Personal Blog~Sharon Stephens - Life Coach

  Gut- Wrenching Love   I just listened to Jason Mraz’s song “Love is Still the Answer”.   I cried.   My heart wept and my eyes did a lot of leaking.   My heart is open wide.     And I remembered love.   Big Love.    I witnessed in the video all kinds of crazy, romantic, sexy, creative God-like love of beaches, nature, clouds, baby’s feet, sharing, a wedding, Gay love, Straight love, love of our children, painting, yoga, music, dancing, playfulness, ice-skating, biking, ballet, fireworks , old age love…well, you get the gist.   You should watch.   You too will cry and remember that love is still the answer.   I am here to share that there was a moment in my life when I chose a different kind of love.   It’s the kind of love that is gut wrenching.   It’s the kind of love that you have to dig down deep into your worn torn heart and find the courage to do the right thing, to choose love.   November befo...

Truth Will Set You Free - one way or another!  I am so happy that my outlook in life is always finding the truth and being grateful that we teach “the truth will always bubble to the top”.   I knew that David and I had struggled hard to keep moving forward in our lives together. We worked diligently forward every day.   The brilliant part it that the truth will always be revealed.    He loved me but really desired someone his own age.   Nothing wrong with that. I wanted someone my own age.   It caused me great pain to never really bond the way a real couple is supposed to. I had that kind of passionate love in my past and it was painful living without it no matter how wonderful we became to each other.   When the truth comes sometimes for you both to finally stop living a lie because we don’t want to lose the perceived safety we both have and a great life we have - the truth can be very messy, devastating, sweep you off your feet, knock ...

The love we fail to share is the only pain we live with.    My partner and I have had one major issue lingering over us for many years.   We both have been so confused and hurt that we withdrew from the topic completely both feeling afraid of the other.   Wounded and confused by the others actions we had a truce of no communication around it.  But a truce is nothing more than pain put on hold.     Being afraid to talk to your partner about a topic can be very painful and if it lasts it can wear deeply on a relationship.     My partner decided to broach the subject with me and kept repeating that he wanted to bridge this gap.   I noticed my brain kept wanting to defend that truth.   For years I believed something different.   As I listened to the commitment from my partner something snapped.   But it took 24 hours to process the change.     I had lived in this topic for so long believin...

Uncoupling – DIVORCE – the end?   Or a Sacred Journey? Let me makes this perfectly clear. There is always sadness when something had to end.   People often talk about the five  stages of grief  – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  Get over it.   You are human and so am I. You are going to feel it all!     It’s been proven that we move through these stages and also predictable that we struggle to move through them, afraid of what is to come.     We may want to negotiate and cling staying in the loop of not moving forward.     Bottom line is that we are just trying to stave off having to be sad and move on.   We are afraid of the feelings and afraid of the future.   I just want to say one thing today. Most of us have had hellacious relationships and bad endings.   But just because something ends, it doesn’t mean it’s a horrendous ending.   We grow in every rela...

What is a Sacred Clown?   Every native tribe of Indians had a position of “scared clown”.   This position was held on high.   Someone who would taunt and tantalize your insides to go within to see what was left to heal.   They all had different names for them, but they all had them.   From north all the way to south America they all had them.   Everyone hoped that the sacred clown would come to them so they could grow.   What a healthy alternative to medicating pain.   Sacred Warrior. To Native Americans, the path of the Sacred Clown is ALSO considered a spiritual calling, essential to the smooth functioning of the tribe: In the days before the invaders came. . .we had clowns. Not clowns like you see now, with round red noses and baggy costumes. Our clowns wore all kinds of stuff. Anythin’ they felt like, they wore. And they didn’t just come out once in a while to act silly and make people laugh, our clowns were with us all the tim...

Question?   Just to run something by you and be seen.   I get a lot out of the fellowship from 12 step meetings but in my heart and gut something doesn’t feel right. They want me to admit that I have a disease and I’m powerless over it. I don’t really believe that. Feels like victimhood. Thoughts? Every faith tradition, sacred text, healing modality and 12 step teaching all have elements that can be translated as the same.   It’s either about love or fear, the two powers that either heal or destroy. If you take a little time to translate the meaning then you will see they all are saying the same things.   Truth really is truth just as electricity always works the same.   Sometimes what stumps us is the meaning of words that have been used in a harmful way towards us and we reject the truth that is in that system, modality or teaching.   Twelve step programs do have a languaging that is hard for some of us in Loving-groups.   We do...

Mass shootings and Facebook   Why bother when we just keep fighting?  Isn't there a lesson in there somewhere?  Duh?   What is the purpose of staying "in the conversation"? Collectively, If we are in the mind frame of wanting more goodness to emerge then being in the conversation may help us in our collective consciousness find the answers together. If we can get past the emotional REACTIONS to just hearing and having curiosity for others opinions, we can find similarities and answers. We are all wanting peace, safety and security for all. If we will just stop the hatred in the conversation and actually have more curiosity for what the other is saying we just might find answers vs conflict. Take a check on yourself while you are posting. Do you just want a fight or do you really want real solutions? Being at war never really served anyone. But remember one thing, if you grew up fighting for your good and never consciously wanted to change that and re...

Most of us at one time or another have been faced with the idea of “I am single…AGAIN!” With divorce rates in the toilet and the blame game running rampant, most people have turned to friends, colleagues, parents, grandparents and even expensive dating professional match making companies for advice. And you know what? Most people are still stumped, dumbfounded and deeply discouraged.   We are met with all kinds of advice including an old favorite book I read years ago call “The Rules”. In the book it lists 35 rules that women who want “marriage, in the shortest time possible” are supposed to follow. As a blogger, Kristin Warkentin , wrote in her blog, “that  written in the 1990’s, it included  advice that was both basic and whimsical, like advice from a well-meaning but slightly unhinged 90-year-old great aunt, offering one of those “pep talks” that actually make you feel worse, rather than better. (“Well you’re no Angelina Jolie, dear, but with t...

A General Theory Of Love reveals that humans require social connection for optimal brain development, and that babies cared for in a loving environment are psychological and neurologically ‘immunized’ by love. When things get difficult in adult life, the neural wiring developed from a love-filled childhood leads to increased emotional resilience in adult life. Conversely, those who grow up in an environment where loving care is unstable or absent are less likely to be resilie nt in the face of emotional distress.   When two parents are not on the same page and children don’t have a sense of predictability, a routine they can depend on then they feel a sense of insecurity and anxiety will grow. If one parent is the playful one allowing fun and excitement and only occasionally as that parent is absent often, then they learn to desire that as an addiction. They want the imitation love of fun and excitement over the parent who may be trying to create the sense of real safety ...

There was a pivotal day in the life with my son when I knew I had changed long enough for him to know it.   The dynamic needed to now be equalized.     He kept wanting to take it out on me. I got in his face.   (with confidence)    I told him this:      “You don’t get to beat me up forever and be happy.   Learning to love another will make you happy and like it or not there will be things that you will never like about me and that is just tough.   I will make mistakes.   But one thing you know for sure is that I will always try.   So you were victimized.   You don’t get to act like a victim and punish me the rest of your life. If you want to do that, then we won’t have a relationship at all.   I am human and will make mistakes. I am not going to walk on eggshells anymore.”   He got it.   He grew up and learned to love. We cannot teach them to just feel loved.   We have ...

The Stars Above I watch over and over again in people’s lives “stars aligning” in a way that can give them the life they have always wanted.  And yet while I can see it and I can tell they can see it too, they run.  They run from the very thing that they want.  They want a way through.  But they are afraid.  They want easy or they want safe.  None of these are possible as they are all an illusion. They have tried everything in the world from sex, money, flirting with danger, pills, rehab, driving fast, endless therapy, anger and shoplifting.  But I will be "gosh darned" if they choose happiness as their first pick.  Why?  Most people have never felt that.  They feel the empty hole of love lost and days gone by.   The hardest thing for a human to learn to do is sit with the pain of our past and meet it head on.  Not because it’s such a scary thing because our brain fights against it.  Our brain will actually ...

If it sounds like, smells like, looks like, it probably is! Question: If I am choosing to look at, get loved around and heal my core stuff as well as create a higher vibration then there is an intersection where 2 people may no longer align. I can still love them and not choose to be with that energy. So the question is why would one subject themselves to the repulsive vibration again?  Answer: Two ways to heal. Independent of anything that will obstruct the core healing is removed. Unloving atmosphere and our own unloving ways we medicate our pain. Most people do need to do this first. You will not learn to be loving and heal the remaining until you are actually in an intimate relationship, to heal the rest. Anything you find repulsive is a gift for you to go deeper in seeing that your capacity to love is blocked by your own wounds. So yes some people need to heal enough and get rid of enough fear and blame first before they get into a relationship. If yo...

Self-Love: 10 Keys By Joyce Marter, LCPC Comments in Sarcasm….by Sharon Winningham I got a call the other day and the woman asked, “Can you please tell me where self-love comes into the teaching of unconditional love in our lives? We don’t talk about it a lot and I am really confused.” I was reading an article today that talked about how much happier you would be if you could love yourself. As this is completely true, most of us are so stuck in the pain and fears from the past that there is no way for us to even know how to do this, what it looks like or how to perform it for ourselves. Yes do we need to love ourselves? Yes, it’s kind of the goal untimately. But we need to have it modeled for us somewhere first before we can do it for ourselves. Well in pop psychology, they give some “steps” to take. All really valuable. But when I read them I get thoughts that come up. And I though I would share them with you. The article gave some really useful tips. The problem i...

  High Heel Foot Prints I met an older Polish woman in a blood lab of all places.  I was waiting to get some blood drawn.  She was very elegant, although her body had clearly shown signs of the years gone by.  Much as you can imagine by the image shown here.  Her whole body was failing her.  She had on very fashionable clothes with a glitzy hair comb in her hair.  You could tell that she tool a lot of pride in her looks as her make up was applied with great care.  He outfit was stunning.  She walked with a cane and sat down across the room from me.  I noticed that she kept staring at me.  I was dressed up with makeup on and in high heels, a long skirt and a top that made me look very curvy and classy.  I was reading a magazine and she whispered to me, "miss, miss.....you are very beautiful, so beautiful".   I thanked her and moved across the room to speak to her.  I sat next to her and she admi...