CHANGING LANES IS MOVING…

After 5 1/2 years, I’m getting ready to bring freshness, and embark on some new adventures with Changing Lanes!

Please check out the Changing Lanes blog at it’s new home:

changinglanesblog.com

I look forward to the continued adventure, and I hope that you will come along with me for the ride!

      xo

~Steph C

Cold as ice…

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” ~ C. S. Lewis

C. S. was definitely on to something with this one.

I think that it’s natural for us, when we’ve been through the loss of our husband or wife, to want to hide our hearts for many reasons. And I think that our experience makes it especially easy for us to choose to hide our hearts in the sand out of the fear of additional heartbreak. The thing is, when we cut ourselves off from the prospect of loving and being loved, while we may think ourselves, perhaps, safe, ultimately each day that goes by in our closed off state, our hearts underutilized – or not utilized at all – for its intended purpose, it begins to forget how to do what it was made to do best.

Much like our muscles, our heart begins to atrophy.

Now I realize clearly that a lot of widows and widowers are simply not ready to wrap their brains around a new relationship. I’m not talking about those folks. I’m talking about the ones who know they are lonely, would like to have a partner in their life, but have declared to the world that they aren’t interested in dating or relationships because they don’t want to get hurt.

Here’s what: love flows in and out of the same channel. If you aren’t open to receiving it, you aren’t open to giving it. And vice versa. If you want something positive in your life and you purposely deny yourself, that blocked flow will start to overflow into other relationships and aspects of your life.

Dating, and relationships, and love can be scary, I know. And, no – no one wants to get their heart broken. And I’m not saying that everyone out there needs to go find a boyfriend or a girlfriend. I’m just saying, if you know that you would like to have someone in your life, you know that you want to give love and be loved, don’t deny yourself just because you are afraid of being vulnerable. Life is one big vulnerable experience. There is no such thing as perfectly safe existence, unless you are going to move into a hermetically sealed tent and never come out. It is by being vulnerable that we allow ourselves to be open to all of the beauty and bounty this world has to offer, and to me that – in and of itself – is totally worth it.

Even if it means a perfectly fine day gives way to the occasional hail storm.

So don’t lock yourself away, because I promise you, you aren’t doing yourself as much favor as you think… ♥

 

 
 

 

 

 

Happy birthday, E

Aaron Rodgers Day, a big kick-ass concert in NJ, and the beginning of the end of days – all on your birthday.  I can’t help but think somehow you’ve got a hand in all of this.  *There are no coincidences* lol…

Happy Birthday, E. I sure wish you were here to celebrate it with us “in real life”, as Ava would say.

Ava and I will be sending you up some balloons later.  She’s indicated that she would like to send you a special note, so be on the lookout for that…

This evening there will be cupcakes and cheap champagne in your honor (see, honey, I’m still keepin it real).  Wherever you are, my love, I hope that you are in excellent company, smiling that great big smile of yours, espousing intriguing, yet utterly useless information, and making the other side a better place.

We miss you today, and every day.

xoxo

R.I.S.E. Holiday Coaching Workshops

This is just a quick post to share the Coaching Workshops that I am hosting for widows and widowers this holiday season through R.I.S.E.

You can check out the video below, and register to join me on either Saturday, November 17 or Saturday, December 15 by going to the R.I.S.E. EVENTBRITE PAGE.

The first one is THIS SATURDAY – so it is right around the corner and space for both workshops is very limited.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would please take a moment to share this with your friends on Facebook or Twitter – you never know who might be in need of this to help them get through the holidays in a more positive way…

Go on and do it, Do it till you’re satisfied

My life and career are nowhere near as exciting as this guy’s…

I really need to stop “sleeping”.

You see, I feel like I’ve really been letting myself down lately.  While I’ve got a few different business things “working” at the moment, I have so many creative ideas and I’m totally failing to take any action on them.  Why do I do that?  Well, either I conclude that the idea is stupid, or I don’t feel that I’m capable of doing *whatever it is* well enough.  Or I’m just afraid if I do it, no one will like it, or they’ll think my idea is stupid.

…Mostly that last one…

Then I see someone else do the very same thing *I thought of*, and I watch while everyone around celebrates them.

And then I get mad.

Then I have to tell myself not to hate on other people, stop being so ego driven.  That perhaps it’s a sign that I need to worry less about others, and more about doing more work on myself…  I need to try harder… I need to be more committed to my own personal goals.  Focus on my own lane.

And then I get another idea, and start the cycle all over again…

I’m exhausted by my own lack of action.

And I spend my time guiding other people toward positive action, helping other people become accountable to themselves and go after their goals.  In other words, I spend my time helping other people in ways which I am unable to help myself. 

Oh, the irony.

Well, I’m really getting tired of watching everyone else live my (amazing, creative) life.  It’s definitely time for this kid to get in the picture.

Call me… Maybe…?

In keeping with the theme…

Yeap…  Pretty much…

Check yo-self before you wreck yo-self, pt. 1

I’m not really sure what’s gotten into me lately, and why I’m suddenly stuck on the topic of relationships.  I’m not sure if it’s because I wish I were in a relationship, or I don’t want to be in a relationship (but I’m not sure I want to be stuck with me for the rest of my life without at least some sort of buffer lol).  I don’t know if it’s about my fear of relationships (power, loss, and all kinds of other things-that-go-bump-in-the-night nonsense), or because, as history has shown, well, I just really suck at them.  Most likely it’s some unfortunate, twisted, paradoxical combination of all of those things, with a little “I turned 40 this year and I’m single” sprinkled in for flavor, that has me so fixated on the topic.

So anyway, I was minding my own business on yet another dateless Saturday night, when I ran out of wine.  Once I got over the shock and disappointment, I realized that there was nothing left to do really, but sit here…

And think… 

And so there I sat… thinkin’…  mulling over the current affairs of my (cough) current affairs, which led me (eventually) to wonder: How is it we misrepresent ourselves and/or our feelings to the world – and by “the world” I mean the opposite sex – and then we get mad because we don’t get what we really want?

Follow along with me… 

A lot of people who know me would probably describe me as strong.  Some might even go one step further and describe me, perhaps, as tough.  And while these would seem pretty accurate at first glance, one I consider a positive (and true), and one – the latter – not so much.  These… descriptives… are nothing new, and certainly didn’t begin with E’s death.  No, they’re words that I’ve been hearing to describe me for a long time now. However, I know that they don’t tell the whole story…

I guess you could say I’m a case of hard and crunchy on the outside, and all soft in the center.  Unfortunately, to get to my center you just might break a tooth first, which may leave you a bit reluctant to take another bite.

I’m not quite sure which point of pressure has caused my outside edges to get so… so… crunchy.  I do know that I wasn’t always this way.  Looking back, I can’t really tell you when things began to change for me, I just woke up one day and my outside was this… strange person my inside didn’t quite recognize.

Whether it was simply my life in general – and trust me, there’s not enough time to go into all-a-that – or my career of choice, in an industry where weak (wo)men are regularly eaten alive (I’ve seen it with my own eyes!) – I can’t really say.  What I do know is that years of having to protect myself (or believing I needed to protect myself) in some form or another, from some thing or another, has caused me to develop this crunchy coating, which seems to have gotten thicker through the years.  And while it existed long before my loss, it would be fair to say that it was compounded, to a certain extent, by it.

But I know that while it may be what many people see, it’s not a complete representation of who I am.

It may be shocking to some, but in spite of what my outsides may say, on the inside I really love love.  Always have.  Throughout my life I’ve wanted more than anything simply to love and be loved.   And I want what every other girl wants: someone whose eyes light up when they see me, who smiles when they think of me.  Who can’t wait to be near me.  In many ways I am fortunate to be able to say that, while we certainly had our ups and downs, I absolutely experienced those things in my relationship with E. 

But, unfortunately circumstances came to pass that have led me, once again, to be alone and, once again, desiring these feelings and experiences.

Also unfortunate, is the fact that on the outside, I’m fierce, fearless… aloof… with a you-can’t-phase-me demeanor.  You might even think I was a little power hungry if you met me on the right wrong day.  No, you would probably never know what was going on in my insides if you only knew my outsides. 

My point?  Well, I guess my real conundrum lies in the fact that my outsides are man repellent.  And when my outsides aren’t repelling men, they’re sending out some high frequency signal that is attracting all the wrong ones (I was going to use a dog whistle analogy here, but I don’t know that it will help my case…).  In short, my outsides are wreckin’ my game.

While men might respect a woman for being strong and independent, I’ve found as I’ve gotten older, that this respect is often only held at arms length.  In my experience, men may compliment, even admire those attributes in female family members, friends, or associates, they don’t necessarily want to date someone within whom those particular attributes floweth over… all over the dang place.  And even worse if a man feels (correctly, or erroneously) that those attributes are being used against him in any way.  Further, if that independence translates to aloofness, that compounds the problem.  I’m not sure any man really appreciates a woman who acts like she doesn’t care about how you feel about her.  And a man who really doesn’t care about how a woman feels about him, is a) not really into her, and/or b) is most likely a man who doesn’t know how to feel, and what girl wants to date either one of those guys?

(You should have known when I said “ran out of wine” that nothing good was going to come of this.  Welcome to Stephanie’s world, please drive through…)

But if it’s true that you get what you give, if I’m walking around giving the outward impression that I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, or that I don’t need anyone, or that I am unaffected by whether someone has feelings for me or not, I’m ultimately going to attract men who don’t care, don’t/won’t have feelings for me, or who don’t think of me at all.  To get anything different, I need to do something different – I must be willing to risk being my real self. 

This idea of being my real self is not so difficult simply because it involves being vulnerable, which, yes, is hard enough.  It’s difficult because it’s going to take an awful lot of time and effort to create a hole big enough in my thick, crunchy outsides to be able to get in and find her.

Apparently I’ll need some additional tools for this job, like, say, a pick axe and a torch lol. 

So, okay… While I sat there pondering the fact that I’d like to *not* sit at home… alone… every Saturday night, and, yes, while it would be nice to have someone in my life who lights up when I walk in the room or smiles when they think of me – oh Hell, who am I kidding?  It would just be nice to have someone with enough decency to return a dang phone call – yeah, while that would be nice, and while I’m willing to check myself regarding my own contribution to my current… situation… here’s what: I’m not entirely 100% sure that making myself more emotionally transparent is really going to completely change the game for me. 

Why not?

Well, because while I recognize my own shortcomings, and openly admit that I could probably work on them – is that truly the crux of my problem?  Or is it something… bigger… and much different than that?  Is it even about me?