Graduating from the School of Hard Knocks

Every day is a journey. The challenges and test we face teaches, heals, and strengthens us. However it is our choice how we react to those challenges and test


If you visit my website at www.theresachaze.com you can learn more about my work.

Ritual to Heal a Broken Heart

Ritual to Heal a Broken Heart


Love is a very powerful emotion; however, it has become more so with the rapidly changing energy patterns. No longer are people willing to settle for what or who is convenient or socially acceptable. Long term relationships are not only being questioned but frequently ending as we seek to find our true soul mates and twin flames. We are more willing to risk pain in order to find true happiness. Although we have many soul mates, we only have one twin flame. More than a soul mate, twin flames is our soul’s perfect equal--our ying to their yang. In generations past, twin flames rarely incarnated at the same time; however, this has changed. Many flames have been given the gift of togetherness at this very important time in the planet’s history. Our soul contracts were written in such a way that we have the opportunity to become whole with our perfect match.

A few months ago, my soul touched and was touched by my twin flame. It was wildly exciting and wonderful. A friend asked me why I loved him. I wrote the following.

Why I do love you? I could say it’s because of your beautiful smile and cute ass. But those are just the fringe benefits. I love you for who you are in your heart and soul--your wit, your wisdom, and your smart ass remarks. You stubbornness to detail and creative view of life. I love how you love me; how you are able to see the good in me even when I can’t. I love how you care for others. When you love someone, truly love them it is the whole package inside and out. You make me smile. You make me think. I love the feel of your hand in mind--your lips on mine. We view the world much the same, yet different enough to learn from each other. I love you nose. I love your smell and your energy. You complete me. You make me whole. You make me feel as if nothing is impossible. I love the fact that the thought of you makes me smile and the sound of your voice fills me with passion. I love the fact that you are someone I can believe in because you are a man of your word. You are a good man with a loving heart and an honorable soul. I miss you when we are parted and long for your warmth next to me. In your eyes I see the miracles that could be. Your independence makes me stronger and wiser because you aren’t afraid to challenge me. You aren’t afraid to love me for me. I love you for you and only you who you are in your heart, soul and mind--for the good, bad, and ugly of your stubborn short term attention span. Most of all I love it when we are together because at no other time in my memory have I feel so whole and complete. I love you because you are you.

Sharing our love can be wonderful, yet it can also be very scary. It takes courage to stand emotionally and spiritually naked in front another, Not all are able. Not all are willing to let go and heal from the past. Love that we share can make us stronger, more able to see the best in ourselves and the world. Shared loved is a blessing for all. However, sometimes the one we love cannot follow their heart. They prefer to stay on the familiar path, instead of risking the unknown. As sad as that may make us, we cannot force or manipulate them to making a different choice. All we can do is seek a new path for ourselves. The following ritual will help the healing process.

Light a two hour white candle and say:

Compassionate Kwan Yin, Goddess of mercy and love
Lend me your strength from above.
Help me to see passed the pain
To find the lessons that I have gained.
The love I offered from my heart
Was not returned, so I ask that we kindly part.
For the highest good for one and all
Use your strength and wisdom to answer my call.
Let both our destinies hence forth be fully blessed
As we part to find new tests and quests.
Heal my pain from within to without
So myself I will no longer doubt.
Show the me the way to begin again
By helping me to heal through the pain.

Let the candle burn out. Be kind to yourself and forgiving of the other person. By releasing and keeping our heart open, we heal ourselves from the inside out. There is an old saying: If you love someone, let them go. If they return, they were yours. If they don’t it wasn’t meant to be.

Loosing a loved one doesn’t mean you aren’t lovable or cannot share love. It just means the time or the person wasn’t right. Keeping your heart open to others, not only helps you find comfort, but speeds the healing process. Sharing love is a blessing, no matter what the out come. Selfish love seeks to own or control the other; it doesn’t care what the other wants or needs. It wants what it wants no matter who it hurts. True love is open and honest. It seeks the highest good for all. It is offered with an open hand, wanting only the best for both. Sometimes that means letting go and moving on.

Washing Dishes-A Metaphor for Healing

Washing Dishes
A Metaphor for Healing
By
Theresa Chaze



Emotional healing is like washing dishes. A strange comparison, yes but an accurate one. Washing dishes removes left over food from the dinnerware; emotional healing removes pain from our souls. For both of them, the longer the waste has been there, the more difficult it is to wash it away. Unlike permanently stained dishes, you can not simply toss away your soul and get another. However, the more quickly you deal with the injury, like dishes, the easier it is to take care of the problem. Yet sometimes the damage is so devastating that like a burned casserole dish it will take a lot of work and time to get it clean.

After a meal, if the dishes are washed or rinsed right away, they clean quickly and easily. However if they are left for any length of time, the food dries to the plate and it will take more effort to cleanse them. The same is also true for emotional hurts. If you deal with them at the time of the injury, you can deal directly with the source. Being open and honest about how you feel clears up misunderstandings and prevents the issue from being clouded by other factors.

However if you are unable, for whatever reason, to deal openly with the wounded feelings, they begin to fester and expand into other aspects of your life. Until it is dealt with, the hurt will not simply go away. Instead like a dish that has been left too long, it will attracted flies and eventually transmute into something icky--like mold. So do hurt feeling attract undesirable emotions like fear, anger and self doubt. None of those emotions are truly negative; it’s not being able to get past them that leads to further problems. Unlike the food that becomes the mold, the emotions are not changed, but they change the person from the inside out. Getting stuck in them only leads a person to do and say things they normally wouldn’t, which spreads the negativity to others.

So how is the cycle broken? Being honest, self aware and honoring yourself enough to speak your mind and stand your ground are ways misunderstandings are prevented. You don’t have to be aggressive or self pitying to tell another that their behavior or words were hurtful. Sometimes people don’t realize how their bad mood is affecting others. Everyone at some point has gotten so wrapped up in their challenges that they have forgotten the niceties. This doesn’t mean that they will always care. There are people who go out of their way to hurt others, mostly because that is how they deal with their own pain. However, by stating your feelings openly, honestly and with compassion, you get them out into the open. But you must remember not to take their reaction personally. It is this clearing that heals, not how the person responds. By stating your truth you are able to wash your plate clean and move on.

Yet what if you haven’t or couldn’t deal with the issue immediately or the person is no longer available? Be honest with yourself. It’s the denial of the feelings that give them power over you. If your feelings were hurt--acknowledge it. The more honest you are with yourself, the less likely you are to misdirect the feeling onto others who had nothing to do with the injury. However if you can’t for what ever reason deal with the situation or person at the time, step back and get perspective. It’s like taking time to soak the really dirty dishes, while you wash the easier ones. By the time you get to them, the dried food has softened and will be easier to remove. Emotionally you have more options: Talk to another to get an more objective perspective; it’s possible your issues could have lead you to over react. Get more information; there might be more going on than you were aware of. Consider that you were responsible; previously you could have hurt their feelings and that situation hadn’t been dealt with. Or it could simple be that both of you just happen to meet while both of you were having a bad day; in that case both forgive yourself and the other person then move on.

Yet like a burnt casserole dish, there are situations that are so traumatic that they simple can not be healed immediately. Unlike like cross words, lies or misunderstandings, these injuries usually affect the persons whole life or have happened over an extended period of time. In these cases, there are no quick fixes--no words that can alleviate the pain. The dish can be tossed, but the emotional injury can’t be. In these cases the pain is so devastating that it is forgotten or buried because the person simply can’t deal with it. Whether it’s fear or lack of self esteem, they refuses to admit they are in pain. By doing so they do not have to deal with the source of their hurt.

In the cases of childhood trauma, many children are taught to honor their parents, no matter how much damage they do. They feel that they do not have the right to be angry with the parent or to hold them accountable for their actions, simply because of who they are. They turn their anger inward. Instead of confronting the source of their pain, they become self abusive. Frequently, as they grow into adulthood, they find others who reinforce the self image their parents cultivated. The abuse continues and is eventually spread to the next generation as the off-spring inherit the abused behavior. In cases when the source is a stranger, confusion and self-doubt is added as the person questions why they were chosen--what did they do to attract the abusive person’s attention? In many cases, they can not find a logical reason, as a result they blame themselves. So in addition to the physical injuries, they take on the emotional responsibility for the actions of another. Instead of blaming the perpetrator, they feel guilty for the attack. In both instances, the longer the pain is not acknowledge, the more difficult it will be to deal with the true source of the pain.

Healing begins by acknowledging that there is a problem and finding the root source. Until that happens, only the symptoms can be addressed. But dealing with the symptom doesn’t cure anything. Cure one and another one will manifest, usually more intense than the previous. Until the true source of the injury is exposed, the behaviors and inner torment will continue. Like the casserole dish, only time, a good soak and a lot of hard work will cleanse the ick away. For emotions, the soak usually involves many tears and a good support team. Friends, family, and professionals working together to help rebuild what was torn apart are essential parts of the healing process. They are the support staff. But the head of the team is always the person and their determination to heal. Until the person makes the decision to confront the source directly, no matter who they are, and properly place the blame, they will not heal. Confrontation doesn’t necessary need to be a physical encounter, but acknowledging who is responsible. Who caused the pain? Who did the hurting? The old wounds have to be opened and the source of the pain brought into the light. Initially the process will be very painful, causing the person to want to go back into denial. Like peeling back the layers of an onion, the healing process will open old wounds and reawaken old memories until the original source is discovered. At each new level, the person learns to understand more about themselves and become stronger for it. The inwardly turned anger is eventually turned outward and focused on the source of the pain. Professional supervision will keep the healing process moving forward on a positive level. Getting stuck in the blame game will only halt you positive progression. Whether or not the other person takes responsibility for their actions has no bearing on you healing process. Like with the small hurts, honoring your truth and respecting yourself is the goal and the way to move forward. By allowing yourself to see the truth of your life without guilt, fear, or anger you see past as just that--the past. You physically survived it, now it is time to truly live through it and move forward.

Dating 101: How and Where to Find Love

Dating 101

It’s not where you are from, but where you are going that matters.

Men may be from Mars and women from Venus, yet, we all need love. Notice that I didn’t say ‘would like,’ or ‘are hoping for,’ no, I used the verb ‘need’ and I meant it! At the end of our day or at the end of our lives, if we seriously analyzed our actions and the motives behind them, most of us would agree all we really wanted was to love and be loved. Since we are among boomers, I like to think we’ve reached the stage in life where we can say, without apologies, that if we aren’t in a relationship, we’d like to be in one. Period. And we deserve it!

Easier said than done, right? I’m not going to tell you that it’s easy, but I am going to tell you that it’s possible—if you are willing to adjust your attitude. Let me explain. As we grow older, we change our eating habits, our sleeping patterns, the way we dress, our exercise routine, and especially as women, we switch health and beauty products. So why are we not changing the way we pursue relationships? I’m here to tell you it is time to do just that.

Like everything else, start small and build on your successes. Certainly you would never go out and purchase a whole case of new products without trying a sample first. Well, here is your sample for adjusting your attitude. If a man about the right age catches your attention, go talk to him. No rolling your eyes, no smirking, no ifs, ands or buts, this is your free sample. I’m not telling you to ask the man out; I’m not telling you not to ask him out, either. I would be content if you just talk to him, for now.

Let’s pretend you are walking down Rodeo Drive and you see a fabulous bag in a store window. Strangely, the shop doesn’t have a designer name, actually it doesn’t have a name or a logo at all, so you have no idea if the bag is affordable, or you’d need to mortgage your house to buy it. Heck, come to think of it, you don’t even know if it’s for sale. But it’s calling your name, oh, how it would complement your summer wardrobe! You breathe deep and hesitantly push open the door, you are now inside the store, closer to the object of your desire, and you politely ask the salesperson if you could see this dream bag up close; “Oh, I would happily show it to you,” smiles the saleslady, “however, it is not for sale; it is part of a raffle to feed the hungry. Would you like to buy a ticket? They are $10 each.”

You buy two tickets, and as you walk away, you don’t care that you are not holding the dream bag because you are holding something that may get you that bag at a bargain price. If it doesn’t, well, at least you helped feed the hungry.

That man who catches your eye is your bag and the salesperson. So walk up to that salesperson and ask a simple question, ask the time, or directions, anything easy and pleasant so that person can give you an answer. If you hold the winning ticket, you may end up sitting in a coffee shop talking to the man; if you don’t, remember, you’ve fed the hungry. Maria Grazia Swan author of Boomer Babes-True Tales of Love and Lust in The Later Years-available now in bookstores around the country.