At times, synchronicity can be annoying.  The Universe really likes to drive its message home with me, and there’s no escaping it though I try.  Quite often I find art imitates life as themes seem to bang me over the head until I deal with them or understand what I need to.

One night, I decided to escape the overwhelming metaphysical work I was doing by watching a movie on Netflix.  I found The House of the Spirits which stars Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas and Vanessa Redgrave.  With an all-star cast like that, how could I go wrong?  The misleading Netflix blurb states, “Esteban vows to marry Rosa, a rich man's daughter. But when Rosa dies before he can save enough money to do so, he instead marries her younger sister.”  What that blurb conveniently left out was the significance behind the “spirits” part of the title.  The younger sister (played as an adult by Glenn Close) is a metaphysically gifted woman who has premonitions and mediumship abilities.  The movie was really excellent, but in trying to escape my metaphysical life, I found myself thrown right back into it again.

On another evening during my divorce, I decided to watch Crazy, Stupid, Love starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei, and Kevin Bacon:  Another film with an all-star cast that I thought would be a chick flick that would give me an escape from reality.  Here at least the Netflix blurb was somewhat accurate as it states, “A middle-aged husband's life changes dramatically when his wife asks him for a divorce. He seeks to rediscover his manhood with the help of a newfound friend, Jacob, learning to pick up girls at bars.”  What the movie description failed to mention is that Steve Carell and Julianne Moore’s characters were high school sweethearts as my ex-husband and I were.  From there, numerous other parallels kept popping up related to the issues we’d faced in our marriage and divorce.  It was far from the sexy escape movie I was hoping for!

When there’s a lesson we need to learn in our lives, sometimes the Universe will take synchronicity into its hands to get us to pay attention.  Seemingly random choices such as movies we select to watch can end up helping us to work through the big picture issues.

©2014 GreenHeartGuidance.com

In many articles about decluttering and minimizing, one of the popular suggestions is that if you haven’t worn a piece of clothing in over a year, you should purge it.  However, in my life, I have found this to be very bad advice.  While I agree that generally we as modern Americans have way too much crap around our houses, having multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) changes the rules of the game.  Individuals with MCS learn how to selectively hoard things that may be of future use.

MCS is a condition that is technically known as Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance; that translates roughly into, “We don’t know why your body can’t handle the synthetic chemicals that most people can handle.”  For me, a combination of genetics and Lyme disease have made it so that my liver has a great deal of difficulty detoxing the multitude of synthetic chemicals in the modern world. 

For those with MCS, new products provide health challenges because of the chemical off-gassing they do.  Off-gassing is the releasing of volatile compounds into the air (and thereby into our lungs and bodies).  A common example most people are familiar with is paint:  Everyone knows what new paint often smells like. Those are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that you smell being released from the paint.  There is now no-VOC paint which is almost odorless, and it doesn’t have as many synthetic chemicals to release thereby making it more tolerable (sometimes) to those who are sensitive to typical paint.  It's not the smell that is the actual problem but the chemicals that are released:  Low odor paint can still be a huge problem for those with MCS because the low odor paint has masking chemicals added to cover up the more toxic smelling components of the other chemicals.

Many products that we buy release chemicals in the off-gassing process.  Vinyl or PVC is one of the nastier ones.  New cars are loaded with toxic synthetic chemicals (aka the new car smell).  Many finishes on furniture are created through synthetic chemicals.  So when a chemically sensitive person purchases most things, they must first off-gas the products in order to release as many of the synthetic chemicals as possible before trying to use the product near them.  If one doesn’t off-gas many new products, someone with MCS will likely get very ill from them.  It can take between days and years to off-gas products, and some things never truly off-gas completely.

Clothes are no exception to this:  The preservative “sizing” that manufacturers use in fabric is actually formaldehyde or similar chemicals which are extremely difficult for most with MCS to handle.  Likewise, there are chemicals used in dying the clothing, and there are chemicals used in processing the raw materials.  Some elastics have fragrances added to unsuccessfully cover the cheap rubber smell of them.  New clothing, unless it is incredibly well processed organic clothing, is toxic by default.  Washing the clothing eventually pulls out some of the chemicals, but how many washes it takes can vary widely by the clothing itself.  There are various tricks one can use to help accelerate the detoxification process for clothing such as using enzymes, vinegar, baking soda, hot water, and for non-red clothing, buttermilk soaks, but repeated washing in water and drying on hot in the dryer really is the best way to make new clothing safer for use.  I have to wash new clothing between eight and 20 times to make it possible for me to wear, and I have had some clothing that I’ve given up after 20 washes and passed it on to others who aren’t as chemically sensitive as me.

Buying used clothing is often not much of a help:  It can be even harder to get out fragrances and chemicals from petrochemical based detergents, fabric softeners and dryer sheets than it is to get the chemicals out of new clothing.  It makes me very sick to even try as those fragrances and chemicals release into the air of my home during washing, and so I gave up buying used clothing long ago even though secondhand clothing previously was my preferred way of shopping for both environmental and financial reasons.  I still will buy used clothing if it comes from another chemically sensitive person, but it's hard to find clothes that fit those standards!

One of the additional issues I’ve deal with in battling Lyme is massive weight fluctuation.  When I am doing well, I drop weight quickly and without effort.  However, when I am facing new health challenges, I gain weight equally easily and with no negative dietary changes.  Thus, I have clothes in my closet that range from size 8 to size 24.  I was settled comfortably into a size 16 for over a year until last March when suddenly I started dealing with pancreatic issues; my weight shot back up to a size 22 within a few months even with me eating less carbohydrates, no sugars, and no fruits.  It was (and is) utterly frustrating.  As we kill bartonella and eliminate parasites from my pancreas, my weight has worked its way back down to a size 18 and continues to slowly drop back off.

I had been just about ready to let go of my largest clothes in sizes 22 and 24 last spring when the sudden weight gain happened, and mercifully, I still had all my larger clothes waiting in storage buckets in my closet.  Had I not, I would have had to invest in all new clothing, plus I would have had to go through the hassle and expense of detoxing the new clothing.  Thus, for someone like me who deals with chemical sensitivities and fluctuating weight, holding onto clothing for more than a year makes a great deal of sense.

While I am working to minimize the amount of “stuff” in my house, my clothing collection is not something I am willing to purge.  For my life and for others like me, the advice of getting rid of clothing I haven’t worn in a year is well-intentioned but impractical.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

I am an intellectually gifted individual.  That’s not meant to be an egotistical statement:  It’s a simple fact of who I am.   I’m definitely not the smartest person in the world (by a long shot!), but the more than ample intelligence I possess has created numerous challenges for me over the course of my life. 

I started reading before I was three years old.  From the time I was in kindergarten, I had special permission to check out the “big kid” chapter books in the school library because I was long past reading the picture books in the kindergarten section.  I also have many memories of my teachers using me as a teacher’s aide because I was so far ahead of my peers that having me do the same work as them was pointless.

I have a June birthday, and my parents had considered starting me early in half-day kindergarten at age four.   This is the course I would recommend for most gifted children if it is an option in their school district.  Our society is relatively accepting of starting a child young, especially if the child has a fall or winter birthday.  Also, if I had needed to spend a second year in kindergarten, it probably would not have been as big of deal as skipping a grade became in a later grade.  (One of my kindergarten friends did this due to his lack of emotional maturity.)   However, my parents decided to start me with the rest of my five year old peers.  This began an annual discussion between my parents and the school as to whether or not to have me “skip” a grade.  However, it never happened at that school.

In third grade, I was in a combination third/fourth class, so the teacher just had me do all the fourth grade work.  That meant I finished fourth grade instead of third, making it the perfect opportunity to have me skip a grade.  However, to complicate matters, my family was moving in October of that year.  My parents were concerned that the school in the new state would be more advanced.  It turns out the opposite was true.  I ended up in a fourth grade classroom in the new state doing work that I’d done several years previously, and I was bored silly.  The principal at that school refused to make any accommodations for me to get educational material that was appropriate for me.  He felt being bored was part of life and that I should learn to deal with it.

As a result, my parents moved me to a private school where I was finally skipped from fourth to sixth grade after extensive testing to make sure it was the right decision.  Academically, it was the right decision for me.  However, it created an initial year of social difficulties for me among  my classmates, many of whom were spoiled rich girls who were great at bullying.  I was the target of a lot of negativity that first year because classmates were jealous that I was a year younger than them.  The next year, our class size doubled, and I was once again able to blend in with the crowd.  I remained at the top of our class intellectually.  I hit puberty a little bit early which actually meant that I blended in more with my classmates than I would have if I’d been in my original grade.  By high school, my closest friends (including my future [ex-] husband) were a year ahead of me in school which meant they were two years older than me.  Emotional maturity was not an issue for my old soul self.

Because of the high school I attended, I eventually entered college with 56 college credit hours already on my transcript.  I graduated magna cum laude with 140 hours that included double majoring and secondary teaching certification at the age of 19 years, 2 months.  When I was doing my student teaching, my high school junior students were only a year or two younger than me, though they had no idea until the semester ended!

As an adult, all of this has faded into the background for the most part.  Many of my friends don't know this information (or didn't until this blog post!) unless they've known me since high school.  As adults, age differences become moot as we associate with people who are our emotional, intellectual, professional, spiritual and social peers rather than our classmates.  Because this has all become a part of my distant past, I debated whether or not to even write this post.  However, as there is information here that can help others who are dealing with gifted children, I decided it was important to share.

I definitely have a brain that works differently that a lot of people’s.  I remember a lot, especially if I’ve read it. My memory is not quite photographic, but I am definitely a visual learner.  In recent years, I’ve become more aware of how much people notice this about me.  One acquaintance who adopted boy-girl twins who were born addicted to crack asked me in a conversation what the statistics were about male versus female rates of subsequent problems resulting from the addiction.  When I told her I had no idea and asked her why she thought I would, her response was, “But Elizabeth, you know everything!”  That’s not at all true, but it made me laugh.  Another online friend paid me the great complement of saying that she wished there was a Google function for my brain.  Some days I wish that too, especially when I can’t find my car keys!

Being intellectually gifted seems like it should make life a slam dunk, but unfortunately, the opposite can be quite true.  The American education system as a whole has become more and more botched over the past decades with its emphasis on standardized testing especially through the “no child left behind” program.  As a result, the schools often teach to the test with teachers having no control over this part of the curriculum they are required to teach.  A lowest common denominator is set for achieving passing test scores on the standardized tests.  If gifted children are way beyond the levels of the testing, they are “held back” from their own individual learning while the rest of the class learns the information on the test.

Another issue surrounding being gifted is jealousy.  I experienced it as a student, and I’ve experienced it when dealing with other parents and teachers as an adult dealing with my own gifted children.  Many people want to believe their child is the most special child in the world.  They insist their children are gifted, too, and they don’t want another child to receive anything more advanced than their children.   These parents are right about one thing:  We are all special.  There’s no question about that.  We just have different abilities.  I sure can’t shoot a layup, and if you want to talk about post-modern theory, my brain goes numb.  I don’t really have the capacity to analyze quantum mechanics, either.  However, that doesn’t mean that I should stop others from doing those things out of my jealousy or inability. 

Each of us have a need to learn on the level that is appropriate.  That is why we have special education systems to help those who need additional assistance.  Our society doesn’t question this need nearly as much as it often refuses to provide advanced educational opportunities for those whose brains work differently in another direction.  Instead, our society often clams up, shuts down, and declares gifted programs to be discriminatory.   Popular articles and political leaders often bemoan that the United States ranks very poorly among other leading nations of the world when it comes to education.  There is a great desire for America to “catch up” with other nations.  Yet ironically, our national education system often doesn’t attempt to work with our best and brightest:  Instead, it holds them back from learning at their best capacity.

So how can our society work to change this?  The first thing to do would be to make appropriate placements for grade level.  Using calendar dates that are carved in stone isn’t it the way to do it.  A child who was born on September 2nd may be far more advanced than one who was born on August 25th, but in Texas, the September 1st birthdate for starting kindergarten is strictly enforced in most districts.  Not only should academic need be taken into account, but emotional readiness should be as well.  Many districts allow parents to “red shirt” their  kids and start them in kindergarten at age 6 rather than 5 for emotional reasons, but the opportunity for some kids to start at age 4 because of advanced emotional abilities doesn’t exist in most places.

The next step is getting rid of the cookie cutter educational system we currently have to focus more on learning that develops intellect rather than one that emphasizes rote memorization and test taking skills.  We’ve come a long way since the nineteenth century education system that focused solely on memorizing lessons, but we still have a long way to go.  Many online programs are also being developed for less expensive education that rely more on multiple choice testing rather than critical thinking skills.  Programs such as these discourage a learning process that engages students in classrooms or online with professors who actually grade essays and interact with their students.  This is a step backward in the intellectual development of our children and our nation.

Third, the development of true gifted and talented programs would help immensely.  The school district I live in has a wonderful GT program that pulls gifted kids out into separate classes for the areas in which they need advanced learning.  The neighboring school district, however, has a GT program that is no more than lip service.  It entitles kids to extra worksheets, but not much else.  At the root of part of this is the ever frustrating lack of adequate funding for public schools.  However, the charter school my children attended for most of grade school managed to meet the needs of kids on all levels of the educational spectrum with far less funding than public schools have.  It can be done: Where there is a will (and adequate curriculum support), there is a way.

It is really important that we support each other no matter what our gifts are.  Some people have intellectual gifts, and others have gifts in other areas.  Regardless of how each of our individual abilities manifests, we should all be given opportunities to develop those gifts without having to face resistance or bullying from others.  It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where each person was loved and supported for being their amazing selves.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

This holiday season, please think twice before you give scented products as holiday gifts.  Many studies over the years have concluded that between 11% and 30% of the population is sensitive to fragrances at some level; there are probably more who don’t recognize that their health issues are due to fragrance sensitivity.  Those people include Cindy McCain, wife of former presidential candidate Senator John McCain, who though she suffers from disabling migraines, still carried perfume in her luggage and made herself very sick when the bottle broke. 

Periodically, new studies confirm that scented products contain dozens of toxic chemicals that can have dangerous short term and long term effects (including being carcinogens).  These products include but are not limited to synthetic scented candles, air fresheners, perfumes, colognes, aftershaves, lotions, and more.  Those most at risk for short term problems are those with allergies, asthma, eczema, and migraines.  All of us are at risk for the long term problems.

I am one of those who is sensitive to fragrances, and I have been all my life.  I’ve always been at risk of breaking out into a rash if I touched a scented product.  Many years ago when I was a newlywed and not yet sick with MCS and Lyme, one of my new in-laws gave me perfume as a Christmas present.  I politely thanked her, set it aside, and mentally noted that I would send it to Goodwill as soon as possible.  The giver, however, kept pressing my then-husband to tell her how much I liked the gift.  He finally had to tell her, “Look, she’s sensitive to perfume.  She can’t wear it.”  While the gift was given from a place of generosity, it was one that had the potential to cause a reaction for me.

Since Lyme disrupted my health, however, I’ve become one of the estimated 1-2% who are severely reactive to synthetic chemicals.  I have a diagnosis of multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS).  My sensitivities are so severe that I can’t be in a room with a plug-in air freshener or a lit scented candle.  If someone gets near me wearing perfume, I have to get up and move or leave the room depending on its size or ventilation.  If I don’t, I end up with fibromyalgia flares, asthma attacks and migraines.  At one point, the chemical sensitivities were so severe that I became homebound because minor exposures would incapacitate me for days.

So this holiday season, as you think about giving scented products as gifts to others, consider whether or not those items really are the best choice for the recipient or those around them.  Scented products can cause short term pain and long term health issues.   As alternatives, consider attending a local farmers’ market, visiting a craft festival, or shopping at a holistic store.  Investigate options in those places for safer products including natural perfumes, candles, and lotions crafted from essential oils; better yet, consider fragrance free items that are far less likely to cause issues for the person receiving the gift.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

Often we find ourselves repeating the same patterns in our lives.  We date a guy who reminds us of our father, but we don’t quite buy into the whole Freudian Oedipal theory.  We watch friends seemingly dating the same person over and over again even though each time they think they’ve picked someone totally different than their previous partners.  We switch jobs only to end up a similar awful situation as our previous positions.  Why?

In my personal belief system, we continue repeating patterns until we learn the life lesson we need to learn.  I believe we all came to this planet with specific goals set before us, although I don’t know if we are aware of those goals or not.  Regardless, challenges will continue to present themselves in our lives until we master the higher concept behind them.  Once we’ve learned that lesson, then we are free to move on to the next.  Of course, that’s an oversimplified description of it all as we are often learning many lessons at once.  Because I believe in reincarnation, I also believe that lessons can carry over from past lives if they weren’t completed in previous journeys.

In my own life, especially in earlier years, there was a repeating pattern of narcissists playing prominent roles.  For me, once I was old enough to manage my own decisions in life, the challenge was to figure out why I kept having narcissists appear in my life.  The first question anyone should ask themselves when examining a repeating pattern is, “Are they serving as mirrors of my own behavior?”  For me, narcissism is not a personal issue.  My instinct is to think of others and to care about their health and safety and feelings.  I’m empathic and that dominates my being.  So for me, narcissism is not something I struggle with on a personal level.

Then why so many narcissists in my world?  As I worked through my personal and spiritual issues, I finally was able to realize that I drew those types of people to me because I had low self-worth.  I believed that I didn’t deserve someone who would love me fully for who I am.  So instead, I accepted the abuse and neglect that narcissists would force on me.  As a child, I had no power in my life to stop the behaviors of those around me, but as an adult, I do.  I am able to walk out of a relationship when I am being used or mistreated or even abused. 

Now that I’ve recognized the pattern, I am able to stear clear of the manipulation of narcissists once they come into my life.  I may have to work with them, yet I keep my physical and emotional distance.  I no longer let their distorted views damage my perception.  I stay strong, believing in the amazing person I am.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

Just a reminder that Green Heart Guidance has two Christmas playlists on Spotify:  An Energetic Christmas playlist which is almost three hours long, and a Mellow Christmas playlist which is over 14 hours long.  I continue to add to the playlists as new albums are released, so there are songs that are new this season.

Even though I'm not a Christian any more, I still love listening to Christmas music, and I hope you enjoy these playlists as well.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance.com

(As always, I am not a medical doctor.  This information is based on my personal experiences and should not be substituted for medical diagnosis or treatment.  Please speak to your health care providers about your personal situation.)

A recent article on Forbes describes the most outlandish reasons for calling in sick that it could find.  The article states, “For the last 10 years, job listing site CareerBuilder has put out a list it calls ‘The Most Unbelievable Excuses for Calling in Sick.’ … Nearly one in five employers (18%) says they have fired an employee for calling in sick with a fake excuse.”

I completely get firing an employee for bad excuses.  In one of my previous jobs, I inherited an employee who had gotten very used to doing what he wanted when he wanted if he wanted, including showing up for work.  One of his favorite excuses was that his old car wouldn’t start.  That is a legitimate excuse, and any of us who have owned a car, especially an older model car, have been there.  However, this employee lived on a bus route that would have taken him 15 minutes to get to work when combined with walking about four blocks.  It wasn’t that he’d be late while he put the car in the shop:  He just flat out wouldn’t show.  In contrast, when my only car died, I hitched a ride with a neighbor to her work, walked a mile, and then took two busses to get to the office.  My car being in the shop wasn’t enough to stop me from going in.

However, three of the ten excuses on the Forbes list seem legitimate to me.  That either shows that my perspective on life is very different than others' or that this list is really weak.  So my responses to these three reasons for absences are as follows.

“3. I was sitting in the bathroom and my feet and legs fell asleep. When I stood up, I fell and broke my ankle.”

Um, yeah.  Been there, done that, sort of.  Three years ago, I was talking with my ex-husband about an intense topic.  While I was sitting in a hard kitchen chair, I had my leg tucked under me as I often do.  When we finished talking, I realized my foot was asleep.  I stood up and tried to put pressure on it to wake it up.  As I stood up, my foot gave way, twisting my ankle.  I collapsed onto the hardwood floors, landing with my body on top of my left foot.  I knew immediately I had done damage and was at my chiropractor’s office within an hour.  Mercifully, I only caused a bad sprain, but it took about a month of adjustments before it got somewhat back to normal.  Had I landed slightly differently, I am sure I could have broken a bone.  This reason seems plausible to me.

“8. I had a gall stone I wanted to heal holistically.”

This definitely is a legitimate reason for absence, and the fact it’s included on this list mainly reflects a prejudice in our society against natural healing.  Gall stones are incredibly painful as anyone who has had them or witnessed someone with them can tell you.  They can make one sick enough to need to skip work; they often land people in the emergency room, though aside from surgery, Western medicine doesn’t offer a lot of help with the gall stones.  Thus, natural medicine is the only real option if one can’t or won’t have surgery.  There are various holistic ways to go about dealing with gallstones, and some of them involve a lot of bathroom time.  One definitely wouldn’t want to leave home.  This reason is completely plausible, and it’s one that might cut down on future absences of the employee.

“9. I caught my uniform on fire by putting it in the microwave to dry.”

While this does reflect a certain level of ignorance in the employee, it’s also realistic.  When I worked at a fast food restaurant, we were only given one uniform.  Eventually after I had been there for quite a while I was able to get a second.  However, having only one uniform meant that employees had to wash our uniforms nightly because they reeked of grease after only one shift.  If one doesn’t have laundry machines that they own, then one is having to either hand wash the uniform or pay for using a washer daily which adds up.  Line drying is a way to save money when you are making minimum wage.  However, if you work an afternoon shift, go out, and get home late, your uniform may not be able to dry overnight before you need to be back early in the morning.  Out of desperation, an employee could resort to drastic measures to try and dry it. 

I’ve also had situations where I’ve spilled food or leaked breastmilk on clothes right before I needed to go somewhere.  If that is the only outfit you can wear to the place you are going (such as a work uniform), then you must quickly try to get it cleaned and dried in order to go.  This could also result in an act of desperation of shoving an outfit in a microwave to dry.

When I was in growing up, my mother used to do a lot of crafty stuff.  One of the things she would make was pinecone wreaths. To prepare the pinecones, one puts them on low heat in the oven in order to kill any creatures that might be growing in them.  One day, she decided to microwave the pinecones instead.  The result was that the pinecones caught on fire and in turn caught the microwave on fire.  The lesson I learned at a very young age is that you don’t put anything but food in the microwave, and even then, you keep an eye on it!

So the possibility of an employee catching a uniform on fire in the microwave is realistic.  Having more than one uniform would help solve this problem, but many fast food employers are unfortunately not willing to spend that extra money on their employees.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

My dreams are generally not prophetic, though for some with metaphysical gifts, dreams can provide amazing insight about the future.  Visions during sleep can also be an incredibly powerful way of connecting with the other side.  I have had one sleeping contact with the other side that I know of in which two deceased relatives came to visit me, but that was an exception to my norm.  Generally my dreams are very clearly my unconscious trying to work out emotional issues and stresses from my past and present.  However, when I am fighting Lyme, Bartonella or have parasites dying, I tend to have awful nightmares.  In a recent round of die off, I was dealing with dreams about death.  Intuitive empath that I am, it doesn’t surprise me that when critters in me are dying, I would be dreaming about death, too.

In the first dream I had, I was dying of butt cheek cancer while in high school.  No, I doubt that’s a real cancer term, but it has to do with the fact that I was having a great deal of Lyme-induced IT band pain which was creating real life butt cheek pain.  My unconscious was dealing with that pain, too.  Despite the fact I had terminal cancer, I was headed to the mall with a high school friend to do research for our math homework by finding the prices we needed to complete word problems.  As disturbing as it was that I was doing my math homework while faced with imminent death, I can even understand where it came from:  My high school geometry teacher had commented on one of my Facebook blog posts earlier that day.

In the second death-related dream, a divorced friend of mine died from a sudden but expected death (such as a rapid onset/decline cancer).  In the dream, much of what I was observing was her ex-husband moving into the house she got in the divorce with his new girlfriend and how their two children were coping with it all.  In reality, this was my unconscious dealing with issues around my own ex-husband as much as her issues with her ex-husband.

In the third death-related dream in less than 24 hours, I was dreaming of Ebola.  We can all probably figure out how that was in my unconscious given the media bombardment about Ebola even if one is trying to avoid it for the most part.  In this dream, I was dying of Ebola which I had caught at my childhood elementary school where I was working as a nurse.  Even though I was happy about being a nurse, I was very emphatic to anyone who asked that I had been a teacher previously.  Here again my unconscious is still working through my change in life paths to become a healer rather than a teacher.  While I believe that much of what I do combines the two vocations, I do not ever see myself in a traditional classroom grading papers again.  I’m on a different journey now.

Dreams can be very revealing of your fears, your desires, and the areas you need to work on healing.  Keeping a dream journal where you record your dreams when you wake up can be quite illuminating. If you’ve never done it, you might want to put some kind of recording device (paper, pen, iPhone, laptop) on your nightstand and try it for a few weeks to see what you can learn about yourself.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance