Tag: Transition

It’s all about the Resurrection

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

To all of you who are hurting, who are freaked out by what is happening in our world and in your life just now I want to offer encouragement. Maybe you’ve lost a loved one, maybe you’ve lost a job and are scrambling financially as a result, maybe you are really struggling with the social distancing – there are a lot of us in that wildly rocking boat right now.

I just want to assure you there is every possibility of a better life on the other side of this crisis, a way through the pain and the uncertainty that opens into beauty and opportunity you haven’t known before.

I know this from my own personal experience of having my life blow to pieces – losing my business, money I didn’t have, many, many people I had considered friends, even my sense of personal identity. I was so terrified and sick with grief it literally buckled my knees.

In the midst of the crisis I NEVER could have seen how much my life and work would transform and how much more peaceful and empowered I would become on the other side. I couldn’t see it then but great things came out of the long darkness.

I just want to pass this along to everyone who’s feeling freaked out right now. Take heart. Take the next step. Stay open to the truth that there are possibilities and opportunities in front of you that you haven’t even imagined. The way through to something much better is in front of you even if you can’t see it clearly just yet.

Here is an excerpt from my book that may offer some comfort – I certainly hope so:

We are each far more than a job, a title, a financial status, a criminal background, a role. We are more than a body. We are more than we know and we have a choice to make. We can fight to hold fast to the selves we think we are or we can choose to let the death of the old and familiar give birth to our True Selves. Every single moment holds the opportunity of rebirth, no matter what is swirling in the outer circumstances of our lives just now. It’s not the crucifixion that matters; it’s the resurrection. Your Easter is here — if you choose it.

– From When Life Blows Up: A Guide to Peace, Power and Reinvention.

Each one of us, and our world itself, is in a time of transformation right now and we do so with the power of grace and Spirit within our reach.  Happy Easter to you all.

Love,

Cylvia

Full Spiral Gratitude

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes
Freya having her own full spiral Thanksgiving all safe, toasty and comfy on a couch with people who truly love her.

Another Thanksgiving but definitely not a full circle experience. I don’t believe we ever come full circle, but instead full spiral; we may return to familiar settings but we are never exactly the same as we were before. A woman can never step in the same river because the river has already shifted and so has she.

One year ago today I was stilled mired in legal and financial challenges, but not any more.

One year ago my son was still halfway across the country locked up in a terrible place. Today he’s here with me building a beautiful life.

At this time last year my coaching work was barely a thing, now it’s a full blown program helping lots of awesome people launch their next chapters of life, career and relationship.

Holy cow a year ago I still really didn’t know where I was going with the book and now it is with the publisher!

My current major clients and the New Economy college course I’m developing (and super excited about) weren’t even on the radar screen a year ago.

Last Thanksgiving my beloved Tessa was still with us and I had no idea how little time we had left. The missing is still strong, near the surface and tender. But along with that a year ago Freya was in a situation of neglect and basic survival. She’ll spend today wagging, wiggling, snuggling on the couch, gently begging for (and receiving) delicious morsels.

I feel so blessed and grateful it’s difficult to contain it. I find myself thinking of the scene in Jerry Maguire when Rod learns he has landed a big contract with the NFL team of his dreams and starts spouting thanks to his family, friends, agent and then, in joyful overwhelm blurts out, “I just love everybody!”

I truly hope everyone who reads this has reason to celebrate a full spiral moment and feel bursting at the seems levels of gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,

Cylvia

To schedule a free Launch Your Next Chapter Breakthrough Session, click here: https://calendly.com/cylvia/30min

The In Between

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

Sometimes things happen that just knock us off the place in the world we thought we were standing on — death of a loved one, a health crisis, loss of a job, divorce, or even things we might choose like retirement. These abrupt changes can feel like a sort of death in and of themselves; our old familiar identity disintegrates, the dream of what we thought our life would be crumbles.

In anthropology, there is a concept known as the liminal phase describing how, in cultures that have clear rites of passage rituals such as moving from boyhood to manhood or from initiate to mid-wife or priestess, there is a period in which the initiate has lost their old identity and place in society but has not yet been granted the new status or reintegrated into society; that in between time is what is known as the liminal phase.

More recently liminality has crossed over from anthropology into psychology and is used to describe when a person suffers major life upheaval that shakes us loose from our familiar identity and position in community or society. This is usually a very challenging space for a person to remain in because it is detached from known routines and social interactions and support. The sense of liminality, of being in between the old and new way of being, often hits during sudden, intense life-changing events.

As I share in my upcoming book, When Life Blows Up: A Guide to Peace, Power and Reinvention:

“I was a couple of months into my public shaming experience when someone first shared the term liminality with me and I cried as I recognized and resisted the space I’d been forced into. On some subconscious level I was terrified that the upheaval and uncertainty would be permanent and I’d be trapped in a purgatory of pain and isolation for the rest of my life.”

My initial reaction to the bomb blast was to scramble to capture up the pieces and try to put things back together somehow, to keep my work going, to force my way forward, but the events had been too catastrophic and at some point I just had to give in, to surrender to the fact that things were never going to look the same again. I finally stopped working and allowed myself to be worked on from within and that’s when I struck gold.

For those of you sitting in what feels like an identity blast zone take heart, the terrible upheaval won’t last forever. And have courage because there is tremendous transformative power in in giving the liminal uncertainty some time to work its magic.

Being initiated into the deeper levels of ourselves often involves being willing to sit in the field of uncertainty for some time as our inner landscape shifts and new currents begin to move. It’s like the eagles who flow with the wind, carried in one direction then the other, until finally the wind itself lifts them up above the turbulence.

In my Launch Your Next Chapter program I work with a lot of people who are navigating liminality and transition and are determined to come out the other side with greater clarity, peace and power. If this sounds like you I invite you to a complimentary empowerment coaching session – just click here and pick a time that works for you.

In the meantime, here is a beautiful meditation called The Space Between. 

And remember, a butterfly pulled too soon from the chrysalis never fully forms its wings and so never flies. Our world will be so much more beautiful when we all are flying.

Love,

Cylvia

The Missing and Harnessing Loss

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

It’s now been a month since Tessa passed. The first few weeks were intense, indescribable really. Missing became a noun, a thing – “The Missing”. I would be going along, doing life, and The Missing would reach up and grab me, freezing the breath in my chest and flooding my eyes. It jumped me even when there was no obvious trigger beyond a lovely memory wafting through. In truth, it was so deep it was akin to a phantom limb; a beautiful part of me I expected to be there that wasn’t. I had to start adjusting to going through life a little lesser, a little less rich, quieter.

I am still grieving, tears still springing at unexpected moments (like now, as I write this) but it is softening – love and gratitude far outweighing the loss. I sometimes now feel her presence on the breeze, and it makes me smile.

I really don’t know if loss, transition and trauma happen for a purpose but I absolutely do know we can make purpose of everything that happens.   Tessa’s passing shifted me out of my normal state of being. After the first week, as the most jagged edges rounded a bit but the grief was still incredibly powerful, I found myself in a softer, slower energy that was just perfect for finishing my book.

I know I announced late last year that I’d finished the book, but after speaking with the publisher, editors and doing market research I realized that for it to fill the niche I’m hoping for the book needed to be a good bit longer. I have worked throughout this year to get it where it needs to be and within a few weeks When Life Blows Up: A Guide to Peace, Power and Reinvention will be headed to the editor, cover designer and graphics team and finally to completion and launch! Whew, it has been a JOURNEY! I am so proud of myself for seeing it through and for not rushing it, for allowing it to become something I really want to put forth into our world.

Loss isn’t easy and grief really can’t be rushed, but it can be harnessed. It can open us to gentler, more vulnerable and therefore more creative energies. Once I get this book fully fledged, I’m thinking about doing another titled, Soul Dog, for all of us who take the beautiful risk and reap the rewards of giving our hearts fully to a four-legged, furred or feathered friend. Thanks for the inspiration Tessa, my sweet pea.

This pic of her has become my favorite since her passing. It was taken just two months before she passed and before I had any idea how soon that was to be. We were out on a hike and, as I had done so many times before, I looked back at her and my heart flooded and I said, “Do you know how much I love you?” As she had started doing in the frosty-faced portion of her life, she looked right into my eyes and smiled, her way of saying, “Yes I do know and right back at you.”

Life is process and man it hurts sometimes. Change is guaranteed even if we wish it weren’t. We are never what we have lost. We are not what has been torn from us and we definitely are not broken beyond repair, ever, unless we choose to build the brokenness and victimhood into our beliefs, our stories and our identities. Even when it all blows to pieces we still are everything we were before. We might not still have what we had — the positions, the possessions, money, the athletic body, the children, the loved ones — but we still are the culmination of experiences, talents, current and former abilities and impactful relationships that make us uniquely us. Every one of us is the sum total of all we have experienced, felt, learned and unlearned before. There is never only one way to view a challenging event and never only one possible outcome.

I still have Tessa’s urn and little shrine on my front room floor. Cards and letters and even lovely drawings poured in from people whose lives she had touched and who cared about us – I am really touched by that and I just love it that so many people loved her. I expect at some point I will spread her ashes in various places that she loved, but not just yet. I will know when that time is right. In the meantime I feel for her on the wind and allow my heart to open a little further.

Love,

Cylvia

P.S. For those of you facing a period of transition and reinvention, whether it be grief, loss or just wanting to find clarity of purpose in the next chapter of your life, I have four openings for complimentary Reinvention and Empowerment Breakthrough sessions. Just schedule a time here — https://calendly.com/cylvia/30min. I very much look forward to talking with you.

Crisis or Awakening?

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

Are you at that mystifying place called mid-life wondering how the heck you got here and what’s next? Maybe you’re facing some unexpected challenges or just wanting to have more of a sense of purpose and direction. Maybe there’s an urge to hit the reset button.

It might not feel like it but I promise you if you are facing major transition and challenges at this particular turning point in life you are sitting on a gold mine of possibility and potential.

I was devastated and freaked out when my life and career blew up in seeming catastrophic fashion in my late 40s. It felt like everything I’d worked for was destroyed and the best was behind me. Well, believe me, I am thrilled to report that I couldn’t have been more wrong! My unasked for life reset opened up whole new pathways to understanding, self-forgiveness and peace that utterly transformed my way of being in the world and with myself. My crisis turned out to be a mid-life awakening and it was the best gift I never imagined!

Here’s one thing I know, surviving, overcoming and thriving isn’t so much about analyzing and hustling gathering information as it is about remembering what we already know; it’s about coming home. There is no need to become better or more or different; all you need is to remember who you already are.

Here are a few tips for mastering mid-life transition:

  • Learn to question and manage fear.

Mark Twain once said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” The simple truth is we tend to harbor a lot of fear about future “what ifs?” that may not even come to pass. Learning to release unproductive fear is a key to empowered transition.

  • Do a Can and Can’t Control exercise.

The secret to success and happiness is knowing that there are some things you can control and some things you cannot. Think about the situation or issue you are concerned about and make a list of what you can control and what you can’t. Spend your effort on things you can control and let the rest go.

Most importantly remember, you are more than a body. You are more than a job, a title, a financial status, a role. You are more than you know. You have a choice to make. Every single moment holds the opportunity of rebirth, no matter what is swirling through the circumstances of your life just now.

It’s a damn shame that in our culture there is no mid-life rite of passage and celebration. I mean for goodness sake it’s a big deal making it through early adulthood and getting some seasoning and wisdom under our belts! But we don’t even have a way of pausing for breath and celebrating our success in getting this far.

I encourage you to do that right now. Take a breath. Give yourself a moment to appreciate all that you’ve accomplished up to this point. And remember, in so many powerful ways you are just getting started. After all, in any really great play all the best stuff happens after the intermission!

Something powerful is happening to you because you have something powerful to do.

With love,

Cylvia

 

If you’d like some support launching the next awesome chapter of your life I would be more than happy to talk with you. You can schedule a complimentary Mid-Life Mastery Breakthrough session here.