As a decade-long practitioner of Mana Gardening, I can confidently state that the wisdom of the inner garden can vastly improve your life experience.
When faced with a break up with someone I was finally excited about, I had a choice in how to handle it:
- do the old pattern of feeling like a victim,
- be in total resistance to the break up, OR
- find a way to be happy with it and trust what was showing up.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Life does not happen to you, it happens FOR you“?
It’s a great mantra that helps you not get too hung up on what happens and to not be in resistance to what is. It is a way to live life more gracefully in general.
Resistance to what is causes great suffering. And that’s the last thing we need more of… suffering.
Instead let’s choose empowerment.
In this case, I chose to believe that this break up was happening FOR me, and not TO me.
So, that is the first step in having a graceful break up: Trusting that this is happening for a good reason, and if we were meant to be together then we would be, or perhaps it could manifest in the future.
With that mantra in my head, I asked my inner garden, How can I make this a graceful break up and feel good about this?
My inner garden gave me several ideas which I implemented immediately and guess what? Positive feelings are the bulk of my experience with this particular relationship ending. Sure, grief comes up and when it does, I feel the feelings and allow myself to cry or kick the punching bag at the gym (hard).
Someone said that grief is unexpressed love.
This seems perfectly accurate to me, as many times when faced with ending relationships, I cry and feel deep sadness because I can no longer communicate with that person the way I did, can no longer share my life with them, or my love with them. It hurts and there’s no way around it. Feeling it and letting the emotion move is essential.
So between bouts of grief, the following list of actions can help you have a more graceful transition out of a relationship and into your own self-love and grace.
Top 10 ways to make break ups more graceful:
- Write a list of the good qualities of the other.
- Write a list of things you received from your time together (lessons, knowing yourself better, knowing what you want/don’t want, any clarity you received).
- Create a list of what you gave in the relationship (love, support, kindness, TLC, communication, help, etc).
- Use the inner garden to resolve any outstanding conflict. Create the ending you need in your imagination. (Our book explains wonderful techniques for this.)
- Consciously send love and light to you both and intend a win-win outcome.
- Use your inner garden to create the new effective relationship you desire going forward. Create the wonderful friendship, or the effective and civil co-parenting relationship, create the space needed, etc. and feel how good it feels to be in that new relationship together.
- Love yourself in the inner garden. Imagine yourself surrounded in a bubble of pure love, being hugged by loved ones, or in any environment where you feel supported, loved and allowed to be who you truly are without consequences.
- Send a note of appreciation to yourself and the other (or don’t send, but at least write it down).
- When you’re ready to call in your next partner, see yourself with them. Imagine them in the car with you, imagine that they are there cooking breakfast with you and you’re both laughing and happy, imagine feeling loved by them, feeling like you can always be yourself, feeling that you are the best version of you with them. Feel that. Know that it is on its way!
- Address grief as it shows up, feel it and be with it. Cry if that helps. Feel sadness, anger, disappointment, etc. The feelings will slowly fade as you spend time with them. It is important to feel our grief and sadness and it is OK to feel our humanness.
With these tips, the majority of your feelings can be of appreciation, grace, and contentment about the transitioning of this relationship into something new. (You may want to revisit any of the tips above to refresh your vibration.)
You got this! I believe in you!
~Michelle
I am available for private sessions, workshops, retreats to serve you and your clients. Our Level 1 Mana Gardening course starts September 19, 2018. Join us for our retreat in Costa Rica August 2018 for a deep dive in creating the reality you desire.