One of the reasons I started blogging four or five years ago was to have a place to share my authentic voice as it shifts. I don’t read back over my old blogs, but if I did, I’m sure I would see very different content from year to year. I’ll call that evolution.

There are several reasons I blog publicly at this point, and not in the secrecy of my own journal. The main reason is that early on I started getting feedback from readers that something I shared helped them. A problem I was pondering was also a problem they were pondering. A perspective I gained through an experience gave depth to their perspective. Something I said inspired them. I frequently started hearing, “You wrote that just for me, didn’t you?”

I’ve become much more aware of the Collective and how we are all connected energetically. That’s because 98% of the time I write what comes to me through meditation. I listen. I ask what wants to be told that week. There’s a difference when I write from my heart and when I write from my head. People notice and they tell me. And often what I start to write is not what ends up coming out at all in the end. I try and follow the trail.

Take this blog for example. I started out thinking about one thing and it morphed into something else. Over the past months, I’ve been doing much inside work as I move through my Spiritual Practitioner training. It’s a heart/eye/Soul opening time. There is much depth work which revolves around understanding why each of us does what we do, thinks how we think, and feels how we feel.

Moving into the holiday season with that foundation, I noticed feelings in myself rising up that I had attempted to suppress in years past. These feelings, I discovered, arise mainly out of a sense of feeling torn for many years. As a child of divorce at 6, I was forced into a holiday sharing scenario from early on. Yeah, there were the double presents, but there was always a hole at either location…a longing of wanting everybody to be in one spot. This theme reinvented itself throughout the years as I became a divorced parent and had to let my own child share holidays. As a married person, the sharing continued.  There was also the year, I got married between Christmas and New Year’s because those were the only days we could get off. I just always felt like I was running in every direction from October to January.

This year, I forced myself to slow down and feel. I refused to get caught up in the “Are you ready for the holidays?” thing.  I had more of an understanding of why a melancholy wave washes over me when I’m supposed to feel jolly and bright. And sometimes I do feel jolly and bright. But then, the wave comes and I wonder what the heck just happened.  This year, I just rode that feeling instead of trying to dive under the wave before it knocked me down. If something felt like it was going to distract me from sticking with that shadow, I tried to let it go. Now, sitting here at the end of the hustle and bustle of this last quarter, I feel more relaxed with more insight into this unique time of year and all the different emotions it brings out in people.

I guess that sort of ties in with what I started out to write. That is, I began this blog to have a space to be authentic. Marketing-wise, that sucks. A person is supposed to be clearly branded, right? But I’ve never really understood how said branding allows for the process of evolving. It seems to me it’s often a trap, forcing a person into a future based on their past.

So as my last blog entry of 2015, I tell each of you from the bottom of my heart that you are a part of me. I know that we are connected in this One thing called humanity. There is great power in that. I will continue to use this space to tap into that connection. I appreciate your feedback, your comments, your private messages, your encouragement, your stories, your hearts, you.

Oceans of Love, Jamie