Category: Medicine Basket

This, as you may well have heard, is a therapist trick for helping folks get un-stuck. Specifically, it’s from the school of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The basics are simple… we behave, intentionally, as if our longed for feeling, outcome, or way of being is already ours.

Here’s a timely example… What would I do today if I wasn’t terrified by all the craziness in the world?

And, yes… me doing this – crunchy fingers on the key board, thinking of you, is one example! Words of perspective and hope in the midst of the crazy.

Here’s another example… push the button to trade news for Joan Baez and all my hippie-dippy summer camp song buddies! For real!!! (At the very least, it’s better for my blood pressure!)

I’m actually writing about this sort of “As If” in my upcoming Tweens/Teens book, too. You know… the difference between choosing and claiming our own beliefs -vs- feeling stuck with what THEY insisted we believe!

This is where things get complicated. THEY are not all the same! THEY have different desired outcomes! My mom was a THEY. Well, actually, she was a WE! And she firmly believed that the way WE stayed safe was by doing everything the way Granny did it. The way we’d always done it!

(Ironic that this post is insisting on appearing so close to the holiday known as Mothers’ Day!)

It took me a long time to realize how much of my lifetime, Mom spent being scared. We moved – a lot, while she had essentially lived in one home until she married. Her experience was that the way Granny did things worked.

Here’s what I learned along the way, though… it wasn’t really the fruitcake cookies that kept us (mostly) safe. Nor the notion that we didn’t talk about the things which should never have been happening. And, in this moment, I can only speak for me.

Acting as if I could do things differently than the way we’d always done some of the ones that really, really weren’t working is a big part of how I got here. And why spreading the word matters to me!

Or, as Carl Jung phrased it…

We are not what happened to us, we are what we wish to become!

So, here’s my question… if you did a bit of acting as if what you wish were already true, what might be more likely for you? What kind of mattering might begin happening???

And, yes… it’s going to take a whole bunch of us!

ps… don’t tell, but the shortbread cookies that come in the red plaid wrapping are pretty close to Granny’s butter cookies 😉 😉

pps… there are about 87 things in the portrait of Our Lady of Fiercely Compassionate Abundance that are NOT the way “we’ve” always done them… and they help! Wanna talk??? 45 min. My gift. Your dream. And some big possibilities for as if, now! You’ll want a cuppa, something to write on & with, and a bit of red thread if it’s handy! Just click here and the calendar elves will hook you up!

Ali Velshi, one of my favorite MS NOW buddies, is telling stories on TV. Stories, we might say, of how we got to this day, known as NO KINGS DAY #3.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes…

“IN AMERICA, TRUE POWER RESTS IN THE HANDS OF PEOPLE!”

My inner editor, who lives inside a body with challenges like sore hands and cranky knees, might make one little change, though:

“IN AMERICA, TRUE POWER RESTS IN THE HEARTS OF PEOPLE!”

And, realistically, in their WORDS!

I began my personal march with organic ginger tea and one of my favorite red pens. Yep… Morning Pages! The photo, above, is a peek. And, yes, I am definitely in Grammy Tales® mode!

As I scribbled, the magic began to happen. This idea connecting with that thought. Book characters carrying signs. (Okay… in my imagination!) What would Glinda and Lily Rose and Madam Margaret (aka, my 8th grade English teacher!) have to say in this moment?

Then, an important piece of the puzzle appeared! You see, I needed a bad guy character. The kind who thinks everybody needs to think what he tells them to think. (You hear me!) Not so much a specific person, as an archetype. Familiar, from age-old stories, way before cable news. Research was involved!

Turns out the dusty answer was lurking in long-ago memories of Baby Greek School! Perhaps, you’ve already guessed…

Kratos!!!

…this character embodies the very essence of the name – an unstoppable force driven by both vengeance and the pursuit of strength.

And, yes… they live on. That’s where we come in!

People literally dancing in the streets. A familiar woman who’s probably either a congressional rep or a newscaster, clad in a sweatshirt reading And Still I Vote!

Bill Nye the Science Guy claiming emphatically, It is time to act!

It’s time to consciously re-claim our power from the Kratos of our time. And, yes… there’s a whole lot more to come!

ps… my Cathar forebears are quite probably dancing in the streets, somewhere in the great beyond!

pps… claiming our own magic – and setting it free – can be really hard. Scary, too. It helps to have a friend along for the journey and that could be me! We’ll work together to name, claim, and create your version of the place where you feel called. (Actual marching is totally optional!) If you’re curious – even scared & curious – just click here and the calendar elves will hook you up with 45 min. My gift. We’ll explore next right options over a cuppa, a bit of Red Thread, and a place to scribble.