​As you read Holy Wow! Volume I, you learn I have heard voices my whole Life. I didn’t find this to be anything special. It didn’t occur to me other people didn’t hear inner voices. When Scott and I first got together, he worked in the field of mental health. When I mentioned I heard voices, he said, “Dana, that’s a sign of mental illness.” I said, “It all depends on what the voices are telling you.”
My voices have always been extraordinarily helpful. Guiding insight. Good stuff to know. As a child, a female voice I heard several times would say, “Be kind to yourself, Sister. Be kind.” As an only child, I wasn’t anybody’s “sister.” But that is how she said it every time.
It’s not like I would hear her when I was upset with myself. She’d speak up at random moments in time. I wanted to see her. I remember one time, I was about 8, standing in the hall outside my bedroom door when she spoke to me. I tried so hard to see her. In a haze, I saw a side view of her face. She looked to be in her mid-teens… with brown hair.
Time went on. Scott and I offered our own Maylaigh Sunday Service in the early 2000s. In response to a question from one of our congregants… I devised “Rev. Dana’s 3 Steps To Greater Awareness.”
Step 1 – Listen to Your Thoughts
Step 2 – Self-Kindness
Step 3 – Appreciation
You can read about each of these steps in Holy Wow!
Self-Kindness is a powerful healing balm. Transformative. It was a year or more before I realized… the seeds of me being partial to the wisdom of self-kindness were planted by this gentle, loving voice I had heard so many years before.
I have never forgotten her.

Today, “acting kind of random”… I pick up Holy Wow! Volume II… Yikes! Yuck! Yum! Yay!... and open to page 163. My eyes fall on the bottom of the page:
“About our human healing process… here is a worthwhile note to self… a useful tip. We humans think “healing” means there is something ‘wrong with me.’ That I need to ‘be fixed.’ At this point in my Life… having spent many years being human… many years being a healer… many years excavating my own healing process… I have come to clearly understand… your ‘healing’ doesn’t have much to do with you being ‘messed up.’
Healing is your journey… from numb, hurting and apathetic… to awake, aware and alive.
We heal as we travel from… unconscious to conscious… unhappy to happy… numb to aware… asleep to awake.
For many folks, numb and unhappy may feel all kinds of familiar. But do they make a satisfying Life?”
A lot of people resist therapy or counseling. “There’s nothing wrong with me!”
Shifting your perspective… realizing “healing” is not focused on “something wrong”… allows you to see… there’s so much right with me!
Unless you had spectacular, caring, engaged parents… (lucky you if that is the case)… you enter adult Life at a deficit. With a negative self-image, doubting your capabilities. Awash in harsh, toxic thought habits.
In my early 20s a voice in my head said… “You are the only person who can help yourself. You are the only person who can hurt yourself. You are the only person who can make yourself grow.” Very helpful information.
Where you are in your Life right now… turn your attention to your healing process. Just think… “I am open to my own inner healing.” Make a mantra for yourself… “I welcome and embrace my healing.”
Give yourself to your healing process. Exercise this healing mantra. See what happens. 

Continuing our random tiptoe thru the Holy Wow! tulips… today, I pick up Volume II… Yikes! Yuck! Yum! Yay!... opening to page 162:

“Include your Higher Self in your healing process.

Healing work that does not include your Higher Self confines you to the cul-de-sac of your mind.

Meditation and Counseling together produce profound insight… profound results.

Here again… ‘Meditation is the greatest gift you will ever give yourself.’ Combining meditation with therapy or coaching dimensionalizes the healing impact you are looking for. This dimensionality itself becomes a part of your healing process. Rather than muddling about in your thinkery or your feeling body… as you meditate, you are focused in your more inclusive spiritual body. This has a powerful integrating effect. Integrating your thoughts and your feelings with your actions… with the way you show up in your world. You become more congruous… more harmonious. More authentic. Inside and out.

Meditation reveals yourself to you. The unnecessary veil of self-reproach is lifted. You open to a finer degree of awareness… as you meditate within and thru-out your healing process.”

I share this with you because I know it to be true. I experienced this as I rambled thru my own healing process. As a counselor… I’ve seen this many times in the healing process of people I work with.

That “unnecessary veil of self-reproach” is a doozy. Wily. Defeating.

Negative self-talk is shrewd and crafty. Slipping into your inner conversation… pointing out your faults… picking you to bits. Before you even notice.
​
Meditation helps you be more aware. More aware of your inner Life. More aware of what you are telling yourself. More aware of your interactions. More aware of ways to balance your Life energy as you deal with your world.

​Today, I opened Holy Wow! Volume III… The HazMat Variety Show… to the very front page. It says, “Here’s what folks are saying about Holy Wow!” There are 8 reviews. The very first one is from Deb B., who states, “When I sit to read Holy Wow!, I feel like I am sitting with a dear friend who is showing me a new way to look at my existence.”
Zowie! That is exactly the way I would like Holy Wow! to be experienced! “Let’s have a conversation about Life. There is more than 1 way to look at your existence.” You could say that pretty much sums up my intent in sharing what I share and the way I share it.
There is more than 1 way to look at your Life. To look at yourself. There is the kinder, gentler… more self-compassionate… way to consider yourself and what you are doing here on Planet Earth.
I’ve said for years… “If you talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself… you wouldn’t have any friends.” Our inner conversation… our inner narrator… tends to be in a harsh, self-critical tone. Reprimanding myself for being me.
I find it much less abusive to adopt a “silly ol’ bear” attitude toward myself. And especially toward others. It’s exhausting to always be so critical… to always be looking for “what’s wrong.”
Let’s put this another way… Give Yourself A Break.
If not you… who?
As you listen to your thoughts… you begin to hear how you rag on yourself. The harsh tone of your inner monologue. Always ready to tell you you’re not enough. Good enough. Smart enough. Thin enough. Rich enough.
What if you are enough?
There’s a meditation seed-thought for you! A mantra. A ‘daily word.’  ~  “I Am Enough.”

I am a longtime wordsmith. I like words. I like finding just the right word. The word to convey a thought, a feeling, a concept. Sometimes I capitalize words… for emphasis… for wordplay… ‘cause I want to. ‘Cause it makes sense to me.
 
I consistently capitalize the word Life. Out of respect… for Life.
 
Life. Such an amazing rodeo! The Show of Shows! Biologically… it can’t be beat! Psychologically… there’s so much going on! Spiritually… beyond amazing! Beyond the beyond.
 
This world we live in is A Miracle. “Life” deserves a capital “L.”
 
Albert Einstein said… “There are only two ways to live your Life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
 
I choose the miracle.
 
You're either groovin’ or you’re grumbling. In gratitude or in grudgement.
 
Where you live inside yourself is completely up to you. We all have a crazed variety of external components. Family. Education. Work. Resources. Lack of resources. But who we are and how we are… who we show up as… is completely ours to call.
 
The way you respond or react to what shows up in your Life… what you do with the hand you’re dealt… this is what makes your Life what it is. Miracle or madness.
 
Where you live inside yourself. It’s all up to you.