Signs of My Soul...

Hello everyone I am Sheila Jenkins the author of "The Day Before"~ Eternal Bonds into the Afterlife  I am so glad you have found your way to my blog. I am also the mother of two girls, Christina and Lindsey and the grandmother of five. My family is everything to me and my most precious gift. I love to dance and make others laugh and totally enjoy meeting and interacting with others. That is more than likely why I have been a server my whole life in the beautiful Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Often referred to as the "Skyline Drive." That is where my journey really began and where I met Sam which led me to write our story and sent me on a hauntingly beautiful journey into my soul.

---

Of course those of you who read our story are familiar with how it all came down so I will not bore you with the details again by going over it. I will just fast forward to the point when I started to experience unbearable grief for the first time in my life after Sam's death. The point in which my soul started emerging and playing peekaboo with me. Little did I know that my old self was beginning to die and who I "really" was, was beginning to crawl out of me from it's hiding place. 

I was at work not even a week following Sam's passing and I was serving the public in a prompt and efficient manner like the sweet little server I am. My guest made a comment about how beautiful this part of Virginia was and how lucky I was to work in such a beautiful place. At that very moment I felt like a newborn baby opening it's eyes for the first time to see this new world I was born into. She flipped a switch in me with her very words, and I noticed that it truly is the most beautiful place in the world to me and not only that I felt connected to my surroundings as if I were a little sprout growing in the earth and needed the fresh air and sunlight in order to survive. 

---

I also took note, not like on my waitress pad note...just a little humor there, but I could not help but notice that I was so grateful to just be breathing and alive in that moment. I was a part of this beautiful world or maybe...the world was a part of me I really couldn't tell. I was happy to be having this interaction with another human being as her eyes seemed to gleam at me. How could I have missed this, after all, I have lived in the Shenandoah Valley for some thirty-seven years. For the first time I felt so grateful for everything that was in that space of time and it reached something deep in my soul.  We are all connected to each other and the Universe/Source.

I have never been an ungrateful person, but who in the heck doesn't complain about having to work and pay bills? How about when you are in a store and someone is right in the aisle where you need to get that "one" item. Or that car in front of you going so slow on the "only" morning you are running late for work? That friend, who incessantly talks and talks and you can't get a word in edgewise so you just keep shaking your head "yes" until the "yes" was not the right answer and they look at you like,"what?" Ooops! Another thing is clean, clean and more cleaning. I have to clean the house to start cleaning the house. It gets old. To be honest, in that second I was grateful for everything in my life and knew I was never going to complain about any of this again as I was happy to have a job, bills, going to the store, my car, friends and a home to clean. In that moment an attitude of gratitude came flooding over my entire being like a raging river.  

In the next couple of days I found myself grateful for everything I saw, had and felt. I would be crying because I was so full of gratitude. I started a gratitude journal and I would write down everything I could think of. I was filling up with love for everything too. I was so grateful for Sam coming into my life that I didn't know if I was crying from my grief or whether I was crying because he was a part of my life. Practicing gratefulness allows you to see more and more you are grateful for.

In the days that followed I noticed the axe (or maybe a Paula Dean pan aside the head) I still had to grind with my ex seemed like the most pettiest thing in the entire world. In fact he became the most irrelevant person in the entire world. I had no problem with him, about him, over him, around him...who was him? Dang if I knew, because he and any negative feelings I had toward him just seem to go "poof" like magic. They just seem to disappear and dissipate into thin air. Okay now I am entering the Twilight Zone. 

Anything that was negative that I made so big in my life became so petty. I didn't want or need in drama in my life it was so unnecessary when you look at the big scheme of things. I could not even watch my favorite television show about true crime anymore (going deeper into the twilight zone.) In fact I could not turn on the television at all, it just didn't interest me anymore. I started feeling like I needed to surround myself with all that was good and positive in the world. When we live from the soul we know our own magnificence and take nothing personally. Negativity in your life no longer serves you.

So here is a recap on the first three "Signs of my "Soul.

• Connectedness to Nature/Universe
• An Attitude of Gratitude
• No Drama or Negativity

This is just the beginning of my journey in what I call the "Signs of my Soul" as they started to emerge one by one and some all at the same time. My old self is beginning to crumble and slowly die as my most "Authentic Self" is forced out of hiding. I now choose to live my life without conforming to societal or religious beliefs, To free myself from what others in my own personal life have "taught" me to be or act like. Not only does grief have away of revealing who we are but "love" does too because, we cannot have one without the other. 

---

Written: March 3rd 2016