Victoria's Compass
 Do you enjoy podcasts? I was so happy December was here! I wanted all the Christmas adventures, traditions and profound meanings of this Season. I was so joyful to get started on all of it and at the end of my day, I decided to watch a Christmas movie. Once the movie ended, I felt so incredibly lonely. At that moment i wasn't too sure where it was coming from so I decided to watch another movie to change my mood. I skimmed through the rest of the holiday movie options and I was stunned by the fact that 95% of the holiday movies were about Romantic-love. What have we done to Christmas? Are we making this the loneliest time of the year? I observed this feeling of anxiety come over me when I thought of my single-status over the holidays. I thought to myself, “Why am I feeling this way after this movie? I didn’t feel this way about my singleness before”. I sat there curious about the other holiday movies and as I watched the previews I noticed that the MAJORITY of the movies revolved around someone being single and lonely. Movies like, “Love Hard”, “The Knight Before Christmas”, “Holiday In The Wild”, “The Holiday Calendar”, “Holidate”, ”My Dad’s Christmas Date”, “Single All the Way”, the list goes on and on! The storylines of these movies were all the same, they were based around the idea that they must find romance during the holidays and to our surprise, the director makes sure that the movie ends with them finding it. All the singles in these holiday movies weren’t portrayed as someone who was secure and fulfilled, it all showed them depressed, desperate and heart broken. It’s no wonder people feel the loneliest during the holidays! USA Today stated, “The busiest day of the year for online dating is the 5th of January” (https://www.usatoday.com/tech/). The world is influencing our idea of what it means to be single during the holidays. Filling our mind with the idea that you can’t enjoy the holidays UNLESS you “find romance”. Are we losing sight of Christmas? I had to really take a step back after seeing this pattern in movies. I decided to clean and decorate so I put some Christmas music on. Aware of the influence in movies, it didn’t come to a surprise when I witnessed the same influence in music. Songs like, “All I want for Christmas is you”, “Under the mistletoe”, “Santa tell me”, “Christmas without you” etc. All of it revolved around fantasizing Romance during the holidays. At this point you may think, “So what?!”. Then I ask you, does it not make you sad? Does it not sadden you that we have made that a primal focus of Christmas? Letting the world get clouded and lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas. Agape Love I promise you that Romantic-love isn’t about Christmas. Romantic-love happens all year round when we are in alignment for it. Whether you believe in Jesus Christ or not, Christmas is about his birth. Before you disregard this whole blog because you don’t follow him, at least honor what he stood for if you choose to celebrate Christmas. He stood for what MANY people stand for despite religion, and that is, Agape Love. Agape Love is an unconditional, self-sacrificing love that is said by many spiritual leaders to be above all other “types” of love. Jesus’ birth is a story of perseverance, sacrifice, humility, service and so much more. If you enjoy the traditions that have been inspired through Christmas, all I ask is that you welcome Agape love, if anything else, make Christmas about that. How do you make Christmas about that? Initiate servanthood and help a friend, a stranger; someone in need. Truly serve someone who needs your love because acts of kindness are pretty but acts of serving someone in need are life changing. Look for an absence of love and be the one to bring love in that absence. That space can either be a home, work, person and even nature. You also make Christmas about it when you persevere for someone else. Who needs hope around you to help them persevere? One of my favorites is Humility through forgiveness and apology. Who do you need to forgive? Who do you need to apologize to? Another one of my favorites is Unity. Is there anywhere you can fill a gap to unite people? Maybe someone needs encouragement to unite with their family. Maybe it’s time for you to create unity through a cause? All of these beautiful initiations can start to bring back the true meaning of Christmas. P.S. You are not lonely during this season, you have just become distracted by the influence of the world and it’s time to refocus. Peace and love be with you! Love, Victoria GOLD Do you enjoy podcasts?
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 I know all too well about what it means to lose yourself. It means losing a grip on your true identity, it means being careless of your character, standing on sand because you have no true foundation on what you value. It’s like chasing ghosts in thinking that you can actually gain significance by running after the superficial. It’s never owning a mirror because you are too ashamed to look into one. It’s to feel like your body doesn’t exist because you can never gage the proximity of where you are. ENERGY I was putting all my energy into the idea that I was only somebody to anybody when I worked like a dog, or when I made money and when I got the next promotion. I could never be enough unless I pleased somebody and I used money to show them I loved them. I would get attention from being the best at a job and I got noticed by suitors for it. I felt like I was being liked for this mask and cape I would wear for only a small period of time. I was drained. I acted out and it wasn’t pretty. I acted out for many reasons. If I am honest, all this energy that got me lost came from this illusion in my head that I needed to make up for a lot. CONFRONTING THE INNER-BATTLE Trauma can do damage by distracting us away from what’s within us. We instill false ideas that turn into false deep rooted beliefs about ourselves. We try to run so far away from what lives in our head that we forget we only run away from ourselves and get so lost. I didn’t know I was lost for a long time because all of these exterior validations distracted me from what was really happening. Until, one day, this inner battle that was there constantly couldn’t stay quiet. Not by money, not by a promotion or a compliment. I remember sitting on my bathroom floor sobbing and tired of feeling empty. I asked God to show me how to get “me” back, I didn’t know it at the time but I was asking to lead me back to my soul, my true identity. I remember feeling peace in my gut and I stopped crying. The answer came to me so rapidly, “go back to your roots, your home”. This home isn’t anything you can touch, it’s everything that feeds your soul. My values had drifted away from me so far that I had abandoned the labor of maintaining the home inside me. I got up and knew how to do what I had never intentionally done, and that was to build my foundation. TIME TO COME HOME I got my journal out and wrote down all my values, I wrote down how I could honor these values, I wrote why they were there and how I would build on them. I worked on them like they were a job and I started feeling full again. I won’t say this was an easy process. It took so much trial and error. Soon I figured out that a lot of my habits were going to get in the way of honoring my values so I changed them. My attitude towards certain ideas of life were limiting my foundation and I changed those too. It was a process and I still learn more about my home to this day but now I know how to get home. I don’t know who I am writing this to but I hope you find your way home. Sit with yourself and ask yourself questions you are too afraid to answer. I invite you to create a log-in to the “Team GOLD” tab where you can find a questionnaire as a guide to get back home. I wish you peace and love. Love, Victoria GOLD |
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