Somewhere Over The Rainbow…

Hey, Maniacs. How are you guys? How’s your heart? How’s your mind? Is it warm, fuzzy, full of starlight and sunrises encouraging excitement each and every morning you awaken? Perhaps you see the sunrise and feel that your soul is in a constant state of night, except the sky in your spirit is void of the beauty of the cosmos showing you that life is something to appreciate one breath at a time in the gift known as the present? Wherever you may be, I am thinking of you and want you to know that healing is coming for those silent cuts that are still bleeding inside you.

Today I want to talk about how to stay up–as much as you can anyways–in this down world.

We live in a time where people are probably the most emotionally and spiritually broken than I have ever seen. Those who may come off as callous, stone-hearted and desensitized to the atrocities, I infer them to be the lucky ones. They can function through the chaos, yet are they really functioning if they don’t feel? But then I have to correct myself and realize that we all grieve in different ways. Maybe they feel everything and just don’t express it. Perhaps they stay desensitized on purpose by coping skills that are hopefully healthy–exercise, therapy, other things of the sort as opposed to drowning at the spout of an alcoholic beverage or binging on drugs to numb the pain.

Or you’re on the opposing side: A visible emotional mess who cannot tell anyone what day it is because your emotions are more chaotic than any amount of rush hour in downtown Manhattan, New York, and you are afraid to express yourself in ways that’ll benefit you? You may know you need help but refuse to seek it because of your pride? Maybe you are doubtful that therapy of any sort will work and will instead search for healing elsewhere?

I can’t tell you that the way I did things will be the prescription that’ll give your mind rest in times where society is more than on edge–and these feelings of trepidation are no longer exclusive to adult life either by the way! I just want to remind you today that you matter! Life is so precious.

Every time you turn on the news or scroll through your social media feeds, you always digest the gripping terrors of what’s going on around you–school shootings, church shootings, political warfare, opinions from self-proclaimed soothsayers of hate being praised and spun as an ingenious revolutionary truth. Lots of unhealthy stuff being forced into crevices within us where our sanity should be!

That being said, there are a lot of people walking around unhealed and being reckless. If you do not take care of you and your issues, you are bound to hurt others at a greater degree than which you have been hurt–and God forbid it gets passed an exchange of words into fisticuffs or even worse, gunfire. 

When you heal those wounds within yourself, whether they have been there forever or for a few seconds, you must have a way to take care of them in a manner that serves you. Your refuge must be a mainstay and not a luxury that you think you don’t deserve. I know it seems like a bleaker possibility that you can go to church and fellowship in the comfort of a pew without thinking in the back of your head, “Where are the emergency exits, just in case.” I know that that going out, in general, can be an anxiety-inducing experience that will have some of us locked up in the comfy isolation of our homes escaping the monsters from the outside–which I am guilty of–but I want to remind you that you still have to find a way to center your soul.

So, call that friend that has proven to be trustworthy and vent your frustrations. Express to each other your worries, your hopes, and dreams and just get around people that are healthy for your mental health in general.

As a fitness instructor and self-care blogger, I strive to keep my dance studio a place where all can come to just be free for one hour out of the day! I know it may not seem like much, but I’ll leave you with this consideration: When someone cuts you off while driving or someone says a sly remark towards you, how much time elapsed during these transgressions? Seconds? Maybe a minute or so? What did you do with that hurt? Did you harbor it and THEN take out that pain on someone else? See, it’s not so far-fetched that a couple of minutes of an uncomfortable altercation can ruin your whole day. So what is stopping you from smelling the roses as they bloom to show that you are here, in this very moment, in this NOW, where you can take advantage of giving yourself the time you have to let positive things takeover you?

Take care of yourselves and be kind to each other. You never know when you are the reason someone keeps going or gives up entirely.

Love you guys! Keep your heads up and take each day one breath at a time. You are going to make it!

Chat with you all soon!

–CAM ❤