your natural state. Love, acceptance and compassion thrive on truth, that’s how you make that stuff blossom.

Chasing happiness is like sprinkling yourself with that “flower food” they give you with cut flowers. The flowers aren’t rooted. Maybe that stuff will make things look pretty on the outside a little bit longer, but if you want to feed your soul, you have to find your roots and plant them in soil soaked in truth. Once you accept what’s real and right for you, it makes it inevitable that you want to do those things for the people you love. You want them to know you can see them and that you understand them. You don’t have to agree with how someone feels or what someone needs in order to accept that’s how it is for them, you just have to be willing to face it, and then you figure out how to love them and still honor your own tender heart. There are no boxes in this thing. Love has open hands, open eyes, open ears and open arms. May we all be strong enough and brave enough to love ourselves and the people in our lives.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Tolerance

In-the-practice-ofNot everyone is going to like us, get us, understand us, see us clearly, or dig where we’re coming from, that’s just reality, and we aren’t going to understand everyone we encounter, either. I think making the attempt is the thing.

I definitely don’t expect everyone to like everything I write, for example. I put my heart out there, and sometimes I don’t do a great job of getting the feelings and thoughts from my head and my heart into words on a screen; I can live with that. I love and welcome a respectful dialogue about different ideas and opinions. Sometimes someone has a perspective that’s so unique, it makes me think about something in an entirely different way, and I’ll tell you, when I write and when I’m teaching yoga, one of my big goals is not to leave anyone out. I know that’s hoping for a lot, but I always try to think about all kinds of people — people who are happy, people who are suffering, those who’ve endured knifing losses, and those who’ve been spared, those who grew up immersed in love, and those who’ve had to teach it to themselves. I don’t want to alienate anyone.

Sometimes people cling to their ideas like a shield, you just can’t offer a differing opinion, it bounces off, and that’s okay, although I don’t think it’s ideal. It’s just that sometimes a person needs to grip their beliefs to get through. If they drop a particular idea, their whole life philosophy falls apart. Maybe they have coping mechanisms they need at this point in time, but I think it’s going to create problems for a person who can’t even entertain a different way of thinking about something over the long haul because in order to hold onto to their beliefs, in order to make the pieces fit, they have to reject anything that calls those beliefs into question. If someone doesn’t agree, they’re wrong, or they’re the enemy, or they’re blind, or lost or confused. A differing opinion or choice feels like a judgment against them.

I see this on the micro-level, between family members who stop speaking to each other because they dig their heels in. This thing happened, and they’re so attached to holding onto their story about why they’re right and their brother or sister or mother or father or son or daughter is wrong, they forget about the human being(s) they’re sacrificing in order to keep the story of their rightness. Everyone screws up. Everyone. We all say things and do things and think about things in a heated way sometimes. We get bogged down in layers of subconscious rage or pain or ideas we have about injustices that have been perpetrated against us, and sometimes we drag a lot of history into the present moment. You can’t turn back time. You can’t undo something you said or did, or something someone else said or did. You can only work with what is, and where to go from here, but angry stories aren’t going to show up by your bedside to hold your hand one day when you really need it. They aren’t going to cover you with a blanket, and rest a cool hand on your forehead. We don’t have to agree all the time to love each other, and to treat one another with respect and kindness.

If family members struggle with these things, then of course friends will, also, and acquaintances, and you can bet strangers will. Then you start adding borders and different countries and different languages, and you can see how this can lead to trouble. We’re so quick to categorize people, to assume we know, to label someone and check the box. Sometimes people rage, or vent, or call names, because they can’t see the eyes of the person they’re attacking anymore. Intolerance divides us, it creates an us, and a them and makes conversation impossible and obsolete.

When we dehumanize people, we can ignore them or hurt them. We take ourselves off the hook of doing the work to understand them or love them, or be open to anything they might want to say or share. Life is about connection, I truly believe that, and intolerance is the opposite of connection. Sometimes it’s good to examine where you’re intolerant. Maybe it’s with certain aspects of yourself. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a belief system, so don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying I think it’s important to make sure we aren’t clinging so hard to what we believe, we’re blinding ourselves.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Attachment

Mostly-it-is-loss-whichAttachment leads to suffering, this is a fact of life. To the extent that we are attached to a particular outcome, we are also setting ourselves up for possible disappointment, heartbreak, or incomprehensible grief, and yet, if you’re going to live life fully, I don’t believe there’s any way around some attachment. You’re going to be attached to the people you love beyond words. You’re going to be attached to the idea that you can hug them and laugh with them and hear their voices. You’re going to be attached to their good health. You’re going to be attached to the idea that they live life in a way that feels good to them. If they’re taken from you, or you’re taken from them, suffering is inevitable. When we love, we make ourselves vulnerable, but not loving is not living, not really. So suffering is part of the human experience.

You can certainly limit and lessen the amount you’ll suffer. You don’t have to allow yourself to be attached to a pair of shoes, or the idea that you’re going to marry someone you’ve known for two weeks. You don’t have to allow yourself to be so attached to your ideas and opinions, you alienate the people who love you most. You don’t have to allow yourself to be attached to being “right”, or winning every argument, or being seen as infallible. You can mitigate the amount you suffer by practicing non-attachment and curiosity. I say it all the time when I’m teaching. “Keep breathing consciously, and try to stay curious about your experience.” That’s a great way to move through life, too, right? Staying present, and allowing things to unfold. It feels a lot better than grasping, or manipulating, or trying to force or control. Entering a relationship that way is ideal. Just being receptive and awake and aware, and seeing how things go. Opening yourself to the experience of getting to know someone, so you can see if it’s a good fit, whether we’re talking about a new friend, or a romantic interest, or a potential business partner, rather than projecting a whole set of ideals that may or may not be there.

When we come from need, we’re not in the power seat, circumstances are. If things go the way we want them to, we’ll be happy, and if they don’t, we’ll be miserable. We are now at the mercy of things outside ourselves, over which we have no control. The only thing you can hope to control is yourself, and even that isn’t easy. You can’t dictate what other people will do, or say, or want, or need. You can’t pick and choose the experiences life is going to put in your path, but you can work on the way you respond to what it is you’re given; there’s a lot of power in that.

If you pursue your passion, for example, that thing that lights you up, that sets your soul on fire, it may not make you rich, but what a great use of your time, your energy and your gifts. When you allow yourself to be pulled, deeply, by what you love, you live. It may hurt, it may not unfold exactly the way you hope, but at least you’re on fire, you’re lighting it up. I’d take that any day over apathy, lethargy, or boredom.

When you love the people in your life with everything you’ve got, when you love out loud, that just feels so good, to you, to them, it’s just a great use of your heart. To the extent that you do that, you may also suffer. Nothing hurts more than the gaping hole that’s left when we lose someone we love, no matter what you believe. I would say, do the part you can, give everything you’ve got. Say out loud what’s in your heart regularly, so there’s no doubt in your mind that the people in your life know how you feel, and there’s no doubt in their minds, either. Let the reality that we don’t know how much time we have with the people we love, inspire you, not terrify you. Be smart about your attachments, but where you’re attached, go ahead and do it fully.

Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

Open Heart, Open Hands

No-one-told-me-you-canSometimes in the name of love, we seek to control. We may do this because we can see a loved one is about to head into a brick wall, and we long to save her from getting hurt. Parents do this all the time, especially with their firstborn child. It’s a natural instinct to want to protect your children from pain; if you don’t have that instinct, I worry for you and your little ones, but if a parent is always there to say “no!”, “stop!” and “don’t!”, what results is a fearful person. You don’t want to scare the curiosity out of your children, or rob them of any sense that they can trust themselves. Eventually, we all have to learn that if we run too quickly, we’re probably going to trip and fall, and it’s going to hurt. That’s how we learn.

Sometimes we see a friend stuck in a painful cycle, and we throw our hands in the air. What are they doing? How can they not realize they’re repeating this destructive pattern? How many times will we have to be there when it all falls apart? I’m not saying we shouldn’t kindly hold up a mirror when someone we love is hurting themselves, but you can’t force a person to see something they aren’t ready to see, you can’t manage another person’s journey. You never know what someone else needs in order to learn and grow and strengthen; sometimes we need painful lessons over and over again before we get it. Sometimes we have to have our hearts broken badly, until we finally say, “That’s it. Enough.”

Communication is beautiful. “I love you, and it hurts me to see you treating yourself so badly. It hurts me to see you in such a self-loathing place, because I see you so clearly, and you’re beautiful.” Say it, go ahead. Maybe, hopefully, some part of that will seep in there. Maybe a tiny little root will grow, and one day the person will start to see themselves the way you do. If you’re dealing with someone who’s harming themselves, of course do everything you can to get them help, but understand, ultimately, everyone has to do his own journey. Healing is inside work. A person has to be open to help, or no help is available.

None of us knows the interior world of another person, we only ever know what someone is willing to show us. We all have pain, some people do a better job managing their pain than others. Some people have more pain handed to them, that’s a fact. Sometimes a person is up against so much grief and despair they reach for anything to numb it, anything to avoid feeling the abyss. Desperation and loneliness and a certain kind of personality, along with possible trauma, a person’s resiliency, and so many other factors can lead to the kind of numbing that’s hard to comprehend. No one wants to be addicted to something that has the potential to ruin or end their lives. Addicts are prisoners of the object of their desire. They get hijacked by it. They’re owned. Their pain owns them, and the agent that numbs the pain owns them. Unless they find the enormous will and strength and love for themselves to fight back, and even then, it takes a Herculean effort, a lot of support, and a decision every day to choose love, to choose health, to choose freedom. Sometimes people just don’t win the fight. It’s heartbreaking. Addiction robs us of so much beauty.

Have you ever been in a destructive, abusive relationship that you wanted to end, but you just couldn’t find the strength? You just weren’t feeling good enough about yourself to say, “F&ck this. I don’t deserve this”? Maybe you tried to end it a bunch of times, but the pull was so strong, you found yourself dialing that number, even when every part of your being was screaming, “No!” It’s not easy being a human being. It can be gorgeous and beautiful and wildly interesting, but it isn’t easy. Love the people in your life. I mean, really love them. Honor them, cherish them, see them, hear them, support their growth and their joy. That’s all you can do, and sometimes, you’ll have to do it from afar if someone you love is hurting themselves and won’t be stopped. Don’t ever think a person is choosing between you and a drug, and that you must not mean much to them if they’re choosing a drug over you. You’re not even in the fight. You’re not in the mix. It’s not about you, so don’t get confused. You’ve been left on the shore. They’re out to sea with this thing, fighting for their lives. You’re outside the thing, so try to grasp that. How much they love you has nothing to do with it. It’s how much they’re able to care about themselves. May all beings be free from suffering.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Home

We tend to think of “home” as the house or apartment where we grew up, and “family” as the people with whom we share a bloodline; those people who were in that house or apartment before we got there. See also: those people who were supposed to love us and protect us and nurture us. When it works out that way, it’s ideal and such a gift, but it doesn’t work out that way for so many people.

There are tons of variables; trauma and abuse can be passed down from one generation to the next. If a person grew up in an unsafe environment, that’s what they know, and that feels like home. The pull to recreate that familiar feeling can be strong, especially when there hasn’t been an opportunity to heal. So sometimes home is a scary place, and family are the people you maneuver around as you try to stay safe. In a case like that, the longing for home, the desire to be loved and seen and heard can feel like some kind of mystery to be solved. Isn’t it funny how we can yearn for things we’ve never had, and miss people we’ve never met?

Anything unhealed within you wants your kind attention. We long for closure and resolution, but underneath that what we’re really wanting is peace. We want to know we’re worthy of love. There are those lucky people who’ve never had to question that, because love is all they’ve known; it’s not common, but it does happen. Someone who is raised knowing they’re treasured and cherished is likely to have an easier time with later heartbreaks. They still hurt, of course, but the person isn’t as likely to question whether there’s something at their very core that’s unlovable, something about them that makes it easy to leave, neglect or abuse them. A person who is securely attached to his or her parents and siblings isn’t as likely to take rejection as proof that he or she is really disposable, after all, but a person who’s never felt loved, who struggles to trust and be vulnerable, can take a heartbreak as that final blow. As if it’s up to someone else to determine their worth.

Roughly thirty-seven trillion cells come together to make up a human being. They’ll never come together in that way again, and they never have before; that’s a miracle in my book, scientific or otherwise. We arrive here needing to be held and fed and clothed and rocked and soothed. We come here needing each other, we go out needing each other, and in between, you can bet we need each other. I truly feel our purpose here is to love — to open, to grow, to heal, to learn, to strengthen and blossom and share whatever we’ve got with each other; to dig until we uncover that limitless well of love within us, so we can spread it as we move through our days. Home is inside you. It’s not a place, although you may feel attached to the house you grew up in if you were happy there. The bonds between family members can be strong, but that doesn’t always mean they’re healthy; sometimes you have to negotiate your boundaries. Sometimes you have to love people from afar in order to love yourself well, and sometimes you have to create a family of your own, with those people who’ve shown you what love looks like. Ultimately, you want to feel at home inside yourself, comfortable in your own skin.

When life throws you a curve-ball, you want to know you can catch it. You want to have your own back. You want to know how to root for yourself. You want to be able to nurture and cherish your particular thirty-seven trillion cells. “Home” might be something you have to create out of your imagination, you may not have a frame of reference for it, but home is inside you. You can visit any time you like.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

The Snack Bar

A couple of days ago I received an email from a man who’s in agony; last week he had a terrible fight with his father. He’s been working for his dad for years, in the family business. He started over the summers when he was in high school, and went right to work full-time when he graduated from college. He and his dad have always been close. His dad coached him through Little League, cheered him on through high school, and never missed any of his college games. They went camping in the summers, and skiing in the winters.

People have always commented about how close they are, but they’re also both passionate and stubborn, and have had a hard time apologizing to each other over the years. He said once they’d gotten into it, and hadn’t spoken for a month. His mother was miserable, caught in the middle and unable to make headway with either of them. He was playing baseball at this point, and he had the last game of the season this particular weekend. He and his dad had spent another week gruffly and pointedly ignoring each other. He saw his mom and sisters and little brother in the stands at his game, but no dad. His team won, but he said he felt kind of dead inside because his dad hadn’t been there to see it. Except he had. His uncle told him later in the week that his dad had driven with him separately and they had stood next to the snack bar watching. When his team won, his dad had punched the air in victory, turned, and walked off to the car. He told me at that point, he’d gone and found his dad in his office. He said he walked in, and at first his dad just looked at him, kind of guarded, and then he said, “Dad, I’m sorry”, and his old man started crying. Two big guys hugging it out in the middle of the office, and it was forgotten.

Anyway, they hadn’t let that happen again until last week. He’s gotten older, and so has his father, and he’s really tried to work on staying calm when he feels angry. That month they didn’t speak was hard on the whole family, and he’d promised himself he wouldn’t let that happen twice, but it isn’t easy when tempers flare, and working for his dad makes it tougher, still. He said any time he’d try to do things a little differently than his dad had been doing them for years, pops took it like a judgment against himself, as if his son was questioning him, or suggesting he was losing his edge or getting old, or that he was, “not with the times.” So they had a blow up and he said a bunch of things to his dad that he wishes he could un-say, and he stormed off. A few hours later his uncle called and said they were on the way to the hospital. His dad had a heart attack. By the time they got to the hospital, it was already over, and he can’t take it back. He can’t undo the last conversation, he can’t tell his dad he’s sorry, he can’t make things right.

I guarantee you, and I guaranteed him, things are right, they really are. His dad knew he loved him, there’s zero doubt in my mind about that. We all have conversations we’d like to do over again, things we regret saying. This is a tough one, when there’s no way to go and look the person in the eye and say, “I’m sorry for a lot of what I said. I didn’t mean it, and I love you.” It’s hard to bear a last conversation that was heated and full of “you always”, and “you never”, but we’re all human, and we are not going to operate from our highest selves in every moment. Part of him is scared he caused the heart attack by yelling at his father, even though admittedly, his dad had high blood pressure, a diet that wasn’t great, and a habit of sneaking cigarettes at work. He’d often go home and have a glass of bourbon after dinner. All things his doctor had been warning him about for years because there’s a history of heart disease in the family. All things his wife had been worried about, as well, and the reason he smoked at work and not at home.

Sometimes in life, your work is to forgive yourself for being human, which sounds crazy, right? I mean, what else could you be? Not everything is always going to be resolved and perfect with all the people in your life, and we all have a finite time to be here; we all have unknown expiration dates. Of course you want to let that reality seep into your bones, so that as much as possible, you let the people in your life know how you feel. So you don’t allow things to build up or unravel for too long. Ideally, you get to a point where you observe your feelings as they arise without acting on them, but if you have one conversation with someone one day, after a history of love and laughter and joy and being there, and yes, tears and misunderstandings and fights sometimes, (because that’s what most relationships look like over the long haul), believe me, one conversation isn’t going to take all that away. You can trust that the people who love you well and deeply, know your heart. You can trust that they’re standing by the snack bar cheering you on, even when you can’t see them and don’t know they’re there. Some things in life you have to carry, and some things you have to let go. Figuring out which is which is one of the great keys to your own peace.

Wishing that for you, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Icehole Alert!

iceholeFor many people this time of year is loaded with triggers and painful memories, with the desire for something lost, or something yet to be experienced. We have this Norman Rockwell image of “how things should look”. And there are people who do a decent impression from the outside, but every family has its stuff. Because every family is made up of people, and people are complex and vulnerable. Often confused and scared and motivated by their own desires, sometimes unknown even to themselves. But if you’re feeling alone already, there’s nothing like the idea that everyone else has this safe haven, this warm fold in which they’ll be embraced and understood, heard and celebrated, to make you feel like the loneliest person on earth. Few things get us in greater trouble than the picture in our head of how things should be. Things are as they are.

If you talk to people with happy families about heading home for the holidays, they’ll still roll their eyes and let you know they’ll need to sneak away to do their yoga in order to stay sane. And those are the lucky ones. There are people who don’t want to go home, because home sends them back in time, to when they were fifteen, feeling belligerent and powerless all at once. Grown adults with children of their own can revert back to bickering with their siblings like they’re reading from a tattered, ancient script. Old competition for attention or affection can rise to the surface, and even those who’ve done lots of work on themselves can be thrown off center.

There are people with nowhere to go, because going home just isn’t an option. I have a friend whose parents won’t accept the fact that he married his boyfriend. He’s not welcome home. I can’t wrap my head around that. You have a child. Your child is healthy and happy, or trying to be. It’s not easy when your own parents reject you, no matter how much work you do to be okay with it. But sometimes you simply have to make your own family. Just pick the people who know how to love you for who you are. And learn to live with the pain in your heart that the people who brought you into this world can only love you and accept you if you do what they want you to do. If you feel and think the way they want you to feel and think. If you want what they think you should want. That isn’t love. Those are people who don’t understand how to do it. And it’s an incredibly sad loss for them and for you. But it’s not a reflection on you, it’s on them. Let’s drink to that, shall we? Raise a little non-alcoholic, or regular, or vegan eggnog and toast that idea.

And don’t get me wrong. There are people who love going home. People who have healthy relationships with their parents and their siblings. Once in awhile, a couple of people come together, and they figure out how to make it work. How to see each other and hear each other, and feed the love between them so it grows. People who guard and prioritize their love because they understand what a gift it is. When that happens, you have the foundation for something amazing. When you start bringing other people into a mix like that, you’ve got the makings of a happy family. You may not have had one growing up, but you can create one if you want to. My point is, much of our pain comes from our own thoughts. Not all of it; there are things in this world that can just gut you. But a lot of the things we suffer over are our own creation. Our own fantasy of how things are for other people, and how much we don’t have that in our own lives.

I would say compassion for yourself is the number one gift you want in your stocking if you’re having a tough time this year. If you’re spending the holidays on your own, and the sight of people bustling around humming holiday songs to themselves, or cutting you off in traffic on their way to the mall for that last gift is depressing you beyond words, give yourself the gift of some yoga. In fact, I’ll give it to you. Sign up here if you’d like a free 15-day trial to practice yoga with me and all of our amazing teachers. Sneak away from your drunk Aunt Marge, fire up your laptop, and center yourself. Because creating some space between your thoughts is often a lifesaver when you’re in a mental tailspin. It’s like hitting the reset button, so your attention and awareness shift away from what you don’t have, and back to what you do have. The feeling of lack, of longing, is so painful and debilitating. It makes us feel sick. The feeling of gratitude is so beautiful. When you start to focus on anything that is right and good, like maybe your health if you have it, or the love of at least one person who really knows you, or a place to call home, or food in your refrigerator, or the ability to watch the sunrise or set, or to take a deep breath, or go look at the ocean, or hear the laugh of a little kid and remember yourself at that age, your tender heart and your curiosity and your belief in yourself and in other people, your expectation that the world would be a safe place–if you can get a hold of any of that, even for an instant, you can start to feed it.

Don’t let your past hold you hostage. Also, you’re not alone. Really, you’re not. We’ve all had holiday seasons that tested us and made us feel small and scared and sad. It’s called being human. Don’t let it make you hard and closed. Let it soften you. Let it soften your heart so you can be kind to yourself. So you can acknowledge and hold the feelings of heartache or despair or rage or resentment. If you lean into them you’ll see they won’t kill you. Avoiding them could, because that’s when you have to back yourself into a little corner and squeeze your eyes shut, and cover your ears and hold your breath. Let it be how it is, because how it is now is not how it will always be. Sending you love, and hoping you’re having a beautiful holiday season, but letting you know there are people who care if you aren’t. In case you weren’t sure. Ally Hamilton

Water Your Plants

Any living thing you feed will grow and strengthen, and anything you starve will die. This includes relationships. If you don’t put any effort or energy into it, it won’t sustain itself, and that happens all the time; that’s why our divorce rate is so incredibly high. A relationship is a living, breathing thing that exists in the space between two people. It’s a third thing, a singular creation that could never have occurred without the intersection of two particular lives.

I’m not just talking about romantic relationships, but also familial ones, close friendships, acquaintances, colleagues, strangers. Two people come together and each one contributes something. If you put your boredom, frustrations, rage, thoughtlessness or fear into the space between you and another person, that’s a choice you’re making. No one is perfect, and no one is going to choose well, or operate from their highest selves in every moment. Sometimes we’ll regret our contribution. That’s when the words, “I’m sorry, I blew it” are brilliant. If you’re in pain, chances are you’ll spill some of that into the space between you and the people in your life. You won’t mean to do that, it’s just natural that we spread whatever is within us. This is why your healing process is so critical. It’s not just something you do so you can be a peace within yourself, it’s a gift you give to everyone you encounter. When you’re filled with love, you’ll spill that, too and you won’t have to be sorry about it.

The thing is, it’s easy to point fingers and hard to look in the mirror sometimes. You can blame the other party if things aren’t going well, or you can choose to try adding something new to the mix. Maybe your lover or friend or mother or brother has been careless with you, or neglectful or cruel. If we’re talking about abuse, you create as much physical and emotional space as you can between you and the person who’s in that kind of pain. Short of that, you could just try a different approach. You can teach people how you want to be treated by example. You could plan something special for no reason, even if you feel the other person doesn’t deserve it. Sometimes we shut ourselves down or close ourselves off. We erect barriers because the pain has become so great we don’t know what else to do but defend ourselves against it. Walls shut out the love, too. They close off the possibility for understanding, connection, intimacy. That’s not sustainable; being in a relationship where you feel unseen, unheard and unloved is so much worse than being on your own, but sometimes we give up too soon, and miss a huge opportunity to grow.

Growth hurts. This is why we have the term “growing pains.” Blame is easy. Making ourselves right, feeling victimized, bitter, resentful, those are all stances we can choose to take, but curling up with your righteousness isn’t comforting. Making yourself powerless is draining, not inspiring. You can’t control other people, or save them or make them happy. Each person has to do her or his own journey, but you can grab someone’s attention by doing something loving and unexpected, and maybe they’ll feel so grateful, they’ll see it doesn’t take much, and they’ll grab your attention next time. That’s generally a better way to go than a constant stream of criticism. Most people will not be able to take that in after awhile. Instead of listening to you with the intent to understand, they’ll shut down or storm off or go on the defensive, and you might have discovered people on the defensive have their hands up. They don’t outstretch their arms. I’m not saying you shouldn’t communicate honestly, because of course you need to do that. I’m just saying if that hasn’t been working, try something else, something completely different. Just to see. We all just want to feel like at least one person is getting us. At least one person has our back, accepts our flaws, celebrates our beauty, cherishes us. Of course we can all have at least one person in ourselves, but connection between two people is some of the best stuff in life.

When people stop feeding the space between them it becomes empty. The roots dry up, and the plant shrivels and dies. There’s no bond left, eventually. There’s just painful history, defense mechanisms, anger, justifications, and attachments to a particular version of the story of what went wrong, and it isn’t easy to come back together at that point. It won’t save every relationship, but the more you decide to offer love, the more it will blossom up around you. You can’t control what other people will want or say or do, but you can work on the way you show up, and what is is you give. You have a gorgeous heart that was built for love. If you’ve erected walls around it, you can tear them down, too.

Sending you love and a hug,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Out to Sea

When I was seventeen I began dating a man who was twenty-one years older than I was. My parents tried to stop me, but they have nineteen years between them, and even though they divorced when I was four, I was positive my relationship was different, because I was seventeen and thought I had all the answers. My previous boyfriend, who had been kind and sweet and awesome in every way, also tried to stop me, but he had moved across the country to go to college, and the truth was, I was heartbroken. I felt abandoned, even though he was talking about Christmas break, and calling every day. No matter; he’d left, and it stirred in me something old and raw and completely unhealed. So I let this guy who was so much older come at me with his cars and his boats and his private plane to his house in the Hamptons. He had a terrible reputation for cheating on everyone he dated, and I signed myself up for the task like I’d be able to fix that. Also, something inside me was believing the idea that I was the kind of person someone could leave, so who cared, really?

The first time we were together it was strange and sad. We flew out to his house, and went directly to the beach where we got in his speedboat. He drove us out to the middle of a secluded bay area. I knew he’d done it before, all of it. It was like some kind of ritual, something to get out of the way. I knew he didn’t love me. That came a few years later, after he’d broken me and it was too late, but I let him have me, even though I felt nothing. I was hooked in, I was playing out all kinds of ancient history, but I wasn’t in love with him, and I certainly wasn’t loving myself, not even a little. When it was over and I was swimming in the ocean, tears came streaming down my face, unexpectedly, without permission. I dove underwater, trying to wash them away, trying to wash the whole thing away. I don’t remember much else about that day, or that night. I think he spent most of the afternoon working, and I curled up in front of the fire with a book. I felt dead to myself, and also strangely satisfied that I’d done something so unlike me.

I stayed with him for three years. Once he had me, he kept a tight leash on me. It’s funny how people without integrity assume other people also have none. He was threatened by the guys at Columbia who were my age. He’d drop me off on campus sometimes and get upset if I was wearing lipstick, or tight jeans, or short skirts, or pretty much anything that wasn’t a sack, but he cheated on me regularly. He was good at it, I could never prove it, but I always knew when he was with someone else because it hurt. It hurt in the way that sends you under the kitchen table, holding onto yourself as you sob and wonder what the hell you’re doing in this situation, and why you don’t get out. Getting out wasn’t even possible at that point, because I was so attached to getting my happy ending. If I could just be perfect enough to get him to love me, if I could just hang in there long enough he’d finally realize I really did love him…because after awhile, I did.

I began to see this insecure guy who felt he wasn’t enough, regardless of how many women he took to bed, or how much money he had, or how many sparkly, shiny toys. Nothing did it for him, not even the unwavering love of a good girl. I can’t call myself a woman when I think about this experience, because I wasn’t yet. I had a lot of healing to do, and a lot of growing, but I was very kind to him. The longer I stayed, the more he gave me reasons to leave. For his fortieth birthday, I planned an elaborate surprise party. I rented a pool hall, had it catered from his favorite sushi place, and ordered dessert from an amazing pastry chef. I sent invitations to all his friends. I made a reservation at a new restaurant that had opened downtown that he was dying to try, and planned to take him to the pool hall from there. I ordered a bottle of champagne to be waiting at the table. It took me months to save up the money to pull it off.

A week before the party he confronted me in the kitchen in East Hampton. He told me he knew about the party, and he wanted to see the guest list to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anyone. At first I tried to deny there was a party, but he kept coming. He laughed at me. He knew it was at a pool hall. He wanted to know if I’d ordered food, and all the other details. He didn’t want to be embarrassed. I stood there in that kitchen and I felt everything fall away from me. I felt like I was made of bones that could disintegrate into a pile of dust on the floor, that his housekeeper could just come along and sweep away, out the door, into the ocean, to meet up with those tears I’d cried the first day. I told him every last detail. He took away any shred of joy I might have felt at having been able to give him something. Three days before the party, he went to the restaurant I’d made reservations at a few months before, so that the night of the party, the only surprise was that sad bottle of champagne, waiting at the table.

You cannot save anyone. All the love in the world won’t get the job done. You can’t make someone faithful or kind or compassionate or sensitive. You can’t make another person happy. They are, or they are not. You can harm yourself. You can allow yourself to be abused, mistreated, neglected and betrayed, but I don’t recommend it. A healthy, happy, secure person wouldn’t have been on that boat with him in the first place. Of course, he preyed on a seventeen year old, and when I look back on it I have all kinds of compassion for myself, but it took me years to get there. It also took a lot of yoga, therapy, weeping, writing and reading. Anything you repress, run from, or deny, owns you. It owns you. If you don’t turn and face that stuff down, you’ll call it into your life in other ways. The truth wants out. Your heart wants to heal so it can open for you again. Whatever is in your past does not have to define your future, but it probably will if you don’t do the work to liberate yourself. We have such fear. We think these things will overwhelm us, that we won’t survive, but what you won’t survive is the not facing it. That’s the part that kills you. That’s the part that makes you feel you could be swept away in the wind. Looking at your stuff hurts. It’s painful and deeply uncomfortable, but if you trust yourself enough to lean into all that pain, you’ll find it loses its grip over you. If you let yourself weep out the searing heat from those wounds, your whole being can take a real, deep breath, maybe for the first time in ages.

You can forgive those who let you down, who didn’t or couldn’t show up for you the way you would have liked or the way you deserved. You can forgive yourself for choices you might have made that were harmful to you or others. When we’re in pain, we don’t tend to treat ourselves well, and sometimes that also spills onto the people with whom we’re closest, but life can be beautiful. You can close the book on the old, painful story that was just a replaying of your past and you can start working on this new creation that gets to be your life after you’ve healed. Not that the old pain won’t show up from time to time when you’re feeling triggered or tested or vulnerable, but it won’t grab you and knock you off your feet and show you who’s boss, because it won’t be boss anymore, it won’t rule your life. You’ll just see it for what it is, an echo of a very old story that came to completion. It can’t be rewritten, it is what it is, but you get to decide where to place your energy and your attention. I highly recommend you direct it toward love; that’s your happy ending, although it doesn’t end. You get to keep choosing it every day. If you do that, you’ll never find yourself sailing out to sea with someone who doesn’t know how to do anything but hurt you. Your own ship will have sailed, and maybe someday you’ll pass your seventeen year old self, weeping in the ocean next to your ship and you’ll pull her on board and show her your future which holds so much joy, gratitude, meaning and fulfillment, maybe she’ll weep there on the deck with you, not in sadness, but in relief. If you’re allowing yourself to be mistreated and you need help, feel free to email me at ally@yogisanonymous.com.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

It’s Not About You

Some-changes-lookOnce in awhile, I re-tell the story of the scorpion and the frog. If you don’t know it, it goes something like this: Once there was a scorpion on the side of a river bank, and it called out to a passing frog, “Excuse me, could you please give me a lift across the river? I can’t swim, and I’m meeting a friend in 20 minutes.” The frog looked at the scorpion like it was crazy and replied, “I’m not giving you a ride! Do you take me for an idiot?! You’re a scorpion, you’ll sting me.” And the scorpion said, “If I sting you, you’ll drown, and we’ll both die. Please, I’m going to be late.” So the frog thought this logic made sense, and he didn’t like the idea of making the scorpion late, so he said, “Okay, climb on.” Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog. With his dying breath, the frog said, “Why? Why have you done this to us?!” And the scorpion said, “Dude, I’m a f&cking scorpion.”

This tale has always helped me when I’ve felt stung and confused by another person’s actions. When I’ve felt hurt or betrayed or discarded or rejected. None of these things feels good, and it’s very challenging not to take it personally if we’re hurting at the hands of someone we care about. If you’re feeling rejected, it’s natural to think it must be because you didn’t measure up in some way. Depending on your history and your personality, you might really internalize the experience. If you have doubt about your self-worth, if you think there could be something at your very core that is just not lovable, having someone leave you or abuse you or ignore you might look like a confirmation of your own doubts and fears.

Most of the time, it has very little to do with you. Sometimes you’ve simply gotten involved with a scorpion. People can only be where they are; a person has the tools he has. That doesn’t mean he might not pick up some new tools as he heads down the river; a scorpion has the potential to turn into a frog if he works at it, but if you happen to cross paths with someone when they’re in darkness, you’re probably going to get stung. It’s personal only in the sense that you’ll now have healing to do, but it’s not a reflection of your lovableness. You are love. You’re made of love, I truly believe that.

If you’ve been stung, there’s only one thing for it — you’re going to have to bleed out the poison. The fastest way to do that is to lean into the searing pain of what you’re feeling. Instead of running or denying or repressing, you simply say, “This is how it is right now, and it will not always be like this, and it will not kill me,” and you breathe. You hang out with other frogs who love you, and who will take you to the river and help you see your reflection clearly so you can remember how special you are.

I know sometimes it can feel like you’ll never get over someone. I don’t just mean this in terms of romantic relationships. This happens in families, and it happens with the closest of friends, too. Sometimes the only way you can take care of yourself, the only way you can love yourself, is if you create distance between you and the people in your life who just don’t know how to love. Maybe at some point they will know. You don’t have to be hopeless about it, but until that time, your job is to keep your heart open, and you simply can’t do that if you keep allowing people to sting you. Your heart can only take so much before it starts to close in on itself and that’s just too sad. Your heart is so gorgeous. You are the only one of you that exists, the only one of you the world gets. You’re a gift, and if you allow yourself to drown in the river of sorrow, you rob the world of a gift only you can bring. Hop up on your lily pad and feel the sun on your little froggy face. Wish the scorpions well if you have it in you, but don’t carry them across the river anymore, and don’t mistake the intensity of your feelings of pain as a reflection of the depth of your love. It’s much more likely that scorpion reminded you of another scorpion you knew a long time ago, when you were just a tadpole. Heal that sting, and the other scorpions won’t look so appealing.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Hope.

If-youre-reading-thisNothing stops you from pursuing your dreams like the weight of hopelessness. It’s so heavy, it makes it hard to get out of bed, or meet your friend for a tea, or even pick up the phone. Sometimes people write to me and they feel desperately alone and sad. They’ve given up on themselves, on other people, on life itself. Most of them include the same question, “What’s the point of it all?” When you’re feeling off-center, life can really take you for a spin.

So many experiences befall us as humans that are hard to bear, or even to understand. There’s no shortage of things that can happen to bring a person to this point; most of us will feel this to some degree at one time or another. After all, there are times things seem so absurd. Can there really be 108 million people in our country helping the weight-loss industry make $20 billion dollars a year, when a billion people on the planet are undernourished? Is it any wonder when we feed ourselves a steady diet of, “you’re not good enough”? Do you ever stop and think about the messages we’re bombarded with all day every day, even if you do your best to watch what you feed yourself? I’m not talking about just food. Even if you don’t watch television, standing on line at the checkout counter at your supermarket can be a depressing experience. Catching just one awful headline about someone screwing up their life can be enough to lower your own vibration, or catching a glimpse of someone’s glossy, “perfect” life can also make you feel badly about yourself if you’re feeling vulnerable. Social media can be amazing if you’re selective about what you like and what you read, but it can also make you feel like crap if you aren’t careful. There are all kinds of ways you might allow yourself to be pummeled by the idea that you suck, and that could suck the hope out of anyone. A deluge of that stuff, day after day, year after year takes its toll, especially if you’re going through challenging times.

Your personal history comes into play here as well. We all have pain, but some people have more than others. We all have healing to do, but if you’re coming out of abuse or neglect, it’s very likely you’ll have to do some work to unlearn the lies you may have come to believe, such as, you aren’t worthy of love, or you’re a mistake, or no one could ever love you. You might think people suck, or everyone cheats, or everyone leaves, or you can’t trust anyone. You might believe the idea that the trauma you’ve been through has rendered you broken and unlovable. Those are all lies. You might need some help to look at things in a different way if that’s what you’re grappling with; sometimes we’ve been in defense mode so long, we don’t know how to open anymore. Maybe something has happened that’s turned your world on its head — maybe you’ve lost your job, or you’ve been betrayed, or you’ve lost someone you don’t know how to live without. Any of these things can make a person feel hopeless, and doubt not just their ability to face reality as it is, but also to ever enjoy life again.

The tendency when we feel hopeless is to deny the experience, to numb out or run away, or push it down or sleep it off, or to throw ourselves into work or relationships with a kind of desperation. Please let someone or something save me from these awful feelings that make my heart hurt and my head explode. No one can save you, nor can you save anyone. Everyone has to save themselves, and that means everyone has to figure out how to open to the truth of their own experience. If you can’t sit with your deepest pain and lean into it, it will own you, and you’ll never know yourself, which is the loneliest feeling in the world. That’s a hope-killer, being a stranger to yourself. If you aren’t able to examine your feelings as they arise, you’ll never release the heat of them, you’ll never find the freedom to open to love, and that is also a hope-killer. Without hope and without love, life is dark and something to endure. When you take that route, it’s guaranteed suffering and isolation. Running from yourself is like running from your shadow. You’ll never get away, and you’ll never be able to stop and rest.

If you want to find your hope again, you’ll have to sit through the knifing pain, first, or the discomfort, rage, shame, guilt, fear, doubt, or grief of your current reality, or your long-ago past. Things that help: people in your life who love you, real moments with people you know, or absolute strangers, taking the time to breathe in and breathe out consciously, reading, writing, hiking, weeping, anything that brings you into your body, whether it’s yoga, or salsa dancing or swimming. Being kind to yourself, and remembering to turn your attention to anything good that is happening, that you do have, no matter how simple or small. The ability to watch the sunrise or sunset. Food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a place to call home, at least one person who knows you and accepts you as you are, who really gets you. (You can be that person for yourself). We all have work to do. Feed any tiny bit of gratitude you can, because hope lives there. Give it even the tiniest bit of foundation, and it will start to grow for you. Hope brings energy. When you have energy and just a sliver of hope, you’ll probably get out of bed, and maybe you’ll even make it to the shower. Perhaps you can look out the window and let in the light. Eventually, you’ll find you want to take that call, you want to meet for tea, you want to believe that people are good, and you are good, and life is good. Which is nice, because those are not lies. As long as you’re breathing, there’s still the hope of turning things around, and finding your way back to love; that’s your center.

Sending you some right now,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

It’s in There.

You-know-youre-in-loveWithout your memories, beliefs and opinions, without your experiences, who would you be? Without your name or your job or your house, without your particular clothes or tattoos or car, without that first girl or guy who broke your heart, who would you be? If you didn’t worry about what was expected of you, what would you do? If you dropped all of it, even for an instant, what do you think you’d feel? Freedom, maybe? Peace, expansion, oneness? It’s weird, right? Without all these things we cling to, all the countless ways we create an “us” and a “them” we’d be each other; we’d be so much the same.

If you struggle with the question, “Who am I, really?”, if you feel cut off from your own intuition, the best thing you can do is get quiet. The answer to the question of who you are is there inside you. No one else can give it to you, but you don’t need it from anyone else, anyway. Sitting quietly, just breathing in, and breathing out, is the simplest thing in the world, but so many people resist it. There may be a huge gap between your authentic, unadulterated self, and the “you” that’s out in the world, kind of living your life. I say kind of, because if you aren’t in touch with your deepest truths, if you don’t really know yourself, life will feel foggy, like there’s a veil over it. As you travel along your way, your choices will be shots in the dark guided by impulsivity or desperation, or you’ll take the routes that seem safest. You may feel like you’re waiting for life to begin, like it’s out there, somewhere ahead of you, and you just need to accomplish a few more things to find it. Life is not in the doing, though, it’s in the being. What are you being? Busy?

So many people fill their days full of stuff to fill the void, that abyss that exists between their true self, and this struggling personality which may be full of constructs that have little or nothing to do with their heart or their inner yes, and everything to do with how they’ve been programmed to think. In our culture, we’ve been taught that external stuff will make us happy. Do you know how many commercials are geared toward little kids? Look at this shiny new toy, look at this happy kid who has it, don’t you want to be that kid? Don’t you want to feel that way? And it never ends. We’re all programmed some way or another, and at a certain point, you want to look and see if those ideas are actually yours. If you sit and get quiet and you do that consistently, anything that is not you will fall away, and that experience can be terrifying for people, which is why so many resist it. Who am I without all those ideas and plans I’ve been clinging to? Who am I without my anger or blame or shame? Who am I if I’m not on this particular track I’ve been walking for so long? Don’t you want to know?

We create borders and try to organize things. It’s perfectly natural, we want to bring order to this wild, gorgeous, sometimes piercingly painful world, but love has no borders. It’s the most freeing, borderless thing in the world. I guess I should have said, “spoiler alert” because when I sit and get quiet, when I let all that noise drop away, do you know what I feel? Love. Sometimes lots of thoughts have to drop away before I feel it, sometimes my mind is crowded and clinging and really loud. Other times I drop right in, but underneath everything, that’s what’s waiting for you. If you drop the stories and the opinions and the borders and the fears, you’ll hit pay-dirt. Once you know what you are, once you hit that foundation, a whole new world opens. You won’t have to agonize over choices, you’ll be moving with love. It’s a flow. You won’t wonder what you’re doing here, it will be obvious that the best use of your time is just to spread what you are in whatever gorgeous ways you can. You won’t wonder what the point of it all is, you’ll be too busy loving, and loving life, for as many loving days as you’ve got. If it’s too loud in your head, take five minutes to get quiet and just breathe. Here’s my tagline for you: Can you hear me now?!

Sending you some love (It’s in there!)

Ally Hamilton

You’re Always Beginning Again

The-feeling-is-less-likeSometimes I get emails from people wondering if a lack of love is enough of a reason to end a relationship. Questions like these usually come from people who’ve been with their partners for years. Sometimes children are involved. My short answer is yes. Yes, a lack of love is enough of a reason to end a relationship. I think when we’re in relationships for a long time, when we’ve taken vows in some cases, it’s difficult to figure out what “justifies” ending something, as if your partner has to be abusive or unfaithful for you to feel it’s okay to walk away. Guilt and shame are debilitating, and few people would thank you for staying out of pity or obligation; to do so dishonors the genuine gift of the human being with whom you’ve built a life, even if that life has been crumbling around you for some time, and the gift they are is now lost on you. Everyone deserves to be cherished. There are all kinds of situations that fall short of physical violence or infidelity (and infidelity isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker in certain cases) that can be crushing to the soul. Feeling invisible will do that to a person. Feeling unheard, neglected, dismissed, or verbally and emotionally abused will do it, too. So my short answer is yes.

However, I think it’s really important to dig a little. I think we throw each other away too quickly, we give up when times get tough, we drop the thread of the story we were creating. I also get emails from people who feel everything would be great if only their partners would change. Sometimes there’s a laundry list of things the other person does or doesn’t do that seems to be the reason it’s all falling apart. It’s important to remember that the mind is easily snagged on what isn’t working — what we don’t have that we want, what isn’t happening yet, the breaks we aren’t getting. It takes effort and practice to train the mind to focus on what we do have, what is going well, and the same thing can happen in relationships. Where once we saw and celebrated all that was right and beautiful about the person with whom we share a home, a life, maybe more, now we can only see the flaws, disappointments and aggravations. Sometimes people project their self-loathing onto the person closest to them. When you get to that eye-rolling place, that head-shaking, defeated place, you can be sure both parties have dropped the thread. It’s good to ask yourself what you’re doing to increase the love quotient between you and your partner. I’m sure you did thoughtful, sweet, surprising things in the beginning of your relationship, just because. What are you putting into the mix now? You can’t change other people, but you can inspire them. Perhaps if you start to focus on how you can uplift and delight the person you’re with (even if you don’t feel like it, and think they don’t deserve it), you might be very surprised by the results. Most people just want to feel seen and understood and appreciated. A little of that goes a long way.

It’s never one person’s fault if a relationship fails, and regardless of what happens, knowing yourself is the key to being at peace. The story to look it is the story of your participation. I know sometimes we want to cling to the list of ways we’ve been wronged, our chronological tale with highlights of places the other person failed, and maybe your partner did blow it. Maybe they haven’t seen you, and by that I mean really seen you, for ages. Maybe you gave them the gift of your tender heart and they weren’t gentle with it. Maybe you’ve been trying to communicate for years, and they just wouldn’t go there with you. Not everyone is ready to be vulnerable and brave at the same time, and that’s what love requires. Nonetheless, you participated, you contributed something. That’s the plot-line you want to study and understand.

If you chose someone for life when you had no idea who you were, that’s rough, but it happens every day. If you don’t know yourself, it’s very hard to choose a partner with whom you can build something solid, so that would be something to examine. Just, who am I? What lights me up, what are my particular gifts, and how do I best uncover and share them? If you don’t know the answers to those questions, I’d really start there because I don’t think you can be happy if you have no idea about that, whether you’re in a relationship or not. A lot of people expect their partners to make them happy, but no one can do that for you, and you can’t make other people happy, either. A person is at peace within themselves, or they are not.

Maybe you weren’t feeling good about yourself and threw yourself into your relationship to avoid doing your own work to heal, or perhaps you grew up thinking your role was to take care of everyone else, and you chose someone who needed you. There are all kinds of ways we can pick people for the wrong reasons, and all kinds of ways we can grow and learn from that, but if you can remember back to the beginning and there was anything good and healthy there, any spark of genuine connection and respect and understanding, then I think there’s hope. There’s potential, if both people are willing to dig and to feed that spark again.

If it was never a match, or you’ve grown in such different directions, or damage has been done that seems irreparable, then there may not be hope, but I’d check yourself thoroughly, because you want to really know why you’re ending something if you end it. If you’re not sure, if it’s unclear, that murkiness will show up in your next relationship, and the one after that, too. Anything you deny or numb out, or run from, owns you. It won’t go away just because you leave a relationship.

If there are children involved, I have to add a few things. If there’s physical violence or abuse, you have to go no matter what, and there’s no way around that (whether you have kids or you don’t). Short of that, if you’ve genuinely tried with everything you have to save your relationship and there’s just no hope, you have to go. If there’s meanness and fighting and that’s really the best you can do, you have to go. If you’re living like roommates, I don’t believe that’s sustainable either. If you haven’t given it everything you’ve got, if you haven’t exhausted every shred of potential, do that first. If there’s any chance you can save it, save it. If there’s any love between you and your partner, try to feed it, truly, because having parents who live separately is not easy on children, and if you split, it won’t be easy on you, either. I say this to you as a divorced mom of two small kids. I know so many people in this situation who say, “Children need two happy parents.” Yes, of course that’s ideal, but it’s not that simple or easy.

Children need stability, too. Going back and forth and back and forth takes its toll, it really does. I realize sometimes it can’t be helped. I grew up that way, so I can speak to you about this from inside the experience. It took me over thirty years to feel like I had a home, and that’s something I had to do for myself. It took a lot of healing and a lot of work, and a lot of screwing things up along the way. Relationships where I played out ancient history, trying to get my happy ending, learning all too painfully that’s not the way. Relationships where I was so focused on not being left, I forgot to think about the million other things that matter. The “happy ending” is inside, and it’s not an ending, it’s a daily choice. It’s doable no matter what kind of history you have, of course, but it’s not easy. If you have to split and you have children with your ex, do everything you can to ease the burden and create a schedule that puts their needs first, so they’re not pulled this way and that, week after week, year after year. Ask them what they want if they’re old enough to tell you, and give it heavy consideration. I’m not telling you to let your kids run the show, because that’s no good, either, but they aren’t possessions, they’re people, and they ought to have the feeling that they have some say, that their feelings matter, that they have some power in the way their life looks and feels. Get creative and work together if at all possible. Don’t fight in front of your kids, and don’t ever speak negatively about your ex in front of them.

Kids feel everything, even if they can’t articulate everything they feel. So if you’re in a loveless marriage, they’re feeling that. If you’re allowing yourself to be mistreated or abused, they’re feeling that. You’re teaching them with everything you do, and everything you don’t do. If you split and meet someone new eventually, they’re going to feel that, too. Will it be good for them to see what a healthy, loving relationship looks like? Of course, but along with that comes loyalty issues they’ll have to grapple with, confusing feelings about the new person in mom’s or dad’s life, what it all means for them, and how they fit into the new picture. If they have to go through that again and again, they’ll get cynical. They may worry about their other parent, how they’re feeling about all of it. The last thing you want is for your child to feel they have to take care of you. That’s a scary feeling for a kid, and they won’t thank you for it later. They’ll have to deal with different rules and different energy in each house, with not having all their stuff in one place, with a sense of powerlessness over their comings and goings, with missing one parent when they’re with the other, with chaotic holidays and a fractured life.

I know this is brutal to look at if you’re in turmoil with your marriage, but I think it’s important to face so you really know what’s involved. Think about adults you know who don’t have good relationships with their mothers or fathers. That’s pain that never goes away, and you can’t want that for your kids. Support a healthy relationship between your child or children, and their other parent. Validate their feelings when they tell you they’re sad or angry or confused. Understand you’re trading one set of painful circumstances for another. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it consciously and as well as possible, I’m just letting you know there isn’t a pain-free way. Do I think it’s better for kids to see their parents living authentically, in alignment with what’s true for them? Feeling inspired and grateful about life, fired up about their time here? Of course. I’m just saying, make sure you can’t feel those things in the context of your relationship before you give up on it. Examine your own part and be certain you’ve done all you can to clean up your side of the street before you forge a new path that will affect your children’s paths, too. If you’re steady for them, if you always meet them with love and teach them that home is on the inside, they’ll be fine. Just be sure, that’s all.

As always, facing reality as it is is your best bet. And there’s no avoiding pain in this life, so try not to beat yourself up if you’ve made a mess of things. Sometimes we have to make a huge mess so we get the lesson that what we’re doing isn’t working, and so we develop the tools to do things another way. Longing to be seen and understood, to be wanted and cherished and held are all completely human and beautiful feelings. Love and connection are the best things in life. Sharing and laughter and tears and hugs, and feeling like you’ve got at least one person in this vulnerable thing who’s with you, who gets you, is absolutely understandable, but I don’t think you can find true connection with anyone else until you’ve found it with yourself. So start there if you haven’t already.

Sending you love, as always,

Ally Hamilton

When Your Heart Breaks, It Opens, Too.

Some things in this life will just break your heart. The beautiful and extraordinary thing about the heart, though, is that when it breaks, it opens more if you let it; it expands. There are things that can bring us to our knees. Losing a loved one too soon, that’s at the top of the list. Going through a divorce, a breakup, any kind of rejection from a person who was once a lover and/or a friend. Being fired from a job. Being abandoned, neglected, discarded or betrayed. Dealing with someone who won’t or can’t communicate so you’re left to grope for the answers yourself, and have to learn the painful lesson that some things will never be explained, that the only closure you’ll get is acceptance.

For so many of us when we’re hurt like this, when we’re grieving and there’s nothing but tears and despair, there can be such a desire to shield the heart; to build up walls so we can’t ever be hurt this way again, to decide we won’t be putting ourselves out there anymore, we won’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable. There’s no way to be a human being in this world without being vulnerable, though, it comes with the territory. We all have a finite amount of time, and we have no idea how much time we have. The thought of that can shut you down or open you up. When you’ve learned firsthand that those you love beyond words can be ripped from you with no warning and no chance to say goodbye, you know the truth of this all too well. If you board up your heart, you serve no one. No one who loved you would ever want you to do that, because it’s a half-life. It’s not even that; it’s an existence. If someone was taken from you, live for them. Honor them by celebrating every moment you have here, and by celebrating the fact that you loved so deeply. No one is ever gone from you. You can close your eyes and be with anyone you’ve ever been close to right now if you try. I realize it isn’t the same as being able to hold the people we long to hold. It isn’t the same as being able to hug them or hear their voices, or see their eyes light up, but they aren’t gone from you, they live in your heart.

If someone has left you of their own volition, allow yourself to feel all the pain around that. Rejection makes us feel like we aren’t worthy of love. It makes us doubt ourselves at the deepest level, but if someone couldn’t see you, or treasure you or understand you, if someone couldn’t receive the incredible gift you are, allow yourself to be released. Everyone deserves to be cherished. Every single one of us is a miracle. You aren’t likely to feel that way if you’ve just been left or betrayed, but you are, truly. Seven billion people, one you. Only one.

If you’ve been fired, that can reek havoc on your self esteem, especially if you identify strongly with the kind of work you do. It can make you feel like you’ve been cut off at the knees. It’s hard to imagine it when we’re in the midst of turmoil and stress, when we’re trying to keep a roof over our heads and food in the refrigerator, but sometimes it’s a gift when our plan gets turned on its head. Maybe eventually you’ll see that this was a catalyst for something beautiful and unexpected to emerge, but in the meantime, lick your wounds.

Whatever you’re going through, keeping your heart open is so key. Shut yourself down for awhile if you need to; if you’re going through the kind of loss that’s so knifing you’re struggling to breathe in and breathe out, then just surviving this period is enough. Just crack the door open so you can receive love and support, because you’ll need it. Some things will never be okay, but accepting that is often the thing that enables you to open your heart again. Life without love is cold and dark; it’s not natural to us, we thrive on connection and closeness. Everyone is in this thing together. Some people face pain that’s hard to endure, and others face the “normal” amount of suffering, but no one gets out with zero suffering, and no one lives forever. With the time that you’ve got, live all the way. Embrace it all and try to trust in your experience here, even if you don’t understand it all the time. Just being a human being is such a gift. Just getting to have this journey is something extraordinary. Even when you feel completely alone, you aren’t. Keep your heart open and you’ll feel that reality.

Sending you so much love (and a little yoga to support your healing process.)

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Compassion: Tastes Great, Less Filling

Once when I was fourteen, I walked to the front of the room in my science class to hand in a paper, and I heard giggling. When I returned to my seat, this girl I had always liked leaned over and loudly whispered, “You can see your panties through your skirt. Nice flowers!” And then she and another girl I’d also thought was a friend, snickered. One of the guys in my class leaned forward from the row behind me and said, “Don’t worry about it, you’re looking good,” which only intensified my embarrassment. Shame is such a powerful, uncomfortable, debilitating feeling. It hits you in the gut and makes you feel wrong and bad and unworthy of love or kindness. I remember being annoyed with myself for blushing and making it obvious I was bothered. I wanted to be tough, to act like it didn’t phase me, to deny those girls the feeling that they had any power over me; things like that seem such a big deal when you’re fourteen. My heart was racing, and I was cursing myself for not having checked my reflection before walking out the door. I felt betrayed and confused by these girls I’d considered friends, who now seemed to be taking pleasure in humiliating me. Beyond that, I wanted the world to open and swallow me so I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of the day with people laughing because they could see through my skirt. I think about it now, as a grown woman, and shake my head. I wish I could go back to my teenage self in that room and say, this is so not a big deal, but it’s funny that it stands out, all these years later.

We all have moments when we feel exposed, when we’ve shown our fallibility and our vulnerability more than we’d intended; when we’ve accidentally let people see the flowers on our undies. There’s so much I could say here. We tend to be so hard on ourselves and on each other. Gossip magazines (which I never buy and encourage you to boycott along with beauty magazines which are anything but) are nothing but mean girls gone wild. Look at this awful thing this person is doing! Here’s someone else with their life falling down around them. Here are ten ways you really suck, and even though you’ll never measure up, here are ten things you can try so that you won’t suck so much, with an occasional story about a person with a fairytale life you could never hope to live. It’s a big plate of awful.

The thing is, you’re always feeding yourself. You’re feeding your body, but you’re also feeding your mind and your heart with everything you watch, read, or dwell upon. You know the old saying, “You are what you eat.” If you focus on all the things people are doing that are terrible, and all the ways you’re disappointing yourself, it’s so defeating. You really don’t want to feed the idea that, “people suck,” because they don’t and you don’t, either. It’s simply not an easy gig, this work of being human, especially when you’re trying to be kind, conscious and compassionate. That’s why it’s important to be vigilant about what you feed yourself. If you look around and find you have contempt for people easily, it’s probably time for a change in diet: Compassion: tastes great, less filling. When you have some for yourself, you’ll find you have some for other people, too. We all make mistakes, every single one of us. We all have choices we’d love to make over again. It’s easy to be the person who points a finger and has that snarky, biting thing to say, but I don’t think it feels good at the end of the day, and it definitely doesn’t up the happiness quotient. Choose love, feed that.

Sending you some right now,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Use Your Key

The best way to meet fear is to allow yourself to feel it. For many people, social situations are a nightmare. What to say? What to wear? What to do if you’re left in a corner and no one is talking to you? What to say or what not to say if someone is talking to you? Whether you’ll get that call, and how badly you’ll feel if you don’t. Public speaking, lots of people are terrified about that. There’s fear of intimacy, the risks required to tear down your carefully constructed walls. Fear you’ll never live a life that feels good to you, you’ll never reach your potential. Or the fear that you will, and then what? Fear of spiders, challenging conversations, hurting other people, rejection, dying alone. There are all kinds of things that might scare you.

Being scared isn’t a problem; running from the feeling is. If you’re panicked, there’s a reason, and you have an opportunity to know something about yourself, probably something very important. All the shadow emotions are markers. They’re like burning flags, waving in the wind patiently, waiting to be examined. They’re marking those places where you still have some healing to do, but so many people are so averse to feeling uncomfortable, they flee. They fling the feeling away, or numb it out, or deny that it exists. They run from that flag like their life depended on it, when in actuality, their life depends on their willingness to walk right at it. If you can’t sit with your sadness and allow the tears to spill, how can you relieve your pain? If a close friend called you in real need, do you think you’d help them by hanging up the phone? Or getting them drunk, or taking them shopping or getting them laid? Yes, I said that, because many people seek relief from their pain in those ways, and no, none of those things would help. Dr. Earl A. Grollman on this, “The only cure for grief is to grieve.”

When I say the “shadow emotions”, I mean fear, rage, shame, guilt, doubt, insecurity, jealousy, bitterness. The feeling of having been betrayed, or judged or shunned — any of those feelings that have some heat to them. Culturally, we aren’t trained to sit with that stuff. We’re told, “Don’t be sad”, “Don’t be scared”, “Don’t be angry”, as if we could just snap our fingers and make the feelings vanish. We learn some feelings are not acceptable, some feelings make those around us uncomfortable, and so we should hide them. In our crazy framework, men aren’t supposed to show fear, and women aren’t supposed to be angry. You know what we call an angry woman. We have a word for it, and it isn’t nice, but this premise is so nuts. We will all feel everything, regardless of gender. We will all have moments when we wonder what we’re doing here, and what happens after this. We’ll all doubt our ability to have an impact on the world around us from time to time. We’ll all wish we could do certain things over again, and differently. This is called being human. We aren’t robots. We can’t edit out or shut off the parts that are unwanted.

I met an eighty-seven year old woman today. It’s not the first time I’ve met her, she’s the mother of a good friend, but it’s the first time we really talked. Her husband died this year, and her brother, and his wife. She told me she goes out every night. Goes to the theater, goes to her bridge club, volunteers. She said it doesn’t change anything, but it makes the people around her feel she’s okay. Can I tell you my heart broke a little? She was married for sixty-six years and her husband never wanted her to have lunch or tea or anything at all with any other man. She told me that while she laughed and shook her head. I told her he knew he had a good thing. My point is, this life makes you vulnerable. That’s what’s asked of you. To open your heart, even though you understand your time is finite. Feel your feelings. Feel all of it. The heartache, the despair, the uncertainty. Feel it so it doesn’t block you, because life is simply too precious for that. You don’t have years to waste being stuck. It might take you years to heal, but that’s different than time spent on the run. What you run from, owns you. That’s clear, right? Anything you won’t face controls you. You’re not meant to be controlled, that’s why it doesn’t feel good. You’re meant to be liberated, but you have to use your key. Hoping that you do, and sending so much love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Being Dragged Kind of Sucks

Sometimes we’re so attached to an idea, it blinds us. Maybe we’re in love with someone, and we so want them to be in love with us, we deny the nagging feeling that it doesn’t seem to be the case. We think if we chase, or hang in there, or show up exactly the way we think this person wants us to, then it will work out, then we’ll “have” them. We start to try to fit into some kind of mold. We obsess and doubt and worry about everything, and we lose ourselves.

Attachment (“raga”) is one of the five “kleshas”, or obstacles that prevent us from experiencing oneness, that deep sense of being in the flow that Patanjali lays out in the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras. That, to me, is the real peace. The surrender, in the bravest sense, to what is, and the ability to open to it and join in it. Some of it is very painful, and not at all as we’d like it to be, and some of it is so piercingly beautiful, it takes your breath away. The work is to hold it all, embrace it all, even when you don’t understand, recognizing that you are not in control of circumstances, or other people, or the way the story will unfold. Letting go of your grip on things. That’s the good kind of “losing yourself.” What you get to work on is your response to what you’re given, your ability to return to love again and again, even if your heart is broken.

The other four obstacles are ignorance (“avidya”, a disconnection from what’s real, an inability to see things clearly), egoism (“asmita”, identification with our ideas about ourselves, our judgments and “shoulds”), aversion (“dvesha”, a rejection of, or desire to avoid those things that are unwanted, whether they be particular feelings, reality as it is unfolding, other people, a certain outcome, or a way of being), and fear of death (“abhinivesha”, the fear of loss, fear of the unknown, fear that we will leave important things unsaid or undone).

The yoga practice is about stripping away those obstacles. When we’re attached to a particular outcome, we close off the possibility for anything else. We stand there with our eyes shut tightly, gripping onto our vision of how we want things to be, and anything that doesn’t fit into our picture must be rejected or denied. When you reject reality, you leave yourself in a world of darkness, you become the architect of your own suffering. If you want to know which way to go, you have to open your eyes, because there’s nothing to follow but the truth; the truth of each moment, the truth of your particular situation, the truth that’s in your heart. When you start following those truths, you pave the way to experience the bigger truth of your connection to everything, your part in the flow.

When I started practicing yoga, I was a person who was trying to chase happiness. If I just do this or that, then I’ll be happy. “This” might be meeting the right person. “That” might be losing just a little more weight, or nine million other things that all had to do with external stuff. I had this idea that happiness was somewhere out in front of me, and that it would present itself if I just worked hard and made it to certain milestones. When you live your life that way, you begin to understand that’s all a lie. You hit the milestone, and it’s still not enough. Happiness is never outside of you. It’s inside. It’s not something you need to create, it’s something that’s already there, just waiting to be uncovered.

The stripping away process can be painful. It can sear you a little, or a lot. You may have to burn away all kinds of beliefs about yourself and other people, about the world and your part in it. The gift of yoga, if you practice long enough, is that it makes you hungry for the truth, whatever it is. Even if it’s painful. Even if you have to face a reality you’d do anything to avoid. When you’re in love with someone and they aren’t in love with you, somewhere deep down you know that, you feel it. That’s what makes you feel sick and doubtful and hooked in that awful way. You’re blinding yourself to reality. You’re cutting yourself off from your own intuition. So you might go through some pain, but eventually there’s a real liberation when you just open your hands and your heart and your mind to the truth, whatever it may be. The truth burning away in your heart. The acceptance of someone else’s truth, even if it means you must let go of some vision you had.

It’s a liberation because it’s exhausting to push down what you know. It’s like trying to hold back the waves of the ocean; it simply cannot be done. When you accept that, you can relax and swim, you can be in and of the flow, and then you can devote your energy to living each day fully, to loving each person in your life fully, to sharing your gifts freely, with abandon, to leaving nothing unsaid or undone, so that if it were your last day (and I hope you have countless days ahead of you), you could end it with the sense of having done all you could today, to live with your heart wide open.

Wishing that for you, and sending so much love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Don’t Pull the Hamstrings of Your Heart

Over the summer, my four year old daughter expressed an interest in ballet classes. I had mixed feelings about it. I started ballet when I was four, and I danced until I was sixteen. I have a lot of gratitude for the experience in many ways. Firstly, dancing got me out of my head and into my body, which I desperately needed. It taught me about discipline, perseverance and dedication. I worked my ass off and I loved it, but it also taught me some other things. When I went en pointe, I can’t explain what happened to my feet. I’d come home and unwrap them, and soak my bleeding toes, only to go back and do it all again the next day, and the next, and the one after that until my feet were raw. Eventually they toughened up, but in the meantime, I learned to override my body’s response to pain. Sometimes I’d dance for hours, even if I felt light-headed and weak and my feet were screaming at me. Eventually, when I was on the cusp of puberty, I learned that my body was something to fear. The older dancers in the company would warn us that we didn’t want to develop, and they never ate. I mean, truly, I never saw anyone eat anything. I saw a lot of cups of coffee, and a lot of cigarette smoking, and I grew to understand that being extremely thin was important. I learned that food was something to fear as well. So when my daughter asked to try ballet classes, all of that came up for me, because it took me years to unlearn a lot of that stuff.

Nonetheless, I thought we could find a class or a teacher where those things wouldn’t be an issue; not at four years old, anyway. As it turned out, we found a lovely teacher. Extremely sweet and kind, and my daughter loved it, so it became part of our weekly routine. I knew already that my girl has a very open spine and hips, because she does yoga with me, and I also knew her hamstrings were a little tight. I’ve always taught her to listen to her body and breathe. A few weeks ago in her class, the kids were doing a standing forward fold, just some stretching before class, and she had her knees bent. Her teacher told her to straighten her legs, and my daughter said it hurt when she did that. Her teacher said, “It’s good if it hurts, it means something is happening.” My stomach clenched, and before I could say anything, I saw her try to straighten her legs, and then stop. Her teacher had moved away from her at this point, and they moved onto something else. After class, when we got in the car I told her I was very proud of her for listening to her body. I said it was not good if something hurt, that that was her body’s way of telling her to stop, and that she should always listen when that happened, that her body is always her best teacher.

It might seem like a small thing, but I don’t believe it is. I think lots of people are taught to override their bodies, to push beyond their comfort level. This whole, “no pain, no gain” mentality can be very damaging. Having an adversarial relationship with your body, feeling that you have to force it to submit, or beat it into a shape that’s okay with you or society at large, is really waging a war within yourself. Your body is a pretty miraculous thing. It’s full of wisdom. It’s been with you from the beginning. It’s the house for your heart. It’s where you’re going to live for your entire life. When we start to ignore the messages from our bodies, we also start to cut ourselves off from our own intuition.

If you don’t back off from a forward fold when your hamstrings scream at you, if you force yourself to do anything that really doesn’t feel right, you’re also training yourself to ignore other messages your body sends, like the hairs standing up on the back of your neck when you’re in danger. Like the way your shoulders tighten or your jaw clenches, or your eyebrows furrow when you feel stressed or threatened. People live like that, and don’t realize how insidious it is. They’re tired, their body is begging for rest, and they feed it caffeine and sugar. They’re sad, angry, lonely or anxious, and they eat, even though they aren’t hungry, and don’t eat when they are. They’re in a relationship that looks good on paper, the mind says it should work, and they override that feeling in their gut. The whole time, they’re feeding this voice of, “not good enough.”

I’m all for hard work. I love the discipline and ritual of getting on my mat and sweating and breathing and moving. I love the rhythm of it, and the freedom and the peace of it, but when I started practicing, I brought my ballet head onto my mat with me. If I fell out of a pose I’d flush in shame and embarrassment. I pushed myself even when my body needed a break. I don’t mind telling you I practiced that way for a long, long time. I’d been practicing and teaching for years when I got pregnant with my son. I had hours and hours of yoga philosophy under my belt. I understood compassion and loving-kindness. I could talk about that, about meditation and breathing and feeding a loving voice all day long, but it wasn’t until I was pregnant with my son that I truly started practicing those things for myself. I’d been doing Ashtanga yoga for years at this point, and I went to my mat one morning, the first time I’d practiced knowing I was pregnant, and I thought, “I have to be gentle, there’s someone in here counting on me.” Then I froze. It was like a curtain was pulled back, and the next thought I had was, “Wait. There’s always someone in here counting on me. Me.” I realized I had a lot of work to do.

That moment changed the way I practiced and it changed the way I taught. I can tell you that the more you work with your body, the more it opens. The more you force it or fight it, the more it resists. Have you ever had anyone scream at you to relax? It’s the same thing. When you work with your body, when you listen and respond with compassion, awareness and honesty, you begin to trust yourself. You open a line of communication, you strengthen that voice of intuition, and it’s there for you in every facet of your life. Discipline is wonderful and necessary in my opinion. If you want to be able to see things through, to put action behind your intentions, it’s a must. Taking your body for a spin and exploring your boundaries is awesome as long as it feels right. Feeding your body the food that will nourish it, getting enough rest, drinking enough water, all these become things you want to do to support your body which is housing your heart, your dreams, and your internal dialogue. Having a voice inside your head that tells you you suck is so painful. Believe me, I know. I had a voice like that in my head for years, but if you feed a loving voice when you’re on your mat, or in your spin class, or on your hike, or whatever it is that you do, that voice will strengthen. Having a voice inside your head that is kind and forgiving is a freaking life-changer. It’s such a relief.

My daughter loves her class and she wants to continue, and for now I’m okay with that. I told her teacher I don’t want my daughter doing things that hurt her, and if that was a problem, we wouldn’t come back. She assured me that was fine, even if inside she might think I’m one of those “crazy moms.” I don’t care. There’s something at stake much larger than my daughter’s hamstrings. It’s her sense of self. I’ll fight for hers if I have to, and I’ll fight for yours, too, if you practice with me. The truth is, eventually, you have to fight for your own, and I hope you do.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Love is Your Birthright

If you have trauma in your past, you are not defective, you are not “marked” for life, you have not been shut out of any chance at happiness; you’re just as worthy of love and joy as anyone else. You may look around and think you’re the only person with serious pain in your past, or in your present, but I can assure you that isn’t so. I get emails from people every day who’ve been through things that would break your heart in two, or who find themselves in situations they’re desperate to flee.

If the people who were meant to love you and protect you, to nurture you and support you, were not able to do that because of their own damage, that is not on you. It is not a reflection of your worthiness to receive love. You were worthy the millisecond you came into existence. The other day I was talking about time folding in on itself; moments overlapping each other, or continuing long after you’ve grown away from them. Here’s where that gets tricky: the “grown-up you” may easily grasp that some people are damaged, and that maybe your parents fall into that category, or did at the time you came on the scene, but a child doesn’t get that. Children have no choice. The situation is what it is, and a child in an abusive environment must figure out how to survive, how to appease, or how to be invisible. At a certain point, a child in that framework will seriously begin to doubt in her own lovableness. She’ll think it must be something within her that is just bad, or that love is conditional, and must be earned. A child in that kind of family has to question if there’s something defective about himself because the alternative doesn’t occur to a little person. A child simply does not have the frame of reference to understand that some people are carrying around so much pain, are so ill-equipped to take care of themselves, they’re in no condition to be responsible for anyone else. In general, the cycle of abuse is repeated, or the person who was hurt breaks the cycle and heads in the opposite direction. In other words, if you were abused, it’s very likely the person who inflicted pain upon you was also abused, but I know a lot of amazing parents who grew up in a war zone. You can come out of abuse and create something beautiful. Your past does not have to define your future (or your eventual parenting style should you have children) once you’re old enough to make your own moves.

If you question whether there’s something within you that is unworthy of love, allow me to say that’s not it; that’s not the problem. You are love. I genuinely believe that. We’re energetic beings and my belief is that the energy from which we arise is love. The problem is your doubt in yourself, because when you fail to recognize what a gift you are, what a miracle you are, and I do not use the word lightly, or in any cheesy kind of way, you just aren’t seeing clearly. I believe in accidents, I think some things are just random, but I do not believe in accidental people. You’ve had your experiences and they are unique to you. You’ve had your pain, the ways you were let down or neglected, the ways you’ve had your heart broken. People have come along who’ve broken you down more, and some have lifted you up. You have your memories and your stories and your internal dialogue. You have your dreams. You have your specific heart. No one could ever replace you. Not ever. To me, that’s an incredible and obvious miracle.

So you have that. You have you. Maybe you have a lot of healing to do to begin to understand what a gift that is. The great news is that healing is possible, you just have to find the path that works for you. I really think talking to a great therapist is essential, and I also think some physical expression is key. Whether it’s yoga or hiking or windsurfing, whether you get regular bodywork or you dance, I think there’s something powerful that happens when you tune into your breath and into your body. Your body is full of incredible wisdom, and sometimes it’s also holding on to so much pain. Old pain. Pain from when your shoulders were hitched up around your ears, or your arms were protecting your head, or you were cowering in a corner, terrified. Pain in your jaw from wanting to scream but knowing that would only make it worse. Pain in your heart because you weren’t being seen or loved. You really need to release that pain, because a lot of the stories are ancient and woven into your body, and they won’t strengthen you. There’s nothing good that comes from grasping them or feeding them or pushing them down into some deep place so that your only hope then, is to numb out.

I’ve had people apologize to me after class because they found themselves weeping in a hip opener, or thought they might start bawling in Savasana. You know what? Weep. Bawl. The job of a yoga teacher is to create a space where healing is likely to occur. A safe space. A person letting it out would indicate the teacher has done a good job. Feeling secure enough in someone’s class to fall apart is a beautiful way to say thank you. We are all human beings. Raw emotion is gorgeous. Everyone has pain. Some people have more than others, some people are more resilient than others, but everyone has pain. You let that stuff out so you can uncover the love. You may have been forced to bury it, you may be inclined to doubt that it’s there, but I guarantee if you find the ways that work for you to dig a little, you’re going to be amazed. Love is your birthright. No one can take it from you unless you let them.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Some Things Will Never Be Explained

When it comes to a mental tailspin, few things drive us there faster than the feelings of being misunderstood, rejected, excluded, judged, or absolutely invisible. Sometimes we feel this way at the hands of someone with whom we were once close–an ex, an old friend we thought we’d always know, a family member. Other times it can be someone we’ve just met– a new romantic interest, someone at work, or, occasionally, a complete stranger. Whatever the source, it never feels good, but the more we value the opinion of the person rejecting us in one way or another, the more we suffer.

Some things will never be explained. I feel like I should almost write that twice. There are relationships that will deteriorate suddenly and with no explanation, and the only closure you’ll get is your own acceptance of the situation. Things happen, and sometimes you’ll find you’re dealing with someone who simply cannot or will not communicate. I don’t think there are too many things worse than ignoring someone, but you cannot force a person to open up. They’ll show you the respect to do that, or they won’t, or maybe they truly can’t. There are people who just will not go there, and it could be because “there” seems a very scary and vulnerable place to head. If you’re dealing with a person attached to never rocking the boat, you may have to sail away and leave the mystery behind you.

This occurs in so many contexts. Close friends of mine used to see another couple every weekend. Their kids grew up together like brothers. There wasn’t even conversation about whether the families would see each other Saturdays, there was only talk of what the plan would be. They vacationed together, their kids went to school together, most afternoons the moms would rotate taking the kids home so the other could have some free time. One week it came to a halt. At first it seemed okay. The friends were just unusually busy that weekend, but then the afternoons weren’t working out, either, and another weekend came and went with vague excuses of tons of work, and the need to have some “family time.” My friends thought perhaps the other couple was having marital issues. They waited, confused, trying to be patient and sensitive, but weeks went by, with no straight answers, just lots of avoidance. Finally, they asked about what was happening directly, but were still met with nothing solid. So after months of wondering and worrying and questioning and obsessing, they gave up, even though the kids didn’t get it, and they were at a loss as to what to tell their son. Of course the mystery around it is the thing. It’s so hard to let go when you don’t understand.

Another friend received a letter letting him know his business partnership of almost a decade was ending, with no conversation and no kindness. When he went to talk to his partner, he was met with rage over something that had happened years ago, and his partner had held it in so long he exploded, said horrible things to all their mutual friends, and turned the whole thing over to lawyers, with gag orders and all kinds of moves that prevented honest, open communication. People leave room for forgiveness, or they do not, and it’s not like his partner lived in a glass house. We all make mistakes. People who lack compassion for others tend to have very little for themselves, and it’s sad, because righteousness doesn’t cuddle up very well at night.

People write to me about amazing first dates, when they’re absolutely certain they’ll be going out again, only to start to question themselves days later when there hasn’t been any contact. When you’re left in a vacuum and the other party won’t talk to you, it’s just natural to start to spin–to replay things in your mind, to wonder if you were misunderstood, to second-guess the things you said or did, or to start chasing, to see if you can fix your imagined mistakes.

Here’s what I want to say about all of it. Your opinion of yourself is the one that matters. You have to be you. You will find there are people who will see you and embrace you with all your flaws and all your beauty and all your pain. People who will not give up on you or throw you away, not ever. Stick with those people. Not everyone will be able to see you clearly, and not everyone will dig what they see, even if they are seeing clearly. It’s okay. It doesn’t feel good, but it really is okay. Try not to waste too much energy on people who won’t communicate with you, because there’s no potential there, and try not to give too much time to those people who won’t forgive you for being human and therefore fallible. There’s no potential there, either. People who misunderstand you or judge you or exclude you are also human and fallible. That’s how it is. Not everyone handles their pain well. A lot of it is not personal, although rejection surely feels personal. Keep your center. Remind yourself of who you are. If you screwed up and have owned it and apologized but have not received forgiveness, at a certain point you have to forgive yourself. You know who you are. You do the best you can with where you are and what you’ve got, and you put one foot in front of the other. As long as you’re doing your best to move from love, you won’t go too far astray, but don’t allow these unexplained mysteries to rob you of too much now. Now is precious, because it won’t come again. There’s so much love in the world, and it would be a shame to miss it because you’re boiling yourself. Shake yourself off and pick yourself up, and remind yourself, if you need to, that this business of being human is not easy. Send compassion to those around you, and send some to yourself, as well. Do your best to direct your energy forward. You never know what beauty is around the bend.

Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here <3

Start with Compassion

When-an-idea-reachesIt’s very hard to make a life shift if you’re feeling awful about yourself, but if life isn’t feeling or looking the way you want it to, it’s challenging not to get down on yourself. What do I want? What am I doing here? When am I going to figure life out? We live in a great but crazy time when so much happens over social media. It can be wonderful to connect to old and new friends, to share thoughts and conversation, to reach out, and to find a community of people with similar ideals. All of that can be so uplifting, but it can also make you feel pretty terrible about yourself if you’re feeling vulnerable already. Not everything is glossy and shiny and wonderful, but people rarely post about their deepest fears, their shame, guilt or the choices they wish they had to make over again, differently, nor do they commonly post pictures of themselves on Instagram when they just roll out of bed, pre-shower. It’s no wonder people can get online and end up feeling worse than they did before they turned on their phone or opened their laptop.

If you feel pulled to make some big changes in your life, you’re going to need the energy and the focus to see them through. Also the inspiration. If you’re busy beating yourself up, it’s going to be hard to get motivated. Lots of people get stuck in the blame, rage, shame cycle, which leads nowhere. You really need to start with compassion for yourself, and a shift in perspective can also be a game-changer. It’s easy to get caught up in what we don’t have yet, what isn’t going right, all the breaks we aren’t getting, and every way we’ve been blowing it. A much better way to go is simply to focus on what is going well, what we do have, what is right about us. One train of thought weighs you down, the other lifts you up.

If you have a place to call home, that’s a gift. If you have just one person in your life who really knows you and sees you and celebrates you, that’s another gift (and you can definitely have one, because you can do those things for yourself). If you have a family, even a crazy one, even one you’ve chosen, another huge gift. Your health if you have it, what a blessing. The ability to breathe in and breathe out, to walk from point A to point B if you can. I bet you have a gorgeous smile. I’ll bet your eyes light up when you laugh, or something or someone wonderful surprises you. Maybe you’re a great friend, you certainly have the potential to be. You might be someone’s mom or dad or sister or brother or son or daughter or boyfriend or girlfriend or good friend. You might be the world to someone. The sun at the center of it all. You could impact the life of a total stranger today, just with your kindness. Connection in life is the greatest gift we get. Relationships are what matter. Shared laughter, tears, hugs, conversations. If you start to turn your attention to all the beauty in your life, your heart will fill with gratitude, which feels so good. When we’re feeling thankful, we’re realizing we do have so much, and there’s something very motivating about that.

Think of just three things for which you feel thankful. They can be anything, and then think of three great qualities you possess. Just start there, it’s enough. Write it down if you need to, but allow yourself to really sit with those feelings. You aren’t stuck. It’s never too late to move in a healthy direction, to follow the pull of your heart, to choose the thoughts that strengthen you, to pay attention to what you’re feeding yourself. You just have to give yourself permission, and the material to start–gratitude, and the willingness to take ownership of your own life.

Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

Live in Love

There’s not a single person you’ll encounter today who hasn’t had his or her heart broken, badly, except for young children (and sadly, not all children are exempt). No one would ask for pain. No one would wave it down and say, “Here, pick me! Cut me through to the core, go right for my jugular, so I can learn something, so I can understand despair, and open and soften and walk forward with more information about myself and other people.” And yet, that’s what pain does; it teaches us. Sometimes we would really give anything not to learn the lesson, but we don’t get to choose.

I’ve had all kinds of heartbreaks, some romantic, some not, and one that brought me to my knees. There are things any of us could look back on and say, “I’d give that one back if I could.” Time lessens the pain, but I’m with Rose Kennedy on this one, it doesn’t heal the wound. The wound becomes a scar, and the scar marks the searing place where you bled out any idea that you were in control, that your hopes or your prayers or your willing it to be so would make it so. I guess we all need to be humbled at some point, to grasp that the world is spinning and we are not controlling it. Sometimes I go sit by the ocean to feel reminded that I can no more control what’s coming than I can go out into the water and hold back the waves. You might as well just be awed by the whole thing. There’s beauty in recognizing your smallness, but also your vastness. You could curl up in a ball, or you could see that everyone is in this together. The stories may be different, but the feelings are universal. Your power in life lies in your response to what you’re given.

You have control over your outlook; that’s a tangible thing you can work on if you need to. I think the world is an incredible place, full of loving, beautiful people, and the kind of love, if you’re brave enough to pursue it, that will expand your heart so much you’ll wonder if it’s going to burst. I also know the world is a place where that same love I’m describing makes you vulnerable. It requires your participation, your willingness to go there, even though somewhere you understand that “there” could be ripped from you. Those are the choices, though. You live in love, or you live in fear of living in love. Funny, huh? But not the haha kind of funny.

When your heart is breaking, there’s no point trying to hold it together. You simply let it break. It won’t break and break and break into nothingness. It will break and open and the pain will be brutal and you may struggle with the simplest of things for awhile. Breathing in and breathing out. Finding the motivation to get out of bed, or eat, or shower. If you’re lucky, you’ll have at least one person who understands they can’t fix it for you or heal it, but they can make you a meal. They can sit with you, or read to you, or simply hold your hand. We need each other; we need to see each other and understand we could all use some kindness. You never know what someone is facing, whether they cried themselves to sleep last night, or just lost someone they loved. We can be so hard on ourselves, and so hard on each other. People seem so quick to lay on the horn or get up in arms about someone else’s mistakes. We all make them. We all face loss. We all know heartbreak and despair. If we didn’t know those things, we wouldn’t recognize joy, peace or the gratitude of those moments that make it all make sense. Move from love, and move toward love. Breathe in and breathe out. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Sending you a hug,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Sometimes it Hurts Like Hell

No lesson is ever wasted; you need what you need to grow, and you figure things out in your own time. You may have crashed into a brick wall, and you may have done it consciously, but sometimes we need the lesson more than once to fully get it, and be done with it. I can look back on my life and tell you with complete candor, there were some experiences I repeated (in different ways) like I was taking remedial dating. How to Pick People Who Will Break Your Heart 101, over and over again until I decided I really wanted to graduate from that class. Usually when you can spot a pattern, you can also locate a huge marker for a place where you still have healing to do.

Yogis call painful patterns in our lives “samskaras”, Freud called it the “repetition compulsion”, Jung famously stated, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”, and Einstein on this: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Kicking yourself compounds the problem; what you need is compassion. If you have a history of picking people who hurt you in one way or another, you really have to figure out what it is within you that believes you deserve that. Chances are, you’re trying to rewrite history, so you look for a dynamic that has that very strong, very familiar pull. If it feels like home, if I’m obsessed and consumed and feel a little addicted to the interaction, this must be love, right? Not so much. If it has that sick pull to it, there’s almost definitely something very old at play for you.

I had a boyfriend when I was seventeen. He was twenty years older than I was. Already off to a good start, aren’t we? He was emotionally distant and had a history of infidelity with every woman he’d ever dated, but I was sure I could save him. I could be so perfect he’d commit and be faithful, and not just faithful, but also happy. I don’t even need to write anymore, do I? You can’t save other people, you can only love them, and why would you choose to love someone who makes no time for you and sees other people on the side? What could possibly be enticing about that? That’s always the stuff to look at, your own participation, and what it is within you that doubts you’re worthy of love. I wish I could say I broke up with him and made better choices after that, but as I mentioned, it took me awhile. I had to ride that train into the brick wall until my head hurt and my heart hurt and I finally thought, “Enough.” You decide you’re going to get serious about healing when you’re ready, and not a moment sooner.

In the meantime, being kind to yourself is key. If you’re heading for a brick wall and you know it, by all means try to figure out why you aren’t taking better care of yourself. After you hit the wall, see if you can walk in a different direction instead of heading back to the station, because you can’t rewrite history. No train can take you back there so you can get your happy ending. Whatever happened shaped you and informed the way you look at the world, but it doesn’t have to define you. You may have to unlearn some very old ideas you’ve been carrying around. Sometimes the lens we’re looking through is very foggy and the depth-perception isn’t great. You might need to wipe those lenses, especially if you’ve been burdened with the idea that you aren’t worthy of love. You are love. You’re made of love. You may have covered it over with fear or shame or doubt, with insecurity or rage or bitterness or hopelessness. So you may have some digging to do. Find a path of healing that works for you, and don’t stop searching for it until you do. Yoga was the thing that turned my life around, that transformed me from a person who kept getting on the train to heartbreak, to a person who wouldn’t get on that train again if it was the last one running. Human beings are incredible, and so is the human heart. It can break, but the breaking can open you. It can soften you and strengthen you at the same time. You don’t have to let your past harden you, life doesn’t feel very good that way. Wishing you the strength to face your fear and love yourself, so you can open to love in all areas of your life, because life feels great that way.

Sending a hug and an icepack if you need one,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

Stop and Think

Once when I was about twelve years old I saw a group of kids huddled around a bucket in a courtyard I was passing on my way home from school. Some of the kids were younger than I was, and a few were older, or at least bigger. Some of them were laughing, some were just staring, and a couple looked scared. The biggest one, a boy, was holding a broom upside down, and thrusting the end of it into the bucket over and over again. There was something squealing in the bucket, and I found myself walking over without thinking about it. Some of the smaller kids saw me coming and took off, but the boy with the broom had his back to me, and didn’t notice me until I was right up next to him, peering over the edge of the bucket at a small, white, terrified mouse. It was covered in some kind of powder that smelled like bleach. “What are you doing??!!” I asked him, shocked. He stared at me, and so did the other kids who were still there, frozen. “I don’t know, ” he finally mumbled. “We found this mouse and didn’t know what to do with it.” He looked horrified and embarrassed, but he said, “Fine, you take it,” which I did, bucket and all.

There’s so much I could say about the cycle of violence and abuse. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes. If the people who were meant to love, nurture and protect you, didn’t, due to their own limitations or history of abuse, that’s a wound that needs healing. Few things feel worse than the belief that you are somehow not lovable or that you don’t matter, that you’re invisible. Most people experience times when they feel like that mouse. Terrified and alone and confused, trapped and running in circles, shrieking for help, the end of a broom handle coming at them without any cause. Grief and loss can feel that way. The why of it can strip a person down to her bones. You might believe in karma. You might think everything happens for a reason, or we choose the experiences we need for the evolution of our souls, or we arrive here with debts to pay from past lives. You may believe in chaos theory, in the butterfly effect, or that we turn to worm-food when we die and that’s that. You may think you create your reality with your thoughts. It doesn’t really matter. You’re a human being, and when you experience devastating loss, violence or the kind of pain that makes it hard to breathe in and breathe out, it becomes obvious that we are all equally vulnerable. People cling to beliefs as if they’re shields. If I’m a good person and I do good things, I’ll be rewarded, but life doesn’t work that way, as any number of good people can tell you. Sometimes horrendous things happen to the most beautiful human beings.

We want to believe we can control things, and that our good behavior will guarantee us freedom from suffering. There’s no such contract. You will lose people you love beyond words simply because you’re a person with an expiration date and so is everyone else, and then there’s all the stuff that life brings. The fact is, we need each other. We come into this world needing to be held and fed and cared for, and that need for connection doesn’t end when we learn to walk and can feed ourselves. The joy in life comes out of love. If you didn’t have a foundation of love, you can create one for yourself, but it takes time and work and a willingness to sit with all your pain until the heat of it dissipates. You may need some help with that. You don’t have to repeat what you know, especially if what you know breaks your heart; you can learn something else. You have a choice in life, you can be the person with the broom, or you can be the person taking it away. I believe we all come into the world as people who’d take the broom and save the mouse. I think we all come from love, but if you were taught fear and pain and that people will hurt you and life will hurt you and you cannot trust anyone, then you really need to unlearn that because it isn’t true. If you learned that you are not lovable or that your feelings don’t matter, you need to unlearn that as well, because those are also lies. No one owns you and your past doesn’t own you, either, unless you let it. We belong to each other, but it’s the kind of belonging that’s based on absolute freedom.

It’s my belief that you’re here for a reason. The odds that you are the only you in a world of seven billion people and it’s some kind of accident or coincidence seem extremely low to me. I believe you have a particular song to sing, and that if you fail to sing it, the world is robbed of a beauty it can’t create any other way. Your song may be buried under rage, grief and disappointment in which case it’s your job to start digging for yourself, for your own peace and freedom, and for all the people in your life.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here.

Forgiveness is an Embrace

Directing your energy is one of the most powerful ways you can decide to be happy, and often, it really is a decision. If you’re grieving, if there are things happening in your life right now that are so painful you question your ability to get through the day, this does not apply to you. Short of those knifing losses we face sometimes, the ability to choose one thought over another is like a super-power we too frequently forget we have.

It’s easy for the mind to latch onto ways we’ve been wronged, disappointed or mistreated. You can get snagged on thoughts like those and let them grow in your mind until they’re so big, thorny and uncomfortable, you feel you may burst or suffocate. We are human beings on a spinning planet with no real idea what will happen next. That’s not an easy gig, but I wouldn’t want to miss it. If you can embrace the vulnerability of this thing, your own exposure and lack of protection, you free up so much energy for the joy in life. When you let go of the pretense that you’re in control, that your carefully mapped out plans will all come to fruition exactly as you’ve envisioned, life becomes so much easier.

Some people want to be angry, to hold onto the pain and feed it and strengthen it. Maybe there’s a payoff. Maybe being angry like that excuses them from action and accountability, or maybe it protects them from being hurt by others. Maybe they get sympathy and that feels almost like love, or maybe it feels like home. Just because something is familiar to you doesn’t mean you have to curl up with it. You’ve made mistakes, I’ve made mistakes, everyone you pass today, no matter how shiny or perfect they may seem, has made mistakes. It’s part of the deal of being a human.

There are also people who don’t want to be angry, but aren’t sure how to stop, how to shift gears; the thing is to catch yourself. When you’re driving, or folding laundry, or taking a shower, to notice where the mind has gone, particularly if it’s taking you down a path of pain. The past is in the past. It’s absolutely worth examining so that you can glean the information you need to move on and make informed choices in the future, but sometimes something is so painful we obsess over it. Betrayal is like that. When you’re shocked because someone close to you has done something you never thought possible, it’s hard not to turn that experience around in your mind over and over again looking for clues, because things like that make you question everything. You wonder about your own judgment, the relationship, whether there was anything real there or if you were confused, other relationships in your life, your ability to discern what’s real from what isn’t. Betrayal is a tough one, as are breakups, the loss of a job, rejection, any of life’s tougher experinces. But the reality is, once you’ve looked at something carefully and learned all there is to learn from the experience, nothing productive comes from dwelling on it. It’s easier said than done, and time definitely helps remove the sting, but at a certain point you just have to pick your mind up and consciously turn it to something else.

When you boil it down, you can feed your fear, or you can feed your love. Feeding your love feels so much better. A huge step in that direction is simply to practice forgiveness. When you forgive people, it doesn’t mean you have to tell them, or have them in your life. It just means you’re committed to your own peace, and you hope they find some, too. It means you’re unhooking your story from their actions. Sometimes there is room for reconciliation, it’s case-by-case. Freeing your heart is the thing, and forgiving yourself, as well. You don’t want to walk around with a closed or hardened heart. We don’t get a lot of time. Even if you live a “long” life, it’s not a lot of time, so I wouldn’t waste too much of it looking back. Regrets are normal, but that’s also a form of looking at things with rose-colored glasses; if only I’d changed this one thing, then…and the truth is, you can’t ever change “just one thing”, if you go back and undo one decision, there are a million others connected to it. You’d have to unravel your whole life, and the truth is, you’d just be trading in one set of circumstances for another. Every single path has some pain, you can’t escape that.

The jagged edges of your life, the decisions you made in desperation and with longing, the unexpected joys, the surprises, it’s all part of your adventure. The whole thing isn’t going to be fabulous, some of it is going to be really heartbreaking; that’s called being human. The thing is to move toward joy, to grab it with both hands, to celebrate it when it shows up in your life, to try to create some for others, and to be kind. I wouldn’t use too much of your time pining for the past or worrying about the future, because whatever is behind you is behind you, and who knows what’s in front of you? I think I’d focus on how much love I could give today, that seems like the best plan to me.

Sending you some right now,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here and my yoga classes here.

Pick Better Moments

Sometimes a memory will come flooding back to me, whole, detailed, out of nowhere. A fragrance on the breeze, or a song on the radio, or something my kids say as they look up at me, and wham, I’m transported back to a moment I haven’t thought about in years. Sometimes the feeling around the memory is sweet, and sometimes it’s painful, but either way I’m amazed by the experience. Where was I storing that, or has it been continuing on in some parallel universe this whole time? That me that stood on that corner that afternoon, walking one way when I could have walked another. Is part of me still on that corner? Is part of me still having that first kiss, with the sun flooding in through the window, and the shock of realizing that kissing means lips and tongues and a racing heart?

The mind is an amazing thing. What we remember is simply our version of events, the way we experienced the world or another person through our own filter. Did you ever leave a film with a friend feeling one way about it only to find your companion has a completely different opinion? We tell our “life story” to ourselves and sometimes to other people, but it’s just that, it’s just a story; it’s the way we’ve received what we’ve been through. I’m not disputing facts. You were born on a certain day, and this thing may have happened, or this other thing may have happened. People came or they went, they showed up for you or they let you down. Whatever happened, happened, but we choose the things that are the highlights. We grab onto those moments that stand out for us as significant, and we give them weight and life and energy. We weave them into the tale of this is who I am, and why I am the way I am. Sometimes the story weighs us down or closes us off or prevents us from discovering our potential for love or joy or freedom or happiness.

Sometimes people hold on to the wrong pieces. Sometimes a person decides the painful pieces are the ones to highlight. The wrongs are brought to the forefront and held up and fed and magnified until the person is feeling what they felt then. Until the past is fully present in the present, and is very likely to screw up the future, too. We are all human. There have been times I’ve met people and I thought they were more than human, only to find that no, everyone who looks like a human is human. So there’s that. People who look human and think they’re floating above the surface of the earth are the ones to watch out for because that’s a distorted perception. Everyone makes mistakes. No one operates from her highest self in every moment. You will hurt people unintentionally, simply because human beings are complex and always evolving, and how you feel at one time may not grow or expand; you may think you want one thing and realize you want something else. You will almost certainly say and do and think things you’ll wish you hadn’t at some point.

If you can accept that about yourself, then you’ll be able to accept it in other people. If you believe you never make mistakes, and if a person is upset with you it’s due to their own negativity and not attributable to anything you could have done, then you’ll probably be very unforgiving and also very lonely. If you expect perfection from yourself, you’ll expect it in others as well and you’ll be disappointed all the way around, or you’ll be deluded. I know people who believe they’re always right. It’s such a sad stance. It’s a sure way to avoid intimacy and true friendship. If you can’t own your humanness and figure out how to say the words, “I’m sorry, I blew it” and mean it, and look at what happened so you can do it differently next time, if you can’t embrace your vulnerability and your culpability and your capacity to screw things up, you’ll also never discover your capacity to love. The two go hand in hand.

I know too many people who waste too much time holding on to anger, to grudges, to ways they’ve been wronged. It’s a cancer to do that, it eats away at you and life is too short and too precious, and there’s so much love that could be happening. Family members stop speaking to one another over the craziest, most meaningless stuff. Money. Something someone said twelve years ago at a wedding, drunk and full of salmon. How much time do you think you have, and how much of it do you want to spend digging your heels in being “right”? Do you want to be right and alone? Right and missing moments you can’t ever have back again? There are no winners in a fight between friends or family. There’s just pain. Pick better moments to feed. If a person has been nothing but abusive, they can’t be in your life, so I’m not talking about that. But if you have a loved one, and their worst crime is that they’ve been human, let the anger go. Love feels a lot better.

Sending you some right now,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here, and my yoga classes and courses here.

What to Do with What We’re Given

Whatever you feed will grow and strengthen. We all have pain to varying degrees, we’ve all suffered loss, despair, and disappointment. Some people have lived through abuse and neglect, and losses so knifing you have to wonder about the resiliency of the human heart, and how strong it is. It’s not a level playing field, and it is a sad reality that horrendous things happen to beautiful people all the time. Maybe you believe in karma, maybe you believe in chaos theory, maybe you don’t know what you believe. Regardless, I don’t know anyone who would argue that life is easy.

You can’t change what’s happened to you, and you can’t control what life will put on the path in front of you, but you can work on how you’re going to respond. Your past does not have to define you, or determine your future. You define yourself and you co-create your future with your choices and your actions. If you’re grieving, grieve. If you’re enraged, move into that heat so you can let it burn off to an ember, and eventually to ash so you don’t have to carry the burden of something huge and painful that you’ll never get your arms around anyway.  Rage is not a fabulous traveling companion, it demands everything of you, and blocks out any hope for joy or peace. Face reality as it is, even if everything in your being is crying out with the why of it. Denial is a traffic circle and so are resentment, blame and bitterness. Those are all natural feelings, but after you explore them, you really want to take the exit to acceptance or you’ll just drive in circles until you’re sick, and of no use to yourself or anyone else.

If you’ve lost someone and you don’t know how you’ll be able to live without them, see if you can open to the gift that it is to have loved that deeply; there are people who will never experience that. If you’ve lost the life you thought you were going to live, consider that eventually, you may find the strength to help other people who are looking in the face of a loss like that. If you don’t help, who will? Who else could ever understand? There’s beauty in that. Would you rather not have those skills? Would you gladly trade them in for a life where you never needed to understand what that feels like? Of course, but we don’t get to choose. We just get to figure out what we do with what we’re given.

You have this gorgeous heart. The more it breaks, the more it opens. I’ve had my heart broken in all kinds of ways. There are certain things I’d really love to give back, and to not understand. It took me years to see the potential for something beautiful to emerge in some instances, but your pain can strengthen you if you let it because the best things in life are giving, connecting, sharing, offering, loving. A person plunged in darkness will not accept a hand from someone who hasn’t been there, but if you can swim out into the center of someone’s despair because you know the way, and you also know the way out, that’s powerful. That’s when your pain turns into your light, and that’s a gorgeous thing you can share.

Some things will never be okay. I think it’s important to accept that. That does not mean that your future has to be devoid of beauty or joy or gratitude. You can hold both: the pain of your loss, and the softness and light in your heart, and you can let that light lead your way.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here, and my yoga courses and classes here.

Life Without Love

When I look back on my life so far, I’ll tell you what stands out for me: relationships. Relationships to people, and to the things that bring me joy. My parents, my grandmother, my aunt and uncle, and my amazing cousins. My first best friend and her family, and their cat, Muffin. My little brother who’s now taller than I am and has been making me proud since the moment I laid eyes on him. Girlfriends I’ve had since high school who are like sisters to me. My first crush. My first love. Every love I’ve ever had. Teachers who changed my life. People who’ve practiced with me for years and are now like family. The women in my life who are strong and compassionate, and there when there matters. My beloved dog, and most of all, my two incredible children. Life is about love. That’s the stuff, that’s the glue and the point. There’s the love that you give to all the people in your life, and the love you receive, and then there’s what you love. That thing that lights you up, whatever it may be (and maybe you haven’t discovered it yet), but that’s the joy in life, to share what you love. To the extent that you’re able to open your heart and follow your heart, and give and receive from your heart, you will love this life.

That doesn’t mean you won’t suffer. The more you open your heart, the more you allow yourself to love deeply, all the way, with everything you’ve got, the more you take the chance that you could be hurt, devastated. My grandmother is gone, and way too soon. She taught me about hugs where your face gets crushed into huge, perfumed bosoms and you don’t care because you’re three and you understand this is what safety feels like, and about singing someone to sleep even if you’re totally off-key, just because you love them, while you trace their face with your fingertips. She taught me about iced tea in summer, from a pitcher, with some kind of magic mixed in, and the smell of tomatoes growing on the vine, and she taught me about loss, because even though she died just before my fourth birthday, the world I knew changed so profoundly there was no way to miss it, even at that age. I think of my mother, who’d lost her dad at thirteen, and then her mom at twenty-eight, when she still needed her, with a four year old on her hands. I still think of my grandmother every day, with gratitude and the hope that I’m teaching my kids about love the way that she taught me.

Earlier today as I was walking with my four year old daughter on the street, a man stood to the side, watching us. My girl was telling me about something very important to her, waving her other little hand around and I was listening intently. Sometimes she comes out with stuff that blows my mind. The man had all of his belongings in a shopping cart, and as we passed he smiled a huge smile and revealed a missing front tooth. “That’s it,” he said, “that’s right,” and I smiled back and said, “It is, isn’t it?”

Without love, you’re sunk in my opinion; you may as well throw in the towel, but it need never come to that because you are love. That’s really what I believe. I believe we’re made of energy, and the energy is love, and if you open to that, life will make all kinds of sense. If you don’t, it will be like a puzzle where none of the pieces fit, no matter how many times you turn them this way or that, or try to jam them in out of frustration. The pieces don’t always fit, the puzzle may never come together exactly as you see it in your head, but if you open to love, you also open to the possibility that life might bring all kinds of wonders in your direction. I could never have imagined my son’s smile, or my daughter’s, and how they would light me up and bring me to my knees at the same time. The feeling of those little arms wrapped around my neck, the emotion that rises to the surface and out the corners of my eyes at the craziest times, without warning, over moments that might seem meaningless from the outside. Love makes you face your own vulnerability, acknowledge it, tip your hat to it, and plunge forward regardless.

It’s really easy to get caught up in the details, worries and responsibilities, in the deadlines, plans and work, and lose sight of the whole thing. It’s trite to talk about what will be on your gravestone, but sometimes that’s not a bad way to check in with yourself and your priorities. Life and love can be found in the details, as long as you’re paying attention to the right ones. Look closely, and may your tree bear all kinds of fruit and blossoms.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

The Story is Pretty Good

If-you-want-a-happyIt’s totally unsurprising that we think in terms of happy endings. Many children’s books start with the words, “Once upon a time…” and end with the line (that screws us all), “And they lived happily ever after.” We’re taught and trained to think this way, and it’s reinforced in every romantic comedy and dumb sitcom, too. But happiness is not a place. You can’t take some “right” train and end up there. Happiness is a process, it stems from work you do within yourself, and most of the time (not all of the time, though), it’s a choice.

We have some crazy idea that at some point we’ll be done. Depending on how old you are, that “done” point will keep shifting to a time out ahead of you. When you’re a kid, you might think you’ll be done at thirty–with that right job and that right partner, in that right house driving that right car, feeling….right. Life will make sense at that point, you’ll know what you’re doing, and everything will fall into place. When you’re thirty, you might think, well…I’ve got some of it figured out, there are just a few pieces of the puzzle I need to figure out. Maybe I’ve got a great person in my life, but professionally there’s a strain. Or vice versa. Once I solve the missing piece, I’ll be done and happy. You can keep having some variation of that conversation with yourself for your entire life. When I retire, I can take trips and relax and life will be good. When this happens or that happens, and before you know it, thirty years have gone by and you haven’t been enjoying the story, you’ve been waiting. As if this isn’t it. Then you can allow yourself to be startled when you catch a glimpse of your seventy-five year old reflection in a mirror, still not “done”. We are always in process, and the story is always unfolding. I think when we look back on our lives, we’ll realize they’ve been shaped by whatever life has put in our paths, and defined by our choices and our actions. That as the story is unfolding, we are also unfolding, shifting, growing, responding and evolving. There’s not going to be an end until we exhale for the final time, and it’s my belief that’s not going to be the end, either. It’s going to be the beginning of something else. Because energy doesn’t die, it just changes form.

The point is, living intentionally is the thing. Being awake and understanding this is the story, this is your life, and where you are right now is just a point in time. If you’re not embracing the journey, you’re missing the plot. When I say we’re all screwed by the line, “And they lived happily ever after”, it’s because the end of one chapter is the beginning of another. If you meet someone and fall in love and one day you decide to get married, for example, the story doesn’t end as you drive off into the sunset with your family and friends waving you off. That’s the beginning of the next phase. Because you’re always changing, and other people are as well, you can never expect to settle in and take for granted that your “happy ending” is a given.

Every story has its sunshine and its storms, its demons, its quests, its confusion, its beauty, its joy. Any good story has all of that. People who are motivated by different feelings and desires, plot twists, bumps and forks in the road. What you do with all that goes a long way toward determining what the experience of it will be for you. If you can open to the ride, to the not knowing of the thing, if you can accept that the ground beneath you will keep shifting, and that you’ll never know exactly what’s around the bend, you’ll probably have a pretty good time. If you keep choosing love, you’ll find it’s there for you when times get tough. And they will. If you take the time to truly know yourself, and know the people closest to you, and if you follow your heart, you’re probably not going to get too lost along the way. When I say happiness is a choice most of the time, I say that because horrendous things happen to extraordinarily beautiful people, and sometimes it’s just not possible to choose happiness. Sometimes you will have to accept that you’re in a chapter of despair, of un-rooting, of pain. But hopefully your foundation of love is strong enough that you’ll pick up the plot again when you’re able. That there will be some hands there to help you up, to hold you, to cry with you. And to remind you that it still is not the end of the story.

Life has everything. It’s a mystery, it has some science fiction, some adventure, some action, some tragedy, some romance, and a lot of comedy. But if you’re looking for a happy ending, think again. That will always be out ahead of you somewhere, because there’s no such thing. Don’t miss the story, I think it’s pretty good. Sending you love. Ally

Who’s Going Rafting?

You-have-now-reachedI received an email from a woman yesterday who is really in a panic. She’s been seeing this guy for six weeks, and is totally over the moon for him. She’s already got their life planned out for the next sixty years. There’s a small problem (there are a few, actually) which is that she feels she needs to present herself as someone who likes the things he likes. So apparently she told him she loves the outdoors just as he does, loves to go camping and whitewater rafting, loves long, strenuous hikes, and feels very comfortable roughing it. So he planned a surprise camping trip involving all those things, and sister has never been camping or rafting, doesn’t feel like a very strong swimmer, doesn’t ever hike, and has intense fear of snakes, bears, camping, being bitten by anything, and being anywhere she can’t plug in a hairdryer. She doesn’t want to tell him any of that because then he’ll know she lied to him, so she’s busy buying gear and trying to figure out what she needs to know so it looks like she’s been rafting before.

I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen this weekend, but I do know they aren’t off to a great start because if you can’t be yourself, if you feel you have to be something other than you are, you don’t give the other person a chance to know you. You don’t allow a genuine connection to build and you know you’re not presenting yourself honestly, so the whole thing becomes an experience in which you feel insecure. This person doesn’t know or love the real me, and just like that, your foundation is shaky. Conquering fear is great, but not when it’s forced on you because you were dishonest about who you are. If you’re going to face down some of the stuff that scares you, it’s nice if you can do it with some support and care. Instead, she’s been hiking the last three days, just near her house, with a knapsack loaded with about a third of what she’s planning to bring. Her feet are blistered, she’s completely sore, and she’s hiked less than a mile each day. His plan is that they’ll be hiking between six and nine miles a day. I don’t think infatuation is going to be enough to pull her through.

When a person doesn’t have a strong center, a solid sense of self, confidence in her or his worth, it’s a recipe for disaster because powerful feelings like infatuation are enough to knock a person off her feet. She told me her back-up plan is to fake an injury, say she’s pulled her hamstring or something. I asked her how much lying she wants to do at the beginning of this thing, but she feels backed into a corner even though she’s very aware it’s a corner of her own making. I expressed concern about her physical well-being, given that she doesn’t love the water, and she said she would get herself out of it if she felt she couldn’t handle the rafting part, but that she would try to avoid having to do that if possible. Putting yourself in jeopardy isn’t loving and it isn’t healthy, either. Being reckless with yourself is a sign of significant self-esteem issues, and a lack of understanding of how precious you are. There’s only one of this woman. Only one her and she’s taking her one self and undervaluing her own particular spark.

She also said he’s mentioned he might need to move across the country for work, and even though she has no interest in moving that far away from her family, she’d do it in a second if he asked. So basically, she’s just giving herself away. Chasing or selling yourself, or sacrificing everything and anything that’s important to you for a relationship is not love. It’s not loving to you, or to the other person. You’re denying yourself and them the chance to see if your relationship has legs, to see if there’s any there there. It takes time and honesty to figure that out, to realize whether infatuation, which can be fun and healthy and exciting, might blossom into something that lasts. You have to see people in different situations over time, notice what’s stirred within you when you’re around that person, and I’m not talking about hormones. Knowing yourself and loving yourself, so you have a clear idea of whether the person you’re with is someone you could love for sixty minutes, or sixty days, or sixty years. You’ll never figure that out if you’re trying to fit yourself into some mold trying to be the perfect partner for them. Try flipping it around if you make a habit of entering relationships this way, and ask yourself if this person seems like the perfect partner for you. Hormones and obsession will steer you in some pretty insane directions. Know yourself and honor yourself, and then you’ll have your compass.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Live Under the Roof of Your Hope

I think most people simply want to be happy, to live a life that feels good to them, to love and be loved, to find a purpose, to feel passionate about what they’re contributing, to feel that life has meaning. It took me a long time to understand that seeking happiness for myself was bound to make me miserable. Thinking of the world and of your life in particular with the mindset of, “How can I be happy? Why aren’t I happy? What do I need to do to get happy?” is like having blinders on. Seeking happiness for other people is a shortcut to all kinds of amazing stuff, like the feeling of being fulfilled, fired up, and full of gratitude. I think we all experience this to some degree. I’ve always been more excited to give someone a gift than I am to receive one. There’s something so awesome about creating or finding the perfect something to give someone and it’s even better if you get to be there when they open it. It’s a way of saying, “I see you. Your particular spark has not gone unnoticed. I know you. I know what will make you laugh or feel understood.” It’s beautiful to give that to someone. You could give a version of that to any stranger you encounter today just by being present. You could say hello, and how are you, and you could care, and you might just turn someone’s day around. Maybe more than that.

What I didn’t realize until I started teaching yoga, was that there’s no end to that. The more you focus your energy on uplifting other people with anything you’ve got, the better you feel, but that’s the reverse of what we’re taught and lots of people end up in despair, feeling hopeless because the “me formula” doesn’t work. Of course you have to take care of yourself, practice compassion for yourself, and learn to love yourself if you aren’t already, but it is absolutely the case that the more time and attention you place on how and what you might contribute, and the more you act on those feelings, the happier you’ll be. If you doubt that, make today about eliciting as many smiles as you can from other people. Extra points for strangers. I guarantee if you do that, by the end of the day you’re going to feel at least a glimmer of hope, if not an avalanche because people are good, they really are. And yes, this world can break your heart, and there are things we need to fix for the sake of our kids and their kids, the planet, and all the creatures who live on it, but directing your attention to how you might contribute to the well-being of others is definitely a huge step in that direction. Good for others, good for the planet, good for you — there’s no downside. Also, you’re wired for that. We have something called mirror neurons; compassion and empathy are natural to us. If you’ve hardened yourself against that, it’s time to allow your heart to break open to the world again. It won’t kill you, it will free you.

Today I don’t hope to be happy, because I am happy. Not everything in my life is perfect, but I have two beautiful, healthy children and tons of love in my life, and I get to spend time doing what I love. What I hope for is the strength to face reality as it is. To accept the truth. To see clearly, and by that I mean, to see myself clearly, to see others clearly, to see the world clearly. I’m hungry for the truth, not happiness. It’s not all going to be happy. Some of it is going to break your heart right down the middle. If you’re attached to being happy all the time, you’re going to suffer even more when those storms come because you’ll have the pain of the circumstances, but also the pain of your resistance to them. If you hope to open to things as they unfold, and if you hope for the grace to accept both the beautiful and the heart-wrenching, you’re probably going to do quite well.

Sending you love, and the hope that you recognize your potential to give and receive love. Pretty sure that’s why we’re here!

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.