Aging, Confidence, and Beliefs

Bette Davis said it best:  Old Age is not for sissies. As if Alzheimer’s , diabetes, and cancer were not three of the worst specters of elderhood, it turns out aging human beings lose confidence in their abilities to perform tasks they are actually good at.  This last aging challenge deserves time and attention, because a lack of confidence can limit our joy in life.  Once we’re aware of confidence erosion, however, we can reframe this issue as an invitation to explore how negative beliefs may be impacting our view of who we are and what we can do.

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NO MORE! The Religiously Motivated Decisions of Patriarchy & the Infantilization of Girls & Women

In my seventies now, I remember the joy of celebrating the Roe v Wade decision that US girls and women had the legal right to choose what happened to their bodies.  It was no small thing then, to Canadian girls and women, because we all share the traumatizing fact of our past as chattel, that is, the possessions of white men and boys in charge.  Corporations had already determined to treat girls and women as bubble heads who wanted nothing more than to look good and be more popular than others.  It was very much a case of the water temperature being turned up over time – suddenly, we found ourselves boiling in the murky idea that our body image and looks, our hair and our rumps, were more important than our minds and our spirits, our hearts and our self-determination. That 1973 court decision lessened the impact of profit motivated businesses selling insecurity and self-hatred to girls and women. At least the courts found us intelligent, responsible, and wise enough to decide a fundamental life choice for ourselves.

Now,  even corporations are reacting to the court’s decision to reverse R v W; that’s how bad this current court’s decision is.  The white supremist view that the ever-creative power of the Universe is white, male, and murderous toward those who haven’t swallowed this vile white supremacy lie has revealed itself in the highest court in the land.  And we’re not having it.

Continue reading NO MORE! The Religiously Motivated Decisions of Patriarchy & the Infantilization of Girls & Women

We Are Generation Equality

Today, March 8, 2020, International Women’s Day, our theme inspires us to discover our commonalities and shared experiences regardless of race, age, wealth, gender preferences, and cultural influences. Feeling isolated is one of the most devastating of these shared experiences, and every girl and woman seeks the relief of ending isolation in the friendships, communities, and movements which change the personal and the political for the better. So, wherever we are, and whatever our plans, let us take 5 minutes to dance the theme of Generation Equality into this year of breakthrough, empowerment, and deeply supportive connections. To inspire our moves, here are Aretha and Annie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGx7JkFSp4

If the link doesn’t work, simply Google “Sisters Are Doing it For Themselves.” Dancing and singing are universal human activities that have been healing body, mind, heart, and spirit since the beginning of human culture, so as we wiggle our hips, let us feel our healing connections with Sisters everywhere.

Ever dancing . . . , with You . . . , and with Love,

Jane

Waiting . . . and EFT

In our highly monetized consumer culture, many have become accustomed to instant gratification.  ‘Trusting the process,’ a highly valuable attitude when involved in creative projects and problem solving, has been lost when dealing with everyday frustrations.  We’re encouraged to be the ‘right-now’ culture, whether we’re young, middle-aged or old.  In this world of constant promotions and immediate-gratification demands, we have misplaced something essential to our humanness:  our delight in free time. Continue reading Waiting . . . and EFT

Making Change in Later Life

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website created to support the most effective use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to reduce stress and increase joy.  To experience the benefits of EFT for in-the-moment emotional support and learn how to build emotional resilience, contact Jane (802) 533-9277 / jane@winterblooms.net.  Visit www.aamet.org and www.neftti.com to learn more about how EFT can support the resolution of inner and outer conflicts, inform more loving and respectful relationships, and empower practitioners to contribute to the changes we want to see in the world.

Making change is often challenging, especially when people we love and respect express intense emotions about our choice to change.  Making change in our fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond can attract even more criticism from loved ones and friends because of their strong attachment to who they think we should be and what they think we should be doing.  Because we live in an ageist culture, limiting expectations often form unconsciously around us as we age, and while these limiting beliefs may be intended to support our well being and safety, they often act as gatekeepers, ensuring we make minimal changes, even positive ones.

Since most of us tend to define ourselves through our relationships, changes, especially those we make to support our health and personal fulfillment can feel like an attack on friends’ and family members’ choices. Happily, the desire to make change in later life often comes with its own “this-is-absolutely-right-for-me” imperative.  This means disapproval from adult children, intimate partners, close friends, and even our wellness team members cannot impugn the inner guidance prompting us to change.   If we avoid making changes simply to please or comfort others who may be living from fear rather than love, we threaten our own authenticity.  When this happens, the body will complain loudly about this betrayal, through pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, or all three.

Supporting mature clients who want to make changes that may not be approved of by family and friends is one of the most rewarding aspects of my coaching practice.  The road newly taken is not always smooth, but it is full to the brim with learning opportunities and positive growth.  Those of us called to make big changes in our later years can do so with relative ease when we follow a few simple guidelines.

Continue reading Making Change in Later Life

From: Learning, Loss, and Love – A Memoir and a Tool Kit

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

One of the most healing tools we have at our disposal is our ability to tell our stories through art.  Some of us dance the pain out of our bodies and psyches, some of us paint, and some of us write.  While I have done all three, my most consistent mode of expression  is what I think of as “telling.”  My telling involves my journal and my keyboard and a long and tender commitment to becoming whole by embracing all my broken places.  As I’ve watched this current election contest spin out of control, my personal work has led me to see this election in the same archetypal terms that have helped me to understand my personal family dynamic.  Donald Trump, in my scheme of things, represents full blown patriarchy, a system that both knowingly and unconsciously exploits and “conquers” groups perceived as outsiders.  In our day, these groups include women, all people of colour, the GBLTQ community, people in poverty, and anyone who worships differently from the fundamentalist Christian faith designed by white patriarchs to keep these groups in physical shame and spiritual distress.

Because of my early childhood trauma, I came to address patriarchy full on when I was in my thirties and forties.  I understood I had to undertake this task in order to heal from my personal father wound and a lingering sense of victimization.  My father left me as a baby, my inner story went, and no one was there to “keep me safe, give me a name I could be proud of, teach me what it meant to be a woman . . . ,” and on and on.  Formal therapy, undertaken because of a terrifying depression that took hold of me after I had achieved a major goal and was living my dream, helped me to find the context in which patriarchy played out in my personal life and in the larger world.

Hillary Clinton, as the Democratic nominee for President of the US, is and will continue to call out of all the dark places patriarchy’s last rampages.  When we do our personal work, this contest takes on mythic proportions.  No matter whether we are for Trump, for Clinton, for Stein, or continuing to cling to Sanders as our “saviour,” these current unsettling political times bring forward the personal work we must do regarding our personal belief systems.  Do our beliefs shore up the status quo?  Do they energize woman hatred in subtle ways?  Do they continually play the race card?  Whatever we feel and think politically sheds light on the personal work we are invited to do.  If we do this work well – by examining and deconstructing our skewed beliefs – we will elect the most competent and experienced candidate; if we don’t, we’ll vote in reaction to our darkest fears and hatred.

With Barack Obama’s election came a wave of overt racism, the likes of which we have not seen since the fifties and sixties.  In like manner, we will no doubt see overt misogyny rise to the surface now that Clinton has secured the Democratic Party nomination.  There are signs, however, that patriarchy is crumbling.  Fox News has replaced Roger Ailes, a man who consistently behaved as Archetypal Patriarch, contaminating the work place with degrading requests and views of women and other groups even as he gave Donald Trump a platform from which to spread fear and disinformation.

Happily, as Dylan sings, these times they are a changing.  Eight years ago, Barack Obama reminded us, despite the obvious failings of an imperfect democratic system, we have reason to hope.  And now, Hillary Clinton has stepped forward as our lightning rod.  She took on the woman haters in 2008 and she takes them on now, with the difference that she is not taking them on alone.  In the interim many of us have worked through a lot of our unconscious prejudices, largely because we could see Barack Obama move through the racist wall of hate with such amazing courage, intelligence, and grace.  Now we get to watch Hillary Clinton do the same. What a privilege to be alive today, and to participate in our evolution out of patriarchy and into maturity, kindness, intelligence, and wisdom, these qualities creating an intersection of all empowered peoples.

If you are curious about what catalyzed my healing perspective regarding what I perceived as patriarchy’s out-sized privilege, please click the link below to read an excerpt from Learning, Loss, and Love, my unpublished memoir.

Continue reading From: Learning, Loss, and Love – A Memoir and a Tool Kit

Seasonal Blues – The Cultural Connection

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the ACEP website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

This time of year, many of us feel the anguish of being alone, not because our solitude is painful or undesirable or the result of accident rather than choice, but because our materialistic, ad-driven culture emphasizes family connections in its hard-sell of goods that bespeak waste, environmental degradation, and the conflation of need and desire.  Linking these goods to a return of Light is an irony hard to miss.  The altruism of giving, something naturally linked to the celebratory feelings of Illumination and Rebirth, is nowhere more evident than it is at this time of year despite the commercialization of our lives.  Tapping can help to calm our frustration and helplessness in the face of rampant consumerism and at the same time help us to feel connected to the energies of Regeneration that are so potent as we begin our slow journey into
Winter.

Continue reading Seasonal Blues – The Cultural Connection

Creating a Partnership Culture

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the ACEP website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

When Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and The Blade was first published almost thirty years ago, the feminist revolution had already taken hold of many of Earth’s Sixties Children and imbued us with optimism concerning our ability to create a socially just world.  Cynics called our vision ridiculous as they made passionate arguments about innate human violence and stupidity.  But those of us schooled in Eisler’s Chalice vision felt called to forge a new way of being in the world, something she called The Partnership Way.  Partnerships, she illustrated vividly, were the antidote to the Dominator model we call patriarchy (learn more about Eisler’s Partnership Way studies at http://www.partnershipway.org/.)  Power With rather than Power Over became our focus, and no matter our backgrounds and talents, we took this model to our homes, to our workplaces, and to our streets.  Since first reading Chalice, I have countless times experienced the transforming powers of a Partnership focus; in my home, in my classrooms, in my workshops, and in my coaching sessions, I have found partnering with others brings the deepest satisfaction and the most exciting results.  Tapping has increased my insights into the value of a Partnership focus, since this tool supports my first and foremost partnership, the one I have with myself.

Continue reading Creating a Partnership Culture

Learning to Love Your Feet

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the ACEP website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

When my grandmother was in her late eighties and her annual appointment with our family doctor loomed, she always made sure she was wearing slip-on shoes, the easier to display her feet and so begin their conversation about her current state of well being and quality of life.  Taking care of our feet through exercise and bodymind health practices is paramount if we want to be as autonomous as possible as we age.  In spite of the vital importance of foot care, I’ve met many people who hate their feet, don’t like to touch them, and cram them into shoes that do not fit because they believe style is more important than foot mobility and comfort.  We may be able to get away with a little foot abuse when we are young, but as we age, our feet become more and more important to our overall well being.  Tapping to overcome our feet prejudices and even podophobia, an intense fear of feet, helps us to positively relate to our feet and increase our well being as we age.

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Positive Psychology and Tapping

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

Martin Seligman’s latest book, Flourish:  A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well Being, describes exciting scientific evidence proving our ability to replace negative beliefs and thoughts with those that support well being.  You can experience Seligman’s enthusiasm for Positive Psychology first hand at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0LbwEVnfJA.    Those of us who have been using tapping as a means of daily self regulation know that the benefits of replacing negative beliefs and thoughts  with positive ones include joy and optimism; we have also discovered that joy and optimism contribute to our overall sense of well being while increasing our store of resilience.  Tapping builds what in Seligman’s Positive Psychology theory are measurable aspects of well being:  positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement (PERMA).  Using the positive psychology exercises along with tapping strength our ability to live with resourcefulness, enthusiasm, kindness, and hope.

Continue reading Positive Psychology and Tapping