Between the Weeds

Life seen between the weeds by creative business owner, Laurie Rohner.

Tag Archives: mental-health


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The choices we make matter.

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

Many years ago I faced the hard realization of the two choices facing me. It was a great fear I held for my life. What if life never got any better? What if I am doomed to live a life filled with disappointments and challenges making my suffering to be unbearable? I knew then as I do now I had the power to choose another direction. My fear was, would life make me bitter and ugly.

Nothing in life happens without our approval. See it and realize every choice has an effect, an outcome we have to take. Sometimes it is predestined and other times our choosing. No matter which it is we can always decide how we will react. Whenever the world gets a bit dark and I feel overwhelmed I go and walk in nature. Find your own grounding method. Make a cup of tea and sip it conscious of each sip. Take a bath imagine a beach. Whatever works for you. Sometimes I find a place and sit down for a few moments but always I remove my self from the darkness.

White Iris Nature Art Painting by Laurie Rohner

White Iris Nature Art Painting
by Laurie Rohner

I am a big believer of meditation and angel/guide(s). Through meditation I can receive valuable information about my life circumstances. I know my upstairs friends are always there helping me out when I need them. Lately needed more because I have huge decisions and life changes happening.

Remembering the divine-ness of your life is epic. The choices you consider will follow darkness with bitterness or transform a bad situation into a creative light filled wonder.

I am filling my life with creative positive choices.  When I was younger I easily found the good in every situation but as I gathered more challenges and life experiences I realized my outlook was becoming cloudy and dimmer.  A true life course correction happened. Think of your self as a charged metal rod and the challenges as iron shavings clinging to the charged rod. Switch the charge and the metal shavings fall off. Switch your thinking and the energy of your life changes freeing your thoughts and energy to work with understanding and acceptance, and not fear of loss and hopelessness.

I have created two web sites for my painted work, Laurie Rohner Studio and Painted Furniture Studio. I have created a separate site for selling my home/studio. I am creating what I want through the suffering and transforming my life into a life I see living. Not everyday is it blooming with happy thoughts but the darker ones do not hang around as long. Inside everyone there is something we can change making each life brighter. I’m tired could change to wondering I am low in energy my body wants to take a break and then to I need to appreciate my self and give your self a break. Small changes lead to epic changes in all things.


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Climbing Life’s Ladder to Positive Change.

“Every positive change–every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness–involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.”

- Dan Millman, is an author of fourteen self-help books,  “Way of the Peaceful Warrior.”

Yesterday I discussed on my blog The Painted Cottage Home about endless speculation and how it can absolutely confine your Self if you do not release it. Once released you start to live from a place of doing and insight. I would have written the post here but it reflected on the home and studio I am selling but I am getting away from the inspiration for this post, here.

If you think about the quote above and then think about the changes you have gone through you have to see the truth to his words. I think yesterday my thoughts were a beginning for the post today. I think back to one of the darkest moments in my life, I was involved in a DUI or DWI depending on where in the USA you live. I was young and thought invincible. I lost everything. My job, my license, my friends, family members found it a perfect time to cast judgement, and I now had a record. Criminal record. I thought I could never survive all this yet somehow I did. Not only survived but became a new wonderful soulful spiritual being.

We all have moments in time that will never change which I refer to as life markers. They are a constant fixed point in our lives. The event will happen but it is what we do after the event that is so crucial. Do you climb to the next rung on the ladder or do you freeze where you are or do you climb back down? Going higher is work and the hardest work you can undertake. If you stay frozen you live a shell of a life, just an existence, no more and no less, just there. If you go down I think it is where evil feeds and life becomes twisted, into the bowel of hell comes to mind. Yet I do not believe in hell as a physical place more one of the mind or dimensional space.

The beloved universe always gives us sign posts and messages for us to see hear think smell nudging us in directions we may not have thought would be right. When you pay attention and learn accepting the goodness and love the beloved universe is offering life gets pretty awesome if not epic. I did not see the sign posts the universe was showing me so my wake up call was a DUI. The DUI was also the best thing to have happened in my life so far. Some events have come close but this moment, this amazing life marker sent me heading on a new bright path.

Nature Art Vermont Watercolor Landscape Painting Trees Woodland Fairy Forest

Today right now life is setting up for something new once more and after experiencing a life marker once before I can feel the energy of a moment fixed in my life time coming towards me. In your gut you can sense an anxiousness,a restlessness of energies around you, your senses become heightened. I am not going to make the same mistake ignoring the signs. I know I have to keep climbing and I know I will be fabulous once it passes. If you have this feeling also keep vigilant and watch how time is moving around you. When that moment hits time seems to slow down. You are acutely aware of time and space.

No one can stop tragedy in life and tragedy is life. I know you can see the signs in your own life. Are you climbing on the ladder next to me or frozen? If you are frozen reach out a hand the beloved universe is there always to aid you guide you and help. If you have fallen well it doesn’t matter because this post would have ended for you long ago, but I send you light and love.

 


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Can we gain once we have lose everything else?

“To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.”

I know this is a dismal thought to many to lose everything but let me explain why this quote hits home. I was standing on check out line in the grocery store and a little peeved at the price of all that I had in the bags. I thought when are things going to turn around? When is it going to become understandable? There has to be some reason for all this chaos but what could it be. On the drive home I thought about maybe I should be doing something different with my life. Is this the Universe saying I am in it up to my thighs and it is only going to keep getting worse?
Then a whisper of an idea came to me. Could it be that the feeling of loosing it all was the best thing for me? When you go through tragedy lose, financial, emotional and very personal,  you finally will come to a stop. A holding pattern of sorts and from that moment you can make the choice to leave the pain and lose behind or hold to it tightly in fear of more lose only to experience the next round of turmoil. It is coming because you have chosen it to be more lose. I find these moments to be turning points in my life and ones that need to be there but when you see them for what these moments are let them go. What is left is what is needed for the next step in your life. When we allow ourselves the lose, the gain is always going to come if we allow the cleansing of the lose. It has to because the lose formed a void and the universe is always filling the voids. You decide what the direction will be.
“The sacrifice which causes sorrow to the doer of the sacrifice is no sacrifice. Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy. The Buddha gave up the pleasures of life because they had become painful to him.”


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Love over fear.

“When you choose to perceive Love over fear, life begins to flow.”

“By placing the magnifying glass on your ego’s dark ilusions, you weaken its strength.”
“Sometimes your higher self will guide you to make mistakes so you can learn lessons.” 

 - Gabrielle Bernstein, from her new book “May Cause Miracles“.
Life Love and fear.

Image from abroadstudy.net

Are you ready to work miracles? Gabrielle Bernstein believes that simple, consistent shifts in our thinking and actions can lead to the miraculous in all aspects of our daily lives, including our relationships, finances, bodies, and self-image. In this inspiring guide, Gabrielle offers an exciting plan for releasing fear and allowing gratitude, forgiveness, and love to flow through us without fail. All of which, ultimately, will lead to breathtaking lives of abundance, acceptance, appreciation, and happiness. With May Cause Miracles, readers can expect incredible transformation in 40 powerful days: simply by adding up subtle shifts to create miraculous change.


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Strength and growth.

“It is through solving problems correctly that we grow spiritually. We are never given a burden unless we have the capacity to overcome it. If a great problem is set before you, this merely indicates that you have the great inner strength to solve a great problem. There is never really anything to be discouraged about, because difficulties are opportunities for inner growth, and the greater the difficulty the greater the opportunity for growth.”

- Peace Pilgrim

Yellow Peony watercolor painting by Laurie Rohner

Watercolor painting I did originally for this sweet person. I never got to give it to her so it is titled Miggie’s Flower. She loved yellow flowers and tree peonies.I think it is a nice tribute.

Many years ago I knew a great woman who had struggled with cancer from the age of 31 when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had a family and she was sent home after surgery to die. Her doctors said she had about 1 year maybe 18 months left on her life. This was long before she entered into my life. It would be another 25 years before I would have the honor of knowing this grand dame of strength and courage.

It has been 15 years this month when I went to the services honoring this women. She became a friend and a teacher. I remember her talks and there were days she would say “if one more person tells me God doesn’t give you more than you can handle I am going to spit in their eye”. I believe she would have. She believed in the strength of her own being and God was her support system and not her judge. She drew from that connection and through her astonishing survival of many more surgeries she never wavered in her resolve to grow and be more. She may not have known then how much she changed my outlook on life (though I suspect she did) and the lives of so many she never got to meet. Her story was how though given a horrible diagnoses it is not a doctors right to decide the outcome of a life. She battled cancer for 38 years, with sheer will power and enormous fortitude. In the end an unrelated corrective surgery caused an infection that struck her down. I think she just got tired of the battle and chose to leave. She passed due to heart failure not cancer.  Her soul said it is enough let’s go home, and she listened.

It wasn’t until I read this quote, that the memory of this women came flooding back. The lessons she had helped me see. I have felt very discouraged and angry at God. I want things to work now and not later. How many times we would have these same discussions? Never would we answer the question but her energy to find a solution and learn from it was always there. I am reminded that life is messy and out of great difficulties in my life I met this women who also dealt with insurmountable odds. She showed me opportunity is in the challenge and accept it with dignity and strength because you can be better than you ever dreamed. The trick was believing the challenge is a good thing. It is something you should be grateful for having and embrace it as a gift from God. A challenge is not a judgement passed down from above but instead a loving lesson to uplift you for something wonderful. It is hard to remember this but thankfully my angels, my guides and beloved fairies keep reminding me, and maybe my dear friend too.


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Intuition.

Change your future.

You must train your intuition – you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide

Ingrid Bergman

The past few days, OK weeks, have been a test of trusting my intuition. Trust is not an easy thing and add intuition to the equation can be daunting (for me). Making this decision has been hard and I listened to the small voice inside to discover the answer, but I will tell you what it said later. The huge discovery I made for myself is that instead of age giving me wisdom (which in some ways did) it gave me a huge dose of anxiety. Anxiety, that old evil friend ego, kills, numbing the intuition and rendering us helpless in the ever turning cycle of fear. Yuk! When I was in my twenties I made decision based on gut feelings, they were second nature, so what went wrong? Life and a bunch of big hits which shook my trust in things and in the way the world works. It has been a journey of self discovery and has reawakened things from my younger years, lessons learned but thankfully do not need to go through again. The one lesson is no matter what your age you are able to keep discovering new and wonderful facets about the world and yourself. Your dreams and visions are important. Do not ever give up on yourself and trust the voice inside, even if you think it is absolutely off the wall.

So over the past several now weeks I have been troubled over what I should do. I am a believer in signs, in my gut (though I did forget how to use it) and my guides. Everything was pointing me in one direction. I am packing up and heading to Maine to expand my business and work closer to nature. I am not going to be so bold as to say exactly how this will happen because I know better now. I know if I am to do this and work hard at putting it all together it will happen. I trust my gut my intuition to lead me down the right road and to make the right choices. I am not just putting the words down to make people read them, this is how I live. I am shedding the middle-aged attitude and embracing the person inside that lives with no boundaries of age or situations. This is what my intuition tells me, what is yours telling you? Stop hiding behind anxiety and be the free spirit inside with no limitations. Oh you know you want to and stop the excuses, they mean nothing.

 


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Feeling stressed? Fairies will help.

Fairy – "Take the Fair Face of Woman"...

Think of fairies as Angelic Little Helpers because they are just that and all you need to do is ask. It is why a adore fairies. They are always eager to help and are the go to beings when you are feeling stressed and drained of energy. It is very simple. Get your tired weary body outside preferably under a tree with your back resting up against the tree. You can meditate, think or speak what is on your mind or write down what is bothering you. Be sincere with your words thoughts and request. If you are fortunate you may see the fairy that is taking care of your request. Depending upon what it is either a faery may take it to one of your spiritual guides or angel. I always feel lighter.  So what is stopping you from asking the FAERIES to take away your stress!

Some more little tips to help cleanse your body and spirit.

Take a sea salt bath.  Love more often! Meditate on acceptance!

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