the intimacy of being understood 🫦

Hey honey bees!!! So let me first gush about the way it’s basically Vancouver summer and I am irrevocably obsessed and in love. Does anyone else only know and associate that word with twilight, when Bella says she’s unconditionally and irrevocably in love with Edward. Truly I don't think I've ever heard anyone else use that word bahahahah. But I’m so serious people keep asking me how I have this summer glow already and I fear these people don’t understand the relationship I have with a summer sun. I worship. And yet it’s still Vancouver where the odd rainy gloomy day sneaks in and so naturally, I went to use it to write the other day but instead I eavesdropped on the majority of a conversation in a cafe that went on to inspire this writing session HAHA. I love being a witness to my own experience, I really keep myself on my toes, and the way I give myself space to surprise myself means I let the universe do the same, which is a really fun way to live. I’ve been focusing a lot of my thoughts and recent workshops and coaching on how the way we relate to ourselves is the way we relate to everything we experience, therefore when you shift the way you relate to yourself, you can change your entire life. And so when I was listening to this older lady going on about how she became a therapist to a 20 year old gal who seemed to be curious about getting into this kind work, she said something that really stuck out to me and I found it a little limiting the way she explained it but it nonetheless raised a good point that only emphasizes what I’m touching on recently. There were a LOT of things she was saying that totally didn’t align with me and of course some that did, but also doing an energetic read she seemed in a bit of a fearful or scarcity state that made me super sleepy bahhahah but anyway she was explaining that you have to be able to relate to clients to be able to hold space for them and how if she hadn’t had a best friend and also a boyfriend in her younger years that both died, she would never be able to hold anyone through that….and I immediately felt a wave of “that doesn’t feel like a truth at all” run though me. I'm not a licensed practitioner and maybe I’ll dive into that one day if I feel called to have another piece of paper that says I do this but the knowledge that I do have as a certified coach and intuitive guide is pretty fkn juicy nonetheless, so I am very much tending to the garden of ‘being able to understand people and their experience starts with the willingness to understand yourself, and then extending that to wanting to understand others’ worlds”.... You know when someone is explaining or venting about their drama or problems and they toss in a “you wouldn't understand!!!!!” UGH that makes me wanna shake my body out because it’s such victim energy.. From where I'm standing, I build connections with others with the genuine intention TO understand them. I am insatiably curious, I want to know the way your mind works, the way your experiences have shaped you, the way you operate because we’re all so uniquely different and being able to coexist means we get to express ourselves in our own way so I want to KNOOOOWWWW how you do that. Or what that looks like to you. And the more I care about you the more curious I am with you. The more I try to understand you, the more we can connect. Obviously I'm speaking for myself here but as I've learnt and continue to learn about humans and consciousness and studying trauma and the nervous system etc, what feels more like a truth to me is that I can absolutely understand someone and their experiences, I just might not relate to it in the exact same way, from the same lens. And that feels way more expansive. Because what this lady was basically saying, with semantics being my fav thing hahahah, is “if you haven’t experienced the most extreme depths of trauma and grief such as having a best friend or partner die, you couldn’t hold space effectively for anyone navigating these heavier themes of life”.... And in my experience thus far, I have held some pretty dang safe spaces for people that have navigated very intense experiences that I myself haven’t personally gone through. I’ve lived my own versions of loss and grief and disconnection from self, and by understanding my own experiences on a deep level and getting so intimate with them, it’s allowed me to then be with others as they share their own and revisit them. Which really emphasizes our divinity as humans and our capacity to understand and learn and be curious and unpack things in connecting with others because if you ask me, it feels really limiting to think that you could never understand what something’s like when you could genuinely just.... learn. Ask questions. And then be able to recognize that you’re having a different experience than everyone else and that makes us all unique and we of course need that, I just don’t think it means you can’t hold space for other people's experiences, no matter the intensity or variation. I could go layers deep into this and yap all day long about relating to ourselves to be able to relate to others, I actually DO do this in the work I do with people muwahahah which is why I genuinely love deepening our connection to self so that we can understand our own worlds, and continue to enhance and expand on it, which inevitably ripples through your entire experience with other people, situations etc!! You can also do nothing with that information if you’d like and just remain solely inside a bubble of limited awareness… But I really love cultivating connection, it’s what we crave most on a fundamental level so if you haven't yet sunk into yourself or find that your connections aren’t where you would like them to be, it starts with you babe!!! I have 1:1’s available and also my 5 session container UNRAVEL is waiting for you to dive into if you feel called <3333 so anyway rather than diminish your capacity to relate to others, recognize we are deeply connected and when you take the time to understand yourself and therefore others, connection becomes effortless and that feels waaaaaay sexy to me! Love you heaps!

xx Sarah