Ellen Besso Coaching

We are everything.” –Debbie Ford

We bought our first home over twenty years ago, a tiny semi-detached, two-story house in the east end of Toronto. After a while a very large extended family moved into the twin side of our house. They left overflowing trash cans by their front door in the heat of the summer, parked their vehicles on the lawn, sometimes got drunk and shouted at each other, and so on. I had many judgments about this family and felt that no good would come of the situation.

After a few months of this we went to my mother’s cottage up north for a long weekend, and I had a dream. I dreamed about my neighbors next door, and in my dream I received the message “You are just like them…you have had a life like theirs in the past.” In the dream I realized that I could not judge them because we were actually very much alike.

At the end of the weekend we returned home to Toronto to find that our neighbours had cleaned up the garbage, removed their van from the lawn and planted flowers out front in a large tire planter. There was no rational explanation for this event that many would call coincidence, but I knew that something out of the ordinary had taken place. Somehow my dream had allowed me access to important information, knowledge I didn’t have during my waking hours. It had given me a window into a place where we are all connected.

At her Shadow Process Workshop in early November, Debbie Ford told us: “We are everything…all the light and all the dark.” The idea that each of us has parts of ourselves – both positive and negative – that are hidden in our daily interactions wasn’t new to me, I’ve been interested in Jungian shadow theory for many years. Grasping that we all embody every light and dark quality takes it a step further. Debbie’s wisdom, along with the careful design and flow of the workshop brought the message home to me in a profound way.

If we believe we are everything, we by definition include all the good qualities available as well as all the ‘negative’ ones we try to hide from the world. We’re the same as the wealthy woman, or the woman on the downtown east side of Vancouver, or anytown USA or Canada.

What better time of year than the holiday season to embrace this idea of oneness? If we do a personal inventory we may recognize that when we judge others we’re really showing distain for parts of ourselves. This simple action will be reflected in everything we do and say this holiday season.

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The Caregiver in MidLife, my new e-book for women caring for aging parents can be pre-ordered now through my website.