The Emmaline - Maditas Blog

HAPPY MONDAY – Filling in the blanks…

I was talking to a friend the other day and it became so clear how we all tend to just share the good or paint a picture of someone else’s life and forget to fill in the blanks. The blanks that are the struggle, the hard and scary moments, the courage it took to get to that moment. The pain, the grief or simply doubt. You can see achievements and moments of highs but we all have doubts and experience hard times that test us.VIEW POST

HAPPY MONDAY being scared of the new

Grabkapelle Stuttgart 6th of October 2018

Sometimes life gets in the way of posting and I am so ok with that! And sometimes you have been a way from home for a week, hang up light fixtures in your living room, have a friends stay with you and everything feels new and fresh and wonderful!

And sometimes fresh, new and wonderful does not feel safe to you and thats a struggle. Its daunting if you crave new and wonderful but don´t know how to not be stressed by it, how to be present and simply how to function. And how to feel – oh feeling things can be scary!VIEW POST

HAPPY MONDAY finding out about trauma

Paris 2016

“We say: ‘Here I am, pain. I give up. All that stuff really happened. I’ll let myself feel it now. Then I’ll tell the story and let other people feel it, too.’ Everyone has a history, everyone has a story to tell. When you write your true identity, it is a love offering to the world because it helps everyone who hears it feel braver and less alone. We all need to know that we are seen and heard. We don’t need our lives to be different, or easier, we just need someone to see the pain. To know what we’ve faced and overcome. To say: Yes. I see this. This is real. We don’t need a magician to take it all away – we just need a witness.” Glennon DoyleVIEW POST

HAPPY MONDAY loving myself through the process

I´m back home and I can´t even tell you what a blessing it is to come home to a home and a city that you love and feel good about!!

I´ve been journaling, watercoloring and reading a lot lately and it has brought me on this path of selfdiscovery (although I had that term) and it feels AWESOME! There is this weird paradox of totally knowing myself and then being totally lost and questioning everything. But it feels so good to finally be able to not only question everything but have the courage and time and space of mind to really see and feel and love and grow! There is a season for everything and I love stepping into this season of growth. I´m learning to love the place in life I´m in right now even though I never decided to end up here and I´m learning to love and trust myself and my body again after a long time where I felt like I couldn´t because it was the source of a lot of pain and trauma. It´s still hard and days where I can´t for the life of me figure out what I feel and what I need, I sit angry on my couch and don´t love myself. Instead of sitting there I want to know and have it all rather than experiencing a frustrating and challenging process of growth. And to top if of I feel like I´m the only person on this planet to feel so stuck. I´m learning though that not only I have days like this but everyone has them. Days where you want to move the world but you rather need a day with your book on the couch but you give yourself a hard time for needing it.

I´ve listened to the “Unspoken” podcast with Sophia Bush the other day and she said something that really spoke to me:

If you were my 4 year old child, I would never allow for anyone in the room to take your energy to the point it made you exhausted. We have to learn to love ourselves that way. I can´t give the world to you – you have to go home and give it to yourself. I have to give it to myself. I have to go home, eat, put myself to bed, respect my existence. It´s hard but it´s important that with whatever form of a public life you lead that you start to respect your existence enought to know that you can not possibly give a piece of yourself to everyone who wants it. Because there would be nothing left. And you can say that with love.

Sending you lots of love!

Madita

HAPPY MONDAY: SPA DAY

Happy Monday! Alex and I had a wonderful and very relaxing Sunday. Alex even told me “now you have a Happy Monday on a Sunday ” 😉 we went out for breakfast and afterwards to a place in Berlin-Spandau where you can book a day ticket to do fitness and wellness all in one facility. It felt so good to be able to work out and even better if you can swim and go to the sauna afterwards!

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HAPPY MONDAY On a Tuesday

Your wallet is too big in your back pocket. It bugs you as you drive. There is a thorn stuck in the side of your sock, deep in your shoe. It gives you the tiniest most infuriating poke when you walk. But to take off your shoe and do the whole thing. Ugh. You wonder if what you said at dinner offended your new friend. It eats you up the rest of the night. Is to bring it up worse?
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Things that nag. Thorns in our sides. They want answers. Solutions. Adjustments. But they do not scream. Some problems shout at us, and get the attention they need right away. But the nag. The tickle. The turn of the stomach and prick of the mind.
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I wonder if you have a prickly something in your sock right now. I mean in your mind. A discomfort. I wonder if it’s inconsistencies in your experience vs the teachings of your church. Those things stick to your mind and do not leave. They can be struck and quieted with the stick of obedience. But they never leave. I wonder if it’s your gut about your friend, boyfriend, or even your spouse. You’ve got history. You’ve got labels. But the twisted stomach is there. Something is off. You are not who you want to be and becoming less so. You do not respect them. You won’t admit it. That twisted gut will not go away.
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I’m not trying to be a rabble rouser over here. I’m just remembering all the itchy thinking in my life… the cracks in the floor… the roof shingles that blew off and let the light in…
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I’ve never had a disquiet thought or an upset stomach that didn’t have something to teach me. Sometimes it was patience. Sometimes it was humility and a bad meal. Other times it was revolution, and knocking down walls. Always it was a lesson, working itself out.
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I don’t begrudge my confusion anymore. I thank it. It’s just a signal that I’ve collected a few more fallen keys from heaven, and I’m obliged to try new doors until they open.

Jedidiah Jenkins

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HAPPY MONDAY: SEE YOU TOMORROW

We spent the weekend celebrating Janis birthday in Berlin and got home late on Sunday! I simply forgot to write a blog post on our long train journey – I will need to do that tonight!

Nonetheless wishing you a very happy Monday and I’m back tomorrow!

♥️

Lots of love,

Madita

HAPPY MONDAY – RISING STRONG BY BRENE BROWN

To be honest, I have had a hard time feeling happy lately. Although I don´t intent to feel happy all the time or think it is something to hold on to in every moment, I know there is a form of contentment and peace one can feel, that can easily move to feeling happy, to feel like you are right where you belong and lets you be present rather than wishing for something else – somewhere else. How did I get here? How do I re-learn being content? The most vunerable I feel like we can get, is by admitting that “I dont feel like myself” or “I feel completely powerless”

I have been reading Brene Browns Rising Strong the last few weeks- it has brought me moments of silence, moments of looking in the mirror and not liking what I saw but most of all it brought small moments of contentment, of “this is right”.

Failure, shame, guilt, thinking needing help is a way of “loosing it”, even more shame, starting to forgo my boundaries and starting to not be true to myself, a never ending circle. But oh the light there is if I look shame in the eye, if I share my thoughts and feelings – if I start to know what I am truly feeling. Going there has bought me to my most vulnerable place but it also brought insight to things I didnt even know it existed anymore!

Here are excerpts from Brene Browns Rising Strong I dont want to forget:

The Latin root of the word integrate is integrare, which means “to make whole”. Integrating is the engine that moves us through the reckoning, the rumble, and the revolution, and the goal of each of these processes is to make ourselves whole. Page 41

Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding enviroment. Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them – without believing, for instance, that there´s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. Page 71

That´s when I realized that mindfulness and flow are never in competition with each other. They aren´t the same thing, but they share the same foundation: making the choice to pay attention. Page 73

Owning our stoies means reckoning with our feelings and rumbling with our dark emotions – our fear, anger, aggression, shame, and blame. Page 75

In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. Page 79

We start weaving these hidden, false stories into our lives and they eventually disort who we are and how we relate to others. Page 84

I can never be sure about the intentions of others, but I believe that assuming the best about other people can fundamentally change my life. Page 129

We can´t heal if we can´t grieve; we can´t forgive if we can´t grieve. Page 139

Expectations are resentments waiting to happen. […] This often happens when our expecations are based on outcomes we cant control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they´re going to react. Page 140

“She wasn´t afraid of people in need because she wasn´t afraid of needing others” Page 175

Trust- in ourselves or in others – is often the first casuality in a fall, and stories of shattered trust can render us speechless with hurt or send us into a defensive silence. Page 198

Seven elements of trust emerged […] Boundaries […] Reliability […] Accountability […] Vault […] Integrity […] Nonjudgment [..] Generosity Page 199-200

Self-trust is often a casuality of failure. […] “I don´t know if I can trust myself again” Page 200

  • B- Did I respect my own boundaries? […]
  • R- Was I reliable? Did I do what I said I was going to do?
  • A- Did I hold myself accountable?
  • V- Did I respect the vault and share appropriately?
  • I- Did I act from my integrity?
  • N- Did I ask for what I needed? Was I nonjudgmental about needing help?
  • G- Was I generous towards myself

I truly hope you are having a happy Monday but most of all I hope you are in a place of life where you can feel a moment of true contentment!

Sending you lots of love!!

Madita