Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life

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A few days ago I came across “5 Different Questions to Ask in the First Week of the New Year” and decided to answer the questions suggested in the article.  It was a truly helpful exercise in prompting me to clarify my intentions for the coming year and so I thought I’d share them as well as my answers, hoping you might try them yourself.

1. What do you most want to feel this year?

I want to feel as much awe as possible.  The kind of awe that I felt yesterday standing on the shore at Christmas Cove.  The kind of awe I felt the day before yesterday gazing out over the Atlantic at Land’s End perched at the head of Bailey Island.  And the kind that I felt the day before that standing on the rocks with my husband, Kevin, absorbing the warm winter sun and mesmerized by the power of the surf thundering against ancient stone at what I’ve started calling ‘the land before time.’

When I feel awe, astonishment, wonder, and reverence flow through me like a sweet and lazy river. When I feel awe, my soul reaches out, freed in some mysterious way from the confines of my body, released with each exhale to flow freely towards the inexpressible; the beautiful; the sacred.

Awe stretches me far beyond any boundary I have known and dances inside of me – my muse, my teacher, my birthright.

2. Who do you choose to love unconditionally this year?  

I choose to love my father without conditions this year.  I choose to love him even when he repeats himself for the 5^th time in fifteen minutes.  I choose to love him when he makes yet another impossible and unreasonable demand.  I choose to love him when old resentments rise from those deep and dark places tucked untidily away within me.  I choose to love him (and forgive myself) when I imagine the day that I am finally free.

I choose to love the man who carried me on his shoulders, who danced with me perched upon his feet, and who kneeled by my bed each evening with hands folded reverently on my bedspread as we said our prayers. I choose to love him with as much gentleness, and patience, and gratitude as I can muster. I choose to love him with a wiser heart this year.

3. How will you get back on track when life gets hard?

When life gets hard, I will remind myself that my discomfort will pass, just as joy passes, seasons change,  and each and every night gives way to daylight.  I will breathe into my pain and seek to learn from it when I’m eventually able and ready to.

I will keep working to let go as quickly as possible of the inevitable inconveniences, frustrations, and disappointments that arrive, and stop giving them the power that they would never have acquired without my help.  I will remind myself that the stories that I tell myself about my experiences shape them (and me) in significant ways, and so I want to commit to telling myself the best stories I can.

4. Who is someone you could help achieve their most important resolution?

The person who I can help to achieve his or her most important resolution is whomever I happen to be with at the moment.   If I don’t distract or burden myself with the responsibility for someone else’s dreams or aspirations, but commit instead to being a loving support person and witness whenever possible, then I will ultimately have more energy for myself and others.

5. What word can you pick as the quality you most want to focus on this year?

I want to experience much more gratitude this year than I’ve managed in the past.   I want to hold (if only for a moment) as many blessings that come my way as I can in the palm of my hands, place them close to my heart, and thank them.  Knowing that as I appreciate them – they, in turn, will appreciate.

I want to move through this life with reverence for all the good (both great and small) that is; that might never be again; that might, in fact, without some sweet miracle, never have been; and for that which has always been.   Let me drink in all that blesses and graces my ordinary/extraordinary days.  Let me utter over and over again the words “yes” and “wow” and “I love you” and thank you.”

And now, it is your turn, how will you answer these five questions?

Many Blessings,

Tammie Byram Fowles