I’m super excited to bring back the Ask Away feature here on Soul Speak!
It’s been about a year since I’ve done this, and I just got the nudge that it was time to reintroduce it.
A few days ago, I announced this on my Facebook page, and several of you sent me questions right away! I’ll start by answering one in today’s post.
If you have a question, please keep reading to see how you can submit it and possibly have it answered, too!
To refresh all of our memories, I first wanted to share what this feature is and how it will work.
The last couple of years have been filled with beautiful lessons for me. I’ve learned about authenticity and community and vulnerability and connection. I’ve learned the power of opening up and allowing others in. I’ve learned that we don’t have to walk through life alone.
And I’ve also learned that we much more the same than we are different. If I’m experiencing something, chances are someone else has already experienced it. And the chances are that they can share how they got through it or grew from it or learned to embrace it.
I’ve also learned that asking for help can be magical. Oftentimes, in doing so we give ourselves permission to transform our lives. We open our energy to someone else’s and allow them to help us. And that’s such a beautiful thing to experience.
For all of these reasons, I wanted to create a space here where we could bravely ask the questions that may make us feel exposed or silly or… human. And I wanted it to be where you weren’t just asking me for the answer, but you were asking an entire community to listen to you and to offer support to you.
We are all unique and each come from a different place. Our experiences and lessons learned give us so many tools to help others along their paths. And their experiences and lessons learned can in turn help us along our path.
So that’s what this is all about.
You ask the question. And then we all lovingly respond with our answer.
What you ask is completely up to you.
Maybe you’re feeling stuck in a particular area of your life and feel like some guidance would be helpful.
Or maybe you’re struggling with making an important decision and feel like you could use a fresh perspective to help you weigh your options.
Maybe you’re super close to having a breakthrough and just need some new tools to help it progress.
It can be any question that comes from your authentic soul – any question that you truthfully are looking for guidance with.
If you have a question, please email it to me here: jodi@jodichapman.com with “Ask Away” in the subject line.
While I can’t promise that I will answer every question, I can promise that I will do my best to get to as many as I can. If your question is chosen, I will let you know if I need any additional information. It’s completely up to you if you would like your question to be anonymous or public. If you would like to keep it anonymous, please make sure to leave out any identifying details.
Disclaimer: Please know that I am not a doctor or a therapist, and so any suggestion that I give is from tapping into my soul and sharing from my heart. Please don’t substitute it for medical treatment.
And now for our first question!
This one comes from Sarra, who wanted to know how to move forward after losing someone very close to her. She feels that she’s lost her way and isn’t happy with some of the decisions that she’s made since her mom passed away.
She wrote that she left her stable job many years ago for another job that didn’t work out. She’s been struggling financially ever since. She also wrote that she is upset with herself that she stayed in an unhealthy relationship for many years, and in the process she lost contact with her family and friends.
My first response to your question, Sarra, is to just reach right through the computer screen and give you a huge hug. To look into your eyes and let you know how loved you truly are. And to send a wish into your heart that helps you to love yourself with the same intensity that you berate yourself.
You have been through a huge loss. Huge. And we all grieve differently. Some of us take years and years to return after a loved one has left us. Your entire world changed the moment your mom passed away, and it’s normal that it’s taken you some time to find your way back after such a loss.
But your soul is so strong. YOU are so strong. You’re still here, and you’re reaching out. That spark inside of you is getting stronger and rising to the surface, and I have a feeling it’s going to emerge fully and completely VERY soon.
My heart hurts when I hear you beating yourself up for mistakes you feel that you’ve made over the past several years. Each experience that you’ve been through has led you to exactly where you are right now. And where you are right now is exactly where you’re meant to be.
With this in mind, you can begin to see your job and your relationship as blessings. You can begin to find the good in each experience. You can feel gratitude for who you are now and where you are now. And you can love yourself for getting you here.
Sometimes focusing on what’s not working isn’t really who we are, it’s just a habit we’ve formed. And we can give ourselves permission to form a new habit.
So that’s what I would love for you to consider: to shift into gratitude for everything that IS working right now in your life. To begin to release all of the blame that you hold for yourself. To begin to love yourself as you are today. To let yourself feel how good and kind and smart and amazing you truly are.
When you wake up each morning. you could express your gratitude to the universe, to your life, and to yourself. And when you go about your day, you could pat yourself on the back continuously – loving yourself for each moment that you chose to engage with life in a positive way.
You have been through a very painful loss. And that takes time to heal from. Please know that you’ve always done the best you could with what you had to give. And also know that each day can be a fresh start. You are so strong – I feel it – and I know without a doubt that you have an amazing life awaiting you. And it’s up to you to step into it. To move forward rather than continuing to look back.
I just pulled a Soul Clarity Card for you:
I think this is a really great affirmation for you. To know that you are so worthy of a well-lived and well-loved life.
You truly are.
That’s what I wish for you.
Sending love to you.
***
The Soul Speak community is filled with loving souls. I would absolutely love if you would chime in and support Sarra. You could answer her question, send her love, or share your own experience and offer your own wisdom.
We’re all in this together, and that’s a beautiful thing!
Please help spread the love by sharing this post on Facebook and Twitter.
Hugs,
P.S. – Last chance to receive a blog review or blog coaching for 1/2 off!
This special ends on the 30th, so please be sure to sign up before then! I can’t wait to support you! You can click here to learn all about it! (Thank you so much to everyone who has already signed up – yay!)
Sarra, I would just like to affirm what Jodi said about loving yourself and forgiving yourself. This is a lesson I’m currently working with. Self-punishment is absolutely paralyzing. I don’t know what helps you, but I found some good guided meditations on self love and letting go of the past. I also made up some affirmations to repeat to myself until they stopped feeling “fake” and I began to believe them. Also, try reaching back out to your family. It sounds like you’ve isolated yourself a bit, and in my experience that exacerbates the loneliness and feelings of unworthiness and uncertainty. Wishing you the best as you keep moving forward.
Jodi & Rebecca, thank you so much for all your sweet and kind words. I gained so much from what you shared with me. It brought tears to my eyes and each time I read it it continues.
It is very true I have totally isolated myself from everyone. I have tried reaching out to my two younger brothers, they have not responded kindly. That is what it is.
I have to find it in myself to be more positive about me, being so negative about my being isn’t doing me any good. I think affirmations are a good starting point.
Thank you again ladies.
Love & Light, Sarra
Sarra,
I’d like to reinforce the words of Jodi and Rebecca. As you’ve indicated, they’ve given you some wonderful advice.
I’m hoping the following suggestions may also help a little. If they don’t resonate with you, please discard them as you see fit.
Whenever you feel at an absolute loss and incredibly disheartened about things, close your eyes, breathe deeply and recall the love your Mother had for you. I don’t know your belief system, but if it helps, know that she is still with you, encouraging you, supporting you and holding space to enable you to reach your highest good and do what’s in your very best interests.
If that isn’t congruent with your beliefs, recall the love she had for you, how you felt in her presence, sharing time and energy and tap back into that feeling of being loved and nurtured and know that even though she has passed, your essence hasn’t changed. You are still worthy of love. You are still worthy of encouragement. You are still worthy of support. We all have times when we’re the only ones that can supply those things and it’s usually when we’re at our most down, but tapping into the memories of how it felt to receive can enable us to give this gift to ourselves and in that way, we reset our emotional clocks and shine a little brighter, thereby feeling better about ourselves and attracting better things to us again
Practical ways of doing this include sticking a label on your bathroom mirror with things that your Mum used to say that made you feel really good e.g. “I love you”, “YOU are beautiful, capable and strong”, etc. In essence using her words as affirmations and putting them in a spot where you see them without fail every single day.
I know keeping a gratitude journal is all the rage currently but this is because they seriously work. Every day write down the things you are grateful for that day. Even if you start off with just one thing (and that could be purely that you’re still breathing), it’s a start and you’ll find things will grow more and more positive and you’ll feel more empowered as a result.
Finally, be gentle with yourself. You’ve been through an incredibly hard time and as Jodi said, grieving is different for everyone. Give yourself permission to grieve, nurture yourself while you do so – think of those things that give you comfort and indulge yourself in them from time to time in order to lessen that feeling of loss, if only for a little while. It’s okay to experience grief, loss, hardship. We all have tough times. You will make your way through this and things will look brighter in the future. I applaud your courage for reaching out – it’s the first step to change.
Big, big hugs from me.
Shân
Oh Shan, thank you so much for your kind and beautiful words. I sit here weeping as I have just read them and they touched me so deeply. All this kindness is overwhelming as I’m not used to it due to the fact that I’ve isolated myself for so many years.
I am going to take your suggestions to heart and implement into my life, they are so good.
Many blessing to you.
Sarra
Sarra, the advice the others gave you is wonderful advice. I only wanted to add one thing, because I lost my mother fairly recently. Be gentle with yourself with regards to your grief at losing your mother. I don’t know how long ago you lost her, but it can take a few years to grieve. One thing that actually helped me a lot with that, was connecting with my mother with the help of a psychic/ medium. It was very healing for me. Sending gentle hugs and take it easy on yourself.
yes please.
yes please thanks