Let’s face it, Helga does not get enough love. At one time or another we all need a little Helga in our lives. I think of the inner Helga as the tenacity and strength to get us through the tough scrapes of life. It’s the energy we need to embody in order to hunker down and get the difficult things done. Helga is about cultivating enough mental and emotional muscle so we can take personal responsibility and do our own heavy lifting. The truth is we get through tough times by rallying more of our power and gumption and this prepares us to handle the times when things really fall apart when there is no one but us to pick up the pieces. The fairy tale is believing in the perfection of happily ever after, but this thinking actually robs us from the richness and complexity of life and stops us from growing up. Life is about the downs as well as the ups. Inevitably as we grow we are confronted by some very tenacious downs, we need all the tools we can get to make it through them. Did someone mention Helga?

We should consider ourselves lucky if life breaks us in gently. Smaller losses are there to help us get accustomed to dealing with our emotions when handling very stressful situations. Loss comes to us as a teacher, usually the one we hate at the time but appreciate more as we grow older and wiser. These lessons of loss may not be something we are excited about learning but they help form the foundation of who we are in our lives and how we will handle the next trying situation that arises. Parents in the hospital, friends dealing with addiction, marriages ending, all of these require us to dig deeper than usual. If we can get through these times even semi-gracefully we are going to carry that new way of being into the rest of our lives. There is no doubt these events change us, but in the long run we want them to change us for the better. That’s where Helga is indispensible. It’s the ability to be strong enough so that we don’t completely fall to pieces never to be reassembled again. We build enough interior strength to get us through the times that shake us up so that we can make it to the other side.

And when we come out of the deep night or dark forest we can appreciate the light in a new way, from a place of sincere appreciation for all we do have. Helga is all about embracing what is presented with stamina and resolve while gaining a deeper reverence for life along the way. We are not in control of what happens, we only control our response to what happens to us. And even there, in our darkest moments, the Helga energy we’ve been cultivating gives us a choice as to how we get through it.

Bring it on, your Helga can handle it.

kb