tdvanoss, Author at She Broke Free

Cultivating a Joyful Mind

by tdvanoss | Apr 17, 2023 | Spiritual Direction

As we attempt to be mindful of our spiritual and mental and physical health, we need to remember…

That we don’t have to fix everything. Nor should we.

That we don’t have to prevent everything. Nor can we.

That we don’t have to make sense of something,

or at least attempt to, before we give ourselves permission to relax.

We do not have to come up with a plan of attack, we do not have to batten down the hatches, and we do not have to keep awake at night standing guard.

It is, simply, not our place.

When we are truly being mindful, and paying attention to our thoughts, to the way our bodies feel, to our spirits’ peace – or lack of peace, then wisdom is allowed to creep in and sticks around awhile until it is noticed, and noticed again, and noticed yet another time. Our fretting minds are so counterproductive on many levels, and it is most definitely an unfriendly way of treating ourselves.

This excerpt serves to help me in my quest to make friends with my mind once again, or, even, for the first time. Father Richard Rohr asks what might a joyful mind be? He answers:

“When your mind does not need to be right.

When you can live in contentment with whatever the moment offers.

When your mind does not need to be in charge but can serve the moment

with gracious and affirming information.

When your mind can stop judging and critiquing itself.

When your mind does not need the future to be better than today.

When your mind can surrender to what is.

When your mind can live satisfied without resolution or closure.

When your mind can find truth on both sides.

When you can observe your mind contracting into self-preservation

or validation and then laugh or weep over it.

When you can find God in all things.”

Thank You, gracious God, for such revelations of peace.

…. for I have l learned to be satisfied with what I have. I know what it is to be in need and what it is to have more than enough. I have learned this secret, so that anywhere, at any time, I am content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little. I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me. Philippians 4

Share this

Moving Through Mourning

by tdvanoss | Apr 15, 2023 | Grief Recovery Method

It’s the middle of the night. My eyes are wide open, unblinking, in the dark of my bedroom. My breaths are quickened, up near my collarbone, not the deep breaths from the core that come from peace and contentment. I’m thinking about that one that wounded me, so long ago. It comes up from time to time, more often than I realize, or want to admit. What keeps me up at night are… words. Words, words, and more words. Ones that were said to me, ones that were never said but I wish I had heard, ones that I keep saying over and over to an empty void that was the space that person once held, and held for a long time. What I want to say, or the questions still unanswered, ruminate through my brain, creating scenarios that will never or can never take place.

Does this resonate with you? Your person may be a family member, or a friend. Your person may be alive, or not. Your person may be within reach, or can never be within reach again. Your person may have wounded you, or you were the one who did the wounding. Or both on that one. Many times, it’s both. Right?

Sometimes we don’t recognize this as grief. We think missing the person, or missing a future with the person, is the grief in its entirety. Yet I have come to know that a very challenging strain of mourning that often goes unrecognized is “undelivered communications.” That is, those truths we wish had been fully shared between us. It’s hard enough missing what we once had or what we planned to have with a person ~ or what we expected to have but never, ever got ~ but the added angst of unsaid words creates a hard and ongoing layer to our sorrow. We don’t have the option to *just miss* that person, because we have those unresolved feelings attached to what we wished was said and truly understood.

The Grief Recovery Method is an educational tool that helps us learn how to recognize those losses in our life that have had an intense and lasting impact, and then safely bring them to the surface. We talk about those words. We work with those words.

I attended the eight GRM sessions for the first time six years ago. I am now trained as a specialist to teach the method to others. With every personal loss and sadness that I’ve brought through the process, I have experienced a peace, as this method guides me to release words that were attached to my mind, my body, my spirit. I did the work, I followed the guidelines, and each time I finished feeling lighter, more equipped, steadier, different. It brings understanding and completion that wasn’t there before. That heals.

I offer both group and individual options. While I’m required to list the Grief Recovery Institute costs, please ask me for my special rates if you are interested in learning more.

The rest of your life is valuable. How do you want to feel?

Share this

Why Photos Awaken Feelings

by tdvanoss | Apr 15, 2023 | Soul Collage©, Spiritual Direction

Like many of you, I have always cherished photos. That rush of excitement to see how the camera captured a moment in time, and that sense of gratefulness for the ability to remember not just that moment, but also that particular time in your life. My 1960s and 1970s photos especially have me peering behind the picture’s subjects to the background objects that also got captured. “I remember riding in the back of that brown station wagon!” “Oh, how I loved that round lamp table with the beautiful, wavy lampshade.”

I happily jumped on the scrapbooking craze. From 1996-2006, I spent countless hours creating photo scrapbooks for our family. Then life became crazier, more digital, and the flow of that hobby was harder to maintain. Ah, but what a fun ride that was.

Images can capture other things as well ~ our moods, our dreams, our longings, our inner voices. They can spark emotions, and we may not even know why. Likely we haven’t even paused to wonder why an image evoked an inner response. Have you ever flipped through a magazine and stopped to soak in a certain picture for a few seconds? Or have been moved by a painting, an album cover, or a particular expression of a perfect stranger’s photo?

There is a reason these different “sparks within” happen. We connect with images because they mean something to the many parts of our unique selves that are important ~ those influential voices in our heads, the soft murmurings of our hearts, the parts we celebrate, or hide. Those parts cause us to think, feel, behave and respond in different ways. They are present within because we have experienced life. They are all to be respected.

The practice of SoulCollage© teaches us how to collect images that give us any emotion. Then, through a very simple, cut and paste process, we make cards from these images that allow us to greet the different parts of us in a gentle, gracious way, and to learn about ourselves in the process. It’s satisfying. It’s fascinating. It’s meditative. It’s revelatory. It’s fun.

My website page for SoulCollage© will tell you even more, as well as the next time I will teach a 3-hour beginner’s class on Zoom. Whether you end up making a few cards or many over time, you’ll find that every single one will be very special to you. Because they will illuminate the multi-layered wonder that you are.

Share this

Living into My Word of the Year

by tdvanoss | Apr 15, 2023 | Soul Collage©, Spiritual Direction

My word for this year is “Hope.” I haven’t always chosen a special word, but I find it really does help me, and then through the year I seem to come across different words, images, lyrics or such that support my focus on the meaning behind that word for me. Recent yearly words have been “Devotion” and “Unfurl.” One time I even attended a wonderful January online event which helped me choose a word for the year in a gentle and satisfyingly effective way.

I almost passed on “Hope,” but I stopped myself from looking further. At first, it seemed too general to be maintainable, let alone provide contemplation. Yet it spoke ardently to my spirit, as truly so much of my own work within is around settling in, even nestling in, with Hope. Not the type of clingy hope that I realize had been my norm for years, but the hope that comes with relinquishment and trust.

It’s been a long road learning to breathe deeply here, and my body still defaults to an initial clenching at times, but I more quickly gather strength from staying still and quiet right where and when I am, praying for God to be in this thing at hand, and then Feeling it – the Hope. Reconciling to the mystery. I spent twenty of my earliest years in the throes of a wretched obsessive-compulsive disorder, the very opposite of “reconciling to the mystery,” so the slow morph there has been, uh, significant.

To fortify my personal development and faith, I often use the practice of SoulCollage®. It helps me to reinforce my present way and to strengthen the way for which I’m striving. This is spiritually enriching work which directly affects the nourishing of my mind and the flourishing of my body. Simply, it’s good for me.

So, I choose images that cause me to have a glimmer within. And then I write:

I am one who will glow with hope. I am one who has decided not to be attached to an outcome, but to hold life loosely and with immense hope.

I am one who relaxes in this hope, knowing things can even be better than ever before, that patterns can be changed, and life transformations can result in permanent shifts.

I am one who relaxes in the time ahead and isn’t fixed on chronological time.

I am one who sets her gaze with a smile and a huge, huge hope, sending out peaceful energies and frequencies, and above all, prayers for the best of those close to my heart.

I am one who basks and warms in the flow of what is to be, knowing there will be what I need when I need it, and I may very well not even need that which I think I will need.

I am one who invites the possibilities, not based on what has happened, what is happening, or how I perceive either, but on the glorious potential ahead.

Share this