A Drop of Om

I am waking up with anger in my belly. It is familiar. I am painfully aware of all that is going on in the US and in the world. I am Turkish with olive skin and brown eyes. When it comes to being labeled as the ‘other’ because of things I can’t change about myself (and don’t want to change), I have experienced my share:

• During my graduate studies, I was yelled at on a bus in Germany by an older gentleman. When he heard that I was Turkish he said on the top of his lungs ‘You’ll go to hell!’. He continued to yell and yell while I responded calmly. No one said or did anything even though it was clear as day that he had no right to yell at me.
• When I first moved to the north of Boston in the US, during a professional dinner for my husband’s work, a woman asked me if I got tan on a recent vacation in the middle of the winter in New England (the answer was no, I hadn’t gone to vacation at all)
• My cousins often teased me growing up saying ‘They got you from the gypsies!’, which hurt deeply because for the longest time I thought I that was adopted as a child because my mom has fair skin and green eyes, and I look nothing like her. In Turkey, fair skin and blue/green eyes are considered beautiful, special, desirable, promotable as well as proofs of European or Balkan ancestry. You are destined to be made to feel less than if you are someone who doesn’t look like that. Fair skin and blue eyes are always mentioned as amazing, admirable, beautiful qualities in conversations. People with fair skin and blue eyes often brag about these qualities and the ancestry these qualities imply.
• I often feel people looking at me strangely when I take my fair-skinned green-eyed child into public or in stores. This happens in the US where we live and in Turkey. Some even comment ‘That explains the blue eyes!’ when my fair-skinned, green-eyed husband walks in.

In all of these instances and interactions, people have ignorance, energetic wounds, want to make themselves feel better by labeling the other something less than, or they simply don’t think of what their words and actions imply. This said, I also haven’t experienced the degree of otherness that people in more marginalized groups live through every day. I haven’t been denied education or opportunities. I haven’t felt like I am in danger every time I step outside because of the color of my skin, the way I look, my sexuality, or religion (well, I mostly feel I am in danger when I step out because I am a woman).

But that is not all, I do this all the time too. I have made people into ‘others’ in my life by:

• participating in racial jokes
• categorizing and stereotyping groups of people
• not reaching out to know, hear, and understand more
• changing the sidewalk or moving my gaze down because I see a homeless person, a person of color, a person of another economic status, or someone showing any other suspicious behavior because I am terrified and unsure of my safety.
• glorifying a certain style, look, clothing, make-up, etc. over another
• judging myself and others
• not initiating conversations or kindness when I could
• not learning, questioning, reading, or supporting enough

I need to do better, we all need to do much much better. Today I am listening to my anger. Clearly, she is not done talking. Within my anger, there is much sadness and fear mixed in. Within my anger, there are so many different layers. Today we will have some tea together, engage in a conversation. I will begin to forgive the parts of me that push out other parts. I will embrace our broken heritage, our togetherness on this strange planet, in this strange time, with all our individual and collective wounds coming up to the surface one by one.

Here’s what I know: unless we tend to our needs and heal our individual energetic wounds, we will always have a tendency to make someone else into an ‘other’. What action will you take today to show responsibility for your own wounding? I am here if you’d like some support to dive into the energetic wound jungle that is you and begin to love all of it. 

With love,

Damla

P. S. If you’d like to get started healing your energetic wounds by yourself, check out my online healing sessions and online courses.

When life asks you to run a marathon, you breathe and you preserve your energy.

You pay attention to what’s good for you and what’s not so good. You decide to keep, enhance, build on the good and leave, release, and forgive the not-so-good. You decide what is true and needed for you, what makes the most sense.

You believe in your ability to run the course. You become your own cheerleader. And you ask others to support and cheer you.

You take the time to slow your pace when you run out of breath. You remember that breaks are as precious and needed as sprints.

You become what the road, the time, the run asks you to become. You leave your pride and ego out the door and do your best. You dig deep to find the medicine in you and the gifts of your ancestors.

You celebrate every little victory, every little step, every little sweat. You add humor, lightness, laughter to the mix.

You stay gentle and kind to others and to yourself. You take it one step, one breath, one road post at a time. And you keep breathing, practicing, forgiving, starting over, and putting one foot in front of the other.

With love, light, and gratitude,

Damla

P. S. If you feel like you need some gentle energetic support, check out my recorded and live online healing sessions. They are super affordable and wonderful excuses to catch your breath during this global marathon.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to tell me and my cousins’ stories about a gypsy wanderer named Tarankuku. Tarankuku very conveniently used my grandma’s pantry as a passageway and occasionally came by to steal and eat children. The pantry was a dark and mysterious place for us children, full of weird, smelly items and forgotten kitchen gadgets, and whenever there was a sound in the house (or whenever my grandmother wanted us to calm down), she would tell us that Tarankuku was about to come by to steal us and we should better behave! And it worked. Of course, there was an age limit of maybe 7-8 years old and by then we all knew the trick and even started using it on our younger cousins.

As we are embarking on yet another week of the quarantine life, I am discovering the Tarankukus in my mind’s pantry, the dusty kitchen gadgets, forgotten jams, and a ton of other interesting stuff. I am realizing that each day is another choice. I can believe that what is in and around me is only darkness and I can stay scared. Or I have the choice to know that there are good things in and all around us and that I can at any moment reach for the spices, tasty pickles, and the home-made aromatic jams to enjoy, savor and make more beautiful things (and so can you).

I believed in Tarankuku for a long time (longer than I’d like to admit), even now I find it hard to sleep with my closet doors open. The last time I was in my grandmother’s house, I went into that pantry. It has been a while since she is gone but it still smells like her, a scent I can’t describe but I know it’s of her. It makes me cry every time I think of it since I’m reminded of how much I miss her. I’d like to think that she is watching me, and being proud of the work I do and maybe occasionally having a chat with Tarankuku over tea in her pantry.

With love, light, and gratitude,

Damla

This is a great time to declare unconditional love for yourself. I invite you to pick up a pen and paper or simply open up your phone’s note app, and begin writing a love letter to yourself and connecting with the life that is here in you and for you.

Here’s my love letter to myself, feel free to read it and breathe it in as if it is from you to you. 

My dear self,

I am so in love with you. I love all the times you have picked yourself up despite all that you have been going through and all that life throws at you.

I love your determination, the way you work to live your dreams and your courage to come back to being open and vulnerable again and again.

I love all your wounds. I love looking at you and seeing the lines on your face, seeing your beauty shine through. You are an unassuming masterpiece.

I love your silence. I know how hard it is to put life into words sometimes. But even if you don’t speak, I hear you.

I love your missteps. When you apologize or accept that you have made a mistake, I am in awe of you.

I love your spiraling thoughts. You are a beautiful mixture of energies and dynamics that dance and shine.

I love how you laugh. I love seeing you embody your joy, your pleasure, your humanness.

I love watching you heal yourself. You have come so far. You have done so much and continue to do so. I am so proud of you.

I love how you make an effort to listen and be there for others. Sometimes you are there for them by doing. Sometimes you simply allow them to be by being and listening. You let them shine. What you don’t realize is that you shine as you do so.

I love all the goodness that flows through you and in you. You are like a beaming light that reaches far and invites others to shine brighter than they thought possible.

I love your shortcomings, all the places in you that feel like they don’t measure up. All of what makes you, you, I love all of it.

I love your spirit, your dreams, your never-ending quest to find inspiration, love, joy, and light in everything you look at. I know how deeply the state of this world touches your heart and how much you want to heal everyone and everything. I know you grieve what you can’t do and the people you can’t begin to reach.

I love how when you fall asleep, you whisper to yourself ‘I am infinitely grateful’ over and over again.

I love seeing you ride the waves of life, and grow stronger, wiser, and more light-filled with each and every wave.

I love you as you are, as you have been and as you will be.

I deeply and completely see, accept, love, and honor all that you are.

With love,

Your biggest fan,

Damla

P. S. Here is an online healing that you can experience within the sanctuary of your home. Invest in your energetic well-being here.

I want you to know that…

You get triggered by life, people, situations, circumstances, relationships, or events because you haven’t tended to the needs of your inner child that gets threatened by that situation, conversation, thought, action or vibration. 

You haven’t taken the responsibility to notice, name, voice, take action on, and ask for support and assistance for your needs.

You haven’t realized that you are living in the vibrational soup that you are co-creating with others. 

And you haven’t understood that the only variable you can do anything about in the soup is you.

The only thing you can do to heal from getting triggered is to tend to the needs of the parts of you that get triggered.

Rather than complaining, shaming, blaming, pointing fingers (in other words, giving your power away), or avoiding, numbing, ignoring, or not listening, take responsibility for your reaction. Own the responsibility to take care of your needs and the needs of your inner children and your ancestors that continue to live in and through you.

I want you to breathe with this: as long as you breathe, you can change your vibrational reality by tending to your needs, taking care of your nervous system and asking for support when you need to. 

I see you, I know you, I love and accept all of you no matter where you are on your healing journey.

I invite you to arrange a 15-minute complimentary call with me to chat about how you can deepen your energetic well-being and healing through working together.

Sending you virtual hugs,

With love, light, and gratitude,

Damla

P. S. My two online courses are open for enrollment until April 18, 2020.

Tending To Your Needs teaches you how to tend to the vibrational needs of your inner children and your ancestors, and how to work with the resistance to tend to your needs.

($400+ value, over 3.5 hours of video lessons, 4 hours of guided meditations, and home-play worksheets)

Introduction to EFT Tapping empowers you with a quick, effective and powerful nervous system regulation and vibrational repatterning tool that you can use for yourself and your family, and have with you for your lifetime as an invaluable support. 

($400+ value, 3 hours of video lessons, 4 hours ​of guided meditations, includes a special bonus lesson on Tapping With Your Kids)