Embracing Vulnerability: Navigating Life's Challenges and Allowing Feelings to be Your Guide

I have been feeling post-vacation let down and an emotional whirlwind increased by the effects of menopause in the last month. Join me as I unveil the intimate details of my own path to self-acceptance, revealing how spirituality includes feeling the full depth of our emotions as part of the path to healing.  In this heartfelt conversation, I shine a light on the transformative power of vulnerability and the importance of facing our core wounds with compassion.
This episode also speaks to the delicate dance of spiritual healing and self-care, underscoring the significance of detaching from overbearing thoughts and the influence of others' actions. Feel inspired by the ways we can recharge our spiritual reserves, much like filling buckets, ensuring our lives remain full and balanced.
To watch the full Rev Rachel Sunday talk on Palm Sunday visit https://youtu.be/KtLYz9w60A8?si=mZI2OsN9HW3I1cm8

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:47

The foundation of soul recovery is to learn how to be okay, even when the people around you aren't okay. But it's also about learning how to be with your own feelings, even when they're painful and hard, even when you are going through a time in your life where you're touching on deep wounds, where you're feeling the sadness that it is to be human. In this episode I talk about where I'm at in my life right now, that I'm in a bit of a place where I'm feeling heaviness, and that's okay. It's part of the journey and, as we can say, this too shall pass. All that is good and all that is hard. It's important to understand. It's also really important just to be in your feelings as they are, without pushing them away, without trying to not feel them, to just be in them and let them teach you what they have to teach you. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives, as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to Recover your Soul. I'm Rev Rachel and I thank you for coming to spend your time with me today on this podcast to learn about soul recovery, to turn the attention to yourself. I know that we come here because we think somebody else is creating drama or pain in our lives, and it's true, it's hard, but what we're doing here in soul recovery is we're learning how to be okay even when the others around us aren't okay, and sometimes we're not okay. Sometimes, being ourself, being in our own lane, being with ourselves, means that we are deeply feeling feelings that are complex and difficult, but having the courage and the strength to be able to be in them is what I want to talk about today Really being able to allow yourself to feel what you're feeling. And the reason why I want to talk about this is because I've been in a little bit of a slump and it's interesting because I've felt so good for so long and it's a reminder at how complex it is to be in the world with other people, to be in the world with our own recovery, to be in our own mind with what we think and how it all processes out.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:52

Back from the trip to Indonesia with my husband, which was such a lovely, wonderful experience. I think it's pretty common to have post-vacation blues where you just felt like you were in the most ideal world. I mean, who doesn't get to have their best selves when they're relaxed and enjoying themselves? Both Rich and I showed up as our true, authentic happy-go-lucky, let-it-all-flow people, and it was an extraordinary three and a half weeks in that experience. And then you come back to real life, and real life is back to work, back to a dirty house, back to bills, back to the grind a grind and I see my career not as a grind at all, but that's not necessarily how Rich feels about his or at least my interpretation of how he feels about his and I also think that I have to really be honest and say that menopause is in full swing, or perimenopause, whatever it is, and that hot flashes were a big piece of what happened to me when we were on our trip and are still something that's really kicking my ass from time to time here. So, as I have this awareness that you know it's almost like being truly vulnerable and open to myself, to you all and to the world is one of the greatest gifts that I've been given. To just truly be me 100% and not have to hide behind any pretending that everything's great all the time. And yet for myself, I put that pressure on myself that I want to utilize these principles to my greatest ability in every moment, to show you that they work, because they do indeed work.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 5:34

The nine steps of soul recovery and using spirituality as your main focus. It really does work to bring inner peace, but it doesn't mean that we stop being human. It doesn't mean that life doesn't continue to have difficulties or pains. And what I recognize in myself that's so honest for me to really look at is, as I'm working, my soul recovery and the layers are unpeeling. There are still places that hold a lot of woundedness. Those core wounds are still exuding some power over me and some fears, and what I am grateful for is that I'm more and more able to see it. I'm more and more able to be in it. But when these slumps come where it just feels like, but when these slumps come where it just feels like there's a heaviness in your heart. This part of my brain still wants to fix it, to get over it, to push it aside, to find some way to distract myself and to make it all go away, because I realize I spent my entire lifetime, since I was little, not wanting to feel that sadness, not wanting to move into the darkness to do anything but to feel that level of pain.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:07

If you're ready for soul recovery, as a spiritual coach I can support your healing to help make real changes that will bring you a life of peace, happiness, connection and abundance. You can also work in smaller groups by taking a deep dive in a Zoom workshop or with me in person at a retreat or an event. Join others on the Soul Recovery Path, once a month for the free Zoom support group or daily on the private Facebook page. Visit the website recover your soulnet to book coaching sessions with me or find all the information you need about soul recovery dates that are coming up and how to register for those groups and workshops. To support the podcast and the community, check the links in the show notes to make a small monthly donation or a one-time donation of your choice. That will make a huge impact to support this community and the Soul Recovery Mission. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:05

Last Sunday was Palm Sunday and I gave a talk virtually to a small unity church here in Colorado and I actually posted that video on YouTube if anyone's interested in seeing the actual talk. But what it really brought to me as I was preparing for this talk was looking at and again I want you to know, spirituality is whatever it is for you, so I am never here trying to tell you what God is or whether you should believe in one thing or another thing. I really want you to totally be responsible for whatever your spiritual outlook is. My spiritual outlook comes from a metaphysical standpoint, has a heavy dose of Buddhism in it, and I went to a unity church for 25 years and so I have a huge foundation in those beliefs and those practices and in unity. There is definitely an interest in looking at the Bible and looking at Jesus, but it's not from the same perspective as a lot of standard Christian churches. So I'm learning about religion, I'm learning about the Bible. I'm learning about spirituality and religion in new ways as I create my spiritual foundation, as I explore what that is for me and soul recovery is me taking all these different things from all these different places and processing them for myself to how I can heal my heart, how I can connect more deeply to the higher power that I've become very, very, very connected to. And that's my invitation to you to choose what that is for you. So when you listen to me talk about this, just know that I'm not trying to tell you what to think. I'm telling you my interpretation of what it meant to me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:02

So as I was preparing for that talk and the Easter story of when Jesus is coming into Jerusalem and he knows that he's going to be crucified, he knows that this is what's going to be happening for him I kept really having this awareness of how we push back as our own selves, our humans, to anything that feels like a crucifixion, that feels like the dark night of the soul, that feels like we're being pushed into places within ourselves that is just too much to bear, that we feel like we're going to die, we feel like we're emotionally just not going to be able to handle it. And we all have those times, whether it's in a relationship that falls apart, or a job that falls apart, or the death of somebody or an illness, or watching somebody else go through pain. We all have these places where we are just crushed emotionally, taken to our knees, literally and figuratively. And when I look at this story around Jesus, knowing that he was going to be moving into this next section of his story, of his experience and I was especially moved by his being in the garden and asking to not have to go through it but if it could be, could you remove this cup from me? And then his answer is your will, not my will, be done.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:47

And it really resonated with me because recently, as I've been in this post-vacation slump or menopause, or unpeeling the layers of my own emotional healing and letting the woundedness of me begin to truly move into new levels of awareness, new release, new forgiveness, there is a part of me that still is so afraid to feel pain, that is so protected and doesn't want to hurt and feels incredibly alone. Feels incredibly alone. And that also was something that touched me to really think about in the story that Jesus asked his disciples to stay awake with him, but they couldn't. They couldn't stay awake, they continued to fall asleep. And this really touched me in that same sense of we're always looking for the people in our life around us to help us, to save us, to support us, to be there for us, to hold us when we're crying, to say the right thing, to validate our feelings, to see us.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:02

And when I look at my life and I look at my experience of the people of whom I've chosen to be around in terms of marriage, in terms of friends, in terms of if you believe that you choose your parents, you know this concept around what did my soul pick? I picked people who are not all that into anything that's going on with me. They love me, they love me a lot, but they are not doting or all that interested in what's going on inside of my heart, and I find it incredibly fascinating that that is what I chose and that I spent so many years wishing that it was different when that's what I picked. So I still find myself in my life wishing that that Rich showed up for me in a different way, that Rich showed up for me in a different way. I still find myself wishing that I had a different relationship with my parents, and it's interesting because I can see it now in a way that is much, much healthier.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:14

But I noticed recently when I was journaling and I really recommend journaling as a way to be curious about these things with yourself and have these conversations. So, in this conversation with myself in my journal, as I'm contemplating this piece, it says what is this pain that I'm feeling? What is this loneliness that I'm feeling? What is underneath, what is the core wound underneath that needs to be addressed? What's that part of myself that has a desire to speak, that needs to say and feel something very isolated.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:04

And I've told the stories before about having the friends in elementary school that really rejected and ridiculed and laughed at me and and I just felt so, so, so, so rejected and just touching in on that part of me that I think is wanting somebody to be awake with me, that is in my circle, that is in my direct circle and is looking for something. And then, when it came to journaling a little bit more, what I realized was that I actually don't feel safe within myself to truly touch that pain, to truly touch that part that had loneliness and fear and sadness even then. And the interesting thing about allowing yourself to see these parts of yourself is that as soon as you can just touch it, just recognize it for just a moment, it lessens, it, lets go. And I immediately was opened to this, knowing that as a baby, as a child, as a little girl, I couldn't hold the emotions that I felt when I was little, that really were truly lonely and that really felt like there wasn't anybody there for me. And so in those moments when we're not willing to feel it, it's like we're the same as Jesus saying willing to feel it. It's like we're the same as Jesus saying if it's possible, can I not feel this? Can I not have to go through this?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:46

And what I continue to come back to in soul recovery and spirituality and the more that I do this work is is this incredible holding of space that we can indeed handle it. That when we come from our higher self, when we come from the truth of knowing that we are held and loved and supported by something even greater still that all this perception that we have within our brain from our thoughts and our beliefs, that we create from our own thoughts, it's all we have is how we interpret it through our thinking. And that you can distance yourself from your thought, witness it just enough, stand back just enough to realize that there's this incredible attachment to others being a certain way that we think is going to solve it. But if I just sit with the hurt and realize that hurt was incredibly real and still today can be incredibly real, then it loosens and the need for the people around me to be awake with me loosens and the awareness that I will go through whatever it is that's happening for me, the pain that I'm feeling, that's being brought up, or even just the changes in my hormones are creating something within me that's very real. So instead of pushing it away and saying oh no, no, that's not real, I don't really feel that way. It's just menopause and I'm just agitated and not feeling myself. Just be agitated for yourself and feel the sadness that there isn't somebody there for you to be what your inner self, your inner child wishes, was available. And then I say to myself what do I need? If I'm here for me, what do I need?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:56

So recently, what I did for myself is I reached out to a circle of other spiritual teaching women and I said I need a women's circle where it is being able to speak these languages, to be able to talk these kinds of things, where no one's the leader, one's the leader where we can just be completely vulnerable and open and be peers with each other. And I can, I can be messy, and that's okay, and we immediately met. I reached out and within a week we had met and that felt so restoring to me because what I recognize is that the more that I'm looking within my direct relationships for this other level of support that I need, it isn't probably possible because the people that I chose in my life are the ones that is around being messy with mostly this concept that we pick our partners to help balance out and move through no-transcript, and I let go of that part of me that is asking him to be awake with me in the garden and recognize that garden experience is mine Every time I go through these heartbreaks. Really they're heartbreaks.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:38

It's interesting because in the past I would do anything to not feel them. In the past I would do anything to not feel them. I would drink or I would watch TV incessantly or I would get really involved in somebody else's business or I would do whatever to not feel. That isn't in my life anymore and, as a matter of fact, it's kind of like since I've been back from the trip, my life has slowed down a little bit in this strange way where I don't have quite as many clients during the week and there isn't quite as much, to quote unquote do.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:17

And I think that it is by design, by divine design, to give me some space to process what's actually happening, instead of being so busy that I'm not feeling it, that I'm not experiencing it, that I'm not in it, because the more that we can allow ourselves to actually go to those tender, soft places, the more we're healing those wounds that are underneath and resetting our belief system. So if my old belief system was I need Rich, for example, to be there for me in this very particular way for me to be okay, I'm not going to get my needs met. For me to be okay, I'm not going to get my needs met. But if I can switch my belief system to say I can trust myself and my own healing journey and I am deeply loved and supported by my husband with how he can love and support me and let him show up for me in the way that he can and know that I am going to make it through whatever this bump is for me. And the truth is I'm still substantially better than I was years ago when I was in a dark place. My heart just hurts, and it hurts on a lot of different levels that I'm still uncovering.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:44

I recognize that I'm still uncovering and that tenderness to myself is what I'm always encouraging you to do as well, which is just to be gentle with yourself for whatever it is, and I think it's so important in spirituality because there can be a whole spiritual bypass. That's just about just think the next higher thought. Be positive, don't think anything that you don't want to attract to yourself. Don't allow yourself to feel bad. Well, sometimes our feeling uncomfortable is getting rid of what is underneath. It's bringing it to light. It's allowing it to bubble up. It's allowing it to move up and into our surface so that we can look at it, so we can feel it, so that we can connect with it, so that we can heal it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:37

I'm not holding onto it and I'm not grasping it and saying, oh well, there's my life, it's not good and I'm unhappy, and I'm very cautious of the words that I use, because I know my words and my thoughts are powerful, but what I want to use those words and thought is I'm open to learning what these feelings have to share with me. I'm open to learning and understanding how I can heal these wounds that might still be in there. I'm interested and curious about what this is showing me and I am and will take care of myself. I am and will lean into my spirituality even deeper. I'm always encouraging you to make sure that you're filling your buckets, and I think of it like carrying a stick that has buckets on each side.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:34

And we have these buckets that need to be filled with our spiritual food, with the resources to keep us nourished, to keep us quenched our thirst quenched, to keep us whole. And every time there's a wound it puts a hole in the bucket, and unless we're refilling the buckets and unless we're mending those holes, there won't be anything to resource us, we'll be empty. And so what I recognize in these experiences, when I have these parts where my heart just feels all of the true depth of loss, the loneliness, the heartache, the heaviness of loving people so much and seeing them struggle that even more important than ever it is for me to resource myself and make sure that those buckets are well cared for. And so that for me is sleep and eating well and listening to and reading spiritual content and making sure that I have my spiritual ritual and practice in the morning and those pieces help keep those buckets full so that when you're in a dark night of the soul a long one or a short one, whatever that is, when you're feeling these feelings, you're not completely depleted, you're actually resourced and still nourished to be able to go through it, to be able to go through it, and just in finalizing that part of utilizing the Easter story, the Easter story, my interpretation of the Easter story, is that, through Jesus showing us all of the emotions that he felt during this time of Easter, during the time of going into Jerusalem, during the time of the crucifixion, they are giving us permission to feel all the feelings.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:48

Giving us permission to feel all the feelings, which includes having to sometimes die in that part of your life that you have. It includes being in something that is so painful that it breaks where you are in your life and that the reminder is there's always the resurrection, there's always the opening to the other side that that will not break you. And so this, whatever this little blip that I'm in right now, to me is a gift, because I'm feeling feelings, hard feelings, painful ones. We know that we can make it to the other side and we gain so much strength, so much awareness when we can be awake for it. We can be present to it, to be in this moment, right here, right now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but right here, right now.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:36

How do I feel? How do I take care of myself? What do I need to make sure that my spiritual buckets are well attended and full? How do I let go of what's going on, with everyone around me turning the attention to myself and allowing myself to be exactly where I'm at and asking for help from the places that you can get it, and not asking for help with the people who can't give it to you because they don't have it to give in the way that we need. Find it in the way that you need, and I believe that you're doing that already because you're here. You're here listening to these teachings, to this podcast. You're part of this community. This is you taking care of yourself, and I know that this, too, shall pass All passes, the good and the hard, but I'm grateful for this connection to my true inner self that can be tender and vulnerable, that can have hard days, and I look forward to seeing what comes from this and I'm grateful for the opportunity to continue this journey of awakening and tenderness and compassion and forgiveness to myself Until next time.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:58

Namaste, thank you for listening to the Recover your Soul podcast and if you loved what you heard here, every Friday we have a bonus episode and you can access this by becoming a subscriber through Apple podcasts for only $3.99 a month, or become a Patreon member and on this platform, you can choose $5, $15 or $25 a month to show what you want to support the show with. $15 or $25 a month to show what you want to support the show with On both of these subscriber platforms is an entire catalog of back episodes intended to inspire and support you on your soul recovery journey. I really want to invite everybody to attend the free once a month, every first Monday of the month support group. This is on zoom. Everyone is welcome to attend and by giving a like or a review and sharing this with your friends and family really helps us to share the soul recovery message with even more people.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 29:53

We are on social media. We are on all the platforms. I am on TikTok. You can listen to guided meditations by Rev Rachel Harrison on insight timer. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for being part of the community. To find out more about soul recovery and everything that's being offered, visit the website wwwrecoveryoursoulnet. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.