How your attachments affect you.

The Love.Heal.Thrive. Podcast

Summary

In this episode, Erin Garay discusses the experience of transitioning to a new chapter in life, specifically the departure of a child to college. She explores the concept of attachments and how they affect our emotions and mindset during times of change. Erin emphasizes the importance of processing grief and honoring the past while embracing the present and future. She encourages listeners to find a balance between feeling safe and secure and letting go of attachments. Erin also discusses the role we play in different chapters of our lives and the importance of embracing change and the unknown.

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Links:

Falling Upward By Richard Rohr

The Relationship between the root chakra and the heart chakra. Part 3 of 4 of the Counter Chakra System from Establishing Equilibrium

Establishing Equilibrium by Erin Garay

The relationship between the Crown Chakra & Solar Plexus Chakra? Part 1 of 4 of the Counter Chakra System

Grief and Healing in After loss image

Grounding with Gratitude

Earth Blanket meditation

Takeaways

• Transitions to new chapters in life can bring up attachments and emotions, such as grief and sadness.
• It is important to honor and process these emotions in order to move forward in a healthy way.
• Attachments to the way things were and the roles we played can hold us back from fully embracing the present and future.
• Finding a balance between feeling safe and secure and letting go of attachments is key to navigating transitions.
• Embracing change and the unknown allows for personal growth and the opportunity to create a fulfilling next chapter.

Chapters

• 00:00Introduction and Overview
• 03:24College Departure and Attachments
• 08:19Attachments to the Way Things Were
• 12:14Attachments to the Role We Played
• 19:30Attachments to How Things Will Be
• 26:38Embracing the Unknown and the Future Role
• 35:02Conclusion and Moving into the Next Chapter

Transcript

Erin (00:02)

Welcome to the Love, Heal, Thrive podcast where you learn to love yourself enough to heal and heal yourself enough to thrive. I'm your host, Erin Garay. I'm a hypnotherapist, Reiki master, certified Enneagram meditation and transformation coach, and someone who has been able to turn her energy sensitivity into her superpower. And I want that for you too. In this show, I will teach you how to know and understand and maximize your energy system.

We'll teach you about your intuition and to show you how to create a mindset that helps you be untriggerable. I'm so happy you're here. Let's get started.

Welcome to season number three. Welcome back from our summer break. I hope you had an amazing six weeks. I did. And I also took some time to process my life as a lot of life changes happened during this time. And for me, I am more of a tortoise when it comes to working through life challenges. I like to go into my shell.

and hibernate and take care of my inner workings so that I can then come out heel -holding complete and ready to hold space for my loved ones, for myself, and for my work. So that is what I did during this time period because while we were away, I launched my baby girl off into college in another state, which...

functionally was a new challenge for me and emotionally was definitely a new challenge. So that is what we are going to dive into today.

You're going to dive into the college departure.

We are going to dive into the experience of the college departure through the lens of attachment. And it does not matter if you have not launched a college student, attachments exist everywhere. And we are going to talk about that and what that looks like and how it applies to you. So while today's may be infused with some college stories,

I also help relate this to you if you are looking at entering a new chapter and new chapters exist all the time. This can look like the start of a new friendship, start of a new relationship, start of a new job, getting married, having a baby, deciding today, I want to start doing something different for myself. New habits are a next chapter when we begin to change how we eat.

We often feel sad about the chapter we left. Next chapters exist all the time. So don't you worry. Some of my stories will be about college today, they also attachments are relatable to every life change. So I'm so, so happy you're here.

And yes, my baby girl is in college in a different state, which definitely required a lot of logistical planning. So between the shipping things across the country, both online purchase and home, as well as checking that list about a thousand times, these physical things made us

These physical things overshadowed what was really going on. This process from one chapter to the next, the storybook of our family was about to turn a huge page. Grayland, which one of my best friends calls our house, was about to start a new chapter.

Garayland, the story of my family.

I prefer to call it the next chapter instead of empty nesting. know, when a bird leaves a nest, it leaves the nest either one because it's undesirable anymore, or it has been overrun with mites and lice and parasites. And I did not feel like that was an accurate representation of my home. You see, over the many years that I've lived in my home of

course, I have raised these beautiful birdies to launch and go be into the world. However, like mama birds all over the world, in addition to those birdies, I've also every day gathered and brought back beautiful strings of yarn, beautiful twigs, beautiful pieces of tinsel to decorate and warm my home so that it is inviting

and comforting and nourishing to my family and to anyone that stops in. So I feel like empty nesting is not an accurate term and I encourage everyone everywhere to begin saying next chapter or however you would love to term it for yourself. Let me know in the comments down below if you have a different term. But for me, it is next chapter because I haven't left my nest empty.

I have launched these beautiful human beings out into the world to go make this world a better place. And in fact, Richard Rohr in his book, Falling Upward, I'll include a link down below, says that

States that, states that children have to leave their nucleus family of their mother and father so that they can go and join the world family. And I feel like that quote has been so helpful for me in recognizing, they're just off joining the world family because we've done our job and we've done our job very well. They're securely attached. So,

We go from the daily interaction to one hour a week that we get to FaceTime and talk because they're having so much fun. They're involved in so many things and doing so many wonderful things, which is exactly as it's supposed to be.

Excuse me.

So what are?

So today we are diving into the question, how are your next?

So today we are diving into the question, how are your next chapter attachments affecting you? We are going to look at our attachments in three different ways. We're going to look at the attachments that we have about the way things were and the roles that we played in it. We are going to look at our attachments to our current situation and the role that we're playing. And then we're going to look at our attachments to what's to come and the role that we think we might play there.

And my hope is that as we...

dig into these attachments. As we dig into what this looks like, you can begin to have more compassion for yourself. You can begin to have a little more awareness of what's actually happening so that one, you don't take things so personally, but two, you begin to have more grace for yourself and for those around you. So what are attachments?

So what are attachments? Attachments are the function of energy.

Attachments are an energetic function of the heart. So we create attachment to a longing of the heart, of the way things should be or could be or feel comfortable being. And why do we think this is? Well, the answer of course lies in the counter chakra system. I will include a link down below to the heart and root chakra episode I did.

We believe something should be a different way in our heart. We cling to that because we believe that in having it, we will feel safer. We will feel more secure. We will feel included. All those themes are themes of the root chakra energy.

I will include a link down below to episode one, where I dive into the root chakra, heart chakra, counter chakra partnership here in the space from establishing equilibrium.

But as we dive into this, think this is such a perfect place to begin because attachments are there because we believe they're going to help us feel a certain way. when we, as we've learned, so as you have learned in my book, establishing equilibrium, when one energy center is symptomatic, it is actually the partner.

the asymptomatic partner that needs nourishment. So when we see an attachment to something, it has to be this way. It should be this way. We want to look to the opposite. Why? What do we think we're going to benefit from that? How are we feeling safer? How are we feeling more secure? How are we feeling more included if we were to have this attachment? Because sometimes we can be fierce about those attachments.

But when we ground our root chakra energy, when we nourish that root chakra energy, it helps to loosen the stronghold on that attachment.

How are your next chapter attachments affecting you?

How do you need to be safer right now? How are you looking to be more secure or included and what things in your life have to be a certain way because you think you're going to get those things.

begin to look at this partnership and what it's really trying to tell you.

So first attachments to the way things were, let's face it. We love knowing how things turn out. We know that it's a known variable. There's no surprises or fewer surprises. We don't have to try to control anything or we know what we can control or did control. We don't have to.

be surprised or worry or have any faith because it's already happened. We're on the other side of it and we can look to the brain axis. We can look to the solar plexus and crown chakra partnership here. Again, I'll include a link down below to the original episode talking about this partnership, but our solar plexus that is located right below our rib cage holds onto the themes of control and fear and joy.

But the counter chakra to that is our crown chakra, where we hold our faith and trusting everything happens in the perfect divine time at the perfect divine way. The opposite of holding onto that fear.

But when it's already happened, we can have all the faith in the world because we know how it's already turned out. We don't have to try to control. The goal here though, moving forward is having that balance of faith and knowing we don't have to control because everything is blessing us. And what does this look like in terms of launching a birdie out of the nest? Well, it shifts from, wow, I was super attached to.

chatting every day and enjoying the intimacy of family life, knowing what you ate that day and being able to nourish you with food and emotion and hearing the nuance of your daily life. I loved that. Who doesn't love that?

So that I believe for many parents is a big shift in not having that daily connection that then moves to the one hour FaceTime once a week. And in fact, just last night I was cleaning up from the day, from the night it was rather late. I'm not usually up so late anymore because now children, I don't have to stay up for curfew.

They had no idea how long, how hard it was to stand for curfew, but it was nearing curfew time as I was putting away dishes in the dishwasher and wiping the counter. And I had a moment where I looked at the clock and my mind forgot that I was next chaptering. And I had this thought very quickly thinking, I wonder when she's going to come home. And I, I.

energetically and emotionally had this expectation that I was going to hear the keys in the door and that the door was going to unlock.

and that she was going to knock on the door to come in.

than she didn't. And that was sad. That brought up so much grief for me right there in that moment. And that's healthy grief. That's how we, when we process our grief properly as we move from one chapter to the next, we are able to release that chapter.

in a healthy fashion, in a healthy way. So it is so imperative to feel the grief and to feel the sadness of whatever your next chapter looks like so that you can then move on to the next chapter. So in that moment,

I felt so sad and I felt this wave of grief show up. And of course, as the universe would have it, of course, I looked at my phone and this beautiful image showed up on my social media feed because, you know, our phones read our minds. I literally didn't say anything out loud. It was actually kind of creepy that it could read my mind that way.

But this was from, oops.

This was.

This was from grief and healing in the after loss. And so this is specific to death, but I want you to look at next chapter in as a, as a form of death. It's still permanent. It's just a different aspect of your life that has moved on to the next chapter. So it says what people think we grieve. What people think we grieve the loved ones that we lost. What we actually grieve.

and then it goes on to list these things.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

So there was this beautiful image from the grief, from grief and healing in the after loss.

So in this image, it lists two items, what people think we grieve and what we actually grieve. And so it just has one thing for what people think we grieve. What people think we grieve, the loved ones that we lost, what we actually grieve, all of the missed moments, the memories we can no longer make, the empty chairs at the dinner table, the conversations that we can no longer have.

all of the happy moments we want to.

All of the happy moments we want to share. Our life before they died. All of the future plans we made.

And I would say here in this moment, curfew, the welcoming of your child home after curfew and just the energy that exists here in the home when your family unit is together or whatever that next chapter is for you. For me, of course, again, it is going to be centered around the college launch.

But we miss those, what I would dare say again, root chakra experiences, the physical experience of our life is found here in the root chakra. It is tangible. It is physical. We miss those things that then create this grief experience in our heart chakra.

So through this, if you are next chaptering, I would encourage you to ground your energy even more. Go sit outside and put your feet on the grass. Do more grounding exercises. I will include a link down below to some grounding meditations that I have put out. I also envision my energetic cores.

I also envision my energetic cords every single day, about a hundred times a day, maybe not a hundred, but a lot. And invite this beautiful Walmart Earth energy to nourish my pelvic floor, the base of my spine, my perineum. I encourage that for you too, so that you can begin to feel safe and secure, included and protected so that you have less attachments to moving forward.

And is it the things, and then we're going to look at the role that you used to play. Is it the things that you are attached to, or is it your role that you used to be attached to? Sorry. Or is it your role that you used to play that you're attached to? And roles are great. Roles allow us to have multiple layers, multiple layers of wisdom.

to pull from.

It's okay to be attached to that role, but in recognizing it's the role, you can begin to reassign your role as a purposeful role into the next chapter. One of my favorite shows is This Is Us and Mandy Moore when she was talking to her adult child. So if you're familiar with the show, it spans multiple generations and tells the story of a family through multiple generations.

So there's an iteration of these triplets as babies, and then those triplets grow up and are adults, and then those children, their children grow up. And so it's like this really interesting timeline of storytelling all about this family. So in this one particular scene though, the matriarch of the main family is older.

And she has an adult daughter that she's talking to. And she says to her, I thought this is the best explanation of motherhood that could exist. She said, when I look at you, I see every version of you.

So we see the baby and we see the five year old, the 10 year old, the 15 year old, the 20 year old. We see every version when we look at our children.

And I think along with each of those versions was a role that we played during that. The parent that we needed to be when they were babies is not the same parent that they needed when they were 15 or 20 or what I imagine at 30. aren't there yet. And I remember my mom would always joke and say, motherhood is the only job that once

And my mom would once, my mom would always say, my mom would always joke, motherhood is the only job that once you're experienced, you're unemployed. And no, we will always be mom and we're not unemployed, but our role definitely changes from what was to now to what will be. Our role is simply.

different. move from that daily survivor to helping them survive on the daily to becoming a coach or an advisor and someone who has less.

insight and influence into their daily decisions.

So how are your next chapter attachments affecting you?

recognizing what we are feeling as this chapter closes as grief is so important and this visually was just so true as I as I mentioned we flew we had to fly to drop our daughter off to college and as we were leaving and flying away you could see I happened to

be sitting on the side of the plane that you could see the university as I was leaving and had a football stadium.

And so as we were flying away, the stadium was got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller in my window. And as you can imagine, I cried harder and harder and harder and harder as the stadium got smaller and smaller. And so I just felt like it was such a visual.

I felt like it was such a visually tangible moment and illustration of this chapter closing and my role changing and that she was there and I was going to be back home. I could feel it. You can literally feel my role changing second by second, minute by minute, clap by cloud.

I could literally feel my role changing second by second, inch by inch, cloud by cloud.

Life was changing. And that's a good thing. It is a good thing when we don't have so many attachments.

So as we move on to the current moment, we can recognize that as we make this transition from one chapter to the next, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.

we can recognize that as we move from one chapter to the next, that there is grief that exists in that. If you loved that chapter, there are parts of that chapter you don't want to leave behind. And the only constant in life is that there is always change. Things will always change. And when we can begin to know that,

we can feel safe and secure and provided for and included no matter what the change is.

And we can recognize that we need to honor that grief.

Have you ever had friends that seem stuck in the past? That they just can't seem to get moving forward. They're just stuck. They're still stuck on old friendships. They're still stuck on old ways and habits and things. They feel like the glory day was then instead of now. The reason why energetically

They're still stuck there is they still have all of these attachments there because they feel that was safe. That was secure. That's offering them safety and security and provision. They haven't come to realize that you can have that here in the current space as well as in chapters to come. And part of what holds us there is not allowing yourself or this person to process the grief.

As we process the grief, as we process our emotions, it allows us to let go of those old attachments and come into this safety and security in the present moment.

So if you are experiencing a next chapter and someone else is involved in that next chapter. So for instance, for me with my daughter, you can be happy for them. You can be excited for them. It is all those things. I'm so excited for my daughter. I'm so happy for her and I am grieving that change. She's fun to hang out with. I miss seeing her. I'm sad because I miss seeing her.

That doesn't mean I'm not all those other things. We can normalize feeling all sorts of things all at one time. This is grief. Grief is all the things. And when we honor that and respect that it helps us move into the next chapter more effectively and bringing in the opportunity to bring in more abundance into that next chapter.

I already said that. Okay.

How are your next chapter attachments? let's see. So welcoming in this current moment. What in your life can you appreciate that exists now because of this last chapter? An abundant relationship with someone. Maybe it is a new job that you only were able to get because of the experience the last job provided you. Maybe it's a new relationship.

that you are only able to attract because of your experience of the last one or because of all the work that you've done on yourself. You are now able to attract new friends, new relationship. What from that last chapter is bringing you into this current moment that you can give gratitude for and appreciation that you are right here, right now, always being blessed.

And what role now do you get to play because you are in this chapter now?

And so often in this current moment, we want to time capsule it all to hold onto it because it is so precious. We know it's precious when we're here in this current moment. And so we want to time capsule that.

And so often we know that the current moment is precious. And that is why we want to time capsule it. Yes, as verb. What does time capsuling look like? Time capsuling looks like the first day of school picture with the sign. It is measuring the child's growth at the same front door every single year. Maybe these are just the things that happen in my house, but I imagine not. I see a lot of pictures. I mean, I'm not on.

social media too much. But when I am, especially the first day of school, there's so many pictures of first day of school signs as well as measuring. That was our thing. We measured against a door to see how much they've grown in that year. How much have you grown this year?

And of course, recording everything. And I feel like this is a touchy balance because we want to record everything, but we also want to be here enjoying and appreciating the present moment.

How are you time -gapsing this current moment? And how can you bask in the presence of this current moment? And how has your role changed now?

As a result of the last chapter, how are you bringing a better version of you into this chapter? Just like the mom from this is us, which version are you now?

Which version of you is your life calling you to be? We can give such huge gratitude for that. And maybe you don't know what your role is currently. That is okay too. When we can sit in a place of

Potent indecision. No. When we can sit in a mo - When we can sit in a place of potent unknowing. This is when we invite the divine in to make magic happen inside of you. When we are at -

this place of non -resistance. We allow the divine to come in and guide us to do exactly what our soul is meant to do here. How can you get to that place? Begin with meditating 30 seconds in the morning, 30 seconds at night, asking for guidance to show you.

Excuse me.

Excuse me, how are your next chapter attachments affecting you?

We are going to dive into the attachments for how things are going to be in just a moment, right after this quick message. Do you want to dive into your own personal chakra journey? Join me for this eight week personalized chakra.

Join me for this personalized eight week chakra group course that will walk you through the chakra system and the counter chakra system so you can piece together your perfect roadmap to physical, emotional, and energetic health.

This course is a combination of a digital course and weekly live calls. If you prefer to journey on your own, that is okay too. The digital version exists. The digital counter chakra series is available separately as well. I would love to journey with you. If you'd like to learn more, click the link down below. Now back to our show.

attachment to how things are going to be. So I have offered to both of my children, hey, if you want to call me in between class, you could call me for five minutes. It doesn't have to be the official once a week call, but they're so full and busy making friends talking to other people. I very rarely sometimes I'll get that call, but very rarely. And that is okay.

I am so happy for them that life is so full because you know what, when things have gone awry, I do get that phone call. So again, I can look at that. That makes me feel safe and secure and, and included root chakra, root chakra, root chakra. When they call me to work through things. And of course I'm their parent.

I'm, I'm always on their team and want to support and guide and help them.

But I don't need them to call me to feel safe and secure. I appreciate that they do. So how will things be? Now, this is where ritual can sometimes enable us and help us move into the unknown. When we have ritual, can know and feel, but recognizing again, the whole purpose of this episode is to recognize this balance between

Root chakra, chakra, attachment and feeling safe and secure and protected. Root chakra, heart chakra, root chakra, safe, secure, included, protected, heart chakra, attachment. Help yourself find this balance. So as we move into the unknown, our attachments of how things will be.

Ritual is something that allows us to feel that safety and security. So I had attachments to show up in such a big way for me in this college process because the college she was attending had like a really big welcome thing. And they were sending out videos for weeks and weeks and weeks ahead that would say, welcome to the university, welcome to the university. And so I had so much attachment around.

the welcome arrival that we were going to experience because I had seen old videos, I'd seen all these videos, welcome to the university, welcome to the university. And so I was there in our packed car, video rolling, I was so excited, I wanna capture our personal moment. And when we got there, the person said, welcome, welcome, which was so friendly. And I think this person was trying to be extra friendly and

extra welcoming, except that my attachment was I was expecting welcome to the university. And I'm not going to lie, my heart was sad a little bit, but I then recognized in the very next beat, literally heartbeat. isn't that interesting? Literally in the next heartbeat, I recognized, that was my attachment. That was my attachment to wanting to hear that exact phrase. And guess what?

other people came up to us and said welcome to the university. So was just this one particular person who I actually think was trying to be extra, extra friendly. Welcome, welcome. There is nothing wrong with welcome, welcome. It was my attachment to welcome to the university that created this disappointment for myself. We were so welcomed. They were so friendly.

my attachment, but in me recognizing it was my attachment, I didn't hold onto it. I still realized we were included in the new family, in the new school family.

I recognized I was still included in the school family, Root Chakra, and that I could let go of this attachment. didn't need Welcome to the University in order to be included. All my Howard attachments showing up for you in your rituals.

And I was telling a friend of mine the same story and she said, yeah, well with my child, all I asked for was a picture of her in, you know, often the freshman class will do a letter on a football field. law schools will do this. She said, all I wanted was the picture of her in the letter of the freshman class. And it came out, I saw it and I said, where are you in this, in the letter?

And she said, yeah, I couldn't, it didn't happen. So for her, she had to let go of that. was something more important for her daughter to go and do. And we are so happy about that. But when we can recognize it's our attachment to a ritual that makes us feel safe and secure and included, we can begin to let it go and not hold on to resentment and hurt feelings.

because it is these attachments that create the hurt feelings in our heart. But we have these attachments because we believe they will make us feel safe, secure, protected, and included.

and we are able to let go of those attachments when we nourish this root chakra.

either through awareness as we are doing in this episode or through grounding your energy in the dirt, on the earth, or through visualization. How can you bring safety and security into your world so that you can let go of your attachments in every phase?

And your future role.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

And to finish off with what comes next for your new role, I would just ask a few questions for yourself. What do you want this role to look like? What is your soul calling for you to do in this new space, in this new time for what's to come?

If you could not fail, what would you do or how would that feel? And simply by basking in what it feels like without attachment to how it is defined. Again, it is this poignant unknowingness, but how do you want it to feel? If you can create the energy for how you want it to feel, the universe will match that feeling and draw it in in ways you may have never expected.

And I want to hear down below when that happens, because it is so cool when you begin to recognize the energy when it shows up in your life. And it may show up in a role you may have never imagined.

How are your next chapter attachments affecting you?

If you're moving into a new life chapter in whatever way, new job, new relationship, launching a child, new friendship, new you, new diet.

Are you ready to let go of the way things were and the role that you played in it? Are you ready to sit in gratitude for all that is currently happening and the role that you are getting to play because of your last chapter? And as you turn that page of the storybook,

and move in to what is to come. Can you have faith that everything is going to fall into place and that you will feel secure, safe and included in whatever manifests in your life?

This is such a potent time for you in your life. And I want you to know you are writing the next page of your storybook. I'm so excited for you and I can't wait to hear about it down below.

Let's move into our next chapters with tinsel, with yarn, with all the twigs that we have filled our nest with. It is time to bask in your own nest and your own next chapter.

I can't wait to hear down below how you are enjoying this next phase. If you found this helpful, thank you so much for liking and following and subscribing to the pod. Thank you so much. If you found this helpful, thank you so much for liking and following this podcast and sharing it with five friends who are also next chapter in your life.

I'm so happy to be back with you. Thank you so much for spending this time with me and I will see you next week. Love yourself enough to heal, heal yourself enough to thrive. Take care.