 Hi, good morning. Welcome. Welcome to Sunday morning coffee with the Bridget. So I'm actually recording this the morning after solstice and that's kind of a big deal for me. I really feel into the energy and the movements of the sun. It's such a big part of my life energetically and the solar male energy is part of my my power and this year I've really been integrating that much much more into my life in ways that are gentle and just supportive and loving within me, you know, that sun chakra. I gotta love it. So I'm sitting here in the darkness. It's about 640 about to be exact. It's 640 a.m. central time on Thursday, the 22nd of December. I woke up at 5 a.m. again. This is the like third or fourth day in a row. I've woke up at 5 a.m. and I'm okay with that. I went to bed quite early and I like to be here in the wee hours of the morning just in the quiet. So I lit a bunch of candles and I'm sitting in my now living room here looking out at the pine trees. I have a different view now of them in the house. I'm on the lower level so I'm really close to the earth which I think is very grounding for me, very centering and we've had quite a bit of snow. You may have seen that on the news. I mean it's kind of relentless snow and definitely a white Christmas for sure in the Midwest here in Minnesota where I live. It's quite beautiful when you're warm inside and it's, the temperatures are dipping a lot the next few days. So it's a little chilly by the window but I have a cozy blanket. In fact, I think I'm going to reach down and grab it and grab my blanket. One of these Christmas themed blankets I've given to the kids in the past. You know when you have adult kids that move and live at college or live in their own apartments, they don't take everything. You bought them with them just so you know. So you kind of inherit some of the cool stuff you've given them over the years which is actually coming in handy a lot. So I have a little cozy, very fluffy, fleecy blanket rolled up and sitting on the floor beside my big comfy terracotta orange chair. Yeah I know, a sacral chakra and that blanket is just rolled up in a basket on the floor beside the chair so I can reach down and grab it anytime I want. So now we're cozy. I have been really working with this energy of the darkness. Unfortunately I feel like I know it too well now. I have become intimately interwoven with darkness in ways that I've never known it before. I have discovered places in my heart that have been lit up with that solar sun love energy from inside myself. Spaces that haven't been touched before in the last year and a half or so and I've had moments of pure joy, moments you know the Disney world and kind of joy where it's like Mickey Mouse himself is holding your hand and showing you around the place with all the magic and all the love all the joy and all the hope for the future and the dreams that you have always held inside some of which you didn't even know you had. Yeah that kind of energy. That's what I'm talking about. I've discovered that inside myself this year. The thing is is just like with you the discovering process isn't so pretty. It's harsh. It's cruel at times. You're challenged over and over again relentlessly with waves of emotion and energy and what feels like manipulation and bait and switch types of scenarios. Life presents situations through people through what seem to be opportunities and then you realize that beneath that is a layer of you that has always existed in the darkness and unfortunately it seems as though it takes someone else's darkness or the shadow of a life circumstance an edge of death quite literally for some to put you into a place where you know yourself intimately where you meet a part of yourself that you have been afraid to know for you would not have the ability to control this new force of you this new force of you that has so much love and gratitude and energy motivation and focus laser like focus to really be productive and always to have a generative base always without question to support you whenever you need it a well to go to to refuel to refresh to recharge that's you and it's always been you I'm not suggesting that we have to go through hardship in order to really know ourselves but I am acknowledging the incredible intensity of the struggle through the weight of emotions of love of loss of painful recognition that other people just don't love the way you do other people just don't understand you and other people sometimes just can't see you because they are so focused on survival sometimes they can't see you because they can't even see beyond their own needs that self focused mentality can be shocking and it can cause you to question yourself and if you are asking for too much out of life are you I think the opposite is true my sweet sweet soul listening to this you are not asking for too much you are simply recognizing the distance between how much more you are how much more you can be embodied as you and when we see others and their tragic stories and we rise to meet their needs emotionally mentally physically with our presence as the gift they siphon off every last bit of energy of light leaving us dark the thing is as we generate more we're generative you and I we we know that we are the light fully embodied and it's easy to forget when we get caught up in the world when of someone else's circumstance situation life projection and need especially when you feel the hearts need desperate for some kind of respite and you the person that is to provide that who is to provide that for you my love who is loving you back who is loving you truly who is loving you fully oh sweetheart that's our job that's our deepest devotion to know ourselves to know there's so much more to us and for us you need to ask for more because you need to articulate what that is so you can hear yourself as you receive it upon your human ears honoring and validating the fact that you actually have needs despite the fact that others do not recognize your needs but for their own focus they cannot see you stop you have to stop needing them to see you you need to see you and I know that can be scary especially in the darkness you have no idea what you're like truly without the cries from others they're forming you to meet their individual customized needs and you have haven't you in all of the relationships you've had with your children at work in love with your parents with your friends you have met all the customized needs of others and for some yet still not enough is it because they are seeking a part of themselves and you and you can't give that to them they can't even see that because they're not looking at you they're looking at a version of themselves that they can't seem to reach but for you and I we can see not outwardly to other people anymore that's not that's not that is not what this time is about because the only way you can see others clearly and the world clearly is through your truest lensing your self the eyes of your soul the golden light of your spirit that's it that's the answer and in this time of solstice of darkness I've been reminded of how it is my job to see me nobody else's it is my job in devotion to peel off layers upon layers of filters to see me and I've been really focused on clearing feeling letting go for the last four months since august since the first week of august when I made my trip to disney world a devastating unbelievable life altering massive change I will always remember my time before I was there and the time thereafter yes it's dramatic because I literally fell I felt like I was free falling from the moment I arrived there I began a descent into the darkness into a well just falling and falling in for these past several months that's pretty much all I felt just getting comfortable with that weightless feeling when you just surrender to the fall there's really no rock bottom here there's no hit there's no landing there's only the energy of the earth in her darkness and this morning I have felt as I was lighting these candles in this room I felt this awareness of rest this calming peace this caretaking energy of the dark mother and she she said rest now you can rest now I don't know if I believe her do you by the time you hear the sunday morning coffee it will be christmas day you will have ahead ups and downs of stress and pressures and misunderstandings with relatives and challenges and traveling and driving and issues with presents and gifts and lacks lack of batteries or a belly ache from too much food as for me I'm going to have a very quiet christmas when I think about it I feel the sorrow I recognize the loss it's not as I would have envisioned it this year this is not what I wanted for the holiday and I'm sure many people are faced with those disappointments and the loss of people a change of life circumstances and I've had this realization that what if I've been grieving the wrong thing what if all this time the culmination of this winter solstice has been to reshift me into my own instead of feeling sad about other people which I have I've carried an incredible burden one of my friends said to me you just carry so much weight from so many other people she said you need to put it down I think this is a misunderstanding of what love is and it's easy to misunderstand love isn't it because when other people come to us with our needs and we hear them say you can't meet my needs I have needs and you know there's literally nothing you can do to change things you literally have no control over what other people need or what they decide they need so the question is what do you need and what if you have the sovereignty the power the truest most beautiful power to care about your own needs what if that's the point of all of this is that sacred sacred relationship within you don't be afraid of what you need don't be afraid to ask for what you need because the gap where you fall short where you do not succeed where you fail at happiness at life is by not recognizing or by holding back what you want and what you need and articulate in that saying it out loud to yourself hearing it for yourself you're not too much that gap between you're not too much and you're not enough oh that's where dreams die that's where people settle for bad relationships and less than experiences in life don't do that you get to see yourself and the fullness of your light and your beauty and through the darkest times the darkest of life experiences of situations of relationships of people you are your light soft everlasting warm and loving you never change your light you are always you are and you always will be that I promise so as you lean into the last week of this year and the last week of this month ask yourself what do I need what do I want put those two words together don't try to decipher them or discern them or categorize all of the things you become aware of just become aware see yourself really see yourself and how you can make the connections within your heart and your soul to be exactly what you need right here and right now this is Bridget thank you for listening to this Christmas Day edition of Sunday Morning Coffee with Bridget