I Got Stung By TWO Jellyfish in 8 Days!!
Hey!
I’m Tiff
You have so many gifts,
strengths, & talents to share
with the world and my job
is to help you fully align to them so you can get them out there!
*originally published via my newsletter on July 28 2020
Today, I wanted to share a story with you and some big lessons I got from it, which was partly what inspired me to focus my content for the month of August on how to manage emotions in difficult times. And as promised, I wanted to invite you to join my FREE Deep Dive for the month of August where we'll go deep into my 4-step process on how to do just that. You can register here.
So for the story & my main lessons...
So OMG YES! I got stung by TWO Jellyfish in 8 days, which is positively insane!! haha!'
On a Friday in May, I was out one early morning with my daughter & some friends, on my surfboard in some pretty calm waters waiting to see if any swells would come in.
I broke off from them for a quick minute to try and catch some waves but as I paddled closer to the reef and put my right arm into the water, I all of the sudden felt this tingling sting that started to get more intense by the second.
And then I felt the same rumbling of fire down the side of my right leg.
Oh shit, did I just get stung?
And then I look down at my board as I’m trying to paddle while my arm starts to numb and holy f*ck, the little bugger that stung me is just chillin' on my board.
BAH!
I try to splash water on it to get it off while also paddling to get my ass out the water.
“I got stung” I yell out to my daughter and friends who were with me.
Fuck. What the hell. What do I do?
I finally get to the shore and as I’m getting out the water as fast as possible, my foot gets cut on the rocks.
Great.
I’m running with my board in hand, my daughter & friends running behind me headed towards the hose.
The venom of the sting is making its way up my arm, welts forming on my wrist & forearm, & my arm is throbbing like hell.
My first attempt at stopping the pain is to go to the one thing I’ve heard people say do when you get stung…
Do you know what it is?
Yeah, pee on it.🤣
So I had my daughter pee on my arm and well, it didn’t take long for that theory to be disproved. That shit don’t work!
Haha!
So after rinsing with water and getting my bearings, I recalled a sunrise meeting with a Hawaiian uncle in 2018 at just one beach over.
He had told me that if I ever got stung by a jellyfish, to go to this particular plant and squeeze the juice out the white seed/berry things onto my sting and I’d be better.
The moment never seemed better to validate his advice. I was just one beach over and so we quickly packed up our boards and with my arm on fire and the venom reaching the top of my arm and into my chest, we hopped in the car and drove over to the next beach.
We pulled up and hopped out so quickly, running towards the plants, lol! Mind you, it’s like 7:30am...haha!
Anyways, I come up on the plant and after looking around a few minutes, cha ching! I found them! Lot’s of them!
And I kid you not, as soon as I squeezed those little white buggers and rubbed the medicine on my arm, I felt IMMEDIATE relief!
HOLY COW!
The swelling went down. My heart rate slowed down. And a release took place.
I was light again. Phew.
Gratitude filled me up for this island, for that plant, and for the beautiful Hawaiian uncle, who I haven’t seen since, imparting this wisdom to me long before this event took place.
For the next week, I reflected on my experience & why it happened. And I’d say I took some wisdom from it and felt maybe there was a message in the occurrence. But I mostly treated it as an isolated incident that I was grateful to have the medicine to deal with.
But, the ocean wasn’t done with me yet...
The following weekend, I took my kids to a completely different beach on the island & for hours they played & body boarded...with NO ISSUES! Literal hours!
But as soon as I get in, within the first 10 minutes, I GOT STUNG. AGAIN.
WTH ocean? Do you not like me or something? Why do you keep letting these jellyfish sting me? Did I do something wrong?
I hurried up out the ocean but there was no medicine on this beach. This time, it wasn’t as bad but the jellyfish went for my chest this time and a little on my left forearm.
But I was done. It was clear there was something I needed to listen to.
The pain of the sting went far beyond the actual physical sting. I felt it in my heart & knew I needed to pay better attention to what wanted to be understood in this moment.
So for the rest of the day and next morning, I tried to sit & listen.
What wanted to be heard? What was the message? What was I failing to pay attention to?
There were many lessons & messages, all of which I won’t share here.
But in my exploration, three points of awareness emerged prominently & I wanted to share them with you.
The first was that I can’t avoid being stung and that’s not the point anyway. I learned that in trying to have a relationship with the ocean & nature, I don’t need to try to avoid possibly getting hurt. I’m obviously not going to go looking for it but part of the reality of being in the ocean, is the possibility of getting stung, among other things!
Which brings me to my second lesson. I learned that it’s not my job to try and avoid getting stung but that when I DO get stung, to remember to find my medicine & actually USE It!
The pain of the sting is hella distracting & disorienting, so much so that it’s easy to forget the medicine I know exists.
But I have the medicine and I just need to use it.
Which brings me to the third big lesson or awaking moment that came up for me through this. I realized that in the same way that I can’t avoid being stung by a jellyfish if I’m in the ocean, I can’t avoid the sting of the emotional pain of getting hurt or hurting others I’m in relationship with.
I’ve definitely gotten better over the years but just as I almost internalized the sting as a personal attack against me & want to avoid all painful stings FOREVER, there are places in my emotional life where I was avoiding emotional stings & pain that can be caused by other people and experiences. I’ve felt it so much in my life growing up that I just DO NOT want to feel it in my adult life. EVER.
But this is just not the reality of life, no matter how I look at it.
I actually can’t avoid getting emotionally stung. And its more likely then not that I’ll also sting others, even if I don’t intend to. Again, I’m not going around looking for it. But it’s going to happen and it’s totally normal. And it comes in all forms!
But instead of being pissed about it, avoiding it, or failing to fully feel, process, & release it, I need to remember I have the medicine to heal those stings. I have the capacity and emotional intelligence to move through these really hard moments.
In fact, the more I allow not just the highs of my feelings to be expressed but also the painful lows, the more I can grow in wisdom & the deeper I can heal!
WOW! That was BIG for me!
~So why am I sharing this story with you anyway?~
Well, this insight has helped me see my emotions and the experiences of such BIG emotions I’ve had over the last months & how to better deal with them. The highs & lows. The joy & the pain.
And I know that over the last months, it has been very hard for many mothers to process the big feelings and emotions coming up. What’s happening can feel like a personal attack and we just want to run away and not feel it all because it’s so painful and at times, unbearable.
Has this been true for you at all? Are you experiencing big emotions & feelings & not quite sure how to move through, understand, or process them?
Well, through this experience & the incidents + reflections since, I learned and was reminded that we have the medicine to sooth & help heal our emotional wounds, pain, & experiences. These moments sting like hell but the feelings that are underneath need to be expressed, heard, & understood so we can release what wants to be released and fully heal. It’s so important!
We need to rest, listen, & process so we can make sense of what’s happening & our unique place in this moment.
And as I wrote about in my first email, it’s time to focus forward & move towards the light. We are in the middle of a great recalibration & rebalancing and your feelings & emotions are a portal to the divine. There is so much wisdom that wishes to be uncovered if we can move past the initial shock & pain of the sting.
So to help you with that and impart more medicine that you can use in this area of your life, I will be offering a 4-week FREE deep dive into the topic of managing your emotions in difficult times.
Every week, I’ll release my YT video that highlights 1 of the 4 steps in my process.
Then every Wednesday, we’ll gather LIVE for 1 hour so I can walk you through taking imperfect action with each step! Trust me, I know accountability is needed & important to help get you moving. So I gotchu! And we also desperately need community right now, so I want to create this space to bring us together to support one another through.
After the 4 weeks, you’ll have learned a very practical 4 step process I use myself to help me process my feelings & emotions fully. It of course takes time but knowing these steps will allow you to face your feelings v. suppress & run away from them out of fear.
Audre Lorde says,
"...our real power comes from the personal; our real insights from living come from the deep knowledge within us that arises from our feelings. Our thoughts are shaped by our tutoring. As black people, we have not been tutored for our benefit, but more often than not for our detriment. We were tutored to function in a structure that already existed but that does not function for our good.Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes painful, sometimes contradictory, but they come from deep within us. And we must key into those feelings and begin to extrapolate from them, examine them for new ways of understanding our experiences. This is how new visions begin, how we begin to posit a new future nourished by the past. This is what I mean by matter following energy, and energy following feeling. Our visions begin with our desires."
Learn my process for how to develop an unwavering commitment to yourself as a mama.
I want you to be able to tap into & uncover the deep wisdom, knowledge, & healing made possible by listening to your feelings vs. being overcome & beaten down by them. My two Jellyfish stings helped me open myself up more to feeling the pain some of my feelings or life experiences bring vs. wanting to hide away from them by any means necessary.
Every time I face a challenging or painful situation, I remember the sting & I remember it's not personal. I just need to get to my medicine ASAP!
So I want to share more with you on how you can do this yourself. Starting next week on Tuesday, August 4th, we’ll dive into the first video that will summarize the 4 steps in my process as well as dive deeper into the first step! So if you haven’t already, subscribe to my YouTube channel here.
And if you’d like extra accountability & community, I want to invite you to register for the LIVE 4-week deep dive! I’d love to see your face & help you move through + process all that’s coming up for you!
Okay my friend, there’s wisdom in the sting & healing in the medicine. I’m sending you so much love as you feel your stings & discover your own medicine.
Talk soon,
Tiff