Personal growth – Dancing in the rain!

Good Day!!

Happy Naked Tuesday and Happy Birthday to me.

I know that some people think birthdays “meh” it is just another day yet for me, it is a celebration of me, all that I am, all that I have overcome, achieved, experienced and all the wonderful things that are on the way. Just last week I was at Tony Robbins and he said we do not celebrate our lives enough and that really resonated with me. There are times that I have really exciting things going on and I am hesitant to share. It is the fear of being too much that really rears its ugly head a great deal for me. How dare I take this life I have and make rainbows and fire them into the sky and stand back and fucking admire them?

How dare I not?

Several times in the last year I started to feel a disconnection with Tenacious Tuesdays. I used to subscribe to the Glennon Doyle Melton School of “we can do hard things!” Yes, of course we can, do we have to? I feel, and I have been gently nudged on this by more than one well meaning person, that the universe gives us what we need and that it follows our lead. The thought that I unknowingly call hard things into my life so that I always have something to conquer is kind of alarming. I have learned a great deal from the situations I have faced this year and I am proud of the fact that I have faced them all head on; however, if I am being honest, I am wide open to things flowing easily going forward. I caught Robbie Robertson’s blue train and ended up fighting the current somewhere on the crazy river and I am more than ready to haul my ass unto a tube and float down the lazy river for awhile.

I am learning that there are plenty of exciting things to fill my life besides struggle.

Since I lost my husband Kirk to suicide in June of 2017 I really tightened up my circle. Some unfortunate situations occurred after his passing that made me reluctant to allow new people into my life. I am happy to stay that this year a wonderful friend and mentor, Dawn Southy Hills gifted to me a life changing workshop with Integrity Seminars called The Gift. It opened up my eyes in a whole new way to how I was accountable to my life, my choices, my reactions, the way I feel about myself, about others, about situations and how I often place chains on myself to keep me small. I had an uncomfortable week after leaving the course and I struggled with letting go of old beliefs that kept me rooted me firmly rooted in mediocrity. The Gift also gifted to me, an entire community of inspiring and growing individuals that have welcomed me into their lives and hearts with love and embraced me in kindness, understanding and non judgement. The Gift really is a gift that keeps giving. I was able to share that with my oldest daughter Morgan, who for the first time in a long time feels listened to, understood and loved by her peers. At 19 years old she has gotten serious about healing and has decided what she wants to do with her life. I walked into her graduation on Sunday night and as she was introducing me to the people in her group and I was amazed and inspired by their glowing eyes and radiant faces, they were shiny. They are on the beginning of a fantastic journey and they looked like they had just been pumped full of sunshine. Our most fundamental relationship is always with ourselves. Nobody else goes through this entire journey with us. It is essential that we learn to love and invest in ourselves, that one change, can be the catalyst in changing everything.

I feel that my greatest success in 2018 was asking for what I wanted and being honest about my feelings. It does not always get you the result you desire, yet there is a great deal of empowerment in attempting to get all of your needs met in a healthy way. Sometimes, ironically, not getting what we want can be a wonderful stroke of luck, I am learning to celebrate my successes and take the lessons from from the situations that do not produce results I had wished for.

I struggle with patience. I have decided to stop blaming it on being a Capricorn and really work on it. It is a virtue that has escaped me for all these years and I genuinely want to be a more patient and reflective person as opposed to reactionary.

Today I am rolling out Naked Tuesday. I am not getting Naked today, at least not publicly, or in the sense that automatically comes to mind when we conjure up images of naked, however what better time to be naked then on your birthday. We came into the world, not just unclothed, also innocent and without fears, insecurities and inhibitions. One of my biggest goals this year is to come to you vulnerably naked and speak to you honestly about some of my most critical struggles, as a woman, as a widow, as a parent and as a friend.

In the next couple of months I will be doing a complete overhaul of my blog to reflect this naked vulnerability. I am not quite ready to share my ideas in regards however; you will be the first to know.

I have some things to celebrate currently that I would love to share with all of you. I have started some exciting writing projects, I am 25% through my Life Coaching certification and this year I will be working the amazing Ev’Yan Whitney of Sex love Liberation. Ev’Yan is going to work with me intensely to help me heal from past sexual trauma so I can step into my full power as a woman. In the last couple of years I have admitted to myself that though I have pushed the memories down as far as they would go, being raped has had a significant impact on my life, my choices, the way I feel about myself and the way I interact and react to others. My hope is that in continuing to put this work in and heal my unhealed areas, I can focus my life coaching on working with women who have suffered trauma, are rape survivors as well, have fears, insecurities and/or inhibitions and help support their journeys as they find and step into the full expression of their sexual and sensual selves. Pleasure is our birthright, and too often we are willing to accept things as is when they can be and should be changed. Society puts a lot of pressure on all of us, as a woman I can relate to that quite intimately. We lose a great deal of our personal power struggling to meet the grand expectations of the masses and we end up in a place of fear and scarcity.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

~Mikhail Baryshnikov

I invite you to continue to follow me on my Naked journey. I know my mom will love that name and never stop fearing the day where I decide to get Naked. I am a wild card…love you mom. Thank you for everything, always, especially my beautiful life.

If you would like some incentive today I would like you to join me in a small exercise. I want you to write down five things that you like about yourself, as you are doing this I would like you to remember that your self image is tied to your energetic vibration and your physicality so try to choose things that are a combination of physical and non physical traits. If you find this exercise difficult and are being bombarded with things you dislike about yourself, this is an exercise that you should commit to daily for awhile. Consider the traits that you like and admire in others, as other people serve as mirrors for us; these traits are most often traits we possess as well. If you can only come up with a couple items that is fine, lets all try again tomorrow. Let’s continue until Sunday and see and celebrate all of the amazing things that make us unique. If you continue to struggle feel free to reach out to me through private message or leave a comment and I will modify the exercise for you to help you find and celebrate the amazing qualities that make you so very you.

Thank you for being you.

I had an uncomfortably amazing experience this weekend at a course called the Gift through Integrity Seminars designed to help me (and others) identify and break down barriers that prevent change and keep me from leading my best life both personally and professionally. I was interested in learning how to establish and support inspiring relationships at home, at work and in my community. Though I could personally identify areas like ego, vulnerability and trust as some of the limiting dynamics that create obstacles in my relationships, I actually went in very unaware of some of the automatic boundaries I put in place to discourage new connections.

For those of you who know me, you probably would never describe me as shy or introverted and you might possibly be surprised to learn that I have discovered that I have developed some habits that may say otherwise. I walked into a room of thirty strangers and I felt small and more than a little bit scared. Those old beliefs of “am I enough?” ran through my mind at lightning speed. When I am communicating with my tribe I often feel like a bit of a badass, completely at one with myself and confident in who I am and also wide open to learn from the empowering and resilient people I have called into my life. In a room full of strangers I felt none of that, however, what I recognized immediately in the discomfort is that I was being gifted the amazing opportunity to grow and expand and free myself of the restraints of my outdated belief system.

My late husband Kirk was a huge presence in every life he touched. He was not a large man physically but he took up a great deal of space in the world. He was loud and loved to be the center of attention. His sister made a comment to me a short time after his death that I was funny but she had never noticed, it was attributed to me being around Kirk for several years and he was very funny. I always knew it was more than that. I was always funny and I became accustomed to standing stage side and being my husbands support. I shrunk to fit into the spaces that were left over. I was shocked to learn about a year before I lost Kirk to the devastating affects of depression, trauma and anxiety that he always felt alone in a room full of people. The person who myself and many others came to know and love as the “life of the party” struggled immensely in a room full of people, feeling completely alone and even talking about it made him cringe. His need to be loud and seen and heard stemmed from a great deal of fear and anxiety. I allowed myself to adapt to being in the background and after his death it was challenging to step into my own, expand and fill my space in the world.

“Change is inevitable.

Growth is optional.”

`John Maxwell

Standing in a room full of thirty strangers I could feel myself shrinking into the space and attempting to become invisible. So many times I have declared my need to be seen and heard and I found myself in the opposite position and though I didn’t like it, it gave me a tangible place to launch from.

I was enamored with our facilitator Rae-ann, she is sharp as a tack, a powerful influence(r), and has the ability to cut through bullshit in seconds. I always say that the words we use matter so I was captivated by her ability to quickly point out how often myself and my course mates were using words like but and talking in the third person to diminish the impact of our words. She became our anchor in a storm of emotions that if left unattended may have had the ability to sink us. Her sharp intuition and commitment to redirecting us when we faltered encouraged us on a path of progression and expansion.

There were times that I deliberately chose to sit back and listen, I feel that we don’t always learn a lot from talking but we can benefit a great deal from listening to the experiences of others. Listening is progress for me as I spent a great deal of my life listening only with the intent to reply. Listening to learn is a bit of a super power.

I tasked myself this past weekend to notice the areas where I was experiencing discomfort. I was in a state of discovery and better yet rediscovery and that disquiet was an advantage that would quickly lead me to my areas of resistance so that I could make the conscious choice to make space for new possibilities.

“We cannot become what we want to by remaining what we are.”

~Max Depree

I have chosen to recommit to standing in my integrity and to set clear intentions about the types of experiences that I want to create in my life.

The thirty strangers that joined me in that room were and will continue to be an integral part of my healing, ascension and growth. Their inspiring stories, wisdom, fearlessness and energy have given me new purpose.

I have made mistakes. I have not gotten that thing I really wanted. I have pushed when I should have pulled and pulled when I should have pushed. I have sabotaged myself and my happiness on more than one occasion. I have under valued myself. I have chosen comfort over connection. I have limited myself with beliefs I didn’t even know I had.

So What!

I’m still a Rockstar.

In the words of Rae-Ann Wood Shchatz “Now what?”

It is what I do now that matters.