Soul Bridge Coaching

Take Good Care of Your Mother

Here we go again…Holly (my spirit guide) and the Collective Wisdom were coming to me with another song. This time it was The Only Child by Jackson Browne. I sat down with my journal to learn what message they wanted to share with me.

Holly: There are scientists and many others on your planet who realize what a miracle has taken place that your planet is the perfect distance from the sun, spinning at the perfect speed, originally populated with the perfect combination of minerals, plants, and animals, that are now facing extinction at an ever-increasing and alarming rate. There are those who would say your planet is a creation of their loving God, and they will hold the belief that that same loving God is going to save your planet. We do not hold that same view of the future of your planet. You were upset when you read the headline of a New York Times article about how Earth is failing. You, on the other hand, see this as a failure of humankind, not of Mother Earth, and we agree with you. We have spoken to you numerous times over the past couple of years about how humans need to reverse the destruction of your planet. And now the leaders of your country, when given the opportunity to put dollars and legislative commitment behind helping Mother Earth while also supporting the most vulnerable in your nation, have turned away from this opportunity. It is the lack of vision and commitment to these issues that have us telling you these words from Jackson Browne:

But take good care of your mother
And remember to be kind
When the pain of another will serve you to remind
That there are those who feel themselves exiled
On whom the fortune never smiled
And upon whose life the heartache has been piled

And the road forward to nourish the planet and the most vulnerable inhabitants will be more challenging as the hands of time move toward human annihilation. You see, dear friend, Mother Earth isn’t failing her children. Her children are failing each other and this planet. Many of the “leaders” of your planet have lost the ability to see past their person gains. They no longer care about the cries of other human voices. Your planet desperately needs leaders who care about justice, compassion, and a sustainable future for the planet and all living beings.

You may think, dear one, we are saying that all hope is lost, but we will encourage you individually, and as part of the greater collective, to do all you can to take care of your Mother and her inhabitants. The times ahead will be more challenging than your planet has ever experienced. And those challenges may be the impetus for people to join hands to find solutions to your planet’s many problems. Do not wait for God to save you. Humankind has created these problems, and your species has the ability to solve them. The question is: DOES HUMANKIND HAVE THE WANT AND THE WILL?

We must do more than hold on to hope, my friends. It is our ACTION that will create the movement toward positive change. For each pebble that is dropped into a pond, a ripple will form. Have the want and the will to save Mother Earth and her inhabitants by dropping your pebbles. And all the ripples from all of those pebbles will join the ripples created by others with the want and the will to create a wave of change. Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, March 1, 2022

Mother Earth and Her Children are Calling Us

Fully Rooted and Reaching for the Stars

Synchronicities V: Answers to Questions Large and Small

My spirit guide Holly and the Collective Wisdom played a significant role in today’s post. Here were their words leading me toward this post: We are aware that many people who read this post do not believe the stories you tell of your spiritual journey. But that is of no significance to us, nor should it be to you. People may not believe until they have had similar experiences. In fact, just the telling of your experiences may wake up others to their own synchronistic experiences. You have had some profound experiences since the passing of two significant people in your life, your brother and your best friend from high school. Others have partaken of these synchronicities with you, and so they are some of your believers. You are ready to tell these stories and add them to this visual spiritual memoir, dear friend.

It was after my brother’s suicide, nearly 24 years ago, that I began to see the power of synchronicities to answer many of my questions, large and small. Several days after my brother’s death, I started receiving what I thought to be communication from my brother. On the first Saturday night after my brother’s death, I called on him to “show me a BIG sign” that he was okay and that he was actually sending me messages. It had to be something that was so obvious no one would be able to miss it. The next morning, my husband and I were driving on our way to do grocery shopping, and we noticed a large church sign knocked over on the sidewalk. Apparently a drunk driver had driven his car onto the sidewalk and knocked over the sign. This became the first of hundreds of synchronicities that have graced my life these past two decades.

The song Angel, by Sarah McLachlan, has played a part in many synchronistic messages from my brother. It was released in November, 1998, just six months after my brother’s death, and the lyrics to the song were so similar to the events of his suicide that I have always thought about him when I’ve heard the song. After doing a presentation in Arizona for a group of parents of gifted kids, I was feeling concerned about having shared personal information about my brother’s death. He, too, was gifted, having graduated from UCLA with the honor of Phi Beta Kappa, and from law school with the distinction of Order of the Coif. Getting into our car after the session, I asked my brother if it had been okay to speak about his suicide and how intellectual giftedness doesn’t ensure a lifetime of success. My husband started the car just as the song Angel was being played. I knew that not only was it okay to talk about Ed’s suicide, but it was important. I recently looked up the story behind Sarah McLachlan’s song, Angel, knowing there had to be an important significance behind such a powerful song. McLachlan says she wrote the lyrics about the Smashing Pumpkins’ keyboard player who died in a hotel room of an overdose. She said, “I felt a flood of empathy for him and that feeling of being lost and lonely and desperately searching for some kind of release.” Just like the keyboard player in her song, my brother was also found in a hotel room. One of the most impactful synchronicities around this song and my brother’s suicide came when I was driving past the hotel where he took his life, and Angel came on the radio at that exact moment. I knew he was truly “in the arms of an angel,” and so was I.

Musical synchronicities weren’t reserved for my relationship with my brother. Many years after I lost my brother, my best friend Sue died. She had big brown eyes, and she loved brown-eyed Susan daisies. We were in high school in 1967 when Van Morrison’s song Brown Eyed Girl was released, and every time I heard it, I thought of my brown-eyed friend, Sue. She had spent many of her adult years in South Lake Tahoe while raising two sons, so although she no longer lived in California at the time of her death, it made sense that her memorial service was held in Tahoe. Several friends and family members came to the front of the church to speak on Sue’s behalf. When it was my turn, I was filled with anxiety about what I would say to memorialize a person who had meant so much to me. When I was done speaking, I didn’t notice there was a step-down from where I had been standing, and I missed the step. It was with an incredibly awkward stumble that I managed to catch myself from falling. I looked up and said that Sue was probably getting a good laugh at my lack of grace. On our way back to our car, I wondered if Sue’s spirit had been with us that afternoon. And as we pulled out of the church’s parking lot, Van Morrison’s song, Brown Eyed Girl, from more than 30 years earlier, came on the radio.

I have continued to have synchronicities with Sue and her Brown Eyed Girl song. On Friday, July 12, 2019, I wrote about this synchronicity in my journal: “I had “spoken” to Sue while I was in the shower yesterday. I thanked her and told her I didn’t know how I would have made it through high school without her friendship. Today, while in a vegan restaurant with a dear friend, the song Brown Eyed Girl came over the restaurant’s speakers while we were having lunch! Her song, from 50 years earlier, was her acknowledgment that she had heard my heartfelt appreciation of our friendship.” I will never forget these synchronicities just as I will never forget Sue. As Van Morrison said…You, my brown eyed girl!

We will encourage those of you who have never experienced a synchronicity like those shared in this post to begin to pay attention to the many and varied ways “coincidences” have been expressed in your lives. Some people call them “God winks,” and we will say they are the way those who have returned to spirit are able let you know they continue to communicate with you and love you. Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, February 22, 2022

Angels Along the Road, Part III: The Hypnotherapist Next Door

Toward the end of 2021, my spirit guide Holly and the Collective Wisdom started telling me that that I needed to pay attention to the gifts that were right in front of me: Some people are the “grass is always greener” types. And some people overlook the low-lying fruit with an eye on the fruit at the top of the tree. We will say you have a great gift within arms reach, and we would like you to speak to this so others will open their eyes to the gift of the angel within their midst. I knew they were referring to the gift that is my next door neighbor, Wanita.

From the first day I met Wanita, I knew there was something special about her. She has a warm and friendly smile, and her laugh is so natural and infectious. I am lucky, because she is my next door neighbor.

Wanita is a 93 year old hypnotherapist who, prior to Los Angeles’ Covid shutdown almost two years ago, had an office at the Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood so her many clients from the movie industry could be ensured privacy from the paparazzi. As her website states, “Wanita Holmes began her private practice of Clinical Hypnotherapy in 1987. Since then, not only has she helped thousands of clients improve their lives, she has taught and mentored hundreds of hypnotherapists. She is an inspiring life coach, public speaker, published author, and mentor. She is internationally known, and has been featured in Elle, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, London Herald, Eve (London), Marie Claire, L.A. Times, Larchmont Chronicle, and the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. She has appeared on the BBC, Good Morning London, The Kilroy Show (London), KABC Morning talk show.”

And then, two years ago, our lives changed. Wanita closed her office in Hollywood, and we both started working virtually from our apartments. There were things about working virtually that worked well for each of us, but I knew Wanita’s vivacious personality would miss the in-person consultations with her many clients.

Both Wanita and I look at the bright side of life, even during challenging times like Covid, health setbacks, and political strife. Wanita evolved from simply being my neighbor to being my “angel along the road” on April 3, 2020, with her first instant message: “Just finished half of my walk this morning and wanted to text you both and thank you for being my neighbors.” I knew she was walking in the hallway of our complex, and many of our neighbors were not wearing masks at the time. I told her I hoped she was wearing hers, and she told me she had a scarf she could put over her face if anyone came within six feet of her. And from that day to now, almost two years later, we have sent each other daily messages.

My day begins with a sweet note from Wanita. We leave groceries outside each other’s doors. We share books we have read. We give each other comfort when we face challenges. She is the kind of neighbor a person could only dream about!

Just five days into our mini conversations, I asked Wanita how she was doing, and she said, “Okay, could be better, a little depressed by being cooped up for so long, but glad to be alive.” That is Wanita in a nutshell. Two years later, and still cooped up, Wanita is as optimistic as ever. She has a Light about her that radiates into my apartment, and her words of wisdom are greatly appreciated. Recently she sent me this message: “You (and Holly) and I just sending healing light out into the world is important!!!! Sometimes not even knowing who is receiving it, just knowing that love and light and healing is so needed everyday, everywhere. So generating that love and that light, and send it, is what is important! Love you Paula.”

When my husband was diagnosed with melanoma of the thumb, and had to have half of the thumb amputated, Wanita created an mp3 recording he could listen to to help him with his healing and good prognosis. We are happy to say he is still cancer-free.

When I sent Wanita a message telling her that I was having sleep issues that included anxiety-inducing nightmares, she told me to repeat this statement over and over until I fell asleep: DEEEEEP…DEEEEEP…PEACEFUL…SLEEP… Not only has this mantra work for me, but in my imagination, I hear it through Wanita’s voice!

In more ways than I can count and share in this post, Wanita is a Light along my journey, and an angel along this road. And I understand why my guide Holly was insistent that I write this post. Wanita is a part of my soul family, and it has taken a pandemic for me to recognize who she is and her importance in my life. She loves my selfie emojis, so this one is for her:

We will encourage each of you to take the time to recall and reach out to the angels along your journey. We will also encourage you to be a Wanita Holmes for someone along their own journey, and be aware of the angels within your midst who may be a colleague or the neighbor next door. Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, February 15, 2022

Angels Along the Road, Part I: Reginald Fitch

Angels Along the Road, Part II: The Marvelous Mrs. O

Everything Carries a Vibration: Part IV – Vibrational Healing Modalities

A couple of months ago, I became curious about the role of vibrational modalities in my healing and wellness routines. Two years earlier, I had read the book Energy Healing: Essentials of Self-Care by Ann Marie Chiasson, MD, and she suggests the important role vibration plays in our healing and wellness. In fact, she says that each morning, while she is still in bed, she taps her feet together to send a vibration throughout her body. Dr. Chiasson’s repeated suggestions about the importance of vibrational healing have remained at the back of my mind these past two years until a healer suggested I purchase an oscillating platform to help an issue related to my knees. After four years of struggling to come to a standing position from a seated position, and then to return to sitting from a standing position, and after seeing a wide variety of doctors and other healers, I decided it was worth trying the vibrational platform.

Curious to see what my spirit guide Holly and the Collective Wisdom would think about the healing effects of vibration, we engaged in the following journaled conversation.

Holly: While Dr. Chiasson’s suggestions about vibration have remained in the recesses of your mind the past two years, we will remind you of other ways you have used vibrational healing. Nearly a dozen years ago, you took a training in the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), also known as “tapping.” Coaches of EFT and their clients use tapping to raise their energetic vibration and eliminate their limiting fears and beliefs. Some aspects of your more than decade-long qigong practice also uses vibration to move energy and clear energy blockages. You may also remember hearing about how singing and humming create vibrational healing.

In fact, more than a dozen years ago, you purchased a book to use with your young clients called Six Healing Sounds with Lisa and Ted: Qigong for Children by Lisa Spillane. Children are encouraged to use a special sound for each part of the body depending upon the negative feeling they are experiencing.

Remember your experiences with singing bowls and sound healing? That is another vibrational healing modality. So, while the idea of using an oscillating platform may seem new to you, the idea of vibrational healing is not. You may not have labeled all of these modalities as vibrational healing, but, in fact, that is their common denominator.

We will say that you should begin slowly on your platform, and by the end of a month, you should know the impact on your knees, and perhaps other aspects of your health.

And so that’s what I did. At the beginning I really enjoyed it, but then I noticed some pains in joints other than my knees. One month after beginning my experiment with the vibrational platform, this is what Holly had to say:

Holly: This platform is not the answer to your knee issues. This morning you are accepting the notion that not all challenges you face will have solutions that are easy. In fact, some challenges will not be reversed or healed. Yet, they may still provide you with an unexpected healing, a healing of the emotional body. This is what you are experiencing this morning. After 71 years with Ehlers-Danlos, hypermobile type, you are left with knee issues that challenge your ability to move down to a sitting position and rise again. And the vibration of the platform exaggerated the hypermobility of not just your knees, but also your hips, ankles, and neck. While you were hoping for a miracle cure, the true miracle is your acceptance of your human body and its unique gifts and challenges. As you have learned to tell your body, mind, and spirit during rounds of EFT tapping, “Although I am challenged by the pain and reduced power in my knees to rise and sit back down, I still totally and completely love and accept myself.”

As synchronicity would have it, I wasn’t done with my exploration of vibrational healing. I heard an interview with Jonathan and Andi Goldman about their book The Humming Effect: Sound Healing for Health and Happiness. Johnathan is a writer, musician, and teacher who is also a sound healer. Andi is a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in holistic counseling and sound therapy. I decided to read their book and begin a five minute per day humming practice. This practice reminded me that my father, who lived to age 98, was known as a “hummer.” He used to have lunch at the same buffet everyday, and other regulars used to tell me how my father hummed even in the restaurant. I’ll never know if his incredibly good health and happy demeanor was due to the humming, but it certainly didn’t hurt!

We will encourage each of you to find healthy and helpful ways to bring vibrational healing techniques into your wellness practice. Your human body is a wondrous gift that will guide you in knowing what is helpful and what is detrimental to your individual body. Be sure to listen and feel with loving kindness. We would like to share music we listen to on a daily basis, The Journey by Master Sound Healer, Mark Romero. SoulBridgeCoaching and Holly, February 8, 2022

Everything Carries a Vibration: Part I – Sensitive Receivers

Everything Carries a Vibration: Part II – She Comes With Songs

Everything Carries a Vibration: Part III – Veganism and Plant-Based Eating

Today, 2-02-2022, is the 2nd anniversary of my switch to veganism. Although I always preferred plants over red meat, my diet had still consisted of quite a bit of chicken, fish, eggs, and milk products. The switch to eating solely plant-based products was not gradual. It actually happened overnight! My husband and I watched the movie The Game Changers (about elite athletes who are also vegan) on February 1, 2020, and that night we agreed we would switch to a plant-based diet. Here is my spirit guide Holly’s take on today’s two year anniversary:

Holly: Your life experiences as a vegan have been short-lived, just two years today, but they have also been profound. As a highly sensitive, highly aware person, you carry a different vibration than those who are less sensitive and aware. You are no longer being fed by the vibration of other sentient beings. Even when you rationalized that organic and free-range animal products were somehow healthier for you, you were discounting the stress hormones of the animals prior to their being killed for your meal. As a highly sensitive person, you were ingesting meat of animals that were flooded with anxiety hormones prior to their death, and you were eating and drinking milk products of cows who had had their young taken from them so that they would become life-long milk producers for human consumption until they were no longer capable of producing milk, and then they were destroyed. You were being sustained off the suffering of other sentient beings. You are now aware, too, of the environmental challenges created by the vast amounts of animal wastes polluting land and water supplies. Your planet’s environment is also challenged by the vast area of land required to graze animals and grow their feed. There are those who told you it wouldn’t be possible for you to maintain your health on a vegan diet with SIBO and other intestinal challenges, but your overall health has dramatically improved. Your cholesterol level is in a “normal” range for the first time in more than 30 years, your blood sugar is lower, and your sense of well-being is expanded. Any challenge of being a vegan is due to the limited choices offered at many restaurants, but that will change as society begins to recognize the need to change the vibration for all sentient beings.

This post is not intended to shame anyone who continues to consume animal products. The purpose of this Soul Bridge Coaching site is to record my relationship with my spirit guide Holly and the Collective Wisdom as well as significant aspects of my spiritual journey. Turning to a plant-based diet has had one of the most significant impacts on my personal vibration, and I know it also impacts my spiritual connection to all sentient beings.

We encourage you to pay attention to what you eat and what you wear. If you can image the plant or animal that you are consuming, be sure to give gratitude to what has been sacrificed for your benefit. If you are willing to try an experiment and go plant-based for a week, it will be interesting to see how you feel from not being burdened by the stress hormones of another sentient being. Our planet could certainly use an extra dose of good vibrations! Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, February 2, 2022

Everything Carries a Vibration: Part I – Sensitive Receivers

Everything Carries a Vibration: Part II – She Comes With Songs

Angels Along the Road, Part II: The Marvelous Mrs. O

In early December of last year, my spirit guide Holly took me on a trip down memory lane. It almost felt like a virtual reality experience because I laughed and I cringed as I quickly relived the memories she showed me. It was like the reviewing of one’s life often described in near death experiences. Several days later, I was able to find some of these same photos that I hadn’t seen in many decades, and I have included a few of them in this post.

It all started with the co-journaling Holly and I do almost every morning. On this particular morning she said: Mrs. O, the wife of your high school’s baseball and basketball coach was a thing of beauty and grace in your eyes. She was tall and elegant, and she was a professional model. At age 15, you were also tall, 5 feet 10 inches, and very thin. You often thought about what it would be like to be a glamorous model like Mrs. O. One spring afternoon, Mrs. O was at the baseball field, and she approached you and asked you if you wanted to become a model. She gave you her agent’s card, and by the end of that year, you were a professional model, too. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as you had imagined. Many of the women smoked cigarettes and drank coffee for lunch while you had a burger and shake. You were much younger than these women, and they laughed as they warned you to watch what you ate because you wouldn’t always be so thin.

What Holly didn’t need to remind me, but that has stuck with me for more than 55 years, is that along with the agent’s business card, Mrs. O offered me some sage advice, Be sure to finish school.

Holly took me on a trip through my modeling memory lane. The first cringe-worthy memory was one of my first modeling jobs. I was hired to wear a bathing suit covered by a short serape, that barely covered my bathing suit, along with a large straw hat. I stood dressed like this near the produce section of a local grocery store (imagine really cold) trying to get customers to buy Sun Glo suntan lotion. Holly poked fun at me by saying that just as the Marlboro Man, who hocked cigarettes on TV commercials and print ads, and dressed as a cowboy, eventually died of lung cancer from cigarette smoking, I had been hocking a suntanning product and eventually ended up with both melanoma and basal cell carcinoma. I am more than happy to say I have no photos to prove this story!

The only magazine I ever graced was Scientific American. As an educational consultant who now works with gifted kids and adults, you would think I would be proud of this accomplishment, but it was another one of my cringe-worthy modeling experiences where I was dressed in a white lab coat in front of some remarkable new invention, and I was totally irrelevant. Once again, I did not save a photo of this “accomplishment”.

Holly reminded me that while a student at UC Santa Barbara, I was hired by the Brooks Institute of Photography to be a model for their students. I had no idea what I would be asked to do, but I ended up wearing all kinds of hats. In some of the photos, you couldn’t even see my face, and in one where you could see my face, I was leaned up against a pillar with a lovely hat. The problem is that I was wearing really odd-looking shoes on my size 10 feet, and those shoes were more noticeable than the hat. Remember, I experienced this all through my mind’s eye, and it was only after locating these photos that I saw what Holly had shown me to be true!

After four years of very part-time modeling, I knew this profession wasn’t meant to be my life’s work. The funny and cringe-worthy moments would have to be a small part of who I was and would be. However, Mrs. O’s comments about finishing my education have stayed with me to this day. I thought about them when I graduated from high school, when I graduated with a BA from UCLA, when I earned a teaching license at Cal Poly Pomona, and when I earned both a Master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Oregon.

And after Holly took me on this virtual reality trip down memory lane, I googled Mr. and Mrs. O’s names, and I found out that Mr. O died in October of last year at age 89. I found a photo of Mrs. O on Facebook from seven years earlier, when she would have been in her late 70’s, and she was still as elegant and marvelous as ever. I am grateful to this angel for our very brief conversation that has continued to motivate me to focus on the learner aspect of my life.

We will encourage each of you to take the time to recall the angels along your journey and how they have impacted the roads you’ve taken. We will also encourage you to be a Mrs. O for someone along their own journey. Your good deeds may take precious little time, but their impacts can live a lifetime. Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, January 25, 2022

Angels Along the Road, Part I: Reginald Fitch

Tying Up Loose Ends and Allowing Expansive Possibilities

In October 2021, I was feeling curious about what the near future would hold for me. I sat down with my journal for a co-created conversation with my spirit guide Holly. Here were her words of wisdom:

Holly: Your blog post, Allow and Let it Go, is a good prescription for these next three months. You are going through many changes, and this will be a good time to bring closure to things left undone. Tie up the loose strings of your life’s quilt so you are able to put your 2022 energies into new patterns for that quilt. You have ideas about the direction in which you are moving, but we will suggest that you not hold too fast to your hopes and dreams so you will be better able to recognize when something even better presents itself. Sometimes humans have a tendency to focus on an idea that is actually a limiting dream. When you are able to open your creative spirit to unimagined possibilities, you will open the door to the truth of who you are and the abundance of the marriage of your human and divine aspects. Take the time to wrap up the gifts and challenges of your current experiences and remain in the deep awareness of all that is in each present moment moving forward. 2022 has great opportunities for you personally and professionally, and your willingness to remain mindful and curious will serve you well.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Pexels.com

There was a part of me that was so eager to know what unimagined possibilities would soon present themselves, but I knew Holly and the Collective Wisdom were always looking out for my highest good, as their previous messages had always served me well. So, I remained focused on the present moments and tied up the loose ends of my quilt.

And here it is, three months later, the beginning of a new calendar year, and these are the unimagined possibilities that presented themselves since that October conversation. 1) For the past four years, I have been searching for an answer to some physical challenges I have been experiencing due to Ehlers-Danlos, and I came upon a wonderful EDS bodyworker in the UK (Jeannie Di Bon) who has a site called The Zebra Club. It is a treasure trove of exercise videos for people with Ehlers-Danlos, hypermobile type. This resource feels like an answer to one of my long-held hopes and dreams. 2) I was interviewed by Marla Hughes on her Interviews with Innocence podcast (see a previous post), and I was able to talk about two of my passions: working with gifted people and working with spiritually sensitive people. 3) I developed a friendship with someone I met through an online course, and we videochat many times per month. I was not searching for a new friendship, but it has been impactful and rewarding. 4) A former colleague reconnected with me, and we have embarked on a mutually-beneficial journey of growth and discovery. 5) Holly suggested I consider some type of online course in 2022, and that same afternoon I received an email message from the UCLA Extension program about their winter offerings. I found a 5-week course that sounded interesting to me, Great Songs and the Stories Behind Them, and the first session will be in early February. 6) As a result of registering for that course, I received an email from the coordinator of UCLA’s Intergenerational Program asking if I would like to be matched with a freshman student at UCLA who is enrolled in a year-long course on aging. We will have six weekly videochats (beginning later this week) in order to explore issues of aging.

It is with profound appreciation that I look back on the last three months to see the many and varied ways unimagined possibilities have graced my life. It makes me hopeful, knowing the next few months will certainly be as fruitful and inspiring.

We will encourage you to follow the same advice and allow unimagined opportunities to fill your lives. Do not hold on too fast to limiting dreams in order that expansive possibilities may be realized. Wishing you all a healthy and insightful 2022.

Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, January 18, 2022

She is an Only Child by Choice

Toward the middle of December, I started looking at my new World Wildlife Fund calendar, and I put a notation for my daughter’s birthday in mid-January. It is an obviously impactful day, and comes just six days before my own birthday. I sat down to journal with my spirit guide Holly, and the birth of my only child was the focus of Holly’s message.

Holly: Have you ever noticed ways you’ve made decisions that later suited your high sensitivities perfectly? You were married 7 1/2 years before you had your daughter. You were a teacher at the time, and others would ask you why you didn’t have any children, after all, you were so great with their children. But what they didn’t know was that you were highly sensitive and intense. Working with a classroom full of children was depleting to your nervous system.

And then, 42 years ago, on 1-11, at 1:01 a.m., your sweet child was born. You had been right to wait 7 1/2 years to become a mother. You had a solid and loving marriage, a great teaching position, and being a new mom and teacher was indeed challenging to your nervous system. This would have been even harder at a younger age.

Some of the greatest highs and lows in this life of yours have been as a mom: the lows of a precious child being seriously ill in intensive care, and the highs of her incredible capacity for love and compassion for others.

As the years went by, and there were no new additions to your family, the questions of “why only one child” were directed your way. You and your husband knew that one child was a good fit for your sensitivities and intensities. Many people will judge you according to their own life experiences and their view of what is “normal.” But you had an understanding that the judgments of others would not drive your decision-making on an issue as life-changing as mothering.

So here you are, and here she is, 42 years later, still a loving and compassionate daughter. Your ability to know your own emotional and psychological limits helped your only daughter create her sister-like friendships that have supported her throughout her life.

She is now the mother of her own family of two precious children. She loves them as much as you love her, and she has invited you and your husband to share in the love of her small family. Your ability to determine what would be healthy and nourishing for you has paid a lifetime of dividends.

We will encourage our readers to realize all the opportunities they have to make meaningful choices that are both healthy and helpful to their personal and spiritual growth. If you are able to see yourself as a unique being, you will see you do not need to be guided by what others see as normal. When you stand in your own truth, you celebrate that uniqueness. Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, January 11, 2022

Seasons of Our Lives

As I mentioned in a post last month, my spirit guide Holly was continuing to send me metaphors through songs. At the end of that post, I mentioned that she went from Take it Easy to Seasons of Our Lives. She was particularly focused on these words: “Autumn leaves will fall, spring won’t save us all, in the seasons of our lives. Just like winter hides all in snow, and the summer shines with new hope, in the seasons of our lives.”

This song came on the heels of my post about how having moved from Eugene, Oregon, to Los Angeles nine years ago, there was a part of me that had a longing for my friends and the place we had called home for 35 years. Holly and the Collective Wisdom encouraged me to look through the windshield of my life rather than focusing on the rearview mirror. And now I was wondering what these lyrics about seasons of my life were meant to teach me.

Holly: This past year, 2021, brought many gifts and challenges to you, your friends and family, and the people of your planet. As in the lyrics to Seasons of Our Lives suggest, spring was not able to save you all, and you lost three friends to cancer. The reason we want you to think about this song is because of your previous longing for the life you had in Eugene. The lyrics that speak THE SUMMER SHINES WITH NEW HOPE are important for you to remember because your life in Los Angeles is a symbol of those days shining with new hope. Almost every morning, you are greeted with a sunny day. Please use that summer-like shine as an invitation to fill your spirit with renewed hope. There are those who prefer to live where there are four distinct seasons, but your spirit is far more hopeful and buoyant with the promise of a sunny day. Remember, too, the grandchildren who are the sunshine of your life. Regardless of where you might be years from now, you are meant for this place at this time.

We will encourage you to find ways to make this new year, 2022, the summer of your life. You don’t need to live where it is sunny to find ways to bring more light into your life. In fact, you can use any kind of a light as a metaphorical reminder of the hope that can glow within any season of your life. Pictured below are some of the many ways we bring light in our home. Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, January 4, 2022

Being Highly Flexible Has Its Risks and Rewards

We come into this human form with a unique opportunity to make the best of our genetic make up and its impact on our physical and emotional lives. We also live a unique combination of opportunities and challenges. There has never been anyone just like us, and there never will be.

My high flexibility is both an intellectual way of being and a genetic trait, and that high flexibility has provided me with both risks and rewards. When I was a classroom teacher and university professor, I taught my students about Bena Kallick and Art Costa’s 16 “Habits of Mind.” These habits are behaviors of effective problem solvers who can call on any of the 16 dispositions when faced with a problem that doesn’t have an obvious answer. One of the 16 habits of mind is thinking flexibly. This habit is characterized by being able to see options and consider alternative points of view. My intellectual flexibility has helped me embrace the reality that I am able to communicate with spirit, and that flexible thinking has had tremendous rewards, despite the skepticism of those who have not had similar experiences.

The genetic aspect of my high flexibility was first discovered by a pediatrician when I was an infant. He noticed that I did not have creases on my buttocks which indicated I had been born with shallow hip sockets. I wore braces on my hips for many months to improve the functioning of the legs and hips. It wouldn’t be for another 60+ years before I received the formal diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, hypermobile joint type. After more than 70 years of genetic high flexibility, I have now lost the ability to come to a seated position, and return to a standing position, without the aid of my arms and hands to ease my way down and propel myself back up. I have been searching for a solution for nearly five years, and that has led to some loss of hope for a “cure.” My spirit guide Holly had this to share with me:

Holly: Focus on all the ways your mind and body function well for you. It is easy to get caught up in injuries and limitations, but that is an example of looking at the trees rather than the forest that is your life. How often have you expressed gratitude for the aspects that are highly functional? And, how often have you expressed gratitude for the aspects that need support and healing? Be grateful for all you are still able to do while simultaneously supporting and nourishing the aspects that cause you pain and/or concern. This may surprise you, but your body is aware of your thoughts of loving-kindness and disgust and/or anger that are directed its way. Imagine your body as a loved one you adore, and shower it with love, compassion, and grace.

Here was Holly inviting me to call upon my intellectual flexibility so I could show love and support for the physical aspect of my flexibility. And so I did! As synchronicity would have it, a friend with joint hypermobility told me about a wonderful book called Disjointed. It is the best resource I have read related to all the physical and emotional manifestations of hypermobility. I found an online collection of videos created by a hypermobile body worker from the UK, Jeannie Di Bon, and the Facebook community she sponsors, The Zebra Club. I also ordered two of Di Bon’s books as additional resources to help support my body with healing and loving movements.

There is only one human who is your unique blend of genetics and life experiences, and that combination has presented you with challenges and rewards. We will encourage you to see your greatest challenges as opportunities to shower that aspect of yourself with love, compassion, and grace. Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, December 28, 2021

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