How to have the courage to go down your own path

"Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up when you can't control the outcome." --- Brené Brown

I've never felt so vulnerable in my life than I have in the last two years when I tore down all the walls I built to protect myself.

I've also never felt like I've failed so many times as in this last year, or like I've veered off course and gone down so many different paths and attempted different things that just didn't fit.

But through that vulnerability, failure and accepting that I no longer have any control over any outcome, came an immense strength, growth, and peace within myself.

I've learned to accept that vulnerability is love, strength, and growth, but also difficult and filled with uncertainty.

I've learned to accept feedback, both good and bad, sometimes very harsh but truthful. Accepting feedback is how I grow, but I also must be careful who I'm accepting feedback from.

Brené Brown says that shielding ourselves from all feedback by disconnecting from vulnerability and emotion gets us to a place where we no longer feel anything. You pay for self protection by sealing off your heart from everyone and everything.

But when you seal off your heart you experience a death--of yourself, your heart, your soul. And I've already experienced that death.

I want to keep feeling alive, vibrant, and fearless. I don't want to fall back into my belief that vulnerability is weakness, I don't need it, and I can go it alone. Cause the truth is, I can't.

So here's to vulnerability, to living your truth, to walking the path of MOST resistance, but the one that makes me feel most alive.

2020 taught me so much, but mostly how to continue down my own road, accepting only feedback from others that I respect, but also not compromising my journey, change course and try to walk down the same path others did.

I need to stay on my own road, even though it may be lonely at times.

Excited to see what else 2021 brings and where my road leads.

"It's your road, and yours alone.
others may walk it with you,
but no one can walk it for you.”-- Rumi

What other people think of you is none of your business

FYI, You will never please everyone, so don't even try.

What others think and have to say about you has nothing to do with you. It's about them and what they dislike about themselves.

Here's the key though: if you have a problem liking, accepting, and being content with yourself, there's no way you can give up worrying about others.

As women we are trained from birth to be likable, content, happy, never angry or sad, to stay thin, never age, always be sexy but mysterious, smart but not too smart, funny but not too funny, serious but not too serious, so many things our male counterparts never have to worry about.

We have to relearn that it's not our responsibility to be liked, understood, approved of, or accepted by everyone. If you constantly try to get everyone to like you, there is no way you can act from an authentic place. You will lose yourself in the pursuit of other's approval.

Take the time to work on you. Figure out what you don't like about yourself, and change it. If you can't change it, learn to accept it.

I'm learning to unlearn. To live from an authentic place. This means being sad when you're sad, raging when you're angry, laughing uncontrollably when you're happy.

Repressed trauma turns into sadness. Repressed sadness turns to rage. Repressed rage turns to depression. Repressed depression turns to mental illness. Repressed Mental illness turns into disease. Disease alters your DNA, which then passes on to the next generation.

Life is not all sexy, perfect, happy, and joyful. It's messy, sad, despicable, confusing, and tragic. But it's also beautiful, transformative, and adventurous. Learn to love it and in turn, love yourself. That's the true act of rebellion.

What are your core values? And are you living from them?

What happens when you stray from integrity, and how to get back to it.

I listened to Marie Forleo’s latest Marie TV with Martha Beck and wow, it was a good one.

This interview aligned exactly with things I’ve been working on myself, specifically regarding integrity and authenticity. 

Integrity happens to be one of my words for 2021. The more I talk about my life, experiences, and how it’s made me the person I am today, the more it’s crucial for me to live in my integrity, authenticity, & to follow my heart regardless of what’s happening around me, what others think or what the majority is doing. 

For someone that was groomed from childhood to be a people pleaser, forced to act a certain way because of my status in the cult & constantly told “everyone is watching me", each time I acted out or tried to be my own person, I was shamed and told I was bad & wrong. Needless to say, undoing all the brainwashing was hard for me.

Listening to this interview helped me connect things I’ve talked about here recently regarding fear, shame, and depression. Martha Beck says the cure for unhappiness staying within your integrity. That’s it. Separating from that not only affects you emotionally, but physically as well. "Once you leave your truth, your immune system function goes down, your heart rate goes up, adrenaline spikes, and stress hormones increase.

I started asking myself how closely am I adhering to my truth on the deepest level? If I’m staying true to my integrity, I’m happier. If I'm fearful or sad, most likely I’m not in line with my integrity and internal guidance system. 

That is SO SIMPLE. When we're living in integrity, we have peace, joy, love, & freedom. It's what we are & what we all yearn for. When we split from one or all 4 of those things, we stay rooted in fear and depression until we return to joy. 

Freedom and integrity are my two core values, my guidance systems. If I’m not getting those things, I’m not within my integrity. I’ve veered off course and strayed from my truth. 

If you’ve been feeling sad, off kilter or unbalanced, check in with yourself. Ask if you’re walking in the path of your integrity. It’s a hard question, because many of us THINK we’re living in our integrity, when really we’re just doing what we think we should be doing. That’s not our truth. It’s everyone else’s.

It may take awhile to figure this out. But think of two words that represent your deepest core values. Just two. Courage, integrity, faith, family, money, adventure, love, career, whatever. Once you’ve found those two, figure out if you’re living within those values. If not, then you’ve veered off course, and that’s probably what’s making you sad, angry, confrontational, unbalanced. That’s that’s fine. Now you know, and you can change it. 

You can change it by finding the pieces of yourself that are stuck in false beliefs. The things we think we should be doing, but really it’s what we think others think we should be doing. Recognize it, let it go, and change directions. Start living closer to your truth, your core values and your integrity. It’s a huge shift, but it’s worth it.

Everything that happens to us is happening for us. Every ache, pain, and depression is a gift, a sign post that is telling you to go a different way. Obstacles are always detours in the right direction, usually telling us that we’ve strayed from our values, and it’s time to get back to who we really are. If something isn’t working for you, don’t try harder, try a different way completely.

No matter how far we’ve strayed, we can always come back to wholeness, to yourself. The moment we decide to trust ourselves and follow our truth, that’s when immediate healing begins. It’s that simple.

Spiritual Identity Crisis...do I be who I am, or who I think people think I should be?

Throughout my journey in life I struggle with a huge identity crisis: being healed, a healer & leading a more spiritual life, all while staying true to myself and who I really am.

After life-changing experiences and healing moments, I thought I needed to appear different. More "healed", "spiritual", "wise", like I’ve got everything together & life is wonderful.

I tried to show how different I was and I'm never going back to my old ways. I projected a newly-constructed image of myself based on how I thought I should behave.

This resulted in a huge identity crisis. While trying to fit a mold of what others believed spirituality should be, I repressed my who I really am. I felt conflicted following the path of others, my true self screaming to be let out.

I knew I needed to make a change, step away from other's opinions & forge my own path. I needed to stop taking myself so seriously & acknowledge things in me that will never change.

The truth about me is that I’m goofy, really spacy, I don't have it all together, I'm a bit clumsy & make poor decisions when rushed. I love to have fun, go out and dance in clubs. I'm wild & do things for shock value to rattle people's cages. Many times I’m a walking contradiction.

I thought being spiritual meant I couldn’t drink, go out, or do what I used to do in the past for fun. I thought I needed to meditate every day, follow a strict diet and face every event as something I had resistance towards that I needed to surrender. While yes, some of these things are good, there is a balance. Not everything you dislike means you have resistance & must surrender. Not everything must have a profound meaning that I have to ponder for hours or I’ll never learn the lesson. Life does not need to be so serious.

This journey has taught me about balance of being who I really am, not just portraying some image on social media. It's about joy and fun, being able to laugh at absurdities and finding pleasure in life.

The times I get the most comments about being at peace and happy in my life is never when trying, but just being myself.

When you're happy, successful, and at peace, you don't need to show or tell anyone, people know. The same for healing. People see the change in you. They see you’re different. They may not like it, but it’s there. It may bother them at first, they may tell you that you’re not spiritual, they may tell you they’re disappointed or disillusioned in you, but these people are put on your path to mirror to you what your greatest insecurities are.

Healing for me is personal, it’s private, but it’s also a never ending shift. It’s the ability for me to say and be who I want, to not sit back and take criticism, and to share my story with others because that’s how we all heal, by learning from everyone else. When you're healed, you’re not healed alone.

When do you feel most free and like yourself?

When I was in New Mexico away from people, cities, politics, and distractions, it allowed me to figure out who I was, when I most felt like myself, what made me come alive and most importantly, when I felt most connected to my higher self.

There are always areas in our lives where we shine, when we feel most connected and most like ourselves. For me, that's being out in nature without anyone else around. The feeling of total freedom, being connected to mother earth, completely unafraid of anything, is the most profound feeling ever. I thought I was alive before, but I didn't really know what that meant until got rid of all the things I thought I needed to feel that way.

We're all different, and we connect to our deepest self and our hearts in all kinds of ways. I'm curious to hear from all of you: what makes you feel most alive? When do you feel most connected to your highest self? When do you feel most inspired and what contributes to that inspiration? Let me know in the comments below!

Society's skewed version of sexuality

I'm seeing a lot of comments on social media that are, surprisingly but also maybe not surprisingly--almost mocking the fact that Netflix was indicted by the grand jury in Texas for the lewd depiction of children in the show Cuties. People are saying it's not that bad, this is all due to conspiracy theorists and getting blown way out of proportion.

Interestingly enough, some of these people are the ones criticizing me and others for having nudity on their page. Let's just pause for a sec at these ridiculous contradictions and the hypocrisy of it all...

Newsflash! The sexualization of children is NOT normal. Images and film depicting "cute kids" in "cute outfits", shaking their butts and twerking on stage at 9 years old is NOT ok and there are NO circumstances where this is appropriate.

Guess what is normal? A 37 yr old woman who knows herself, doesn't stand for people's bullshit, who is proud of & celebrates her body in its natural form, who has gone through horrendous amounts of sexual abuse and trauma, only to come out the other side perfectly healed with a healthy sense of sexuality, showing off her body in an artful way on social media, just the way she wants to. Shocking? Maybe to some, but certainly not wrong.

I can't believe the state of the world sometimes and its skewed view on sexuality. How anyone can think that a grown woman posting beautiful photos on social media is not OK, while a disgusting show on Netflix with underage twerking children is fine, is beyond me. Something normal and natural like images of women showing their bodies or nursing their children, are censored online all the time, while the sexualization of children remains all over TV and Social Media. Guys, we can do so much better as a nation and so much better together.

Your reaction to other people's actions and what they're doing with their lives says far more about you than the other person. I would suggest we all examine our morals, our beliefs, and our thoughts to see where they are coming from and how they are being influenced. What you find may surprise you.

#nudaisnormal #nakedinnature #sereneearth #skewedperspective #cancelcuties #childabuseawareness #bodybyhiking