Years ago, when having a dialogue with my guidance, she said to me, "Your challenge is to learn to stay open-hearted, no matter what."

I took this very seriously and worked for many years to learn to keep my heart open, no matter what – even in the face of fear and even in the face of others' unloving behavior.

Now I can do this, and it fills me with joy!

What I've learned about joy is that when I fully take my eyes off what others are doing and stay open and connected with my own feelings and my guidance, spirit fills me with joy. This is an experience of Grace and I feel completely blessed by this profound joy.

This may sound easy, but it took me many years to learn. Why did it take so long?

The problem for me was that I would get myself into a great open-hearted place, but as soon as someone close to me was angry, blaming, shut down or in any way disconnected from me, my eyes were on them rather than on me. My wounded self would get triggered by their wounded self and I would be reactive – getting angry, shutting down, 'speaking my truth,' so they didn't think they could 'get away with' treating me this way.

But whenever I reacted in any of these ways, I lost my connection with myself and my guidance, and with it went my joy.

I had been taught, like so many of us, that I had to be strong and stand up for myself. I learned to do this really well, but it didn’t seem to lead to joy.

I had also been taught to stay open to learning with them – rather than with me. I thought that this openness with them would help to resolve things, but again I lost my joy in the process.

One day, while out walking and doing my Inner Bonding work, my guidance came through loud and clear with a new instruction for me. It was one of those moments of Grace and clarity that shifted everything for me. It was like a bolt of lightening struck me and I saw clearly what needed to happen to maintain my joy. Here is what she said to me:

"My dear one, the most important thing for you to do is stay connected with yourself when someone else is disconnected. To do this, put your hands on your heart and get fully present inside – with me and with your little girl. Bring compassion to the feelings of sadness, loneliness, and heartbreak that you feel when someone important to you disconnects from you and/or themselves. Let go of thinking that you need to say anything at all to them. You don't need to get them to see anything. You don't need to try to get them to stop. You don't need to focus on not letting them get away with treating you badly. All you need to do is get fully present with me and with your feelings, with compassion for your painful feelings."

I realized in that moment that I was very often outside myself when someone was acting out, trying to control them rather than take loving care of me. I saw that I needed to completely let go of any focus on what they were doing and only focus on what my inner child needed from me.

In that moment, I let go of control over others on a very deep level.

Since then, I have been able, most of the time, to go inside the moment I'm at all triggered by anyone else. It generally just takes a minute to attend to the loneliness, heartbreak, or crushed or shattered feeling, with compassion – and the feeling releases.

What has happened as a result of this is that I'm now able to keep my heart open almost all the time, and this results in profound joy! Sometimes my joy is so intense that I can hardly contain it!

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