42.299152, -85.591736
42.3838° N, -85.95861° E
47° 39′ 31.6044” N – 117° 25′ 33.7728” W
Hope Is
Your life as your message
Dear readers, hello!
Recently I was reading an email from Soren Gordhamer, founder of Wisdom 2.0, titled “Your Life Message”. He shared about a response Gandhi gave a reporter who once asked about Gandhi’s message for the people of India. Gandhi wrote on paper “MY LIFE IS MY MESSAGE.”.
Soren continued to write.
Our “message” is not only what we post on social media or put on our LinkedIn page, it is how we live our life — what is seen AND what is not seen.
If someone was tracking your life, what would they think your message is?
Our life inevitably expresses a message. We cannot avoid it. If we have children or loved ones, they are tracking us. In many ways, we can never hide anything.
So what do we want our life message to be?
While we may have an answer that uses words, our deeper answer, in many ways, is in how we live each moment of our life.
As Thich Nhat Hanh used to say, “Your actions are your only true belongings.”
Inspired by and then reflective of Soren’s message, a few short weeks later the same information crossed my path twice. A CDC study recently released in the U.S. indicates that “one in three girls seriously considered attempting suicide,” in 2021.
One in three.
If you are reading this sitting in a room filled with 3 people, look up and around and imagine if one of those individuals was a youth-filled girl who questioned if life was meant to be continued here on Earth.
One in three. Question that life is worth living.
And one of the contributing factors excerpts in mental health fields have is that social media is influencing one’s sense of value, worth, and belonging based on a young life’s perception of being “scored” through how many “likes” and “followers.” Someone gets.
If someone was tracking my life, what am I messaging?
Let me give you a glimpse into my internal conversation.
Self: Let me find these girls who are struggling to believe life is worth living, who are struggling with their sense of worth. Another space in which suicide and hopelessness grab my heart, hard! Like the military veterans and the calling to write HHCN. I am my best when I am listening to the voices who don’t feel seen and heard. I am best when I can frame and reframe the stories of life someone is telling themselves to reflect hope, worth, and dignity to someone feeling hopeless, unworthy, and judged. I will gladly share my journey from self-judgment to self-worthy, from uncertain to hope-fully, from grieving to embracing, from shame to dignity, from separated to a sense of whole. I never questioned if life on Earth was no longer worth staying in, but oh, did I sure know the depths of not feeling worthy of being seen and heard.
{My Soul and my guides, keepers, and ancestors are dancing and high fiving each other for listening to that inner whisper as I pull out my map and highlighter to make another trail system that I feel called to travel.}
self: Well, hold on. Wait a minute. First, what makes you expert? You are “just” an author/writer, coach, and teacher. You haven’t worked out all the bugs and kinks yet in your own journey of fully embodying worth, and peace and self-trust and and and. And, secondly, how can these girls find you? After all, you shouldn’t be adding fuel to the very spaces that are adding to the sense of unworthiness and hopelessness these girls are feeling. If you start posting on social media, isn’t that being hypocritical to what you really desire to teach, which is how to be present and connected in one’s own skin, with people, with Nature…with life. Aren’t you really wanting to foster “real” connection through “real” conversations? “In-person” either physically or via Zoom, because after all, you know how to teach “real” connection virtually as well as in person. That is part of your gift with the art of hearing. So, just be patient, doorways will open without “having to”…
{My Soul and my guides, keepers, and ancestors sit down, a soft, gently, loving, non-judgmental smile on all of their faces, as they making knowing eye contact with each other that communicates her dance of grace between opposites on her spiritual journey as a human being learning that she is safe in her own skin being seen and heard for her story is the inspiration others need and we are waiting to bring her the voices she can best hear. Her mission is to lead a social movement to shift the world’s grief, pain, trauma, sorrow, and despair to hope, and one step at a time, she is finding her way.}
One step at a time, my dance of grace. (smile)
During this past month my quest also led me to a very beautiful honor of reading writings from my husband’s grandmother when she was alive. I was struck by how there are certain wisdoms that are timeless. More than once as I was reading I needed to glance at the date in which she had put her words to paper. The words out of ‘today’s’ headlines; her words written in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s.
We hurry through life at such a rapid pace nowadays. There is not enough time to do all the things that we would like to do. We all know too well that we are living in chaotic times… Don’t misunderstand me – I don’t mean that you must always agree with what others have to say or believe in…but do not let this difference divide you in your feelings, from others… A bridge permits free passage, a free exchange from one area to another…or one person to another. Let us not think then only of bridges which are built with the hands because our hearts build bridges too…bridges of friendship, of compassion for brotherhood.
Her messages from her life.
Words left to paper, left for the next four generations – her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, and her great-great grandchildren.
Timeless wisdom, rooted in foundations of and for humanity. Rooted in ways for life to continue to go forward amidst the oppositions that life also brings that try to pull one’s being to also take root in hopelessness, joylessness, unworthiness, the emotional pain of loss and of trauma, the physical anguish of the body internalizing that loss and trauma, and the erosion of one’s spirit in believing in and trusting the rhythms and flows of life, that there is a Wholeness, a Oneness to it all.
So, just as I felt called to something so much bigger than me when I wrote Hope Has a Cold Nose, in the very depths of my being, I can no longer not keep leaning into what calls my heart, which includes more fully “showing up” with my life’s message.
Hope Is
Life.
In how we choose to make grief, pain, trauma, sorrow, and despair
matter that it happened
by choosing to live
with joy and love
In the journey of the inner pathway to whole, mind, body, heart, and soul
in looking the grief, pain, trauma, sorrow, and despair in the eye
reframing it, absent of judgment
with compassion
to find the beauty, worth, and dignity
of every extraordinary story
For if someone bravely choose this life to live, no matter the duration
There is an extraordinary story that was
lived
A person who deserves to be heard
and seen
For in doing so
Humanity and life
dance forward
in balance and harmony
with a beautiful
grace
Care to join me on my mission? Together we can create a movement!
Perhaps in a fun way like this!
What is Hope to you? I would love to read and hear your thoughts. I’d love to share them with others via email or on my web page(s). I welcome your handwritten messages or drawn pictures to the address below. Or feel free to email me (Christine@hopewhispers.net)
P.O. Box 327
Gobles, MI 49055
ATTN: Hope Is
.
42.3838° N, -85.95861° E
A Cold Nose
A duet, shall we!
N ° S ° E ° W °
Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks
Oh goodness, so many exciting trail systems ahead! (Wink, smile) Metaphorically speaking. Well, for the most part metaphorically, not counting upcoming physical hiking adventures this summer!
Where should I begin?! Let’s start with this video!
https://studio.youtube.com/video/1eOOhA6HV7c/edit
If you are on Instragram or You Tube, be watching for inspirational routine postings in video or words if it resonates for you to join alongside me. Together we can dance between being spiritual beings having human experiences and human beings having spiritual experiences. (Don’t be surprised if every once in a while you get an inspirational short email if my inner whisper nudges that at least one of you could benefit from an inspirational message for the day. Since I know that inner whisper is much bigger than little ole’ me, I strive – in my dance – to listen to it and act on it. If you could benefit, I want to deliver!)
Attached is a flyer for upcoming workshops and courses I am teaching. Email me! I’d love for you to attend!
And ooooohhhh, I am so excited! Book three continues to gain momentum to become a reality! I’m not yet able to reveal the subject yet, but oh, I can’t wait until I can!!! Just keep thinking Between the Dash and hold out as patiently as you can for the May Hope Is message! I do believe I will be able to communicate more details then!
I’m also trying my best not to add too much water to another seed before it’s ready to drink more – I have always been a little bit clumsy in my dance between patience and impatience! But. There is a potential 4th book in which the seed has been placed in the soil this month. We shall see. (Smile, grin).
And, hey, one more thing. In the spirit of Soren and another very inspirational person who has recently crossed my path (author Julie Lythcott-Haims)
I am listening. If you need to be heard or seen, email me. Christine@hopewhispers.net
Namaste’
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again. – Crazy Horse
Sincerely,
-Christine
P.S.
If you have enjoyed this month’s message, please pay it forward to others. They can also subscribe to future emails by visiting www.christinehassing.com. If you know of someone who has a Hope Is message to share, please encourage them to share via the post office address (or via email at Christine@hopewhipsers.net). I welcome sharing their input in a future Hope Is message!