I have lived in Sedona for 10 years, and one of things I love most about it, is the changing seasons, without extremes.  I was in Ashland Oregon 3 weeks ago where my daughters and grandson live and it looked unbelievable with the fall colors.

The trees dance with color, and their movement with the wind was magical.  Sedona is magical in a completely different way. Sedona doesn’t have the extreme changing colors, but it also doesn’t have the extreme cold or hot.  If you drive down the Oak Creek Canyon in the fall, you get this feeling that everything in the world is okay.  The trees showing off their colors, the smell of camp fires, and the crisp, clean air.  The days are warm and the nights are perfect, maybe a lite sweater. It’s even beautiful when all the leaves have fallen.

I lived in Ashland for 11 months before I moved to Sedona, and as beautiful as Ashland is, Sedona has become more than a home to me.  Besides being totally breath taking, it holds me in a blanket of safety.   I have never felt like I was home until Sedona.  I lived in Phoenix for 33 years, and I never felt connected to the place or the community.

I was talking with Anne a gal at a party on Saturday night and we were talking about how Sedona either embraces you or unfortunately spits you out. I have seen many people spit out, it’s not pretty. I myself feel very lucky that it allowed me to stay.  What really seems to be the ongoing thread is that, Sedona brings up the issues you need to work on, if you work on them, you’re in, if you don’t  “toowee”.

It really allows me to live in a place that has 4 seasons without being brutalized by any of them, all of them are mild. No 20 below, yet, no 110 degrees.  So, I guess I’m going to stay for awhile, as long as Sedona will let me or I keep working on my stuff.

Where do you live and what do you love about it most, and how does it make you feel?

Stand up for yourself, set boundaries, don’t let your friends take advantage of you.  Wow, that’s a lot to ask of a teen!

It seems like it’s a lot to ask of an adult. Look around you, how many adults tell their friends, their bosses or anyone that is acting inappropriately, “that’s not acceptable”!  I am in a circle of pretty conscious people and most of them have difficulties setting boundaries. When most adults have to make a decision to confront someone who has done something to them that they don’t appreciate, it takes a lot for them to talk to the person. Some people actually get sick to their stomach, and have extreme anxiety about it.

So why do we act like our teen should be able to handle this easier.  It is most often harder for a teen to confront another teen or worse yet an adult about something they have done that he or she is not good with.  It is tougher for a teen to make sense of what has happened and why it feels off.  This happens to adults also, but with teens they can’t usually figure out how to confront without being ousted by their peers or not respected by an adult.

So how can we help or teens and our self to confront with ease?  For me it is easier just knowing that if I confront I am taking care of myself, and usually if it’s good for me it’s always a gift for the other person in learning more about themselves, if they are willing. Also if I look at what it is they are doing and why it is triggering me, that helps me learn about myself. It helps me take the blame off of them and realize it’s just another lesson to learn.

For teens it’s important for the parent to have compassion for what they are feeling around it, understand their feelings, and their hurt, step into their reality.

Help your teenager get in touch with their feelings around the situation, ask them questions like “how did you feel when she did that to you” or “why do you think she is acting like that”, also ask her if she feels the hurt anywhere in her body. Sometimes there will be physical symptoms. Asking questions helps them get in touch with how they are feeling, and why and make sense of the situation.

Help your teen put together a plan of what they might say to the person acting inappropriate.  Also help them understand why the other person might be acting this way; so that your teen can have compassion for them, this really helps with easing the anger.

These are also good tips for adults to use when they are having difficulties with confronting.  I have become really good at confronting people in a loving way because what I noticed was, when I didn’t confront I got sick to my stomach and would lose sleep over it. I bet if you thought about it, you would realize that it is more painful not to confront than to confront. So stand up for yourself, start setting healthy boundaries, and confront in a loving way.  Let me how you feel when you do or don’t confront.

Well, Sorry I haven’t Blogged in a week, but I was in the hospital…Yuk!

Friday night I got a big oh pain in my right side and Saturday morning went to the emergency room, thinking I had appendicitis. They ran a bunch of test and found a very inflamed colon.

How could this be, I eat all the right foods, and even take supplements for inflammation, and stomach care. None of it made any sense at all.

Then I did a bit of reading and found out that it could possibly be STRESS. Well, looking at the life I have created and what I have put on my plate, it didn’t surprise me. I decided to get my book out and read the chapter on Stress Reduction. It’s right there in my own words:

“Stress can do quite a bit of harm to your body and you emotional health”.

No kidding! I was shocked, even though I have read about stress and at some level participated in its unruly actions, nothing like what I experienced with my poor inflamed colon.

I knew it could be destructive to our bodies and emotional health, because of what I have read; now I know it first hand.

I am slowly removing things off my plate, getting things done on my time. I’m kicking off the things that have caused me grief and aren’t worth having on my plate in the first place.

I have started meditating again; this slows me down and starts my morning out with the intentions I want to set for the day. Check out Sarah Mcleans website on meditation Sedona Meditation Training

Check in with yourself and make sure your plate isn’t so full you can’t carry it anymore. Do you have feelings of anxiety? How is your sleeping? Are you having any aches or pains that are unusual? Just check in before the stress does any damage.

It feels as though I have been pushing up against everything lately, and feeling not very supported. This gives me the opportunity to look at why? Why not relax into it and go with the flow?

To look at the movement of water, how it just moves with ease, over rocks, and under logs. How can I emulate this free flowing water? For me, I need to realize that life is a journey, that I get to go on to learn how to love myself and show up in the world for me and others. That everything else is an illusion. My house, my car, my cloths, even how I look!

The only thing that is real is my relationship with myself, others and a higher power if you believe in one. And then this leads me back to how to have a relationship with myself? This is something I have to be conscious of every minute of the day. When I am feeling contracted or trigger with something or someone, to explore my feelings around it, not to blame the person who might have triggered me but to connect to those feelings and grow from them.

It’s just like realizing that I am pushing up against everything and life seems harder. To realize that these are feelings that I had when I was a child. To have a little conversation with my child within, listen to the feelings wrapped around those feelings and then step up and be a good mother and father to that child within. This might look like, just shifting how I am doing something…Stop pushing and relax and go with the flow.

Throughout the day, pay attention to your body, and how you feel. Are you contracted or upset? If so, don’t ignore those feelings. It’s like if you had a child of your own, and he or she was feeling badly, maybe really sad, would you ignore her feelings? I don’t think so! So show up for that little child inside of you, and be a good mother and father. Every time I feel unsupported in this world, it’s because I am not being supportive to myself. Experiment with really paying attention to your feelings for one day and attending to those feelings and see how you feel. Let me know how the day lays out for you.