Jean Gardner with the horse named Egypt near Glacier National Park, Montana
I am a featured author in a collaborative book called The Gifts of Pain which launched on Amazon in June.
The Gifts of Pain is a collection of inspiring stories by 31 co-authors who are using Dr. Elayna Fernández’ (@thepositivemom) S.T.O.R.Y. System to share their vulnerable stories of adversity and the tools they used to find hope and healing.
My chapter is titled “From Outcast to Finding Myself.” The underlying focus of Earth Group Global is embodiment – trusting your own body’s knowing. The Gifts of Pain focuses on this universal embodied experience that is often dismissed or minimized. The process of writing my essay truly was a gift that supported me in knowing myself more completely through presence with my pain.
What have you learned from pain? I invite you to share your experience by sending me an email. I would love to hear from you.
From Outcast to Finding Myself
I am an awkward 7th grader when my father announces: “We’re moving from Illinois to an Ohio suburb. When you arrive, don’t speak up, don’t be so smart!” His orders shock me to the core. I panic. When meeting my new classmates, no words come out of my mouth. I am unprepared – wrong clothes, wrong behavior. Raging in angry pain, I feel utterly humiliated.
Out of place in my new school, my mother rescues me by sending me to summer horseback-riding camps in the Rocky Mountains. There, I discovered what I never imagined – native indigenous peoples and their ceremonial love of the Earth. I eagerly join Navajos in a Blessing-Way-Healing Ceremony. Later I am invited to watch young Hopi Braves with rattlesnakes in their mouths race up their ancestral Mesa. Overwhelmed, I stand on the Mesa in the sky as the fiery setting Full Moon reflects the Rising Sun. I have found where I belong. My angry pain is released. The Native love of the Earth replaces my father’s orders as my life path.
I let go of my father ordering me not to speak and tell others my first-hand, lived, emotion-filled adventures in the mountains and deserts of Turtle Island – the original native name for the North American continent. They are eager to listen! I found my “Voice.”
Now I love teaching children, students, and adults to listen to their bodies and emotions – to experience their curiosity. I confidently encourage them to trust what is uniquely theirs – their own experiences. Then to shape their lives, not on what they are told, but on what they know from their own first-hand, lived painful experiences, like mine.
I invite you to discover your own “Voice.” Don’t judge yourself. Be honest. Let it all out. You are finding your “Voice – Your Being.”
Exercise:
Give yourself a special notebook. Every morning before your daily routine starts, open your notebook to “free write.” Note/draw/scribble/make marks describing first your painful experiences, then your release from your suffering. Use color to express your feelings.
For more information on this collaborative book, click here to visit Amazon.