Life After Death

I know what miracles are. I know because I see them happen every day—and because some of them happen to me. I guess you could say that I’m proof, or my life is proof, or, for that matter, my very existence, is proof. There have been so many miracles in my life that choosing just one to write about and calling it the “biggest” would be like loving one of my children more than the other.

I loved my husband, Randy Michael Connolly, until death did us part. So much so that it felt as if I’d died with him. By the time December 2013 rolled around, I’d been praying for my own death for a little over a year, although I still hadn’t conjured the nerve to take my own life, and realized I might never find that nerve, no matter how devastated I was. The only thing that could possibly keep me going, I determined, was a miracle.

I wanted, I needed, some kind of concrete, measurable evidence that he was still with me, just as he’d promised he’d be as he was dying.

Night after night of crying myself to sleep had mitigated neither my desperation nor my depression. Nor had knowing that there were people around me who were hearing Randy, in spirit form, clearly and irrefutably. Sure, I appreciated their loving messages, as indirect as they were. But what about me? I was his wife, dammit. Didn’t I deserve to hear those messages straight from the source?

Then, one night, a night like all the rest where I’d passed out after hours of tossing and turning and abject anguish (I don’t profess to be one of the stoic ones), I was awakened at 3 am by a loud—booming—voice that said, “Get out your pen and get writing. We’re going to write a book.”

I can’t tell you why and I can’t tell you how, but I knew in every cell of my being that this disembodied vocalization belonged to my husband (and not only because I was alone in the house). What I did not realize was that the result of this mandate, and the ensuing half hour of notebook scribblings, would be the basis for our first “ghostwritten” book together, Crossing the Rubicon: Love Poems Past the Point of No Return.

You might think I’m going to say the miracle was that Randy, in spirit form, woke me up and downloaded a book of poems, along with an almost instant comprehension and precisely worded description about how to form a new relationship with your loved one after death, and how to write about it so others would understand and benefit.

You might think it was that since that night I’ve been able to communicate with Randy, and the dead brother of manicurist, and the dead wife of my father’s best friend, and many other spirit beings who so much want to communicate with their own loved ones.

Either way, you’d be right.

But, honestly? The most profound and shocking miracle is that without the gift of Randy’s dying, I would never have discovered, or perhaps I should say uncovered, the brilliant conscious creation practice that has become my way of life.

A celestial life.

Is it possible to recognize a miracle—a blessing, even—while you feel you’re being ripped to shreds? When your soul can’t see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel even if it were wrapped in the glow of every star in the sky? When your heart is gasping for breath in order to survive one more minute, one more hour, one more day?

My answer?

• BRD–Before Randy’s Death: Absolutely not.
• ARD–After Randy’s Death: Absolutely. Even if you’re in the throes of agony. Because once your anguish has been imbued with conscious awareness, the frequency of unconditional love, the vibration of truth, and the resonance of wisdom, nothing is ever the same again.

For me, on that night, even as I wrote in the dark, sobbing over the pages of an old lined notebook, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, fear, grief, and the sense that I had been abandoned to fend for myself in a world I could no longer make sense of, I was concomitantly aware that I was feeling something I’d never felt before.

Even in that state of complete overwhelm, I knew I was experiencing something so enormous, so rock-me-to-the-core powerful, that while I couldn’t name it at the time, I could feel it blooming inside me, as evidential as the scar on the inside of my thigh, the one I’d gotten in a motorcycle mishap in high school. It seemed as if I’d always had this thing that was burgeoning—always known it, always felt it—but would never again fail to recognize it and cherish it.

The wave of unconditional love that flowed through me arrived in the form of complete phrases and rhymes and prose: an unabridged conversation. It arose in the vibration of truth, through the voice of my dead husband. It emerged in the resonance of wisdom, as a new kind of knowledge I was being invited to believe in, accept, and share. It emanated with the awareness that, even as I wept and the lead in my pencil dwindled to a stub, I would never be the same again.

Turns out, it’s true.

Because nothing has been the same since that night.

I no longer have any need to pretend that I have it all under control, or that life makes sense. I don’t and it doesn’t. Which is precisely what makes miracles so…miraculous.

I now understand that all our attempts to control, fix, cajole, maneuver, manipulate, push, and pray are nothing more than miracle-blockers. When viewed through the lens of retrospection, miracles are the fruit of faith, not force.

When I met Randy after my first 40 years on the planet, I knew that was a miracle. The circumstances were too bizarre, too completely without precedent. We agreed that we were two of the truly fortunate ones. We’d prayed for a miracle. We’d gotten it. End of story.

Then he died.

Which compelled to ask, What does that say about our supposed miracle? Was I wrong? Were we wrong? Was this some kind of a joke, a faux miracle? Had I been deceived? If God wanted me to be happy, why take away the one person who made me happy?

Could something that once looked like a miracle of light and love turn into something so sinister and dark, something so obviously not miraculous?

I did not know the answer then. But these questions are what goaded me on, deep into realms that I’d never previously tapped. I explored karma, life after “death,” past lives, meditation, and conscious creation. I acquiesced into what has been so aptly called the dark night of the soul. I allowed myself to be held by those who’d had similar experiences and encouraged me to believe that I would come out the other side…whole again.

I eventually learned that my sensitivity was simply code for being an HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person, and medium for the spirit world, and that tapping into that ability would prepare me for becoming a facilitator for other HSPs.

Finally, ultimately, I learned that miracles are in the eye of the beholder, like these:

1. I contracted with Randy and agreed to be his partner in this lifetime to help him learn that someone (me) could and would love him unconditionally—a lesson that allowed him to cross over knowing he’d achieved his spiritual goal.
2. Randy is now helping me learn, from across the veil, that having trust and faith in what you can’t see is the means by which we can influence the energetic force that determines our ongoing lives.
3. Questioning every core belief you once held deepens your understanding that the spirit world is always communicating with us, and that it’s simply up to us to learn how to listen. For me, this has meant having the ability to share such insights with others.

The biggest miracle of all, you ask?

That’s easy.

There is life after death. On both sides of the veil.

* * * *

MY SPECIAL OFFER THIS MONTH

Purchase a copy of Crossing the Rubicon and receive the complete audiobook version, read by Heidi

and backed by her inspirationally guided flute music, for free! Use CODE RUBICON11 at checkout.

The post Death and Grief and the Highly Sensitive Person first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

“The Package Came C.O.D.”

by Heidi Connolly

The package came C.O.D.

The delivery guy said it was for me

I signed for it, opened it, put it on, claimed it

I owned it then; it sure owned me;

I could have thrown it down

Kicked it to the floor

I could have sent it back

And slammed the door;

I could have just said no

I could have stood my ground

I should have watched it leave

Sent it back where it belonged;

’Cause when you live your life in denial

Of who you really are

The light you hold inside you

Sounds like whispers from afar;

You learn of love and how it hurts

For reasons of remorse

It churns and gnaws inside of you

And charts a deceptive course;

When fear is allowed to lead the way

The truth is buried alive

Without a chance to breathe and grow

With no chance to survive;

When doubt grows into hatred

It traps you like a snare

The burden of a thought

That’s really not ours to bear;

If you let it, it will cut you

Your wings clipped in despair

Every minute a sad reflection

Everyday another correction;

When the package came COD

And the delivery guy said it was for me

My life went driving down the street

I lived a lie in defeat;

But now I keep only what is mine

Whatever arrives must be divine

When it’s for me it’s whole, intact

This is a promise and a pact;

I close the door on everything else

I send it back much blessed

For only in the vibration of love

Is fear ever laid to rest;

I lift the veil of denial

I lift the weight of pain

I become the one I’m meant to be

Like a desert freed by rain.

I wrote this song in 2004 and “came upon” it today as I was searching for another file. You might call it a coincidence, but I would much rather land on the side of synchronicity, if for no other reason that it feels good when I do.

Yesterday I posted a poem by Becky Hemsley. Today I found my song. Notwithstanding my lack of songwriting ability and without knowing Becky’s intention for certain, it seems to me that we are talking about similar ideas about accepting who we are. As HSPs. As Highly Sensitive People. As individuals. As humans. As creative souls who live and breathe and identify and share and grow and touch and feel and respond and love and all the rest of it…the whole messy enchilada.

What amazes me is that I wrote this in 2004, not 2012 after my husband died or 2014 when I began hearing from him. Not all these years after discovering that my HSP-ness was directly related to my psychic and mediumship abilities and being witness to my own growth as an author.

I had to ask myself: If I didn’t know then what I know now, where did the words come from? Was I already channeling, if you want to call it that, my higher self? Had I entered some kind of 5^th-dimensional reality or parallel universe? Had I time traveled?

I really don’t know.

Yet here I sit before you today (well, before my computer writing to you) and feeling every word of this song.

I have lifted the veil of denial

I have lifted the weight of pain

I am becoming the one I’m meant to be

.

The post Fear came wrapped in a package and arrived C.O.D. first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

It took me quite a while to get up my nerve. Truthfully? I was almost afraid to ask what it meant, why he’d stuck it there. I mean, who tapes a piece of paper that says “RA YA KOO MA YEE” on it to his back car window?

Randy, that’s who.

The Language of the Emotions

The only thing he’d tell me—my husband who passed in 2012—and only after many months of asking, was that it was the only written bit of “his language,” the one he was born with and had never shared with anyone, the one he’d never heard anywhere else from anyone else. He called it the “Language of the Emotions.” As our relationship grew, Randy used to speak words of this language to me, mostly during intimate moments, but also when verbalizing during times of extreme emotion, as if there were no other way to articulate what he was feeling without its use. Looking back, it doesn’t really surprise me that English was actually his second language, given his dyslexia and problems with spelling and grammar.

The other thing Randy always did that left me wondering who exactly this brilliant guy was that I’d fallen in love with who held a steady job, but was also one of the weirdest people I’d ever met, was to sign his name with little superscripts at the end, like this: Randy Connolly*” Again, I had to be content with the non-answer I usually got until, one day, he admitted that the asterisk and quotation mark were his way of nodding his thanks to the Great Mother and the Great Father of the Great Oneness.

Several amazing events have taken place over time that have revealed just how these things are connected, and just how deep their meaning goes. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a chakra meditation my good friend and author Sherri Cortland has on her website in which she takes you through a chakra clearing and balancing that incorporates chanting syllables that relate to each chakra’s energy. I responded strongly to the meditation, but the real kick came when I asked myself What if….? What if the single-syllabic tonal chakra chants were similar to Randy’s language? What if the syllables of “Ra,” “Ya,” “Koo,” “Ma,” and “Yee” each had a meaning beyond an emotional communication?  And why the heck hadn’t I ever thought of asking that before?

Flashback to about 12 years ago, as Randy made his transition and spoke his language for the last time. Only a few words, but words that would matter more than I can say. I felt the circumstances even more painfully because, as he lay dying, he also kept pushing me away. Literally pushing away the love of his life. His wife. His partner. I was pretty hysterical at that point. Let’s face it, who wants to be rejected at a time like that by the one you love? And so I sat and cried a couple of feet away, not knowing what to do, afraid to watch as he took his last breaths.

Not only didn’t I realize what I was doing with my hands, which, it turns out, were, of their own volition, fiddling with a tape recorder on the table, but, because I couldn’t see through my tears, I wasn’t aware that I’d pressed the PLAY button. In fact, it wasn’t until months later when I turned the recorder back on that I heard the few precious syllables of Randy as he spoke his final words…in “his language.” And it wasn’t until a couple of years after that, at one of the recording sessions for my audiobook of Crossing the Rubicon, the producer said, “Gee, it’s too bad we don’t have any audio of Randy. It would be a perfect way to incorporate his energy into the book since he wrote it with you after he died, right?”

Right.

Which is when I shared the recording with a medium I knew who was able to translate the words for me: “Goodbye, my love…I’m coming home.”

This message was exactly what I needed. The one that would, at long last, shift the energy of shame I had been carrying since Randy’s death.

Randy always said he (we) came from another planet. That his real name was Two Lakes of the Star Clan. When he napped, I found myself imploring him to remember to come back to me because he always seemed to go so far away when he slept. Now I had my answer. He was not pushing me away because he didn’t want my love. He was pushing me away so he could “come home.” Apparently, the more I held onto him, the less his spirit and his body could do what they had to do—leave the physical realm.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. As I said, I’d meditated to Sherri’s guided chakra meditation and suddenly got it in my head to research each of the syllables of “Ra,” “Ya,” “Koo,” “Ma,” and “Yee.” What I found, if revelations are ever really “found,” was both obvious and mind blowing.

Bear in mind that Randy misspelled everything, so I had to be generous with my own spelling as I researched.

• RA: Egyptian sun god, the creator of the universe and the giver of life.
• YA(H): One name for God; YA(A): goddess of fertility and love.
• KOO (KU; also known as Akua): God of war, fishing, farming, with supernatural powers. (And now I appreciate why Randy called himself a “frequency farmer.”)
• MA: Moon goddess; Mother goddess; warrior goddess.
• YEE: As in John 10:34, “As ye are gods.”

To me, and I know to Randy who felt strongly on the matter, one finds the kingdom of God within. So if “ye” is the plural of “you,” we are all Gods…God is within each one of us. We are all God and everything is included in that oneness.

Is the trajectory of these events and discoveries beginning to come together for you as it did for me? Because between the gods and the goddesses and the oneness, we’ve pretty much covered the territory of Randy’s daily reminders: the way to consistently express his powerful belief that he was a spiritual being having a human experience—and was grateful for that opportunity.

It was his way to give a nod of thanks to the Universe.

Every time he signed his name. Every time he climbed into his car. His way to give a nod of thanks to the Universe.

I keep Randy’s original printed 4” x 11” “RA YA KOO MA YEE” sign on my desk. Over the years it’s been on a shelf, in a filing cabinet, packed away, and misplaced. Since chanting the tonalities of the chakras and feeling the frequency of the sounds, however, it has taken on a whole new meaning and will continue to sit front and center in my life.

We are the sun. We are the moon. We are warriors. We are lovers. We are frequency farmers. We are all God. We are all one…speaking the same language.

And, most importantly, as HSPs, the Language of the Emotions is our language,

and paramount to the state of the world.

The post HSPs have their own language–The Language of the Emotions first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

So, to recap, you’ve asked the big questions:

• If wearing someone else’s coat can feel so right, can feel as if it’s mine without a shadow of a doubt, then what else could be going on here?
• What else am I believing is “mine” that really belongs to someone else?
• How do I know if/when I’m in my own Unique Energetic Signature or diddling around in someone else’s?
• What about all the feelings I feel and the thoughts that come into my head unbidden?
• When I feel sad or angry or upset, are those feelings really mine?
• Because if they’re not mine, I don’t really want them.
• If I know I don’t want them, how do I give them back—or not accept them at all?

Now, what???

The voice on the other end of the phone, the one that convinced you the coat you thought was yours really belonged to them, has turned your life upside down. You feel lost at sea, gob-smacked. How could you have been so convinced of something that was absolutely not true? It’s scary, really, how you could have believed something so deeply that was so wrong, and begin to wonder what else in your life you may have misinterpreted or against which you may have misguidedly chosen to take a stand.

This time is was “only” your favorite red coat. But what if it’s so much bigger than that? What if someone else’s coat was vying to be an energetic contender it had no right to be!

Don’t worry! That’s what we’re here to talk about.

The 32BYou Method: Amplification, Alignment, and Calibration

What’s the 32BYou Method?

1. Wring out your psychic/energetic sponge body, your Psychic Octopus, so you can focus on AMPLIFYING your own vibratory field.
2. Identify your UES, your Unique Energetic Signature so it’s easy to stay in ALIGNMENT with who you really are.
3. Develop your IGS, your Intuitive Guidance System, your permanent gateway to ongoing CALIBRATION.

You’ve already learned about the psychic sponge, the psychic octopus, and the coat of many contenders: how we unconsciously tap into other people’s energetic fields and then take on their thoughts, feelings, and reactions. The next step is knowing how to identify and recognize your very own UES, your Unique Energetic Signature, so you can pull in those tentacles of energetic grasping any time you want.

The only way to pull in your tentacles is first by knowing your own energy. If you don’t want to be in someone else’s, you absolutely need to know what yours feels like. Most of us don’t have any idea. Sure, we have a personality (an ego-driven side) and we identify by the things we like and do. Yet, in the end, we really have no idea if they are ours or we’re absorbing them by default.

Take the gym, for example . . .

(or a class environment, or a restaurant). These are all places where you probably come in contact with people you have never met, or don’t know well. For me, any time I went to the gym I found myself deluged with emotions. Feelings of all sorts. As soon as I felt an emotion hit, two things happened. First, I recognized I was feeling whatever it was, such as fear or anxiety. Second, I felt distraught about what I felt and how I felt. And, third, I attempted to figure out why I was feeling that way. Where could I place the blame? Was it because Jim hadn’t said hello to me or Jane hadn’t called when she said she was going to? Did that mean he didn’t like me or Jane had lied to me? What did I do wrong that would make them behave that way? What should I do? Speak up first to Jim, pretend nothing happened? Call Jane and tell her how upset I feel?

Someone else’s energy is speaking through you, thinking through you, and acting through you.

And on, and on, and on: The thought thread that never quits keeps you in a constant cycle of expectation, anxiousness, and delusion.

In order to change your energetic mechanism from “Default” to “Yours and Only Yours,” you need to spend time in your signature of alignment.

Step 1: Wring out your psychic/energetic sponge body, your Psychic Octopus, so you can focus on AMPLIFYING your own vibratory field.

1. Close your eyes and give yourself a moment to breathe, to go inside.
2. On the slow count of 1-2-3, with your eyes closed, say out loud and with strength and volume, your full name. “MY NAME IS FILL IN YOUR NAME.”
3. Feel how it feels to speak that truth. Where do you feel the truth of that knowledge in your body? In your chest, your throat, your pinky toe? Take a minute to feel what you’re feeling.
4. Do the same thing again, but this time instead of speaking your own name, make one up: “My name is John Smith,” for example. Say it just as loudly and strongly. FEEL IT.
5. What does it feel like in your body to speak an untruth? To state something with such assuredness that is obviously false?
6. Again, try to pinpoint where you feel the sensation of that untruth in your body.
7. When you’re done, open your eyes slowly and breathe.

For many people, this simple exercise is hugely effective—as it was for me. I’d never taken the time to feel somatically the difference between what someone said to me and what I felt was or wasn’t true. Not only did I realize that the two vibrations in my body were completely different, I knew from then on I would be able to recognize truth from lie and, hence, my energy from someone else’s.

Budda-bing-budda-boom.

Life changing.

The post HSPs and the Red Coat: Part 2 first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

In Part 1 of HSPs & The Magic Pill, I talked about the way HSP-ism interacts with and is interlaced with symptoms, labeling of those symptoms, and diagnoses of those symptoms when you are an HSP. I talked about how much I yearned for a “magic pill” that would change my life.

Again, I do not advocate for nor am I against the use of medication for any purpose prescribed by your medical professional. What I present here is simply another way to interpret some of the symptoms–psychological, chemical, mental, emotional, and physical, you may be experiencing as a high-sensitive person. Like me.

Are you living in the label you’ve been giving?

In Part 1, you read about how I began taking Prozac against my husband’s wishes and fully immersed in my own shame that I “needed it.” I don’t think that shame has ever completely gone away. Needing something implies a weakness, and being weak is bad, right? That’s what I thought.

The incredible thing was that within days I was getting out of bed in the morning for the first time in my life that I could recall with actual enthusiasm. Gone was the “Omigod, another day, groan” thing. GONE. I couldn’t believe that this tiny pill called Prozac could make such a difference in my experience. The cloud of shame under which I lived had to stay buried in order to allow this new me to shine. Because I kept the fact that I was “on an anti-depression medication” under wraps, eventually Randy stopped asking me about it; we silently agreed to not speak about it, pretend it didn’t exist. The shame didn’t go away, but I gave up trying to make it go away.

Life changes in ways you cannot possibly expect

And now it’s 2012 and Randy is dying. Over the almost two decades we’d been together, I’d been on and off meds periodically, but  mostly off. I really wanted to “make it on my own” without the help of drugs. I cannot stress how much energy it took to pretend everything was okay. Especially after Randy’s illness began taking a more severe toll and my level of anxiety ramped up and the thought most prevalent in my mind was, “I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with this.” Over and over it ran, even though I was dealing with it, one painful day at a time.

When the worst happened, all the “what ifs” came to pass, when I was left to scrape myself together, I’m really not sure why I didn’t go back on medication. I can see where it would have helped carve out a space for me to begin to cope. It seems I’d developed a sort of stubborn sense of what was right and what was wrong and what was weak and what was strong—and that no matter how weak I felt, I could not give in.

I don’t share any of this in support of medication or to steer anyone a way from medication. And I do not share my story to whine about the past. My only purpose here is to share how I made the transition from someone who “needed drugs” to someone who doesn’t.

Label, labels, and more labels

I know that my “anxiety disorder” is just another aspect of hyper-sensitivity, but that hyper-sensitivity is just another aspect of being highly intuitive and it’s completely within my power to use that intuition without getting caught up in the energy of it. Now it doesn’t feel like anxiety; it feels like the energy of intuition, curiosity, and inspiration.

I know that my “chronic depression” is just another mislabeling—believing that my intuitive sensitivities  were wrong, bad, and a problem, and that shutting down was the only way to survive. Now I know that when/if I feel the energy, the frequency, of so-called “depression,” it’s really only an energy reminding me to listen, really listen, to whatever message might be coming in. Just because I assign a label to a feeling, an emotional feeling like “depression,” does not mean that’s what it is.

So often, in fact almost always, these kinds of feelings are not what they appear to be. If no label existed, would I still feel the way I feel? Quite possibly. And yet, what if the label were not “you are depressed,” but “you are being guided to listen to your intuition”? How might that change our perception of that energetic experience?

For me, it changed everything and continues to be the way I live my life. Things are not always what they appear to be, even by consensus. “Uncomfortable” is not necessarily bad. What looks like a duck and quacks like a duck is not always a duck.

Consider new options. Learn a new way. Give yourself a break. Think differently. Wonder. Be curious. Open to the possibilities.

You won’t regret it.

The post Are you still looking for a magic pill to change your life? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

How do you become who you are? I’ve asked myself this question many times through the years, mostly because I’m so surprised at where I keep “ending up.” Especially since we all know that there is no “ending” until . . . well, there is.

No matter the length of the retrospective, it can be illuminating as a catalyst in moving forward. From the perspective of where I am now, I can understand a lot about how I got here. I grew up in an atmosphere of education and learning, equaled only by the ever-present churning inside me to comprehend the universe in a way that made sense. What a paradox it was! How do you live your life as a human when you feel like an alien species deposited in a strange land? When you’re sure you were left only with a wave and a vague suggestion to figure it out for yourself until the time comes for you to depart.

Low-functioning HSP-ism

I stumbled along. Sometimes severely low-functioning; often appearing high-functioning . . . the consummate HSP. That Highly Sensitive Person who felt everything 1000 times more than anyone else, could not understand the way the world worked or people behaved, or the way I was supposed to behave in it. A fish permanently out of water, gasping for breath every step of the way just to stay alive and moving from one day to the next, one crisis to the next.

The common traits of HSP-ism

I felt terrified, abused, ignored, overwhelmed. Over-protected, indulged, and loved–somewhat conditionally— based on my current level of handling whatever it was I was supposed to be handling. I was disillusioned by the world, but knew it was all my fault; blamed myself for being crazy, over-emotional, “too much.” I prayed to be understood, to feel accepted, yet only felt discouraged and unworthy. My life was guided by standards of achievement, which were expected to be met no matter the topic or goal. Loving intention in my environment, admittedly no small thing, could never be enough to mitigate how adrift I felt in my life.

Who were all these people around me who were so confident? How did they get that way? Why did I feel like crying all the damn time? What did they know that I didn’t know?

Death changes everything

Honestly, it was not until my husband Randy transitioned in 2012 that my life took the dramatic turn it apparently needed to clear the way for a true awakening. All the usual challenges—how to live without a beloved spouse, how to go about daily life when suddenly you are one, not a partnership of two, and so on—were enormous, yet it led to the emergent, deep-seated revelatory truth I’d been waiting for.

• Sure, I’d gone to Harvard University, yet never really understood how I got there or how I managed to graduate.
• Sure, I’d raised two children, much of the time as a single parent, yet felt terminally inadequate.
• Sure, I’d worked in some capacity for all these years—as a professional flautist, corporate trainer, counselor, medical transcriptionist, and longtime editor the owner of Harvard Girl Word Services—yet felt supremely unworthy of my own accomplishments.

The dark, dark night of the soul

Now, without my husband at my side, it was time to take a good, hard, long look at who I’d become—or hadn’t. I was 50+ years older, yet the same anxiety-ridden, prone-to-depression, fear-filled, tired person I had always been. Sometimes happier, sometimes sadder, sometimes more productive, sometimes less. But always, always, unsure of myself, my place in the world, my purpose.

On becoming high-functioning

High Sensitives like me—like us—can be really good at what we do. The thing is, we can be so filled with misgiving that we would rather stay anonymously in the background than stand out in the limelight. For example, I was happier to be praised for “channeling the messages” of others through writing than write material of my own—to put my name on the cover. To stay safe in a world where too much attention meant taking responsibility for the attention I might receive. The deep desire to be “seen” never surpasses our deeper need to stay hidden. Being discovered means being known for the fearful mess we can feel we are and are ashamed to be.

If any of this resonates with you, please know that the way ahead for you can be very different. You don’t have to wait until you’re 30 or 40 or 50 (the way I did) to feel inspired to live, and capable of living, a beautiful life.

What’s  your journey?

Of course, my journey is not yours. Writing a book with your dead husband after he’s transitioned about forming a relationship with those on the other side of the veil may not be in the stars for you. The only reason I am here now communicating with you, the HSPs of the world, is to share that you are so much more than you give yourself credit for. You have so much more to offer the world than the world might acknowledge. Your talents and abilities are not only valid and valuable, but the very talents and abilities that keep the world in balance, keep it from going over to the dark side, and are the saving grace of all humanity.

Sure, it’s a big statement, but I stand behind it.

Tools & techniques for the HSPs of the world–for YOU!

With the incredible realizations and tools and techniques I have acquired along the way, however, I am no longer that person. The kernel of who I was remains, but instead of rotting away from neglect, it has happily blossomed into something, someone, authentic and alive and full of life.

No, it doesn’t always happen all at once. It was more like the unraveling of a slow-moving epiphany than a Big Bang. Like the psychic octopus: Learning that Heidi hadn’t really existed at all, just the energy of other people who’d been invited in to take residence in her mind, body, and spirit.

Like the UES: Learning that I had a Unique Energetic Signature all my own—that all I had to do was identify it, feel it, know it . . . live in it.

That’s what I’m here to share with you. The ideas in Elevating Your HSP-ness will knock your socks off. They will change your life. They will support you through thick and thin. They will really, really, REALLY shift the way you see yourself and the world. They will invite you to realize that you are, and have always been, perfect and perfectly positioned to shine a light in a world that needs it more than ever. A combination of all I have learned and been in my life—the “professorial” element—and all I have ever experienced spiritually and emotionally—that has integrated into an identity I could never have imagined, into who I am today.

This bit of music from my healing guided collection should help you do the same.

The post When you feel lost, don’t give up. It’s the time for a change. first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Pretty early on in my life I discovered there was pill for anxiety. Everyone knew such pills were only for housewives trying to numb out their lives (think Jacqueline Suzann and Valley of the Dolls). I never knew anyone who took them or where to get them had I wanted them. Still, I wished there were something to take away the pain. You know, a magic pill that would cure me. An “anti-me” pill: anti-anxiety, anti-depression, anti-everything pill.

I was living in married students’ housing in Ann Arbor, MI when I met Beth and her husband. She was another musician and he was a scientist in the field of pharmaceuticals. Beth and I hung out a lot. Seems we could commiserate on a lot of things. Having babies and raising kids while our husbands were busy working and going to school; being super-sensitive and hyperaware every moment of the day; feeling overwhelmed by it all as we supported each other for being two wonderfully loving, if self-deprecating, women.

Prozac? Are you kidding me?

One day Beth told me her husband and his team had developed this new drug called Prozac, which was supposed to help relieve the symptoms of depression. Well, count me in, right?

Wrong.

Drugs? Me? Never! I should be able to deal with my own issues (from the panic attacks to the generalized fear to the postpartum depression) by myself. Otherwise, I was weak and unworthy. And the same went for you. If you couldn’t handle your life, there had to be something wrong with you. 

15 years later

Okay, so now it’s 15 years later. I’ve been divorced from that husband and remarried to a wonderful man who was at least as sensitive as I was. Incredible! He wasn’t scared off by my intensity or my tears. In fact, he could go there as fast as I could. It was a marriage made in heaven.

And yet . . .

I still suffered internally. I was afraid of being a bad mother and a bad partner. Afraid of not doing or being enough. And on and on and on. There was no stopping me. Just think of all the energy I used being so anxious that could have been put to another use. By then, Prozac had been on the market all that time and, in the back of my mind, I really, really wanted to see if it could help me. Still, “taking drugs” was a Very Bad Thing To Do. It meant you were really all those things people said you were. And none of them were good.

Which is worse? Being who I was or “taking drugs”?

Finally, though, at some point, I realized I had reached a point that no matter what my external circumstances, my internal voice was struggling to stay sane. So, yeah, I went to the shrink and got myself some good old-fashioned Prozac. The incredible thing was that within days I was getting out of bed in the morning for the first time in my life that I could recall with actual enthusiasm. Gone was the “Omigod, another day, groan” thing. GONE.

My husband was horrified. I’d been so good at keeping my depression secret that he could not believe I “needed something like that” to fix me. Wasn’t I happy with him? Didn’t we have a good life?

“I can’t help it. I was born that way.”

I tried to explain my situation in terms of science. “You see,” I told him, “it’s just that it’s a chemical thing and there’s’ really nothing I can do about it. I was born that way. It’s not psychological, it’s chemical, and I need help to be okay.”

He was not happy. He felt he wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t happy. I felt I wasn’t enough. Plus, I knew now that I was truly broken.

I kept the fact that I was “taking drugs” secret, much as I’d kept my state of being secret. Inside I felt ashamed and guilty even though I’d never felt so free from the weight that had kept me down all those years.

In a twist of fate worthy of a fairy tale, it wasn’t until the death of my husband Randy that everything became clear. . . .

To Be Continued

Stay tuned for Part 2 of HSPs and the Magic Pill in tomorrow’s message.

The post HSPs and the Magic Pill: We all wish we had one first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

I’m Heidi Connolly, aka the Celestial Professor, and I readily admit that there’s no one quite like me. You might ask, “Who Is Heidi Connolly & Why Is She Writing about HSPs?”

The truth of who I was lies in the past

The truth is that I thought I knew who I was for many years: an over-emotional, hypersensitive, albeit intelligent, “creative type” who was unworthy due to weakness, instability, and lack of confidence. And it didn’t matter how functional I became or what I accomplished, that belief, instilled in me by parents, teachers, and the world at large, stayed with me and walked beside me like a constant shadow. It was not just who I believed I was, but I knew I was.

In fact, it wasn’t until the death of my husband in 2012 that the world shifted on its axis as I was faced with either giving up on life altogether or somehow moving on through the pain, desperation, depression, anxiety, and fear that I’d been born with and still lived with every day of my life.

The reality of who I’ve become lies in the lessons

That is when my journey changed direction. I started to hear from Randy and other spirits on the other side of the veil. I learned I was an HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person. Well, I knew that, right? But now I learned it wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it was the best thing ever, if only I could shift my paradigm, channel my abilities in a new direction, see them as blessings and not the curses I’d been taught they were. Understand the role that intuition, energy, and consciousness plays in everything.

The purpose of who I am in the now lies in the present through conscious awareness

The conundrum in which I found myself, however, was that, in thinking of myself as someone who felt “too much” in some ways, and wasn’t capable enough in others (using logic to navigate the world), I still felt mired in a place of self-victimization. I needed other people to understand my sensitivities and accommodate me. I was triggered by just about everything.

The world was still a dangerous place because of how strongly I reacted to it. Basically, um, not working for me. I needed to understand how to be who I was, sensitivities and all, without requiring massive compensation from the world.

Who Is Heidi Connolly & Why Is She Writing about HSPs?

Listening carefully to spirit

The tide didn’t shift until I fully committed to the opening of my spirit to spirit. The more I listened rather than reacted, the more I trusted the quiet inside of myself, the more the messages could come through. The more carefully I listened, the more clarity I received. The more clarity I received, the more calm I felt. The more calm I felt, the less I resisted and fought against my life, the more my actions played out in results that felt positive and the more I received validation for moving forward.

It’s what I call having a “psychic opening.”

And, yes, it can feel scary at first, which is why it helps to have a support mechanism in place. Someone who fully comprehends the process and can offer tools (like the psychic octopus) to navigate it.

Be the BADASS

I started playing the flute again. I wrote a novel. I created afterlife meetup groups to help other High Sensitive People—what I might call BADASSES–Abundantly brilliant, consciously aware, amazingly dynamic, unapologetically adept, and unambiguously sensational–beings they were created to be!

It’s about going from unhappy to happy and unempowered to empowered and into laughing and loving and generally feeling good about life. Are you going to feel that way every minute? Probably not. Neither do I. But the pauses in between are getting smaller. Or you might say that I’m living in the pauses themselves.

My approach differs from that of traditional coaches, counselors, and medical professional who deal with the physical, emotional, and psychological, because I use my ability to see things beyond the 3-D to help my clients. I step way outside the box by using my innate abilities as an intuitive medium to work with higher concepts and levels of consciousness. I do this in combination with my expertise in research, writing, and development to explore unconventional yet profoundly concrete solutions. I draw from information that no one taught me, and no one can replicate. In that way, I work with HSPs interested in discovering who they really and the gifts they offer so they can feel the joy of living a higher frequency life—a more woke, fulfilling, satisfying, and divinely driven life—and sharing that amazing invitation with the world.

If you are interested in turning your life around, taking it from miserable to magnificent, the path is calling and I am here if you need me.

The post Who Is Heidi and why is she talking to me about being an HSP? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Why discovering your UES matters so much

• What is a Unique Energetic Signature?
• Why is the Unique Energetic Signature so important for HSPs?
• How do I know what to do with it once I’ve identified my UES and know what it feels like?
• Why is it so important to differentiate between your UES and someone else’s?
• How can I, who am so highly sensitive, stay in my own UES without forcing it—in other words, easily and effortlessly.

Knowing what your Unique Energetic Signature feels like . . .

. . . is the single most important step in your evolution as someone who wants to understand how amazing it is to be highly sensitive—to go from “I’m so sensitive and it’s so hard to be me” to “I love being sensitive because it’s the greatest gift of all.”

It’s all about ease (vs resistance).

If we have any outcome at all in mind (while understanding that being attached to outcome isn’t the point), it would be that whatever we do is done easily, without resistance. Lack of resistance not only ensures a sense of freedom, but confirms our innate, if depleted, sense that we can handle whatever comes up in our world. So, although we might hope for a result, we also recognize that it’s the journey and the process that actually provides the inspiration we seek.

If you are willing to embark on this journey, you are ready to appreciate that it’s not a sad condition that keeps us down, but a brilliant addition to life, one that invites us to participate that much more fully in life.

Knowing what your own Unique Energetic Signature feels like allows you to differentiate between your energy and the energy of others.

1. Firmly establishing your own Unique Energetic Signature is a permanent state that easily keeps you from taking on the energy/emotions/physical sensations/and patterns of others.
2. Being, living, in your Unique Energetic Signature opens your heart to all you are. It naturally invites you to become all that you really are and opens the door to living a life of integrity, authenticity, and contentment.

Identifying the deep-down authentic you for an authentic life

The first step to identifying your own UES can be tricky, but once you get it, you never forget it! You wonder why you never recognized it for what it is: the deep-down authentic you. The place most of us knows is there, but have not been able to access due to all the things that have gotten in the way, internal factors like low self-esteem, lack of confidence, fear, and depression, often based on significant external factors, like negative societal input. HSPs tend to need external validation for who they are because inside they’re confused and haven’t identified their UES yet.

Knowing the difference between your energy and others’

To know the difference between your energetic signature and that of other people’s, you really only have to identify your own. In other words, it really doesn’t matter what other people’s energy feels like to the degree that you only care about what yours feels like and how good it feels to be in it. It’s not about blocking out the energy of others; it’s about relaxing into your own to the point where the energy around you doesn’t get in your way anymore. It’s there, but you don’t feel it.  It’s there, but you don’t care.

Preparing the way to your UES

As we continue along with these posts we will talk more about how to identify, establish, and live in your very own Unique Energetic Signature. For now, let’s prepare the way.

Ask yourself:

1. Where does my energy live in my body?
2. Do I know when I’m no longer in my own energy?
3. Am I so used to picking up other people’s energy that I assume it’s mine?

Practice self-awareness in this way and see what happens!

The post Identifying your Unique Energetic Signature (UES) matters! first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Everyone knows the story of the Wizard of Oz, where the Great and Powerful Oz turned out to be just a man behind a curtain.

The Greek word for curtain is connected to aule, or “court,” perhaps because the “door” that led out to the courtyard of a Greek house was a hung cloth; figuratively, from the early 15^th Century, from the French cortiner¸ “to enclose with or as if with a curtain.”

Why HSPs end up “behind the curtain” instead of traveling the roadmap of life.

When I think about how I stayed hidden most of my life I am more sad than anything—and yet how could it have been otherwise?

HSPs learn, as many who are afraid to reveal parts of themselves that others might consider unworthy, and at any early age, that sharing our “over-the-top” feelings, our fears, our natural, ingrained responses to overstimulation, etc., is Not A Good Thing.

There are lots of ways to hide, lots of different kinds of curtains. For me, there was the “I need to go practice the flute” curtain. From age five or six, I had the perfect excuse to close my door and be alone. Over time it felt like my only escape. Sure, over time it felt like a prison sometimes, but at least I was alone in my own self where I could read or sleep or listen to weepy music like “Bridge of Troubled Water” and let the tears flow.

The problem is that years and years of prison life is a real drain on your entire being. Literally. I always felt tired, partly because I slept so badly due to my chronic anxiety. My body ached from head to toe, no matter what I did or didn’t do. You get the point. Eventually, you go looking for labels and diagnoses, things to have and own, like “I have anxiety.” “I suffer from depression.” “I have fibromyalgia.” Having disorders then allows you to seek help for the distressing symptoms, and life becomes a revolving door of doctors and self-help books and pills.

Not that medical attention is bad. I myself seek medical assistance when I need it. And self-help books? There are lots of them on my shelves and many of them felt like they saved my life at the time. So there’s no judgment here. Only the suggestion that hiding who we are can lead to much more than a device for self-protection, and most of it isn’t good.

In other words, I was a high-functioning HSP. Are you?

Going behind my personal curtain allowed me to breathe. It allowed me to put away the constant act I promoted in front of other people because I felt it was what was expected of me and I would be chastised for being myself. My curtain developed a thickness over time, layer after layer of methods to hide.

Eating. Sleeping. Keeping my mouth shut. Pretending I was okay when I wasn’t. Always feeling less than and staying silent about it. Closing out, closing off, closing in. Shutting down, shutting out, shutting in.

The really sad thing is how many of us are smart enough and talented enough and brilliant enough to figure out ways to hide when all that brain power and heart power could power an entire electric grid!

It’s time to open the curtain, pull out your road map, get in the car, and go…go…go.

In other words, enjoy the ride!

The post Why we hide behind the curtain of life & why it doesn’t work first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.