I wrote you a little something...
LISTEN AS YOU READ HERE:
**Please note: I’ve since made updates to the text below to be gender neutral to be more inclusive to the souls magnetized to this Courage of Ease community and message. The audio still has the gendered pronouns so please replace as you see fit as you listen. I will be updating the audio soon. :) Progress over perfection.
Hi love,
Is it strange to write you a love letter before we've even met? I guess by old-paradigm standards it would be, but let's face it, you're a new paradigm kind of person and you appreciate someone willing to operate outside of societal and cultural boxes.
Why a love letter? Well, because it’s one of my favorite gifts to give another human being. Words chosen just for you straight from the heart knowing that someone out there deeply appreciates you and the way you show up. It’s a special thing.
I feel a bit shy to tell you this…but I knew you were coming. It’s more like a cosmic invitation got sent out and you being here is your RSVP that you got the invite to the “Courage of Ease Party,” otherwise you wouldn’t have known where to find me.
Like all good love letters, I wrote this out for you first on paper…
I told myself earlier this year that until I get the “green light” to take action on divinely inspired next steps and/or messages, I would patiently enjoy myself until I got the “go.” This is my medicine to the habitualized over-doing and taking steps that weren’t actually inspired from anything other than the fear of:
“Who am I if I don’t DO things?!”
My life works so much better the more I trust and sink into listening to the timing of things. So, consider this letter to you my “go."
You see, I used to go about life completely opposite from this. I did (and still do at times admittedly) the whole over-achieving, perfectionist, people-pleasing, straight-A-student, good-little-worker-bee thing until I had a shake-up-wake-up call that injected life into me in a new way where I couldn’t deny the truths I was hearing and the intuitive nudges I was getting.
I remember growing up with the most amazing parents. We always had what we needed and beyond. Lots of time together, delicious latin food, dance classes, sports uniforms, all the Barbie dolls a girl could want and Christmas gifts galore. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and along with my dad who balanced a full-time job, were there for everything the three of us girls had going on. They literally gave everything they had to us girls and the family.
Me at age 16. I've always loved teddy bears. Like so much. :)
As we headed out to college, my mom had an especially hard time with us needing her less. We were her world. After college, as I was working in corporate IT living the life I had been coached by society to have -- the great job, the great paycheck, the travel, the trendy house in the trendy neighborhood, the friends, the happy hours, the events -- I started to realize a painful truth which I imagine was something my mom and I shared in common at the time:
I didn’t like being alone with myself.
It was much easier to focus in on helping and loving everyone else in my life than it was to help and love...me. To be truthful, I didn't even know loving myself in that way was an option.
In January 2011, my mom entered the hospital with Stage 4 Cirrhosis and needed a liver transplant as soon as possible. The six months that followed were the most intense months of my life.
There was this moment in the hospital that I’ll always remember as being the moment that changed everything for me and likely saved me from experiencing a similar path myself one day. I was in the Intensive Care Unit with my mom following another bad infection that had her unconscious for the majority of that weekend. Not knowing if I’d ever speak with her again, I held her delicate hand and took what I now know to be a “Vow of Self-Care” that would forever change the entire trajectory of my life. I said quietly to myself that I didn’t want my future children at my bedside for things I can help now.
It was that day that I promised myself that I would take exquisite care of myself because if I didn’t, who would?
My mom, by a straight-up-direct-from-the-hand-of-the-Divine-kind-of-MIRACLE, received a new liver on June 16, 2011. Both her and I started our healing journey that day that continues to bring us closer each day that passes. I later realized that her and I had been given a gift to heal TOGETHER what has not yet been healed in our lineage which is...
...learning how to love those we love in a healthy, balanced way only WHILE also learning to love and care for OURSELVES FIRST.
We grow up, particularly as women, under the insane notion that we’re not allowed to take care of ourselves the same way we take care of those we love. But what if we could love our loved ones BETTER if we learned to love ourselves first?
Something I’m clear on is that I’m not here to guide you to some perfectly melded, tested and proven “system” of self-care with a 10-step how-to guide to create your dream life. That’s just not my style.
The truth is there is no one best way to “do” self-care.
I consider my self-care to be an array of living, breathing practices that run alongside my life. As unique as you and I both are as women, so is your self-care. It’s up to you, your body and your soul to work together to reveal to you what it looks and feels like for you. Emphasis on: YOU.
I will give you a clue, though, as to how to find out the best ways to take care of yourself. Are you ready?
YOU ALREADY KNOW
How do I know you already know? Well, because we all come in with built-in ways to receive messages as to what we’re here to do, who we’re here to be and how we’re meant to live optimally in this life. You’re no exception to that rule.
The role I’m here to play on your life’s journey, at a very high level, is to embody another way of living life as a modern day, ambitious, heart-centered woman so that you, too, can return back to your own natural rhythms and cycles, your own truth, ease, creativity, fire, desires and joy. You already have an innate language inside you that tells you everything you need to know.
I’m here to help you decode that language so your body, heart and soul don’t have to work so hard to get the messages to you.
I often call myself a “Permission Giver.”
For better or for worse, we’ve been conditioned to be “good girls” and “good boys” who have been conditioned to wait until some force outside ourselves deems us worth of having what we want in this life. Until you embody your own internal permission, I'm here to say that it's MORE than okay to put yourself first.
We live lives thinking we’re shackled to our responsibilities,
that we’re only here to work our jobs, raise our kids, manage our stress, get food on the table, have sex every so often, date who we’re “supposed” to date and rest once a year on vacation only to come back to more emails than we had when we left and completely sick because it’s the first time we stopped to rest in an entire YEAR!
We’re here for more than the run-around that lands most of us in a state of dis-ease by our 20s, 30s, 40s and/or 50s chained to a lifetime of prescription meds.
We are here for more.
YOU ARE HERE
FOR MORE
We’re all doing the best we can and often times, until another path is shown to us, we just don’t know what’s possible.
Love, I’m here to show you what else is possible.
I’m here to help guide you back to your own natural rhythm of EASE again. We came in knowing it and we still know it. It just got buried for awhile.
Ease is more our natural state than we’ve been lead to believe and this is why I’ve devoted my life to reminding you of the courage it takes to live a life of ease as a heart-centered, loving, pleasure-filled, brilliant, innovative, visionary, soulful human.
You’re not alone. In fact, you’re in WONDERFUL company. And one thing I know for sure is that I am so incredibly happy you’re here.
Loving you and this beautiful, intuitive journey you’re on. Thanks for being here and I’m thrilled to journey with you.