I Was Taught to Survive, not Thrive

A recent dive into my ancestry, taught me something about myself. It wasn’t the old DeForest grocery store in a small town in Nebraska. Although that did reveal a long line of fried chicken lovers in my family tree. The grocery store advertised it’s “live” and “dressed” chickens are “great for fried chicken”. It’s been my favorite food since I was young. My mom would bring home those familiar buckets of chicken, those were the best days. Maybe it was one of her favorite foods as well.

When I look at the family tree that I’m building, I notice that most of my ancestors were hard workers. There are a few entrepreneurs, a doctor, and there are many farmers in my family tree. They all seemed to be very hard workers.

It wasn’t surprising though my maternal grandparents were farmers, my uncles were farmers. I remember them working from sunup to sundown and often into the night during harvest. My mother always worked hard too. By the time I was in first grade, my parents were divorced, and my mother was supporting five children by herself. She worked all day for someone else and came home to work all night for her children.

I grew up surrounded by people who worked very long hours. And when I got to working age, I did the same thing. I was proud to have that good Midwest work ethic, but then I worked to an extreme. I worked in finance and accounting which afforded me the opportunity to work from sunup to deep into the night for half the year during budget season and fiscal quarter ends. Just like my mother I worked all day and late into the night.

From my family tree, I learned that I was taught to survive, but I was never taught to thrive. I was taught to get up, go to work, get home, go to bed and do it all again the next day. I was taught that this is the way life should be and it took me a very long time to figure out that all work and no play makes me a very dull girl.

At fifty-five years old, I’m learning how to thrive. I’m learning to do the things that I like to do, more accurately, I’m learning what I like to do. I’m also learning how to just be. I’m learning how to enjoy my life. I’m learning to thrive.

Generational Patterns.

Some spiritual people talk about breaking generational curses, but really its about changing generational patterns of behavior. Breaking patterns of behavior can be challenging because our entire family line has been doing things the same way. It’s ingrained in us; some say it’s in our DNA.

So, when someone from a hardworking family decides to go in a completely different direction, it’s breaking that pattern. It takes hard work and dedication to change what’s deep inside of us, but it’s also worth it to follow our heart, follow our inner guidance.

Learning to Thrive.

Learning to thrive hasn’t come naturally to me. Parts of me felt guilty for not working my ass off from dawn until late into the night. My Spirit guides have nudged me many times and still I held onto working long hours. I insisted on working harder, smarter too, but my guides wanted me to see my life in a different way.

My guides, my whole Spirit team, want me to be in flow, receiving, and manifesting. They want me to adjust my vibration to attract. It’s taken me a very long time to learn how to be in flow.

They are still guiding me through this new phase of my life. I am following Divine guidance, listening to my intuition, and finding my way forward. I feel like I’ve written that a lot lately, “finding my way forward”. Each time I get a burst of energy thinking I know what comes next, Spirit puts the brakes on and slows me down.

To be honest, in this moment, I have no idea what my future holds. But I do know that I am no longer interested in working all day and all night. Moving forward I will choose a path that includes time and space for being, for savoring life, and for thriving.

The dive into my ancestry has shown me the patterns and conditioning that came with and through my family for many generations. Those are the patterns and conditioning, the karma, that I’ve been releasing. My family tree has helped me heal.

It was my Spirit Guides that led me to researching my ancestry. It was something I was interested in for a while, but then it became part of my spiritual path. I didn’t know that it was going to be part of my healing. Sometimes while on our path, we must trust the healing before we understand exactly what it is that we are healing. It’s a funny kind of trust and faith that I am only now beginning to understand along with learning how to thrive.

The picture used today is four generations of women in my family. I am the baby on the lap of my great grandmother Louise. On her right is my grandmother Lauretta, my mom, Roberta, is to her left with my brother on her lap. My sister is in the foreground. Maybe, with all the kids around, they are thriving.  

Be well,

Nikki