Yoohoo! It’s the holiday season! Anyone eating too much delicious food because you deserve happiness? Or having old feelings you’d rather not feel again come to the surface? Anyone visiting family and discovering their angsty inner-11 year old self is still alive and well? Or going through Costco size bottles of bourbon?

This season is ripe with potential for emotional healing.

The flavor of my own emotional healing lately is 80% dark chocolate- the kind you almost want to spit out because it’s so intense, but once you get used to it, realize that Hershey’s tastes like wax.  With the fair trade stuff I’ve been eating daily, I can taste the earth the cacao beans are grown in. It’s deep and delicious and potent.

In therapy terms, my dark chocolate looks like EMDR therapy. I’ve been doing EMDR therapy weekly for around 3 months now. From the EMDR Institute website:

“(EMDR) enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences.  Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal.  EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma.  When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound.  If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain.  Once the block is removed, healing resumes.”

It is bonkers how deeply ingrained some of those rusty old beliefs can be…you know the ones that tend to send you far off-course from the things you’d like to accomplish in your life or the things you’d like to think about yourself? Your true north may have you thrilled with your life and relationships, feeling fantastic about aging and who cares about what’s happening to your thighs, but those dang past traumas and beliefs pull you just far enough off the trail that you’re stuck on “Can’t Look in the Mirror Loop” or “Furious at the World Trail.” EMDR seems very much like a shortcut to getting back to your true north.

It’s not for the faint of heart. To heal some of the old stuff, you need to revisit the disturbing and painful feelings so they can lead you out of the brambles.  But it’s not a long, extended visit. It’s a sit-down, a hello. It’s tolerable. But suddenly you see yourself in a different light and the world around you looks different too.

In all this emotional healing over the past few months, I’m realizing that on the flip side of feeling deprived or stuck in the idea of lacking this or lacking that….are old wounds, blocks or stubborn patterns of not knowing how to let love in.

Have you ever had the feeling like you’re being loved, but you just can’t feel it? Or you don’t trust it? Maybe you don’t believe a compliment or don’t accept a gift. Or feel you have to repay a favor?

If we really did come here to this planet to remember who we truly are- that we all have within us the unlimited love of the source of creation, that we are all individualized versions of that same source….then this whole process of noticing ways we don’t feel loved is just like noticing specks of dirt on your windshield.  It’s getting the windex out so we can see more clearly just how much love we’re swimming in.  Because love is fucking everywhere. And if we can’t feel it, there’s some unawake part of us hiding under the porch, asking for attention.

My wish for all of us this year is that love flows freely to all the deepest parts of us. To the parts that need it the most, the ones that have been asking for years in ways we couldn’t understand. I wish for us the nourishment of knowing that oneness and loving connection are birthrights, and not things to be earned by somehow being better.

I wish for all the tiny stones in our shoes that have made our walk feel painful…to be turned out onto the earth and spread onto our common path, just a little more gravel on the trail. The sound of our footsteps walking together is so sweet. I wish for us all to open to the sweetness and know that we matter, we are loved, and it’s ok to feel it.

With the 7 year anniversary of my dad’s death being tomorrow, I thought I’d share a song I wrote years ago about souls passing over, and how our bodies are really homes for the big divine. The electric guitar contribution in this tune was by Dale Kidd, a dear friend who loved this song and also passed away all too soon. We recorded it in Dale’s house and, at the time, my dad was still alive.

Both my dad’s parents are also passed over, and I’m not sure he’s spending too much time with them in the great beyond, as his relationship with them was contentious, especially with his mom. The stress of their relationship often drove him to triple brownie sundaes, though to most, she likely seemed harmless. She was around 5’3″ and had permed short hair, large round glasses, a sniffle that was like a repetitive tic, wore nylon stockings and slips- even with house slippers, and skirts held together with a safety pin.

When I was growing up, she and my grandpa would fly from Massachusetts to visit us near Chicago. When my dad drove them and my sister and I around in the family sedan, my grandmother would sit next to my dad in the front seat, worrying a kleenex in her hands to shreds, watching the road like a hawk, gravely warning, “Watch it, Tommy” anytime he inched toward another car to pass, or crept just pass the speed limit, or another car passed us, or if our exit was coming up, or if he was getting ready to merge. After 20 minutes in the car, inevitably my dad would say, “we’re just going to make a stop here” at one of any number of hot dog places in the area, and he would emerge with a milkshake to get him through the rest of the car ride.

I imagine he must have felt a bit like that kleenex in her hand, just worried to bits by her, yet he was always gracious and generous with her and his dad- buying them gifts, vacations, and hosting them for long visits. Whenever we visited them in Massachusetts, we would daytrip to both the mountains and the ocean. He may have gotten his love for the mountains from her, and I may have gotten my love for the ocean from him. Who knows how these things work and what we pass down to each other.

It feels a little weird to honor my dad by posting this song, since my dad didn’t listen much to the songs I wrote, but I imagine that when I do post this, for him it’ll be like attending some sort of otherworldly recital where he’ll pretty much have to listen. If he resists and tries to sneak away so he can go watch whatever football game is on, his mother may suddenly appear sitting next to him, and she’ll say, “Watch it, Tommy,” and hand him a milkshake to get him through.

Hello friends! After almost a decade of focusing my energies at home, this mama is headed back to work! I’ve always worked part-time since having kids, and then took a long break for over 2 years when our 3rd baby was born. And now I’m looking to dust off my credentials and get cracking!

Here is the new website:

kriskadams.com

The lowdown: prenatal yoga and healing services including neurovascular therapy (an even gentler cousin to craniosacral), Reiki, and EMF Balancing.