Tag: spirituality

If This Isn’t Nice, I Don’t Know What Is!

We probably wouldn’t have survived as a species if we weren’t somewhat “wired for worry”, and though most of us no longer have to be concerned about sabertooth tigers eating us for lunch,  the mind still tends to get “snagged” on the negative. Someone says something or does something that makes us feel slighted, misunderstood or angry, and we go for a mental spin right into the abyss. Or we sit down to catch up with friends and end up focusing on what isn’t going well, and not on all the amazing things that are.

I think part of it is cultural, too. We’re constantly receiving messages that happiness lies in external stuff, that it’s a destination somewhere out ahead of us and if we just keep plugging away and trying harder and making ourselves “right” eventually we’ll be happy. The thing is, it’s not a destination. There’s no house that’s gorgeous enough, there’s no weight you could be, there’s no hairstyle or other person or car or job or amount of money in your bank account that will bring you to that place we call Happy. You can try if you want to, we have millions of people stuck on that track, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t feel good, either. It’s the track of, “You’re not good enough, you don’t measure up.” How could that track ever lead to Happiness? The destination if you keep moving forward in that direction is Depressionville, Despair.

It doesn’t work, because happiness is something that happens inside yourself when you stop and realize how much you do have, when you make the choice to stay rooted in that awareness of what is going well, even if life isn’t easy right this minute. It happens when you’re living in alignment with what’s true for you, when you’re living with your heart wide open. It happens when you uncover your gifts and give them away freely. It happens when you lend an ear, or your hand or your shoulder or whatever else you’ve got to someone else. It happens when you’re patient with yourself and your own process, when you have compassion for yourself and other people, through connection, and a feeling that your life has meaning and purpose. You can’t buy that stuff at a store.

Of course, even if you do tap into that, you’ll still have pain in your life, and you have to lean into that, too. Heartbreaks. Confusion, doubt, fear, shame, guilt. Part of happiness is opening to all of it. Learning and growing and saying, “Yes, this too.” (There are some things that will never fall into the category of “Yes”, though. There are some things that will break your heart wide open and then the only question is if it hardens you or softens you. I recommend softening if at all possible). Life is going to keep coming, but when you’re living from your heart and you remember who you are, you have such a solid foundation to receive the everything that life brings. You also know how to give yourself permission to stay in your pajamas all day if that’s what you need to do. It doesn’t all have to be pretty and perfect every minute; in fact, part of being at peace is knowing that it won’t be.

That’s one of the main reasons it’s so important to figure out what you need in order to quiet your mind. Yoga, seated meditation, hiking, something. Because the habit-pattern of the mind is to head into the past or the future. We usually head into the past with longing or sadness. When we think about the future, it’s often with anxiety or fear. Peace is available in the present moment, but if your mind is screaming at you, it’s not easy to tap into it. Your breath is always happening in the now. That’s a powerful entry point to This Moment. Stress comes from being in one place, and wanting to be somewhere else. Wherever you are, you are home. You can breathe in and breathe out, right now, and bring yourself into the present. You live in your body. You live with your internal dialogue. So your inner world is peaceful and loving, or it’s violent and painful. If that voice is full of, “Not good enough!”, stop feeding it because it’s a liar. You are the only you, out of the roughly 7 billion people we have on this planet. That’s pretty amazing. I don’t believe you’re here to be a size 2 or to have huge biceps or to amass as much money as you can. You’re here to shine. When you notice a tree blowing in the wind, when you see the sunlight reflecting off the million different greens, and you feel the breeze on your skin, I hope you take it in. Because those are gifts, just like you are.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

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

Doubt is a Dream-Killer

Even after I fell in love with yoga and watched it transform my life, I thought I’d never teach. “I can’t teach, I have a huge fear of speaking in public,” I’d tell myself and anyone else who thought to suggest such a thing. I did have a huge fear about it, but I held on to this idea of myself and my limitations so tightly it strangled me. It made me unable to see the possibility of something else, and if I hadn’t been put in a situation where I felt I needed to sub a class for a teacher who didn’t show up one day, I probably never would have realized I could do it. Our ideas about ourselves are powerful, they shape our lives. They encourage us or they crush us. When you start to tap into what your gifts may be, they pull on your heart like the moon pulls on the ocean. It breaks my heart to think so many people stop themselves from just opening to that pull because a loud voice inside is saying, “You can’t.”

This shows up all over the place for people. You like someone but are afraid to express it because they’d never go out with you. You want a job, you know in your heart you could rock it, but are afraid to send your resume because so many other people are more qualified or well-suited than you. You have a dream, but who are you to do something great? That voice that has your ear (if any of this speaks to you) is a liar. It’s the voice of fear. The fact is, you may ask someone out and be rejected. You may apply for a job and not get it. You might pursue a dream and find out it’s ten million times harder than you thought it would be. None of that really matters. What matters is living with a voice inside your head that tells you you are not good enough. That you don’t measure up. That you can’t or you shouldn’t. That’s a voice that will kill your hopes and dreams before you even find the courage to pursue them. That’s a voice that will keep you down.

If you aren’t feeling good about yourself, it’s really important to figure out why. Whatever that why is for you, it’s a place where you still have some healing to do. Do you think you aren’t lovable for some reason? Or are you replaying old tapes? Did you get fired and let that crush your self-esteem? Did you grow up in an environment where you never measured up? Figure out the source of that, I can’t or I shouldn’t, the source of that belief that the person you like wouldn’t like you. The feeling that other people aren’t seeing you, getting you, or welcoming you into their mix. Then do the opposite of what we’re taught. Move toward the source of that pain and take a serious look at it. Hold it up to the light because it isn’t real. Maybe that person you’re afraid to approach would fall madly in love with you. Maybe you’d get that job. Maybe your dream would come to fruition.

Even if none of those things happened, your inner world, the place where you’re going to live every single day of your life would be a loving place to reside. A place where you believe in yourself and have compassion for yourself, because being vulnerable is a brave undertaking. Putting your heart out there in any direction involves risk, but not doing those things involves greater risk. It’s the risk that you could live your whole life and never give yourself the opportunity to fly. That would be the saddest thing. Failing is part of life. You get up, brush yourself off, and start again. Not trying is a prison. As much as any other collection of 37 trillion or so cells that have come together to form a human being, you are the only one of you there is, or ever will be. Take your particular 37 trillion cells, and live your heart out before it’s over.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

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

Where are You Rooted?

Yesterday my six year old son asked me if I knew about the “walking palm trees of the rain-forest.” He told me that these trees were able to “move their roots” if they saw a spot that looked better to them. I told him that was incredibly cool, and that I did not know about these trees. Of course, I had to go Google it, because palm trees walking around the rain-forest seems like something I’d have heard about somewhere along the way. So it turns out the Socratea exorrhiza, or, “Walking Palm” is native to tropical Central and South America, and it has stilt roots that allow it to grow in swampy areas of forest. Some people think their roots exist as an adaptation to flooding, and others believe the roots allow the palm to “walk away” if another tree falls on the seedling and knocks it over. If this happens, the palm produces new vertical stilt roots and rights itself, the original roots rotting away.

I think life asks us to do this very thing again and again; to start over, to respond to the ever-changing nature of things, to move our roots when we need to and right ourselves. But a lot of the time we resist. We cling to the dying roots that don’t sustain us or nurture us anymore, that cannot support our growth any longer. Sometimes we do this out of desperation. We love someone, or many “someones” and can’t bear the thought of hurting them. Or we’re afraid of all that is required to pick up and move toward the unknown. In relationships, it’s incredibly painful. The roots grow down directly from our hearts. But if you aren’t growing, you’re dying, and if you’re dying you can’t nurture anyone else because all your energy is going toward your withering and quiet destruction. Without living, healthy roots, you just won’t have the strength to rise up and reach the light and so life becomes very dark indeed.

I know so many people who keep feeding those dying roots, though. It’s all swampy and murky and nothing new can grow there, but still, they try to shore the thing up, to feed it whatever they can. Sometimes it’s old stories that have become rooted. They’re poisoning the tree, the branches are hanging low, the leaves have mostly fallen off, but the roots of blame, anguish, fear or sadness, of bitterness, shame or guilt keep the person rooted in the Forest of What Was. I spent a good decade in that forest, so I can tell you the main thing that grows there are weeds. The kind that climb up your trunk and strangle your branches and steal all the light and all the nutrients, until you are just this Tree of Blame with sour fruit. “I am this way because this happened, and then that happened, and then this other thing happened, and so now when you say you love me I don’t believe you because everybody leaves and everybody cheats and I’m just going to stay rooted here in the darkness.” Or something like that.

Fear will keep you paralyzed in that forest if you let it, but it’s such a shame because old stories are old. They don’t have to control your present or your future. They may have created some grooves in your trunk, but they don’t have to overtake your ability to produce the sweetest fruit you can imagine; the fruit of, “I Got the F&ck Out!!!” for example. That is some sweet fruit. You may feel stuck and powerless. You may even be rooted to those feelings; there may be some pay-off for you in staying stuck. Attachment to sympathy or attention, a reason not to do the brave and difficult thing so you can stick with what you know even if it doesn’t feel good, or an excuse to numb out are some possibilities. But I have to let you know, the pay-off of digging deep, to the very bottom of your soul, gathering up your courage and your stilt roots, and moving your a$$ to the Forest of Life is Freaking Amazing has a much greater pay-off. If a tree can do it, I have zero doubt you can do it, too.

Sending you a lot of love,

Ally Hamilton

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

Choose Hope.

choosehopeI watched some raw video from the Boston Marathon yesterday, instead of just reading about it, which is what I’d intended to do, and so I heard the awful screaming of people in shock and dismay. The shaking voice of the man taking the video and the way his breath was shallow, and my own heart-rate went up listening to him. We all sound different in that state. I learned that the one and only time I watched the birth video a girlfriend took during my labor with my son, which was scary and violent and full of moments I wasn’t sure we were going to make it through. All you can hear after the birth is me sobbing and asking again and again, “Is he okay?” in a voice I do not recognize as my own. But it’s the exact same voice I heard yesterday in someone’s video footage and it went straight through my heart. Panic, fear, despair and shock take such a toll on us and we really are all the same in our humanness and vulnerability.

When things like this happen and we look around at the state of the world in general, it’s easy to say, “It’s just too much. Everything is broken and violent,” and to feel hopeless about it all. I went to a screening of a powerful film I’ve seen three times, “Children of War” by filmmaker Bryan Single. He spent the better part of three years in Northern Uganda, filming the work of Jane Ekayu (you can check out her website, childrenofpeaceuganda.com) and other counselors working with children who were abducted from their homes and forced to become soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army. They targeted children 5-15 years old because they’re the most tender and the easiest to control. I can’t tell you what these children have been through. Some were forced to kill their own family members. But human beings have an incredible capacity to forgive and heal and people like Jane who care and take action make all the difference in the world.

I realize when we see violence like this it’s natural to want to crawl into a hole or distract ourselves. I saw people yesterday getting angry at those expressing sympathy and bringing up other places in the world where violence is a way of life. One is no more or less distressing than the other. I experienced some of that myself in December, when I wrote about Sandy Hook Elementary and someone said there’s no reason to weep if it doesn’t affect you directly. It’s all direct. Sometimes people don’t feel the impact of how awful something is until it hits close to home; there’s no reason to have contempt for someone who suddenly realizes the heartbreak of violence and destruction. Realizing is the thing, whenever and wherever it happens. What’s happening in Iraq directly affects us all. And what’s happening in the Congo. Do you want to know the truth? It doesn’t matter where it’s happening. Borders are meaningless and something we’ve made up. Skin color is meaningless. We are one people on one planet, and we are all connected. The root of almost all of our problems is that we’ve separated ourselves from each other. If one of us is suffering, we are all suffering.

The thing is not to give up. Not to decide it’s broken and too much, and what can one person possibly do, anyway? You can’t fix everything, that’s for sure. But you can do something. I mean, anything, really. Any way you can extend some love and some hope and some care, matters. It can be the smallest thing. You can hold a door open for a stranger, that matters. You can let someone merge while you’re driving, that matters, too. You can treat everyone you encounter with kindness. If you feel really inspired, you can pick one organization and volunteer. Give your time and your energy and your heart. A secret thing you might not know is that spending your energy trying to uplift someone else will make you feel incredible. Like your life has some meaning and that won’t just be a feeling you have, that will be the reality. We can heal and we can care about each other, and we can impact the way the world around us looks and feels. But hatred won’t get us there. “Us vs. Them” won’t get us there. Demonizing people who are severely troubled or mentally ill won’t get us there, either. Focusing on what’s different won’t do it. But do you have any idea how much is the same? We all love our children. We all breathe the same air. We all have dreams and hopes and fears and nights we cry ourselves to sleep. We could all use a hand reaching out in the darkness sometimes. And we could surely use a lot of people who don’t give up and numb out. I think we have a whole bunch of them on this page.

Sending love to all of you, and to anyone, anywhere, who is suffering,

Ally Hamilton

The Heart Cries Out with Truth. Answer It.

When-someone-shows-youI get lots of emails from people dealing with relationship issues and they often go something like, “I love my partner, and things would be amazing if he or she could just change some essential, defining personality attribute.” I mean, they don’t say it that way, but that’s the heart of it. There are few things in life more painful than falling in love with someone, offering up the most tender parts of yourself only to find you’re being rejected slowly for who you are – what once was endearing is now disappointing – or that you’ve been misunderstood on some profound level. That if you’d just change yourself, your partner would love you again. I see people bend over backwards, or squish themselves into the tiniest amount of space possible to endure. I’ve done that myself in past years, but I’d never do that today.  Love doesn’t require you to crush yourself and betray your spirit. That’s not loving someone and that’s not the experience of being loved, either.

This takes so many forms. People fall in love with someone they want to save (change). I’m going to love this person so much, they’ll heal and all these painful places within them that also cause me to suffer will go away. Or, this person has clearly told me they have trouble committing, but that’s just because they haven’t loved me before. Oh, yeah? I’d go get your crash pads out now. Sometimes a person gives to get– I’ll love this person so well, they’ll never leave me or hurt me. I’ll accept all kinds of poor treatment and keep showing up with love and eventually they’ll appreciate me and then I’ll have them. People are not possessions. Love is not controlling or manipulative. It’s not conditional or punishing. Love is accepting and when it’s happening well, it will open you and lead to the greater expansion of your heart and your partner’s.

I think a big part of the problem for people has to do with this desire to project. I have people write in about how they’ve made lists of all the attributes they’d like in a person and then they meet someone they’re attracted to and BAM! Miraculously, this person has all these qualities, down to their eye color and political leanings. Sometimes we want love so much, we simply see what we want to see. The best gift you can give someone is your curiosity and your full, kind attention, whether you’ve known them a few weeks or many years. Most people will tell you who they are if you give them the space to do that.

You really don’t want to be pushing important things under the rug, receiving the information that’s comfortable and editing out the stuff that’s confrontational, worrisome, or confusing. I think the key is to listen deeply and open to it all. You either love and accept people for all parts of themselves, the way you have to love yourself if you want to heal and be at peace, or you don’t, in which case you find the courage to gently release them. This is not to say we don’t all have our “stuff” and our places where we can grow. A great partnership is a foundation to move through those areas in a safe and loving space, to go deeper and become more vulnerable and still be accepted and cherished. That’s when you see a person blossom in the context of a relationship (If you haven’t blossomed before the relationship, it’s highly likely you’re going to go through some serious growing pains along the way, and you’ll either grow together or apart). But too many people fall in love with someone’s potential and that’s painful for both sides of the equation.

There are other areas this shows up as well. Parents who struggle to accept their children as they are, who have such a strong vision for their son’s life or daughter’s life, it’s hard to accept their path may look completely different. The heart cries out with truth. Part of loving means answering that call, and being in support of other people as they answer it.

You can’t change other people, and you can’t save them, either, but you can love them with your whole heart. Everyone deserves to be loved like that.

Wishing that for you, and for everyone,

Ally Hamilton

Don’t Give Up.

A few weeks ago, someone messaged me on the fan page and said he was going to end his life. I can’t really explain the panic I felt, especially because his message was a few hours old by the time I saw it. He shared some details of his life over the last few years and why he’d come to the conclusion that it just wasn’t worth it. He’d suffered some devastating losses, enough that it was understandable he felt hopeless and defeated. I wrote back immediately and gave him the Suicide Prevention Hotline number (800-273-8255), my number, and also contact information for three therapists I know and trust. I begged him to write back and let me know he’d received my message and also told him there have been times in my life when I’ve felt like giving up, too. Not for many, many years, but I certainly entertained those thoughts at one time in my life. When things feel so dark you really can’t think of a reason to lift your head off your pillow, the thought, “What’s the point of it all?” is natural and understandable.

Yesterday, someone wrote in a thread, “Why can’t we talk about the miraculous sometimes, too?” and then she wrote back and rescinded her question, saying that it “all leads back to joy.” But it’s a legitimate question and there are days when I just write from my heart and send out a hit of love. Or I hope I do. I write about the shadow emotions a lot because I feel in the spiritual community there’s so much focus on being positive and spreading the light. I think it’s alienating for many people. There is so much light. There’s a limitless well of love within each of us, but to uncover that well there’s usually some digging required. A lot of people feel alone in that digging, like there must be something wrong with them and sometimes they give up. Numb out. Run, deny, try to push it all down. Or they become bitter and think other people must have it easier. The truth is some people do have it easier. We don’t all go through the same experiences. There are some people who will suffer losses that are so knifing, so brutally painful you have to hope they’re going to be able to put one foot in front of the other, and that’s usually when some well-meaning positive person will come along and smugly assert that, “everything happens for a reason,” and forget that the foundation of a true spiritual practice is compassion. There’s nothing comforting in telling a person who is trying to remember how to breathe in and breathe out that their loss has happened for a reason, or that they should focus on all the good things in their life, or that one day they’ll understand why. Some things will never, ever be okay. Some things will never make sense. There are some lessons that will never elicit gratitude. Growth, yes. If you get through it. Deeper understanding, insight and compassion? Yes. Gratitude? No. Not for some things.

It’s my belief a spiritual practice ought to be there for you whether you’re moving through beautiful, joyful, miraculous times in your life, or you’re going through blinding pain that makes you want to give up. I don’t worry about those of you feeling gratitude. I love you, but I’m not worried. I do want to reach out to those people in darkness and say you’re not alone and offer a hand. A blog post. A yoga class, a hug. An email. Whatever I’ve got. Because I really think that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to love each other, support each other, and share and grow together and I think that is pretty miraculous. When I look at my life today, it’s hard to imagine I ever wondered what “the point of it all” was, because it’s very clear to me now. The point of it is to love your heart out. To connect. There’s an insane amount of joy in all that. I’ve been emailing with the man who was feeling desperate a few weeks ago. He’s talking to someone and getting support in many areas. Sometimes we need help. It’s not easy, this business of being human. But it is pretty amazing.

Sending you a ton of love,

Ally Hamilton

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

What’s Up, Monkey?

Sometimes life can be brutally painful. We lose someone we love beyond our ability to put it in words, way too soon. Loss like that is violent and shocking, even if it happens slowly. Or we have our hearts broken in a relationship, sometimes over and over again by the same person. If betrayal is in the mix, it’s even more painful. Or we lose a job we really loved or wanted. Or we simply can’t seem to get any traction going in any direction in life, with relationships or work, or even with how to be in this world. Maybe there’s an abusive background. A family of origin with addiction issues. A history of broken promises, emotional or physical violence. You get the picture.

Whatever you’re coming out of, you have a choice. You have the choice to ask for help if you need it. Healing is often confrontational and painful and lonely and confusing, and having someone there to hold your hand or offer an ear or a shoulder can really make all the difference. Someone who will kindly hold up a mirror for you, and make sure you’re examining your inner landscape clearly and thoroughly, because you can’t let go of those things that are blocking your ability to give and receive love without understanding them first and without allowing yourself to mourn and to grieve for what was, or what could have been. Your understanding is your path to liberation, your willingness to open to all of those emotions we’re taught to push down is the key. You actually want to pry the lid off and invite them all to come flooding in so you can swim in that stuff for awhile, and scream your heart out if you need to, and shed your tears, and exhaust yourself until there’s no denial and no fighting of reality left in you. There’s just facing it, as it is, and as it was, so you can open to how it could be. Your awareness and acceptance and compassion for yourself clear the path toward a new way of being.

Starting over is also lonely work. The old way doesn’t work, and the new way hasn’t become clear yet. Some of your closest family members and oldest friends may not like your new adventure. They may feel threatened and angry, like you’re rejecting them in an effort to take care of yourself, which really has to come first if you plan on being happy in this life. Socrates has a beautiful quote, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

Even if you’ve been hurt and disappointed, neglected or abused, abandoned or ignored, you have the choice to live in fear, hardened and bitter and full of rage and blame, or to do the brave thing. To let go of the old handlebar you’ve been hanging off for far too long. The one that burns your hands with its heat and its pain and its why and its unfairness, and to reach out for love. To make yourself vulnerable in that space between the one and the other. To use all the strength and hope and courage you’ve got to propel yourself forward and reach out with your open hand and your open heart for that bar in front of you that’s full of promise and something new. Something different. To open to the possibility that you might do all that and slip right off the bar and land on your face and have to get back up again and start over. But that if you keep reaching and you keep trying, eventually the way will become clear. And then my dear monkey, the bars become rather fun.

Wishing you the courage to let go and reach out, and sending love, as always,

Ally Hamilton

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

Marriage, Divorce, and Little People

Yesterday I posted about lies, deceit and betrayal and as I expected, it stirred up a lot of feeling in people. Today’s post is focused on marriage, divorce, and children because I got a flood of emails from people related to this topic. It seems many people are in relationships that aren’t growing anymore. We could talk about that quite a lot. How is it that our divorce rate is so high? It’s over half of all marriages that fail now and I believe a large part of it is cultural. We’re taught to keep looking for bigger, better, newer, shinier. So much of what we value is external. A lot of the time, we aren’t looking at the gifts right in front of us.

We’re living in a time when everyone is busybusybusy, racing from one place to another and then it’s Monday again. And again and again and again, and wow. A whole year just went by. Three, five, wait. How old am I? This year I’ll take that vacation. Hmm, maybe next year. This weekend I’ll hang out with my family. Oh, wait, I can’t, I have a deadline. We also have a broken system where you have to work your a$$ off to be able to afford health insurance for your family and to keep food in the fridge and a roof over everyone’s heads. It’s not like I don’t get that, but still. A walk after dinner. A dinner without devices on the table. A story before bedtime. Something. A card for your spouse for no reason once in awhile. Date night. A touch on the arm on your way out the door and a moment to really see each other, remember each other. Or it’s going to die.

I dated a guy who was a runner once. Every morning he’d jump out of bed and go for a run. Then he’d come back and jump in the shower and race out the door with barely a goodbye over his shoulder. He’d race the entire day until he collapsed in bed at night. He raced through everything. I’ll leave it at that, but I mean everything. The only time he slowed down is when he’d travel for work. Then he’d call me and want to talk because he’d be lonely in some far-off place. You can’t race through life and prioritize your to-do list and come home and zone out in front of the television and never give the people in your life your full attention and expect a relationship to keep growing. You have to water it. You can’t have the attention span of a flea and think that’s going to cut it. If you don’t see and appreciate what you have, you’re probably going to lose it.

Weddings are easy, marriages are not. You have to choose to marry the person every day. To see them and hear them and cherish them the way other people do, people who are not taking them for granted and who don’t assume they know all there is to know. It’s funny, I’m lucky enough to have some friends I’ve known over twenty years. I don’t ever think I know all there is to know. Yesterday, I was supposed to talk to a girlfriend I’ve known since I was twelve years old and we couldn’t make it happen with her kids, my kids and the time difference. But when we do talk, it’s not going to be static on the line because things have happened since we spoke last week. She’s not the same today as she was seven days ago when we talked about everything, and neither is anyone else. People felt confronted yesterday by what I wrote. People who may be engaging in email flirtations or more. You think I don’t understand? I fully understand, believe me. It’s painful to live in a house with someone who doesn’t see you anymore. I’ve been there more than once. More than twice.

What do you do? You go to the person you built a life with, even if the walls are starting to crumble and you say four words: I am in pain. And with as much kindness as you can, you tell them exactly where you’re at, even if you’re petrified, even if you have children, even if you would rather suffer yourself than bring pain to your family. Because I promise you, if you are in so much pain that you’re resorting to desperate acts with other people, your family is already feeling that. If you have children, on some level they know. They may not understand what they’re feeling, but they are feeling it. They’re on the ship with you. My parents got divorced when I was four and I remember all of it. If the space between you and your spouse is charged or dead or full of anger or lies or heartbreak or utter disappointment, realize that’s the space your children are growing in. Children have no defenses, they aren’t hardened, they feel it all. Maybe your spouse will storm out. Maybe they’ll hold your hand and cry with you, and it’s possible you’ll touch on something ancient between you that hasn’t been stirred in a long time. At least you’ll be communicating honestly.

If you feel like you can’t have the conversation without support, ask to go to couples’ counseling. I’d highly, highly recommend that in any case. If you have children, I think it’s a must, even if you end up talking about how you’re going to end things, but if you can save it, save it. Try with everything you’ve got. Read the book, “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 year Landmark Study”. We want to say that children are resilient and what matters most is that they have two happy parents. That’s true, but I can tell you honestly the best thing for your kids is keeping the family together if there’s any way possible to do that and be happy. I say that as someone who wasn’t able to do that.

Sometimes the best thing for everyone is for mom and dad to live in two different places. I just think people go a little too far with this kids just need mom and dad to be happy. I hear about schedules that are convenient for divorced parents, but so insane for the kids. Here one night, there the other, back and forth so much it would make anyone’s head spin. I grew up three nights here, four nights there, and even that was really hard. There’s a line. If you have to split because staying in your marriage requires the crushing of your spirit and your children’s too, then yes, you need to end it, but put the kids first. If you have a co-parent who won’t do that, that is so, so hard, but then your job is to rise to that occasion the best you can and be a rock for your children. A safe space (and to get support with that if you need it). Being a single parent is not at all easy. Depending on the other parent, it can be very, very painful, or it can be manageable, but as with everything in life, you cannot give your power away to someone else, or make everything someone else’s fault. Your ex is your ex for a reason. If there’s no support, understanding, respect or consideration coming from them, that is rough, but then your job is to figure out how you’re going to deal with that with grace and strength. You’re going to have to figure out who and what you can lean on to get through so your children do not pay the price, or pay as little as possible.

There are three kinds of adults I meet. Those whose parents got divorced, those who wish their parents had gotten divorced, and those lucky people who grew up with two parents who were able to pull it off. You know what? Everything you go through will open you and teach you something if you let it. As much as we may think we do, or we may want to, we never know what someone else’s path is supposed to look like, even our own children’s. Yes, your job is to put them first. Always. And to protect them as much as possible, and to nurture them and hold them and share with them anything and everything you’ve got. Your job is also to teach them what it looks like to be a happy, kind person. Isn’t that what we all really want for our children? We want them to be happy, right? To live life with their hearts open. To be able to recognize what’s true for them, and to live guided by their own inner yes. How will they be able to do that if you don’t show them what it looks like? It’s not impossible, but they’ll have to work a lot harder to figure it out without an example.

No matter what happens or how you feel, your ex will always be your child’s other parent, the other most important person in their world. Do you know people who don’t have good relationships with their moms or their dads? It’s a heartache that never goes away, and it wreaks havoc on all their interpersonal relationships unless they work on it a lot. You don’t want that for your children. (If we’re talking about a situation where there’s abuse and you are dealing with concerns about your child’s physical and emotional well-being, then we are in a different territory altogether, and then your job is to do everything you can to protect your child). Once in a parking lot I saw this little girl, probably about three years old, crying in her stroller and saying that she missed her daddy. Her mom looked really stressed out and yelled at her, “It’s a mommy day, you’ll see your dad tomorrow!!!” I couldn’t help it. I went over to her and said, “She just misses her dad, it’s totally normal. She loves you. Why don’t you take a time out, I’ll stay right here with her for a few minutes.” And her mom started crying and sat down in the drivers’ seat of her car, and I squatted down right outside the door and had the most amazing conversation with that little person. When her mom came out of her car she handed her cellphone to her daughter so she could talk to her dad.

The best thing you can do for your children is support a healthy, nurturing relationship with their other parent, even if their other parent is a rat-bastard, no-good @#$SB(&^$%. Okay? I understand that might be your reality, but even then. Your children will figure that out for themselves if that’s the case, your job is to help them get the best out of their other parent while they’re little. To feel loved and supported by that person, even if s/he has a limited capacity to love anyone. Also try to remember you have your experience with your ex, and your children will have theirs. Putting your kids in the position where they feel they have to choose sides is brutal for them and not loving. If you can work out a way to be friends with your ex, that is so ideal, but I know that’s not always possible.

What is possible is that you never, ever say a negative word about your ex to your child. Ever. I know exes who launch an intentional campaign to turn their children against their other parent, and I want to say if that is something you are doing, I can absolutely guarantee you will pay for it dearly at some point. It may not happen until your children are eighteen, nineteen, twenty, but as soon as they’re old enough to look back and think about what was said and done and by whom, you will pay for it. That is not putting your child’s best interests at heart, that is allowing your rage, bitterness and disappointment to poison you and to bleed into your children. They will never thank you for that, and if you cost them their relationship with their other parent and steal from them years they could have had love and support that were denied to them because of you, that is going to have a very damaging effect on your relationship with them. Right as you enter your golden years, right at the time when you hope those relationships will blossom and you and your grown children can develop a deeper bond based on a greater, more mature understanding of what it means to be a human being on planet earth, right then…that is when they’re going to understand what you took from them, and right then is when you will pay. Do not let that happen to you or to them. If you are enraged, talk to a therapist, your best friend, your mother or anyone else who can lend a sympathetic ear, but do it when your children are not within earshot. And do your best in the face of everything to work it out so that your children have as much stability as humanly possible.

Sending you love, as I always am.

Ally Hamilton

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

If It’s Making You Miserable, That’s a “No”

relationshipstatusYesterday I got a phone call from one of my close girlfriends in New York. She’s divorced with a young daughter and recently re-entered the dating scene. It’s been six years since she’s dated and times have changed. I’ve experienced some of this myself over the last year, as those of you who follow the blog may recall. There’s all this online dating, okcupid and match and let’s hook up (I may have made that last one up), and texting and tweeting and instagram and seriously, isn’t dating complicated enough without having to distill your thoughts into 140 characters or update your relationship status so everyone knows you’re getting some? Or you were and now you’re not? Or you may be but aren’t sure?

Anyway, she called me because she went on a date with this guy and as far as she could tell it was a home run. They went out to eat and talked for hours, walked through SoHo holding hands and ended the night with a hot make-out session on her couch. He talked about how she’d have to meet different friends of his, and things they’d do together this summer. She felt totally confident they’d be going out again. He texted her when he got home and said he hoped she had sweet dreams and knew he would be. Said he’d call her the next day to make a plan, and that he couldn’t wait to see her again. And then, crickets. It’s been almost two weeks since their date and no contact from the dude. Of course it’s especially crushing because it was her first foray out of the gate, and because she sent him an email a week later “checking in” and heard nothing back. So she wanted to replay the whole night with me to see if she was missing anything because she feels rejected and her feelings are hurt. I got the whole play-by-play in such minute detail, it was as though I was there on the date. She wondered if he’d seen the picture of her ex that she hadn’t put away yet. If it scared the guy off that her ex still works for her dad. If maybe he thought she was conflicted and that she might reunite with her daughter’s father. If she had talked too much about the demise of her marriage even though he expressly asked, and had shared the story of his own divorce. If she had moved too fast by making out with him for so long, or not fast enough because she sent him home without letting him scramble her eggs. You get the drift.

I listened to all of this and when she was done I said I thought it had nothing to do with her. I know her. She’s funny and smart and kind and a total head-turner. She’s confident and sexy, and there’s just no way she’s not hearing from this guy because there’s anything lacking in her. I said all of that, of course, but also just listened because it doesn’t matter if I know all that, it only really matters if she does. I don’t know what’s going on with the guy. Maybe there’s someone else in the picture. Maybe he’s great at first dates. Maybe he got scared. Maybe he likes head games. Who knows? But she’s suffering and watching him update his statuses with pithy remarks and tweet about basketball games and post pictures with friends out to lunch. Of course I told her I thought she should stop “following” him everywhere and get back to the business of being awesome.

It’s incredibly hard to walk away from situations we don’t understand. Especially when it seems that a real connection happened, but we’re not always going to get answers. Some things will be left undone, unsaid, unknown. It won’t all be wrapped up in neat little packages of digestible information. Some people are in incredible pain, in lonely desperation with no idea how to move forward. Some people make a mess of things because that’s where they happen to be when you cross paths with them. Try not to expend too much energy in an effort to figure it all out. Just trust that it won’t be a mystery when it’s right. You won’t be wondering and suffering and having crazy conversations with your friends dissecting every sentence you uttered, searching for the mistake. The hole inside you you must have exposed. The dumb thing you said, or the fact that you snorted when you laughed. You won’t second-guess yourself. When it’s right, you’ll just be happy. (Assuming you were happy already.) Tired, but happy.

Wishing that for you, and so much more,

Ally Hamilton

Throwing Pans is Not Your Only Option

Last night in class I ended up with a roomful of people who had clearly been doing yoga for a long time. When we got to the first Warrior I, I said, “You all look like you’ve done this pose a million times, but you’ve never done it before in this moment. Don’t take it for granted, because that’s how people end up divorced.” Everyone laughed, but I was serious. (Not that I minded the laughter one bit). It’s so easy to think, “I know this person. I have their number down,” and stop paying attention. Stop learning and listening and being open to the evolution of the person next to you on your path. As if they’re frozen in time. As if there hasn’t been any growth or change since they said, “I do.”

Yesterday I received an email from a sweetheart of a guy. I asked if I could share his story anonymously, because I get emails like this all the time. He said he’s in love with this woman, but he’s not going to pursue it because his parents got divorced and he just doesn’t want to go down that road. He said he knows he’ll never find anyone as perfectly suited to him, that they have an amazing time together. There’s laughter and love and affection and intellectual compatibility, but he knows how it will end. I asked him how he knew. He said he just knew. That’s just fear, and I so get that it can be paralyzing. We only have the frame of reference we have, and our experiences shape us and inform the way we think about the world, romantic partners, friendships, and “our place in the family of things,” as Mary Oliver says.

Your past does not have to own you and neither does your pain. Your pain is running the show if you let go of someone you adore because you’re too afraid that someday you’ll be throwing a pan at her head the way your dad did at your mom while you watched in the grip of fear and powerlessness and rage. You do not have to live your life as that scared kid and throwing pans is not your only option. (Whatever “throwing pans” may be for you). You are not the same person you were last year, and neither am I, and neither is anyone you’re going to encounter today. We are always in process, everything is process. You respond and you grow, or you react and you suffer. A reaction comes out of your past. It happens when you feel triggered and your heart starts racing, your breath is shallow, and the whole scene, even the air between you and the other person, is charged. We get triggered when a current situation brings up a painful past experience. When someone says something or does something that’s the equivalent of stabbing a searing knife into the most tender place we’ve got. If it isn’t healed, it owns your a$$.

It’s easy to underestimate our capacity to grow and change and embrace new ways of thinking and being, but we are all capable of those feats. We’re built for them, because everything is in a state of flux, it’s the nature of all living things, of life itself. You are not your mother or your father or your wounds. You are not your thoughts, either. “You are the sky, everything else, it’s just the weather,” as Pema Chodron says. If you’re willing to walk right into the center of your fear and have a seat and open your hands and open your eyes and open your heart, you will find that it won’t kill you. It will hurt. It will be wildly uncomfortable and confrontational and if you allow it to, it will open you and soften you so you’re ready to give and receive love. It’s not easy, but it’s a lot easier than watching someone you cherish walk out the door because you did not believe in your own ability to forge a new path for yourself. To use your past experiences to inspire you to move in a different direction.

You are capable of incredible love. It’s the very essence of your energy in my opinion. It’s the real “charge” in all of us. You may have static in the way of fear and abuse and neglect and heartbreak and disappointment and despair and rage and bitterness blocking your channel, but that stuff is your path to freedom if you explore it. You can’t get to the love if you’re not willing to examine the pain. You’ll never outrun the pain and you can’t numb out enough to deny it. Or you can, but that actually will kill you. It will kill your spirit and your yes and your ability to continually uncover your gifts and share them. It may even kill you in a literal sense if you try numbing out to the degree that’s required if you really don’t want to feel the reality that you’re owned by your fear. Move into your fear so that eventually you can wrap your arms around the people you love without entertaining the idea of pans for even an instant.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

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

The Person You Decide to Be

I’ve had two weddings, but only one marriage. My first wedding was to a man who kept the antique mirror I (painstakingly) had restored when I was nineteen years old, the one that belonged to my grandma whom I adored and lost long before I met him, and who also kept the vintage diamond necklace that belonged to my great-aunt, which I’ll never be able to pass along to my daughter. I call him Mirror Guy. I didn’t love him and I can’t tell you what I was doing with him because it feels like another lifetime and because I was in a fog fueled by outrageously painful migraines, percocet and a stubborn desire to cling to stories that didn’t serve me, to blame my parents and my childhood for my brokenness, and a general sense that I had no clue what I was doing here. I was coming off of some of the darkest times of my life and I was very young and totally lost. I’d been in that damaging victim mentality for too many years, blaming other people for my poor choices and behavior, numbing out, denying, running. I wasn’t an awful person or anything, I’ve always been kind, I was just a bit of a mess.

You know the syndrome, right? I am this way because this happened, and then that happened, and then this other thing happened, so when you leave the room, I think you’re leaving for good and that’s why I’m freaking out. As if that makes sense. This thing that should have happened did not, so I have fear that no one will love me and nothing good will happen, so I’m just going to sleepwalk, okay? Because I don’t know how to do the ‘awake, I’m-going-to-take-responsibility-for-the-way-my-life-unfolds-thing yet, so if you want to marry me, sure. Sounds good.’ Or something like that.

Of course I thought I loved him or I wouldn’t have worn the Cinderella tulle dress and gotten myself to the beach club on time. But you can’t love if you’re sleeping. You can stick your arms out in the darkness and hope you run into something good, but you probably won’t. If you’re in darkness, you’re most likely going to fall in a ditch and break something, like your heart or your ability to keep sleeping. Something will give, that’s for sure. Nor can you see that the person you’re about to marry is incapable of telling the truth in any form about anything or of being honorable or kind, or of loving you in any capacity at all. I should have known because he told me he was separated when we started dating, but actually he wasn’t and it took two years to sort it out. Somehow I became fixated on that and never realized I didn’t love him and it would have been just fine if he’d stayed married to that other woman, thanks very much. I should have known because my therapist at the time asked me what we did together that was fun, or what it was that I liked about being with him and I literally could not think of a single thing. I should have known because too many of the things he said to me did not make sense and often came back to bite him in the arse later. It’s not like there weren’t signs. I begged for signs. Do you realize if you’re asking for signs that’s a sign? I didn’t.

I have to share about the signs because it’s comical. I’m going to the store to try on wedding dresses with my mom weeks before the wedding and she has to wait in the car because I’m throwing up. I’m throwing up. Nauseated at the thought of buying a dress to marry the man who turned out to be Mirror Guy. I can’t get the song, “You Don’t Know Me” out of my head for weeks. The morning of the wedding it is sunny and gorgeous and I think, “At least that’s good,” because we are getting married on a deck overlooking the water in front of 250 people, most of whom I’ve never met. At 4pm the sky turns black. I’m not exaggerating. Black, and then the sky opens and there’s rain like I have never experienced in my life, not before, not since, not anywhere, even in the jungle of Costa Rica. Torrential rain so thick it sounded like someone was an inch over the roof of the minivan with a thousand power-hoses. Giant frogs dropping from the sky would not have surprised me. Oh, did you catch the part about a minivan? My wedding party left in the limo I was supposed to be in because the makeup artist wanted to do me last so my makeup was fresh, but she ran so late they had to take off, so I went to the beach club in a minivan with my parents and my little brother and his best friend.

More signs: Because there was a weather alert with a red stripe across the bottom of every television telling everyone to get home and stay indoors, the traffic on the highway from the hotel to the beach club was nuts. Like a parking lot, people racing out of the city to make it to their homes. This is in New York, mind you, where this kind of weather simply does not happen. So my step-dad drove on the shoulder of the highway for six miles. So pretty much, on my way to getting married to the very wrongest person, hundreds of people gave me the finger. How many signs do you need before you turn the minivan around? That’s like a punchline, isn’t it?

When I got to the beach club my mom and I raced to the bridal room, and my best friend and bridesmaids shoved me into my dress and someone handed me a glass of champagne because I said I thought I might pass out, and of course champagne is the answer when you feel faint and are about to make one of the worst decisions of your life. So I went down the aisle like a wind-up doll, done up like a princess, vacant eyes. Worse than that. Deer-in-the-headlight eyes. As if I hadn’t said yes to all of it. As if it were just happening to me. When the justice of the peace announced we were man and wife, there was a crack of thunder and lightning so loud you can hear it on the wedding video and everyone laughed nervously and I thought,  “Well. You can’t ask for more signs than that.”

I say he didn’t love me and I know I didn’t love him, even though I believed I did and I believed he did in my sleepwalking state. But he didn’t want a wife, he wanted a mother. Someone to make dinner and read his screenplays and rewrite all the dialogue because people don’t speak like that. Who speaks like that?

More signs:

Him: Hey, why don’t you leave your dog at the kennel this weekend, because actually, I don’t like dogs.

Him: I need to go shoot this commercial, so drop everything and come, okay? Even though it’s in Canada and you’d rather stay home since I’ll be shooting all day and sitting around a set isn’t all that fun, and I don’t want you off exploring by yourself because you’re too young to be off on your own like that in a foreign country.

Me: Um. Canada? I think I can get around because I speak English.

More signs: It was never consummated. I’m not saying we hadn’t had sex before the wedding. I’m saying there wasn’t any after, and there wasn’t much before because he preferred porn to an actual human. But I didn’t know that then, so I was busy thinking there must be something wrong with me and feeling rejected all the time. Anyway, I had the thing annulled. I should say, I woke up several weeks after this wedding and had it annulled. And Mirror Guy is actually the perfect name, because that’s what happened. I looked in the mirror and thought, How? How did I land myself in this mess? How did I not stop, at any of those burning red flags and turn myself around?

Maybe it was compounded by the fact that the much older guy I dated had come before Mirror Guy and by this point I was just wrecked, but I got the message. I got it hard and ugly and in the face. There was no one to blame but myself, because my mom didn’t like Mirror Guy and said as much, and my dad and step-dad didn’t think much of him, either. All my fingers pointed back at myself and I thought, I’d really better turn this sh&t around, now, or my life is going to be bleak and dark and very painful. No light. I’d been doing yoga for a couple of years at this point and that’s the light I used to find my way out of a nightmare of my own making, without the mirror or necklace, but you know what? Such a small price to pay. Because in the years after that I started planting the seeds that sprouted into the life I have today. I look at my life now and I’m blown away. Two amazing, healthy, happy kids. A man who is everything I ever could have hoped for and so, so much more. Friends who know how to show up, a few of whom have been there through everything with me. A community of yogis locally and around the globe because the internet is pretty amazing. And all of you.

You get to decide who you’re going to be, you really do. I’m not saying everyone has equal opportunities or that the playing field is level. I’m saying you have the power to decide how you’re going to do your life, and what you decide makes all the difference in the world. You get to decide what to dwell on, what to emphasize, what to cling to. You get to decide whether to forgive other people and forgive yourself and move forward. You get to decide whether the past is going to determine your future, or be something you grow from. You get to decide whether you’re going to blame and moan or get busy working. I hope you decide to be your best self. To own your story. To refuse to let your past dictate your future. To get your hands filthy with your pain so it doesn’t control your life, because there’s no need for that. Your life can be so beautiful. Even with heartache and tragedy, there’s still so much beauty to be found if you open to it. Wishing that for you, if it hasn’t happened already.

Sending a ton of love,

Ally Hamilton

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

Your Capacity for Change

Endings are hard, especially endings between people. I’ve never had an easy time with them; I must have missed the day when they taught “clean break.” Whether it’s a relationship, a job, or a way of being that needs to come to an end, loss is not easy. Soul-searching is important if you’re thinking about making big changes especially when other people will be affected, but there are certain times it’s just clear that change is coming and needed. A friendship is not what you thought it was, your boss is abusive, your landlord goes through your underwear drawer when you aren’t home — time for a change! Everything living grows, blossoms, peaks, and dies and something else is birthed. Resisting that reality is futile, you may as well head to the ocean and try to hold back the waves. This doesn’t mean all relationships die, it means we must be willing to shift and grow together and also accept that sometimes we’ll grow apart.

Growing up I had a friend I adored, I’ll call her Mary. We met in kindergarten, and were in school together all the way through our junior year of high school, mostly because I would not hear of going to any school where she wouldn’t be. I was at her house so many afternoons and weekends, her mom walked around in her underwear in front of me like I was one of her own. Before the start of third grade, my beloved best friend told me she didn’t want one best friend anymore. Now that we were almost eight she planned on having lots of friends. I went home and got in bed and cried my eyes out for hours. At some point my mom called Mary and asked what had happened and told her I was inconsolable. Mary said I misunderstood, which I wanted to believe but knew was just a thing she was saying to my mom to not be in trouble. I was sick to my stomach the first day of school, but Mary sat next to me and we played at recess, and I went to her house after school like always. It went on that way, but she did start spending time with another girl who wasn’t very nice to me, although we are now in contact and Mary and I aren’t. Life is so funny, and can you believe this stuff starts so early? This one likes me, but this one doesn’t. I love her, but she loves someone else.

When she was in preschool, my daughter announced one night that she didn’t want to go to school when a certain three year old boy was there because he never wanted to play with her. I asked her how she felt when he didn’t want to play and she said it hurt her feelings. I told her I remembered feeling that way when I was little and that grown-ups feel that way sometimes, too. I told her it did hurt, but if he didn’t realize how totally great it was to hang out with her, he was just missing out on all the fun he could be having and that was sad for him. I told her to play with the kids who love to play with her. Problem solved for a three year old, but this sh&t never ends. I have a bursting inbox of emails to prove it.

Depending on your personality, your life experiences and the context, dealing with change and loss can be very challenging. The end of a job you’ve had for years, even if it isn’t inspiring you and hasn’t been for far too long, is still a loss. It’s a loss of your comfort zone, of the familiar. If it’s imposed from the outside, of course it can also involve the loss of security, income, and if you have it wrapped up together with your identity, self-esteem. Even if you quit, if you’re in the driver’s seat, if you’ve decided it’s time to go, it’s still the loss of something old and the beginning of something new. The end of a relationship that isn’t growing anymore is still the loss of what was, what had been. The end of self-destructive patterns that are causing your suffering is still the loss of the familiar coping mechanisms and ways of denying. Now what?

Life is so much about transitions. If everything is in a state of flux, how do you open to the changing reality? Most of what stops us from embracing change is fear. We all want to be able to count on something. This is my house. Out on my lawn is my tree (it’s not your tree). These are my shoes. This is what I do on Mondays. Here’s where I put my mat in my yoga class. This is my partner. I know this person. (Do you know them, or are you assuming you know everything there is to know? Because your partner is changing just like you, growing, opening, thinking about things in different ways, evolving as life brings new situations and events, some wanted, others not.) The only thing you can really count on is that everything is changing all the time and that fighting that truth will cause you to suffer. Open to it all, invite it all in. Let it wash over you. Take action when you need to. Don’t expect to blossom if you’ve planted yourself in soil that has been stripped of all its nutrients, that hasn’t been watered for far too long. Nothing inspiring will grow out of that. Mourn when you need to. Be enraged, lonely or confused. Let your heart break. That way you can also open to all the gifts. All the wonder and joy and surprise and love. All the beauty and growth and expansion of your heart. Accept the endings so you can also embrace the beginnings. Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

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

Run Like Hell

I’m going to state some things that may seem totally obvious when you read them in black and white, but which I think we tend to forget in our tender hearts: Unkind, hardened people are not suddenly going to be soft. People with rage are going to behave in violent ways. If someone is envious of you, they are not going to have your back. Self-absorbed people will not suddenly think of you and how you might feel in any given situation. There are people who are so damaged, they actually want to drive the thorn in your side intentionally. Hurt people hurt people as the saying goes. People who behave in any of these ways are in pain themselves and are living in a certain kind of prison. All kinds of abuse and trauma can lead to imprisonment like this. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.” The sad fact is, help is only available to those who decide to help themselves. You can’t do it for someone else. You can’t save anyone but yourself.

Of course you can’t define a human being in a word, we are all complex beings and only to the degree that we examine our pain and our motivations will we be accountable for our actions and the kind of energy we’re spreading. The way we’re being in the world. A person coming from an angry place most of the time may be able to pull it together to do some great stuff on those days they’re able to rise above. What I’m talking about here is a baseline way of being. If someone is commonly thoughtless or cruel. If someone consistently behaves in ways that are hurtful. If someone is generally so wrapped up in their own experience it doesn’t even occur to them to think about the impact of their actions. People who hurt us the most are usually also suffering the most. You can have compassion for them and you can practice forgiveness, but you really don’t want to put yourself in their path if you can help it; you don’t want to keep paying the tab for someone else’s cruel or thoughtless acts. If a person stabs you in the back, don’t expect them to turn around and call an ambulance for you. We can look at any of this stuff and say it’s not personal, right? A scorpion will sting you because that’s the nature of a scorpion. You can also open your heart and your mind to the idea that a person can change and grow. Where they are now is not necessarily where they’re always going to be. If someone hurts you, it’s the most liberating thing to wish them well, but you do that from a safe distance. The part that is personal is how you choose to respond. You don’t stick around to see if they want to push the knife in more deeply.

I say this to you because if you’re kind and open and trusting, if you want to hope for the best from people, you may need to look at whether you’re sacrificing your own well-being in the process of loving someone who is not able or willing to love you well, or participating in a set of circumstances that insults your soul. Your work is to heal your own heart so you can open to all the love within you, and give it away freely. If you keep engaging with people who crush your heart thinking tomorrow might be the day they realize what they’re doing, that’s kind of like “expecting a bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian,” as Dennis Wholey says. Forgive if you can, for your own sake, so you’re not held hostage or made sick in your soul by the actions of someone else, but set up your boundaries and be prepared to defend them, because some people just won’t get it. Not in the time-frame you’d like, and maybe never. If it’s a person you must have in your life, then you figure out what it is you need to maneuver as safely as possible through painful terrain. You set up the best possible circumstances you can to take care of yourself. If it’s not a person you need to be dealing with then run like hell, my dear.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

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

Be the Architect of Your Own Joy

If a person is crazy about you, you’re going to know, it’s not going to be a mystery. I get emails from people every day who ask about various situations they’re in. This guy barely calls. This girl doesn’t make a lot of time for the relationship. This person is probably seeing other people. This one is separated or divorced, but still hanging on to their ex. This one used to like me, but I didn’t like her and now I do and she doesn’t. I like this woman but she likes other women. I have a huge crush on this guy but he’s gay. Or married to my sister. Or dating my best friend. I like this woman but she has a boyfriend, but really she’s in love with me she just can’t hurt the other guy’s feelings. We used to go out and now we’re both dating other people, but last week we fell into bed and now it’s a mess. I like this girl but my family doesn’t. I like this guy but I’m too scared to tell him. I went out with this guy and it was amazing, but I never heard from him so now I stalk him, but just a little. Mostly on Facebook. Okay, sometimes I sit across the street from his house. He may have gotten a restraining order. But I’m pretty sure he’s gonna come around.

I’ve loved people who were distant, inattentive, or frequently mean. I’ve liked people who sent very mixed messages. I’ve liked people who didn’t call. I stopped doing all that a long time ago. It’s a good thing to stop doing. Please take the mystery out of this for yourself. If a person wants to be with you, they will find a way.

The real, painful issue to examine is why you’re giving so much of your precious time and energy to anyone who isn’t running toward you with everything they’ve got. Perhaps you’ve forgotten you’re made up of 37 trillion or so cells that have never come together in exactly the same way to be YOU at any time in the past, nor will they again at any time in the future. There are seven billion people on our planet, and only ONE, particular, amazing you. So why would you second-guess your value? If you undervalue yourself and accept treatment that really isn’t what you deserve, you, my friend, are the architect of your own suffering. The story to look at is never what the other person is doing; the story to examine is always the story of your participation. Participate in joy, freedom, recognition and celebration. In understanding and appreciation, and oh, wow, I’d almost given up hope I’d find someone like you. Choose love. You’re too incredible to wait around on stand-by for a boat that couldn’t dock where you are, anyway. Get out of the airport and head for the ocean.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

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