We are all spiritual beings having the human experience of being alive.
But what does it actually mean to be alive?
Aliveness is a liberated and liberating experience. It is the freedom to feel all the feels - happy, sad, excited, delighted, joyful, rage. It is the freedom to move - to act upon our uncensored wishes, to change our minds, to follow our physical, emotional, and spiritual impulses.
In order to do all of this we need to feel worthy. And to feel worthy we need to experience belonging.
Belonging is the foundation of human survival. It is the right to resources such as food, shelter, solidarity, connection, love, support, listening and bonding. It is the safe space from which we can venture out into the world securely attached and resourced.
When we wonder if we are worthy, when we are wondering if we are good enough, what we are really wondering is this: “Am I worthy of belonging?”
As children it is normal for us to take any measures necessary to ensure bonding to our care givers. If expressing one's true self - embodying our full aliveness - is perceived as a threat to caregivers children will abandon themselves in order to bond to their caregivers. It is mission critical.
Depriving humans of belonging - or threatening to do so - is traumatizing and creates existential crises.
Children learn "Who I am is not worthy of belonging. I must hide who I truly am and conform." As we move from childhood out into the world, unworthiness decimates our ability to belong and therefore our capacity to fully embody our authentic aliveness.
As teens and adults we are unhappy and stuck. Having bonded into pressure and scarcity, we belief we are unworthy and live under constant pressure to perform, to prove ourselves, to not get found out. Disconnected from our innate sense of safety, our intuition and our imagination, we are confused, overwhelmed and underwhelmed by life.
And this is where alcoholism and addiction come into play.
Alcoholism and addiction are survival mechanisms and behaviors deployed to cope with and combat the sense of unworthiness and abandonment we experience as children. Initiated for our survival, these patterns and behaviors work temporarily (or else we would not use them) but wind up perpetuating an increasing sense of unworthiness and isolation, and - perversely - our own annihilation.
This suffering is rooted in the false beliefs we wisely adopted as children and the actions and choices we made based upon those false beliefs.
Enter sobriety and recovery. Twelve Step recovery is a brilliant, prescient program to explore the unconscious mind, excavating and making accessible the long held beliefs we carry with us from childhood.
When done with love, curiosity and support the 12 Steps are a path out of isolation back into the sunlight of worthiness and belonging.
And that is where coaching comes in. I offer women a safe and supported container in which they can get in touch with their intuition and deepest knowing to imagine their new future - one rooted in authentic belonging and worthiness. What will your aliveness look like?
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