Hello friends.
From now on my posts will be found on my new website:
Thanks so much for reading and being apart of the work!
eternally grateful,
Tyler
The Place That Changed My Life May 12, 2011
Image by blmiers2 via Flickr
In the spring of 2009, at the suggestion of a dear friend, I attended a program called “Journey Week”. Truthfully I had no idea what I was going to be doing or what the outcome would look like. While Journey Week is held at different locations throughout the year, I went to the one at The Well of Mercy in Harmony, NC. I arrived divorced and at the end of a post divorce relationship, still struggling with family of origin issues, and unaware of how to really get where I wanted to go in life. Since journey week, my entire life has changed. I have learned to be with myself and enjoy my company. Ironically, I have at the same time found healthy love in my life today. My career has completely changed, for the better! I’ve completed the first draft of my book and am in the process of making my record, after years of writing for other people. My spiritual life has taken on new meaning, as I have discovered a loving God of my understanding. And that’s just a little bit of what happened.
I got there broken…. I left there open!
My mentor informed me that two spots became available for this journey week. So, I’m writing to let all of you know. It requires taking off Wed, Thurs, and Fri of next week. You will never regret doing so! Use your vacation days, do whatever you can to go. It is life changing. Do not let money hold you back. They have always made a way for everyone to attend.
If you want to change your life…..this is the place to begin!
For information contact:
Melissa Jones or Bedford Combs
at
615.790.3513
I’m telling you…… just go! You’re life is about to begin!
—-Tyler Hayes
—sending you love wherever you are in the world.
THE FRAME May 3, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
I had an idea of what my life would look like. When I was 17 I moved to New York, with every intention in the world of being on Broadway. When I was 24 I married, with every intention in the world of being a wife. When I was 31 I divorced, with every intention in the world to never again being in a destructive relationship. I took the dreams and visions and goals of my heart and built a frame into which I tried for years and years and years to fit my life. When it didn’t fit, I shoved it in the frame harder, with more focused intention. When it still didn’t fit, I cried, sunk into depression, and felt forgotten by God.
In fighting to make my life fit into the gilded frame I had imagined, I neglected to realize, the frame was too small. Writing this I’m sitting in a room where I once sat with tears streaming down my face, devastated by a break up. Believing I was losing love, pain pushed me to surrender, where grace was waiting. Here I am, in the same spot, in the same room, but a very different woman. I haven’t changed because I found love, but rather because I realized it was never lost, nor can it ever be. What limits love, hope, joy, & peace, what stifles life, is the frame we put it in.
The frame, my friend, is too small. The picture I painted of what my life would look like, would have fit the frame I had. However, God had a different picture. Love had a higher calling. And I, needed a bigger frame.
Letting go of what I think it ‘should’ be and becoming open, I can let go of having ‘to know’. I can release my idea of what is best, embrace what is, and watch Love do her great and mighty work. Her brush strokes are big and yet her detail precisely attentive. Her colors are brighter than I would have imagined. Sometimes I have no idea what she is painting, but I know this about Love, she is a master artist. I can not make a frame until the picture is complete and when the picture is complete, I will not need a frame.
However I thought it was going to be, it isn’t and yet I know, it is exactly as it is supposed to be!
—Tyler Hayes
–sending you love wherever you are in the world
expecting the worst? April 24, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
Today in Atlanta, GA, we woke up to sunshine, Easter baskets, and breakfast cooking on the stove. Pushing through crowds at church, we made our way to some seats just as the music began. I enjoy an alter full of Easter lilies, a choir in robes, hymns, and the message of resurrection. However, I also believe, no matter where we are, if we remain open, we get exactly what we need. The service we attended was not traditional. No hymns were sung, however, lives were changed. Isn’t that the purpose of the day anyway?
As the pastor spoke one line stood out to me. When he talked of the tomb where they lay the body of Jesus he said, “they did not roll away the stone so Jesus could get out, but so that we could look in.”
My greatest struggle has always been in my mind, in my thoughts. I have lost myself in fear all because of a thought I played out over and over in my head. My “magic magnifying mind” has gotten the better of me, time and again. From Byron Katie, a brilliant author, I’ve learned to question those thought, to not believe them, and not let them control my mind. However, there are still days when I feel that sick pit in my belly thinking of how a situation might work out against me….. or as my friend calls it, “the wreckage of the future”.
When the Pastor said the stone was rolled away so we could look in, I realized how desperately I needed to remember, life isn’t always as it seems. Expecting death, they found resurrection. The same is true for us. We can always experience the miracle, regardless of what the situation looks like. However, the real dilemma lies in our minds, our thoughts, and our beliefs.
This Easter, for me, is a reminder, that Love is bigger than everything. Just because it looks one way, doesn’t mean it is. And so once again, I find myself praying that simple prayer my Dad taught me, “I believe, help my unbelief”.
—Tyler Hayes
—–sending you love wherever you are in the world.
How did I get here again? April 20, 2011
Image by mikebaird via Flickr
Today I was chatting with a friend who was struggling with her relationship. She kept saying, “how could I be so stupid?” Questioning herself in a way I am all too familiar with. After a divorce and two failed relationships I ask myself, more than once, “how did this happen?” “What’s wrong with me?” Do I just attract what won’t work?” “What am I doing wrong?”
As my friend and I continued our conversation, I shared with her what the patterns of relationships had looked like for me, how I’d become aware of those patterns, and begun to change them. When we are raised in a family system of dysfunction, abandonment, neglect, codependency, or abuse, we are imprinted with certain messages. The primary message in those situations is, “there is something wrong with me.” To a child nothing can be wrong with their parents. They put their parents on pedestals as a survival skill. We all need to believe superman and superwoman are at the helm of the ship, that’s normal. However, when the ship starts to sink, as a child, we can not afford to think it might be our parents. We are aware that we aren’t old enough or strong enough to survive on our own, so if something is wrong with them, we are screwed. The ship will surely sink. Therefore, we tell ourselves, ‘something is wrong with me’. And we carry that belief into every other relationship we have until we heal it.
Part of the book I’m writing is about healing that ‘imprint’, that belief. It’s a process that’s well worth the journey. Because, what happens if we don’t heal it, is we end up in broken places over and over, asking, “how did I get here again?” In my recovery process I have discovered, that with each relationship, I unconsciously recreated the sinking ship of my childhood. It is the inner child’s way of returning to the scene of the crime hoping for a different outcome. We don’t even realize we do it. However, the wound is so deep and so painful, it drives us more often than we know.
“If I can make this work this time, we say, then none of it was true.” “The ship didn’t sink because of me. It isn’t my fault and there’s nothing wrong with me.” From that place we begin using the coping mechanisms of manipulation, coercion, control, and whatever else it took to survive our childhood. However, now we are using childlike coping mechanisms in adult relationships. And the ship….. keeps sinking.
We have to go back to the original wound. We have to go back to the ship! We have to tell that little child the truth, “there’s nothing wrong with you.” And then, we have to get that kid off that damn boat!
For me I began healing the little girl at a place called Journey Week. ( For the skeptics, I get nothing from the Heart Stream Journeys program for saying this….I’m just letting you know what worked for me.) As it turns out I’m not “going there again” and I’m learning to love myself, believing the truth, that there is nothing wrong with me. Of course I have stuff to work through and work out, but from that place I got on the path.
Recently my boyfriend and I had dinner with my dad and his wife. Later, my dad’s wife said to me, “we really like him. He’s different from any guy you’ve ever dated…. in a good way.” I smiled to myself! All that work, healing the original wound in my heart was allowing me to make new choices. Healthy choices. I wasn’t recreating the scene of the crime again. I wasn’t getting on the sinking ship, again. I was dating out of wholeness for the first time in my life.
For more information about Journey Week….. Please visit http://www.heartstreamjournys.com
—-Tyler Hayes
—sending you love wherever you are in the world
the appearance of wings April 18, 2011
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Yesterday the sun was shining bright in my little town. I stood at the corner we call “five points”, Starbucks in hand, waiting to cross the street. Three historic churches encircled me. Filing out of each one were children carrying palm branches, in honor of Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy week for Christians around the world. With a chilly breeze in the air, I hurried down the sidewalk. Through a heavy door, up a flight of creaking stairs, I landed on the worn velvet cushion covering a pew that looked older than time.
One phrase from the Pastor’s message rang in my head all day, “He doesn’t look like a King.” The Pastor had been referring to the words of those watching Jesus ride into Jerusalem on donkey, while they waved palm branches over Him in celebration and honor. They were right. He didn’t look like a king. He looked like a carpenter riding on a donkey and yet…..
Recently I’ve discovered a daily reading by Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening. It’s a powerful read. This morning, in meditation, I read his passages for the day. I was profoundly struck by these words in his message: “Feeling our tenderness, we can learn from the caterpillar how to endure the tremble that precedes the appearance of wings.” I could see that caterpillar crawling on its belly knowing it was meant to fly. Jesus riding in on a donkey, looking nothing like a King. The winter trees barren, holding all their leaves inside, not looking like they will ever bloom.
There I was, just like them all, fully who I am inside, but not fully formed. And so it is, I am a mother, yet to have children, an author, yet to have sold a book, a songwriter, with an unfinished record, a speaker, with no audience. I am a caterpillar knowing I was born to fly, waiting on “the appearance of wings”.
This is the place where we must not stop! We can not give up because we are a tree with no leaves, a caterpillar with no wings. Nor can we look to the day that we bloom, that we fly, as our final arrival. We must be present in the middle of our transformation. We must get acquainted with the groundlessness of limbo. It is uncomfortable. It is hard. It is scary. And yet, it is all so very necessary for our wholeness.
Today my heart beat feels thick, my tears heavy, the ache of ‘wanting to know’ creeps around me. The little voices that say to the caterpillar, “you? You can’t fly,” say the same thing to me. But I smile in the face of it all. Yes, it is true, I can’t fly…. YET!
—Tyler Hayes
—sending you love wherever you are in the world
Exactly Where You Are Supposed To Be April 13, 2011
Image by AlicePopkorn via Flickr
Where ever you are, right now, is exactly where you are supposed to be. It’s a requirement for your next step that you take this one. Depressed? Sick? In the middle? At the beginning? Unsure? At the end? Over weight? Under weight? Drunk? Sober? Exhausted? Happy? Sad? Apathetic? P E R F E C T. That’s the right place for the miracle.
Depressed motivated me to seek counsel & to heal some deep wounds that were creating a very destructive path in my life. Drunk had to come before sober. Beginning something got me started. Over weight got me exercising. Sober allowed me to feel my feelings and then be there for you when you needed to share yours. It helped me live to good purpose on the planet.
Everything has a purpose and a reason. The only danger lies in not listening. If we take away the ideas of “good” and “bad”, replacing them both with the word, opportunity, we will be amazed at all that life is offering us, even in our struggles. My judgment about my situation is far worse than my situation. The secret is to let go of the judgment.
I’m reminding myself today, I’m in the perfect place for where I’m headed. There is a gift in every moment and I’m going to find it! Recently a friend helped me organize my closets. When I took her into my guest bedroom with clothes strewn all over the twin beds and on the floor, she said, “oh, this makes me so happy!” We worked for 8 hours. She said, I love knowing that the work I’ve done made someone’s life better. I couldn’t believe her attitude at what to me looked like a full on disaster. As Marianne Williamson said, a miracle is truly “a shift in perception”. That shift will always generate gratitude and gratitude will heal us!
Wherever you are, don’t let the lies of discouragement and judgment pronounce anything over you. Turn your face to the light and pray this prayer,
THANK YOU.
—-Tyler Hayes
—sending you love wherever you are in the world
When you want to quit… April 12, 2011
Image by Aelle via Flickr
It’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I’m eating peanut m&ms that I warmed in the microwave, watching Oprah, wrapped in a blanket, and feeling like building this new career is, well, extremely hard. It’s not the hours of writing or the trips out-of-town or the diet I have clearly broken today or the questions looming in my head that make it tough, it’s all of that AND Shakespeare’s old friend, doubt. I haven’t worked out in a week. I feel fat as a barn. I’m living in two cities and I’m wondering, does this story come together in a spiritually rewarding lucrative way? How? When?
It occurred to me, you probably feel the same way, at least some times. The power of sharing our struggle is just as important as the struggle. The journey, the day in and day out of life, is, in the end, what matters most. Sure, it would be fantastic to have the Oprah Book Club seal on the cover of my upcoming non-fiction manuscript and one of those glamorous E Entertainment interviews. Those sorts of things symbolize “arrival”. Right now, I’m in the trenches. As I’ve heard before, this is what separates the men from the boys, or as in my case, the girls from the women.
Going where we want to go, doing what we believe in, dreaming our dreams into reality is never easy. That’s why they make lifetime movies about it. That’s what those interview are all about. The real question, everyone is asking, anyone who “made it”, is, “how did you get where you were to where you are?” How do you go from watching TV to being on TV (& not because you made it onto an episode of ‘cops’)? How do you go from working for the company to starting the company someone works for? How do you get the idea out of your head and onto the paper? How do you go from 9-5 to doing what you love?
Starting is often the exciting part. Like a new dating relationship, there are fireworks at the beginning of an adventure. There are enormous expectations full of hope and promise. Life seems to be holding a bright future. And then there’s the middle! It’s the back 9 at Augusta, the 7th inning stretch, 4 hours into a 10 hour flight. It’s month 6 of pregnancy, 50 pages into a manuscript. It’s the last 20 hours of your degree, residency when your up for 36 straight hours. The middle is the part that has no glamor, no lime light. As the say in recovery, we “trudge the road” of happy destiny.
The reason it separates the girls from the women is that a child can’t do it. It’s going to take putting on our grown-up panties and doing the next right thing, the thing right in front of us. “We do not do great things,” said Mother Teresa, “we do small things with great love”. And so it is, we take action. Not all the action, the next action, which for me, at the moment is a brief nap to recover from the 5 hour drive I just made and then off to a show I need to attend. Tomorrow its writing one more chapter and taking my butt to the gym. Most of all, it’s NOT QUITTING, not getting off course, and moving closer to the goal one step at a time!
—Tyler Hayes
— sending you love wherever you are in the world
Golf, the human experience, & recovery! April 8, 2011
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Yesterday, sitting between the 2nd and 3rd hole at Augusta, Anthony Kim hit his ball nearly into my boyfriend’s head and ultimately into a difficult position behind the camera tower. The crowds gathered. The rules committee gathered. After a brief assessment it was determined he would be able to move his ball to the nearest unobstructed point. Standing directly beside him, we heard his discussion with his caddy. They talked about the winds, the distance, the curve, the angles, and all that would go into his recovery shot. With grace, dignity, and the distinctive confidence of a pro, he asked the crowd to back up a little, became very focused, and made a brilliant recovery shot.
I was profoundly moved by one of those life truths that sport seems to offer us. It is not so much how well you play the game. It’s all about how well you recover.
In my life, I’ve made Kim’s shot, not literally because I’m a terrible golfer. But, I’ve made the shot, into a corner it was difficult to get out of. I’ve made choices that were stupid. I’ve been the maker of many of my own tears. I’ve swung wildly at life and found myself needing a caddy and the grace of an unobstructed shot to get back on track.
Recently, I realized a miracle has occurred for me. Many many years I struggled with panic and anxiety. A memory, a trigger, a feeling, a thought, and boom up would rush the adrenaline, the hot & cold waves of fight or flight. I took medicine that helped, but nothing all together set me free. Today it is a rare occurrence that I experience these feelings, but when I do they don’t take me down. A few weeks ago, my heart bumped up against a situation that triggered my childhood wounds. There is was, the panic. I felt it in my veins. I was breathless. Tears were falling down my cheeks out of necessity. My body felt weak and heavy. Normally I would have canceled my day and for several days following felt extremely off. However, this time I lay in my bed, consulted my “caddy”, and began to move out of my “trap”. By that afternoon I was on my way to Atlanta, laughing and strong.
What made the difference? The recovery. I was able to recognize where the feelings were coming from because I’ve been practicing slowing down and feeling the feelings. I saw what had been triggered and got it right sized. Instead of feeling like it was my current situation all together, I noticed what I was projecting, what was happening now, and what was historical. Then I went to the little parts of me, the inner child. I closed my eyes and I saw her, 13, overwhelmed and scared. For about 30 min I talked to her, as the grown woman I am today. I became the mother she needed so many years ago. Wrapping my arms around her little frame, if only in my mind’s eye, I held her tight. “I’ve got this,” I said. “I’m a grown up. You don’t have to figure anything out. You get to be a kid. Your safe. Your not alone. I’ve got lots of resources. We are going to be just fine.”
My heart steadied. Peace came. The little part of me, holding all those painful memories needed a mother. All the years of therapy and counsel and seeking, pulled together. Today, I am the mother she needs. ( In my forthcoming book, I share how I’ve learned to create an internal parent, to re-parent the broken little parts of us that are so easily triggered.) That’s all I needed. The answer, the mother, and the Spirit were all within me ready to heal the child.
So, I’m not a professional golfer. For that matter I’m not a golfer period. However, yesterday at the Augusta National, Anthony Kim and I shared a struggle, a human struggle, we were off course and in need of help to get back on track. For him it was a caddy and a new shot. For me, it was an internal parent. Either way, for both of us it was all about the recovery.
May your ability to recover grow increasingly strong!
–Tyler Hayes
—sending you love wherever you are in the world
Why does it hurt so bad? March 30, 2011
Image by Okinawa Soba via Flickr
Most of what we feel about the moment we are in isn’t about the moment at all. It’s about a moment from somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else. Our cells hold the memories of hurt, woundedness, and trauma. However, when the immediate issues touches up against that cellular memory we will feel the power of the wound from the first time we experienced it as well as what we are currently experiencing . As a friend said, ” if it’s hysterical, it’s historical”.
The difficulty lies in this: rather than returning, emotionally, to the original wound and healing it, we attempt to change our current circumstances, thinking that will solve the problem. Guess what? Not so much. Of course we can tuck that memory back into the cell it came from, that hurt, that unresolved pain. We can push it right back down, but it will come up again. It will rise to meet us. Once again we will find ourselves in a situation that triggers the unhealed parts of our soul. It doesn’t mean we are in the wrong situation, although we could be. It doesn’t mean we need to leave the situation, although we may. What it does mean, is that we need to heal our soul!!!
Relationships, intimate or platonic, will be the teacher to our spirits. Whatever we have yet to heal will wait for us. We will feel it rising over and over until we turn and face it. Trust me, I know!
Women say to me a lot, “why do I keep dating the same guy?” To that I reply, you don’t, you keep dating the same wound! There is a part of us that is deeply wounded and its trying to heal, to surface, to get out of our cellular memory. On a spiritual level you want to heal it, because in each man, you keep drawing the wound to yourself, hoping to get a different outcome, a healing. However, the deception lies in thinking it is the man who has the power to heal it. “If only he would commit…. if only he would do this…. or that….. then our relationship would be great…. then I wouldn’t be sad.” Not so! It isn’t his wound to heal. However he may have come to help you heal your wound or at least to bring it up.
A friend, after dating the same guy off and on for several years, found herself, once again, in tears. He told her he wasn’t ready for a commitment. Isn’t it funny how it shocks us when someone is consistent? Her guy was the same guy he’d always been, non-committal. So why the tears? Why did she stay? Her wound! That is the reason she stayed. Deep inside was a little girl with a strong father fracture and a deep craving for his love and attention. Guess who she was going to to get it? Someone just like her dad, someone who couldn’t commit.
It’s called returning to the scene of the crime. We re-create our wound over and over hoping to arrest a different outcome. However, it’s the ‘inner child’ that returns. We must get her out of the driver’s seat and put the grown woman in. (or the grown man, which ever the case may be) Then and only then do we stand a chance of healing the wound!
The question is, HOW? How do we bring our adult self into the space? How do we comfort and heal the child? How do we stop re-creating the past? Well, all of that is the book I’m currently writing that will be out sooner than later! However, I leave you with this: first, recognize it! Ask yourself this question, “when was the first time I felt this feeling?” Get a pencil and a notebook…. and start writing. Every time a strong feeling comes up, ask yourself again, “when was the first time I felt this feeling?” Write it all down! That’s the starting place.
—Tyler Hayes
–sending you love wherever you are in the world.
conversations on creating your life 