NOTE: This post was originally published on my previous blog, Recovering Shopaholic. For the past two years and at various points in the past, I have chosen a word or theme to guide my focus over the course of the year. For 2014, I actually selected two words, simplicity and joy, but I felt that diluted …
NOTE: This post was originally published on my previous blog, Recovering Shopaholic. The essay below was written in April 2013, shortly after I had made a commitment to conquer my addiction to caffeine (and just a few months after I started this blog). I decided to document how caffeine was negatively impacting my life so I …
You’re probably familiar with the expression, “my past came back to haunt me,” and you likely have some personal examples related to this phrase. While it is always good to live in the present and embrace “the power of now,” do we ever fully escape our pasts? Can we truly be free of our mistakes and poor behavior of years gone by?
This post will focus on our so-called “sins of the past” and how they affect our lives in the present time. I will relate personal examples pertaining to my past relationships and physical health, and do my best to provide useful insights and suggestions for letting go of regrets and repercussions from the past.
I’ve lost a bit of weight lately… I’m not sure how much since I don’t weigh myself very often, but my clothes are looser and my stomach is surprisingly flat. While I am happy to be feeling leaner, my weight loss is somewhat of a “hollow victory” and I find myself having mixed feelings about it. I’ve lost the weight as a result of a health condition that has been causing me a great deal of distress in recent weeks (and the reason why I didn’t post a blog entry last week).
This is different from “one stomach flu away from goal weight” a la Emily in “The Devil Wears Prada.” While it’s decidedly no fun to have the flu, one knows that it will eventually end and she will be back to feeling like her normal self in a matter of days. Unfortunately, I’m not sure when I’ll be back to my “normal self.” Instead, it’s entirely possible that I will end up with a new definition for normal. My condition has a tendency to be chronic and difficult to treat, and it’s made it challenging for me to eat all that much food for a number of days now. In fact, I may end up losing more weight than I ideally want to lose as a result of my being on a continuous diet of sorts.
I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night. I was awakened around 2:00 am by extreme discomfort in my neck. I tossed and turned for quite a while, but was unable to get comfortable enough to fall back to sleep. Sadly, this wasn’t the first time I had suffered from such neck pain at night, but it was the worst time. Since sleep was not forthcoming, I decided to get up for a while to stretch my neck and calm my mind.
To call my problem a stiff neck would be an understatement. A little over a year ago, I started to experience aches and stiffness in the front of my neck. The discomfort would come and go, and chiropractic care was not effective in relieving my pain. I mentioned the issue to several doctors and other health professionals, but they were as puzzled about this development as I was. Internet searches haven’t yielded any meaningful answers, either. There are a few serious conditions which include frontal neck pain as a major symptom, but if I had one of those ailments, I’d likely be much worse off than I am by this time.
Since the teachings of Louise Hay are an integral part of my healing project, I used my time of sleeplessness to revisit what she has to say about neck pain. Louise states that the neck represents flexibility and the ability to see what’s “back there.” Neck problems signify stubbornness, inflexibility and a refusal to see other sides of a question or situation. A stiff neck is a mark of unbending bullheadedness.
My Wardrobe, Myself 