September 24

FREEDOM MONTH: DAY 24: “Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.” – Albert Camus

When I can learn from mistakes and improve my performance each day, I am free. This is a great reminder that we are not doomed to continue to circle the drain like we do in addiction.

If I get the grace to stop the downward spiral of insanity that is active addiction, I am free to begin to improve my behavior and beliefs about life by applying this process to everything…in ALL my affairs. Being who I am, I was excited when I first read this, because I was certainly a woman who enjoyed having those affairs…but that was not what was meant…oh!

However, when and if I do have affairs, I have since learned that these principles DO apply in those as well. Ok!

But, first, I get to clean up a lot of things that stand in the way of my usefulness to you guys and that Power that graced me in the first place. I have not always been in total agreement with how this unfolds, but I DO accept it as being the right thing to do. Most often, it appears to me unbidden and the daily doing of these things allows a great deal more to be revealed. Oh again!

Even after all these years, one of the biggest events that needed to be amended in my life occurred without me knowing it would. It has taken a year for me to work through some stuff that was a pretty toxic time in my life. My part was not something I needed to amend, but I did need to shift the story and see the benefits and how I could reframe it to become a great asset to my life and those with whom I am meant to share. I can also be that voice that tells the story, even when my voice shakes. And this can be of great benefit to others.

When we learn to speak about what has taken place in our lives, we become free. When we clean up the way we see the story and take what is there for our benefit, we are free. When we get to see that things that happen are done, not TO us but FOR us, we are free.

And the better I strive to be in this instance, as well as so many others, is a beacon of freedom for others. It may not make some folks as happy as they would like that I tell these stories, but it gives everyone else permission to do so as well.

And we heal, and the world is better when we do. And we stop dying to those things and we move past them into the “sunlight of the spirit” and we are better people when the broken places are not healed over, but when we crack them open completely and reset the broken ideas and beliefs around these events.

That is called transformation. Or, more accurately, transmutation. Transformation means we have shifted the energy into something useful and productive. Transmutation means that we die into that story and are rebirthed into something entirely new. I believe that deep healing only happens at the site of the original wound. That means we die to that wound and let it be completely re-broken and reset. I love that analogy, because sometimes the wounds are too deep to let the skin grow back and opening the wound is the only way to make sure it heals well and cleanly.

I am free, yet again, from something I thought was never going to heal. I tried a couple of times over the years, and could not find the path to the center of the wound. It has been a long, slow process, but today it is on its way to rebirthing me. And I am free, and it is good, and oh, so very much better. YAY!