We’re all on a journey and it can help to have a picture of where we’re actually going and what it looks like when we get there!

These are the steps to freedom that I went through and that all my private clients go on and I hope it inspires you too.

This topic is inspired by the fact that recently I was in a coffee shop having a little sneaky little gingerbread muffin and a lovely lady came by and tapped on my shoulder.

It was one of my beautiful clients from several years ago.

She looked amazing and we had the most beautiful chat.

Her name’s Helen. She’s in her late thirties and she had a pattern of getting into these relationships with men who aren’t available.

They were wounded and not available for any kind of real relationship with her.

They had issues and she felt compelled to rescue them and take care of them and take them in.

And she said ‘I know it’s not good for me and it’s not going anywhere, but I still do it. Why? I’m just so dumb.”

She’d just had a pretty nasty breakup with someone that was causing a whole lot of hurt in her world.

Can you relate to Helen?

Have you ever repeated patterns in relationships and bashed your head against a wall and wondering why the hell you keep going around and around the mulberry bush?

So, when she met me, she was in the first of five stages.

1. Waking Up

She chose to wake up.

She woke up to the reality that what she was experiencing in her relationships wasn’t actually healthy.

It was what she knew and had been playing out her whole life. But it wasn’t what she wanted, what she deserved, and what she saw was her future.

So, she woke up to the fact that she was in this pattern and she needed to get herself out.

Most people unfortunately, will never even do that first step.

They don’t want to wake up. They can’t wake up, and that’s because denial is such a powerful force.

You think you’re stuck forever and that there’s no hope, right?

But Helen did choose to ‘wake up’ and she came to me and she did the next step.

2. Own Up

The next step was she chose to own up.

She had to own up to what was actually her stuff that was causing her to keep attracting these same men, and she had to own up to all the pain she was feeling.

The anger, the hurt, the sadness, the grief, all this stuff from the past, all of her fears of being rejected, of being abandoned or being lonely, it was all hers to deal with.

And that’s really hard to do because when before we wake up, what we’re usually doing is blaming the other person, right?

So, owning up is probably the hardest part.

And if you’ve been in 12 step recovery programs like me, the first step of the 12 steps is admitting we were powerless over our own behaviour, powerless over other people, powerless over all these things outside of ourselves. And that we had stuffed our lives and we had to do something different.

We have to own that.

That’s really hard.

Helen chose to do it because she was in pain.

And then she took the next step.

3. Grow Up

It was time to grow up.

She decided to stop blaming, stop judging, and stop diagnosing other people.

She had to stop that and own for herself that she’d attracted these people into her life.

It’s important to choose to grow up and take responsibility for loving yourself, caring for yourself, learning how to be on your own in a healthy way, learning to have good boundaries so you don’t find yourself in these cycles over and over again.

It’s up to you.

You’ve got to grow up.

Helen was brave enough and willing enough to do that because it’s the only way to freedom, right?

4. Clean up

Then she had to do the next step, which was clean up.

It was time to clean up her life, and that started with healing all of her pain.

It involved being willing to look within, being willing to go to a deeper unconscious level, really letting that pain go, really, really letting it go.

All the hurts, all the betrayals, all the resentments, letting it go and forgiving herself and forgiving those men she’d been in relationships with.

Honestly, I know the cliché of forgiveness is thrown around, but you will never be truly free if you don’t forgive starting with yourself, you have to forgive yourself first.

You’ll never forgive anyone else until you forgive yourself because until you forgive yourself, you’ll never have any compassion to forgive others.

So that’s what Helen did. She cleaned up.

She decided to become an authentic woman of integrity and to transform with me.

Using the revolutionary power of Creatrix ® She cleaned up all the baggage and then she went out into a life and she started cleaning up her relationships.

She learnt to be a Boundary Queen and to say no to men who asked her out when her gut said, ‘No way’.

She embraced her feminine essence and learnt to take better care of herself,

She cleaned up her whole energy physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and then took the next step.

5. Show Up

Helen chose to show up.

She’s showing up in life as the truth of who she really is with no walls up, no masks, no people pleasing, no rescuing, none of that stuff.

She’s focusing on being the best person she can be and giving from her heart to people who deserve her.

And in turn, people who are healthy are respecting her in return.

When I saw her at the cafe she said, ‘Oh my God, you’re not going to believe this. I’ve sold my house that I didn’t like. I’ve left the job that I didn’t like, and I’ve got another job. I wanted to live by the ocean here in Newcastle. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m living by the ocean. I’m going down to the beach every day and I’m in a relationship with a ‘normal’ man. Someone without all that unhealed baggage. Someone who’s not wounded, someone who doesn’t need rescuing. I can’t believe I used to be stuck in a box of frustration, pain, rejection, hurt and thinking there must be something wrong with me?!”

So, the steps are again, wake up, own up, grow up, clean up, show up.

Once you’re awake you have to choose to stay awake.

As my therapist always used to say to me, “Don’t go back to sleep”

I know it’s scary to choose to show up as who you really are without blaming anyone else for holding you back.

Marianne Williamson, in her famous book ‘A Return to Love’ wrote:

“Your deepest fear is not that you’re inadequate. Your deepest fear is that you’re actually powerful beyond measure. It’s your light, not your darkness that most frightens you and you think, who am I?

Who am I to be gorgeous, talented, fabulous, wonderful?

Well, who are you not to be?

Are you ready to take a powerful step forward?

I encourage you to download my free audio training & eWorkbook ‘Be a Woman of Integrity: The 3 Hidden Ways a Woman Gives Her Power Away and How to Take Yours Back’

You’ll wake up and uncover three ways you’ve been giving your power away (without even knowing it) and learn what you need to do right here and right now to take it back and take back control of your life.

I hope this blog has been of service to you. I invite you to comment your experiences or thoughts on this topic below.

You do have the power to just be you.

Love,

Want to connect personally with me?

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