#40 The Power Is Within You: Empowering Love

In this episode we explore the life of Christy Brown, author of My Left Foot, and the difference between empowering love and enabling love. 

Christy was born with cerebral palsy. He learned to write with his left foot-guided by a mother who believed in his strength, and refused to shield him from his weaknesses. 

Discover the neuroscience of resilience, the spirituality or belief, and the practical ways you can embody empowering love in your own life. 

If Christy Brown's story moved you, share this episode with someone who needs to remember the power of belief and the difference between the love that protects and the love that empowers. 

If you like this episode, please let me know. Stop by at social media on Instagram or my Facebook page, just count me in, and please leave a comment. 

If there's anybody that you think could benefit from this episode, please forward it to them. 

With gratitude,

Sari

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Thank you for joining me!

If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today!

Transcript

A Mother’s Empowering Love

Defying Labels And Early Diagnosis

The Chalk And The First Letter

Tough Love Meets Neuroplasticity

Vision, Faith, And Self-Image

Lessons For Parents And Coaches

Journaling Prompts For Self-Belief

Guided Mindful Visualization

Closing Reflections And Call To Share

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome. Welcome to this special episode of Transform Your Life, Just Count Me In. This is a place where miracles really meet mindset, and I wanted to just give a tribute to Christy Brown, a person who I'm sure everybody's heard of. I grew up and there was a story on our coffee table, the book that he wrote called My Left Foot by Christy Brown. And this story really reminds me that my spirit is always going to be bigger than any kind of struggle I have. I'm your host, Sari Stone, and we're going to explore this man's extraordinary life and really the empowering love that his mother gave him because that changed his destiny. Christie was born with cerebral palsy. He was unable to control most of his body except for his left foot. Through that movement, he learned to write, paint, and he expressed his soul to the world. Behind that miracle stood his mother, not one who enabled his weakness, but one who believed really strongly in his strength. And I know as a parent and a teacher and a coach, it is so hard sometimes to make it's just something we're constantly aware of, constantly checking, constantly monitoring. Are we enabling or empowering? Are we supporting or are we actually feeding a weakness in somebody by doing it for them? These are things that we always need to be careful about. And I talked to a lot of parents about this. Christie's mom's love didn't protect him from struggle, it called him forward through it. And that's the kind of love that really changes lives. When he was born, it was in 1932. He was actually born in Ireland. He was one out of 22 children in a working class home. So from the time he was born, the doctors told his parents he'd never walk, he would never talk, and he was incapable of learning. They actually labeled him hopeless. His mother, Bridget, refused to accept that story. She could see in his eyes. She looked into his eyes and she saw a spark of awareness and intelligence. And it told her that there was more than what the world could see. And we do that when we look in and we see another. Yet her belief wasn't soft or sentimental. It was strong. It was demanding. She didn't pity him or do everything for him. I don't think she could with 21 other children, but I don't think she would have anyway. If she believed he could do something, even if it was really hard for him, she expected him to try. She practiced this with what we might call now empowering love. Love that believes in someone's highest potential, not their current struggle. We see beyond that. We see beyond the circumstances. We see beyond the clouds that are clouding the sky. We know the difference between the screen, which is who we are, and who that person is, who that soul is, and the movie, which is the experience that we're having. This was the same kind of love that Helen Keller's teacher, who inspired me to be a teacher, Ann Sullivan showed her. The kind that refused to enable limitation and instead insisted on awakening Helen's greatness. And when I read that book when I was seven at the same year, I also had a really inspirational first grade teacher after having a horrible time in kindergarten, and that was when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. One day when Christie was five years old, his siblings were all writing with chalk on the floor, and his mom put a piece of chalk near his foot and told him to try. She didn't help him. She waited. Miraculously, Christy lifted the chalk with his left foot and wrote the letter A. That single moment changed everything for him. It was an epiphany, it wasn't a letter, it was his liberation. It was the proof that his body might be limited, but his mind and soul were fully alive and he was taking it all in. From that moment on, his mom nurtured his potential with unwavering love and she believed in him. She challenged him, she encouraged him. We would call it now tough love. She refused to let him settle for anything less he was capable of. That balance, love with expectation, compassion with challenge became the foundation of Christie's greatness. So there's always an inner landscape. There's always neuroscience and spirituality to everybody's story. And Christy's story is a living example of the neuroplasticity that we are always talking about. The brain's capacity to adapt, to rewire, to form new connections. Every single time he practiced writing or painting with his left foot, he activated parts of his brain that strengthened his coordination, his focus, and his creative expression. His effort literally reshaped his brain. And he was seeing himself do these things before he was doing them. He was aligning himself with the energy of I can write, I'm learning, I'm smart, I'm the same as my brothers and sisters, I can do this. His mother's faith in him was spiritual too, because she didn't just see her son. She saw the spark within him. And she held that vision even when he couldn't hold that vision for himself. And in doing so, she helped him stay grounded into who he actually came here to be. Empowering love in its purest form is divine love in action. It doesn't fix for someone, it awakens like the fixer within them. It doesn't carry their burden, it reminds them they're strong enough to lift it. It doesn't give them something, thus reinforcing the belief that they can't get it for themselves. That kind of love doesn't make life easier, it makes transformation possible. Although there's that period of struggle, and the person may even get really angry and frustrated with you. Christy Brown's story taught me that transformation starts with effort and starts with energy and starts with imagining ourselves to be what we are physically not yet. And as I said, I grew up with this book on my coffee table. My mom told me about him, and I was just fascinated. His mom's belief lit the path for him, but you know what? He's the one who had to walk it or write it with his left foot of all things, one painstaking stroke at a time. He later learned how to type, and that was how he typed his first book. Together, they modeled a partnership between love and will. And maybe this is something we can take into our own lives, whether we're parents, teachers, friends, coaches, empowering love doesn't mean shielding someone from their struggle. It means standing beside them, reminding them of who they truly are, and then almost holding them accountable to their potential, seeing that potential in them despite what's going on externally. It's what Ann Sullivan did for Helen Keller, it's what Bridget Brown did for her son, and it's what we call to do for ourselves. Here are a couple of journaling prompts that I used with this. Um, and it it actually helped me flush this topic out a lot before I wrote the podcast. Who in your life has loved you with empowering love, believed in your strength even when you didn't? Where can you be maybe enabling someone instead of empowering them? Is there any of that going on in your life? How can you show yourself the same kind of firm, loving belief? One of the things I do is I work on a technique where we like instill the perfect parent in ourselves, and I do that with clients. We become our own perfect parents, and it's the same, it's the same verbiage. What small action could you take with what you already have? And what story about your limitations, although they might not be as dramatic as Christie's were, what story are you ready to rewrite about what's limiting you? This one I really took to heart. I am stronger than my challenges, and I know I'm wiser because of them. Empowering love calls forth our highest potential. Every challenge I experience invites me to awaken to a deeper strength, and I believe in other people's brilliance. We have just enough time for a short guided meditation or a mindful moment. So I'm going to ask you to close your eyes and take a deep, steady breath into your heart, and out. And imagine you're breathing in through the front of your heart, and out through the back, and in through the back, and out through the front, and one more into your heart, and exhale, and another breath in through the back, and out through the front. So picture yourself in a warm sunlit room. And in this room, there's a piece of chalk lying on the floor. That's your symbol. That's your symbol for potential waiting to be realized. I can feel someone standing behind me, and you feel someone standing behind you. Maybe it's a mentor, maybe it's a parent, maybe it's your own higher self, someone who believes in you silently, completely. They don't step in to do it for you. They wait, trusting that you can. You lift the chalk, and in your heart, it feels light, and you begin to write your own A, your own first act of self-belief. Feel the energy of that empowering love flowing from that being that's with you, not doing it for you, but standing beside you as you awaken to your strength. You are never defined by what you can't do. You are always defined by the love within you. And that love doesn't ever give up on your potential. Take one last breath in and let that truth carry you forward today. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Transform Your Life. Just count me in. If Christy Brown's story moved you, share this episode with someone who needs to remember the power of belief and the difference between the love that protects and the love that empowers. And remember, your miracle might not come from ease, it might come from faith and the smallest little yes to what's possible. And sometimes it takes some grit. Until next time, keep flowing, evolving, persevering, and transforming. Remember, you're never stuck, you're not limited. You are infinite. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you like this episode, please let me know. Stop by at social media on Instagram or my Facebook page, just count me in, and please leave a comment. If there's anybody that you think could benefit from this episode, please forward it to them. And I look forward to seeing you next time. We're all in this together.