After my dark night of the soul and complete crumbling of my life (more on that in a later blog post), I learned to start paying attention.
Paying attention to life, to signs, synchronicities, to the little nudges from the Universe gently guiding me into the flow of life. Recently, I received a profound message in one of my dreams.
This poor goldfish was flopping around.
I looked over and it was out of water. Trying to survive.
It had little time being out of it’s environment of water before it would be no more.
I quickly directed my sister to go get the fish in a cup and I collected some salt water from the ocean.
We submerged the fish in the water and immediately realized that this was not the right water for the fish.
The fish wasn’t swimming and coming back to life, it was still in the wrong environment.
My mind started racing and I woke up.
My dreams have a way of leaving me on these cliff hangers..
“Did we save the fish?!”
“Did we not save the fish?”
“What happened to that poor fish?!”
These are all the thoughts that were running through my mind the second I woke up.
Waking up to these cliff hangers is annoying, but it also makes it so that I pay close attention to what I was dreaming about.
In my sleepy morning reflection as I had a mental debate about the right type of water for fish, it made me think about the importance of being in the right environment.
I realized that there was one environment, fresh water, that the fish could thrive.
And then I realized that the fish in the dream was me.
I was trying to thrive in salt water, but what I needed was fresh water.
Let me back up a tiny bit.
Before I got pregnant I was in the best shape of my life.
I was 2/3 of the way through 75 hard, walking 15,000+ steps a day, doing SolidCore 4-5 times a week, eating nothing with added sugar, no alcohol, I was thriving!
I felt amazing.
I was so energized and seriously felt on top of the world.
And it’s a good thing, because around week 5 of being pregnant, my energy was ZAPPED!
There was no more energy for workouts and walks, it took all I had to get from the bed to the couch and grab my morning banana to fight off morning sickness.
Naturally, the energy required to create a human took priority and I slowly didn’t have the energy for the things that were making me feel so good – walking, working out, eating delicious whole foods.
So when I lost the baby, and as my body started to regain energy, I was out of the habit of working out and eating the same nutritious meals I had been eating.
Rather than fall back into that habit, my grief and sadness took the driver’s seat and they drove me to old coping mechanisms of binge eating.
I’ve been leaning on ice cream and pizza and fast food and iced caramel macchiatos to make me feel better.
I keep trying to fill this void in me. I keep trying to feel better.
In a weird way, I think I’m trying to still feel pregnant.
Last night, before I went to bed, after eating way more chips than I should have, a slice of banana bread that…probably was thick enough for two, and a chocolate treat, I realized not one of those things made me feel better.
Actually, they made me feel worse.
My stomach hurt.
I was bloated.
I remembered all the old feelings I used to have when I was an extreme binge eater and would gain up to 20 pounds in one month.
I’ve worked years to heal that, but in extreme times like a miscarriage, it still rears it’s head for a minute.
I feel really thankful that I have the awareness to notice it more quickly now.
The junk food, the binge eating..that’s my salt water.
I can’t thrive in salt water.
Eating healthy food, honoring my body’s fullness level, staying active, that’s my fresh water.
I’ve been trying to thrive in salt water, but what I really need is fresh water.
So I did what I always do when I have this type of relevation – I went to my journals!
I went back to my journal entries where I was completing 75 hard to remind myself of how good I felt in my “fresh water” environment:
“I am so glad Richie introduced 75 Hard to me. It’s changing my life. It’s bringing me back home to me.”
“Life is so damn good right now. I’m in the flow, I can feel it.”
“With each passing day I feel stronger mentally and physically.”
Re-reading these entries engulfed me in the energy I was in when I was feeling so good and reminded me what it felt like to thrive and that it was possible.
This is one of my favorite ways to use my journals – go back and reference times in the past when I was feeling really good and do my own self study. I call it a lookback.
I ask myself questions like:
“What was I doing then, that I could implement in my life now, to give me that same feeling?”
“What were some of the supportive thought patterns and affirmations I was saying to keep me in a high vibration?”
“What was I not doing?”
It’s really easy to reference my past journal entries because in the journal I created, there are page numbers and a table of contents where I keep track of milestones and breakthroughs and important times so I can easily reference these entries in the future.
This keeps me in the habit of turning back to myself for guidance.
For most of my life I would seek out the opinions of others, but who better to know what would work for you than what has already worked for you in the past?
Lookbacks have been a really pivotal part of my own self discovery journey. They’ve helped me not only understand myself and my patterns and my conditioning, but they’ve helped me build trust in myself.
I have over 30 journals filled over the past 7+ years so I have lots of examples where I can lookback and extract wisdom from my own experiences or gain insights.
So now with the awareness that I’ve been trying to thrive in the wrong environment and my past journal entries on deck to remind me of this when I want to turn to that third serving of banana bread, I feel ready to start building my fresh water tank again.
Is there an area of your life where you feel like you could shift your environment to help you thrive?
Even if you don’t have past journal entries to reference, can you remember a time when you felt really good?
Can you extract some wisdom on what your habits and thought patterns were at that time that helped support you feeling so good?
One of my favorite ways to reflect and explore is through my journal pages. It helps me in the moment, but as you can see, it also helps me in the future to document it.
If you’re feeling called to explore a journal, I want to invite you to explore the journal I created that has helped me so much over the years. It has the same format that has supported my growth and self discovery.
Until next time love,
-mel
p/s: Stay conscious
Letting Go 
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