Welcome back friends. I'm so grateful that you're here. My head is buzzy right now. Because have you ever come to like a realization, a major light bulb moment, and you had a visceral response? That's what I'm experiencing right now. And just to mark the moment, I'm gonna light a candle. It's my bring your own Sunshine candle, the one that I branded for Picture Love, because, my definition of bringing your own sunshine is do your part, you know, tend to yourself so that you can show up as a more supportive, authentic. Authentic version of yourself. I was just listening to see if there was another word that wanted to pop in. So I lit my candle. And I wanna share with you a dream I had in the early hours this morning. And I don't know about you, but when I get. An hour, hour and a half of sleep, and then I wake up and then I go back to sleep. I usually can indulge in some very colorful or vivid or very distinct dreams, and I've made a habit of journaling them, writing them down, even if it's just a color and emotion. Setting, and sometimes it's too hard to put into words because it feels so abstract, but I've found that it's very, very useful in reflection. As a matter of fact, if you've been around for any period of time, maybe you recalled the Ape in the Chair episode that I recorded for Picture Love, and it was me unpacking something. Well, I think my dreams helped me unpack another layer of something really, really life- improving for me. And I'm sharing it with you in hopes that it stirs something, makes you feel maybe seen or heard, or helps you open a door that needs to be opened to clean out a closet or something metaphorically helpful like that. Anyway, in this dream, I was actually in the backyard of my. Grandmother's house, my grandparents' house, they were wonderful gardeners. And in this dream that was my home with the current family, you know, dreams. Hmm. Crazy. And I'm walking out there with the poop bag, cleaning up piles for my dogs, and I noticed my older dog, Beasley was covering something and I thought, Beasley, did you dig another hole? You know, like current day questions? And she was hiding something. And then I come to discover that she is not hiding, but she was protecting and warming two newborn puppies. And these two newborn puppies were so perfect. They didn't look very furry. They looked new. Then I looked around to see if there were any others, and I noticed a deceased mama and whatever had happened to that mother dog. She was obscured by bushes. I knew Beasley had nothing to do with it. She's just so gentle. And my other dog was nowhere in the scene, but Beasley went into mama mode. You know that that innate. Nature, maternal instinct where she knew that there were some puppies and they needed some shelter, and she I can pause and tell you all the wonderful things about my dog, but that wasn't the message of the dream, the dream. Overlooked that. The dream overlooked the beauty of the new life, the beauty of little puppies, whi, which to me represent playfulness and vitality and new life and excitement and new adventures and new chapters and sunshine. And I didn't, I didn't go to the what Beasley did, which to me was just like an expression of love, of natural, divine, beautiful love. Protecting the young and, and keeping them warm and all that my attention went to:"Do I know what to do with newborns who don't have a mother?" Okay, these are orphan puppies."What do I do?" And my mind went into a loop of trying to troubleshoot and try to fix it instead of noticing the beauty and the love and the miracle of life and the joy. All of the beautiful thing, beautiful things that brand new puppies can represent for so many people. And so then I woke up because I heard my daughter coughing and I was like, went to go check on her and came back to bed. Went back to the same loop of questions. What do I do? What did the, what do these doggies need? Do I, I don't wanna put them in a shelter. They need, they need something, somebody to nurse them. They, I don't know how to take care of newborn newborns. I've never had a newborn, newborn animal before. And then I fell back asleep to just all that. Woke up again. My husband made a noise. I went back to sleep to the same questions. So my mind was looping on unanswered questions. Then I wake up with a song in my head and the title is, is Escaping me right now. Oh, to build a home, it, it was kind of ambient. It wasn't primary, but I just really, I sat with it and then I started to realize that. I was being given an opportunity. Let me back up. My awake response to the looping was, Ugh, that's so restraining. Ugh. I felt caged in. It was annoyance. It was exhaustion. It was, it depleting thoughts and responses to the pattern of questions that weren't being answered in my dreams. And then after sitting with it long enough and putting it together. I kind of started to see that, that that dog, the mother, might be an old version of me, and that how life can be cared for, even by letting, even when I'm letting go of my old take care of everything and fix it. Habits. And so I started to wonder maybe that loop wasn't actually a loop. Maybe I was just seeing it wrong. Maybe that loop was grace. Maybe that grace was giving me an unlimited amount of tries to get it right. Maybe that loop was a do-over and then another, and then another. It wasn't rapid fire. I wasn't the goalie standing in the net with my whole team just endlessly hitting hard balls at me to block. It wasn't that. It was giving me a chance when I didn't get the right answer, it was giving me another chance. It was that teacher letting me retake the quiz until I got a hundred. And a hundred is very subjective for me. My lesson is not the same as everybody else's. True? So the next time you find yourself in a thought loop, it might be in your waking hours, it might be in your sleeping hours. Maybe you're being given grace. Maybe you're being given space to come to a different conclusion. Instead of trying to find all the answers, maybe we're being taught to not fix it- But notice it. Notice the playful puppy aspects of what's looping. Maybe notice that death is part of life. It's part of a cycle, and in death, it doesn't mean it's the end, it means it's the beginning of a new chapter. And appreciating all the different stages and the different lessons in life. So maybe those loops are grace, steps of grace. So this might seem a little radical, but the next time we find ourselves in a repeating thought- whether it's a conversation you know, replaying itself or something that's not resolved in our minds, or maybe processing a dream or something like that. Let's zoom out. Let's take a bird's eye view of it and look at it with curiosity. Let's try to detach from expectations. Let's try to zoom out enough and detach ourselves that we can absolutely make self-judgment irrelevant, unnecessary. It's something that melts away because the temperature just does not, is not conducive to that. But allow ourselves to actually look at something and say, okay,"what's the obvious?", What are the details that are supporting the obvious that I'm not focusing on right now?" And what is it that, what is the one wall I keep running into that I probably need to consider backing away from altogether?" I did not see myself trying to be a fixer. I thought I had healed that in myself, but it just goes to show there's always new layers of what we learn, right? Life always gives us opportunities to practice and learn new layers of our lessons. But then in that zoomed out version with curiosity and that willingness to back away from the wall altogether, consider what other things are waiting to be noticed. I love to, I love to look at appreciation as a starter. Appreciation brings ease, appreciation, relaxes, judgment, you know, good versus bad. I mean, yes, of course there's validity to what we desire and what we find undesirable, and we don't all have to agree on what's desirable and what's undesirable. That is something that as humans, we get to each decide for ourselves. And we can also find freedom in agreeing that we see things differently. But that being said, allowing ourselves to be curious, noticing what are the other supporting details, noticing what, what's the wall we keep running into? And if we backed up and turned even just a degree. What would that new perspective look like? And if we're really, really in a bad way, what would it look like if we did a 180 and turned our back to that wall we keep running into? What are we gonna discover that was behind us, that now we can see from a, a bird's eye view? What's there? And trusting ourselves to actually see it and be open to finding new insight. And here's the other thing that tends to drive me bonkers. I don't know about you, but a lot of us humans have issues with patience. And understanding that answers don't have to come exactly when they're asked, but that the asking of the question is the initiation that opens us up to find a reply or an option or a possible answer- and in some cases, an absolute answer. And that can come from speaking to somebody who does resonate and can look at something objectively with you or from the perspective you're asking for. But I would like to remind all of us that the best way to learn about ourselves is to go within and going to somebody you trust, somebody who is going to be in integrity with you is a great second choice. Or sometimes just that sound wall where if you hear yourself speaking to somebody explaining it, your voice is going to reveal the answer and you just needed that person to hold that space to be the sound wall to bounce off of. So. A quick, quick little sidebar. Shout out to Joanne who sent me a text about a mantra that I, I offered a few episodes back and she said how much that supported her and, and that felt really good to me too because I love, I love mantras, I love filling my thoughts with. Supportive information that creates space. And so I came up with a few lines that you could phrase into a mantra if it feels good for you today. And this one is about grace, and it has a redo energy in it."I am allowed to return. I trust my becoming. I don't need all the answers in this moment. I release what is no longer mine to carry. And I understand that my freedom, my sovereignty lies in gentleness and grace." Maybe that supports somebody today. I hope so. It's with my deepest love and and gratitude for listening to my perspectives. I would love so much to have a two-way conversation on the topic of loops or situations where you feel like you are in a loop. I know some people have have coined it other phrases, but where you feel like you're out of control because something is looping your mind or looping a situation or a repeated pattern. Sometimes it's really not the cage it appears. Sometimes it is grace, lovingly giving us a second chance and a third and a hundredth, however many it takes. Because to me, that's love. It's infinite. It's it's unlimited. The way I choose to picture love for myself and others today is seeing the space in the do-overs and the freedom of being able to back up and look at it from a fresh perspective. I hope that helps somebody else picture love today. If there's something here that really lit a light bulb for you, please share it with a friend. I love you. See you next time.