Transformation

As a child, Christmas was a magical time. We went to my grandparents in Nebraska, and despite being packed into their little white house, there was lots of laughter and joy. That time is over now, and the holiday has been shifting over the past few years for me.

As I’ve been making more changes in my life, I realized I needed to turn my inner compass to the way I’d been spending the holidays. Somehow I’d gotten into a pattern of how it was supposed to be done. Somehow I wasn’t choosing anymore. I was drifting, participating in something that had become comfortable and expected. It was hard to decide to do something new, but I did. For the first time in my entire life, I am spending Christmas in the home I live in.

Radical for me, and a little scary.

I had to let go of what I’d grown to think my Christmas was and who I spent it with. But that gave me freedom too. I could make new choices, ones not encumbered by the past and times and places now gone. It’s been funny how hard that process has been. Take Christmas Eve dinner. Should I make the lasagna I always made or cook something new? My grandma had started the tradition nearly two decades ago, and thinking about letting it go made me feel like I was letting her go, which was silly. So this year, we dove into a new idea for Christmas Eve dinner, and we may keep doing it. Or we may try something new next year. That’s what makes this so exciting and tremulous.

This holiday is my choice.

I’m with some of my sisters in our new “hood.” One had moved here with me, and the other will join us this spring. We went to a neighborhood Christmas party last night and were welcomed by more people to this new place we find ourselves in. What a joy. What a blessing.

There has been no crazy traveling. No suitcase to pack. No unusual bed, couch, or air mattress to sleep on. It’s been nurturing to be home. Have I missed some people? Sure. But I know we will see each other. Those you love are never far from you, even if you are apart.
I’m trusting myself, my ways, and being open to creating new traditions. But mostly, I’m happy to be surrounded by those I can be my truest self with, who bring me joy year round. That’s what I’m celebrating as we usher in this holiday. Deep down, the message of the season is that when love comes into being, it changes the world. I am so glad it’s changed mine.

Happy holidays from my heart to yours.

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When you love writing—literally reshaped your whole life to do it—it’s a tough thing when you hit a patch of time where you don’t want to. It’s scary, honestly, the kind of boogeyman scary from your scariest nightmare.

Grief will do that to you. Nothing puts out fire like water, and there’s been a lot of water lately. I’d never had writer’s block—never understood it. And then I watched my friend die, and when I tried to finish something as simple as edits, my brain simply would not work. I could not think.

I learned about blocks. And then some. From there, I moved to a new state, and again, as part of my whole life was ending, it was a tough time to do something creative. A dear friend of mine commented that she wondered how I was planning on writing a book when everything around me was dying. My response was simple: it’s what I do.
But I couldn’t do it even though I struggled through a portion of the book. As many of you know, I choose to push a book back a couple of months to give myself time to grieve and root in my new home. Best decision ever. I am so grateful I can.

My fatigue from the last months was deep, so it took a while to come back. My guidance said to not be discouraged when I didn’t want to write the next week—or the second. A month later, I was looking at the calendar and my word count and wondering how this book was going to come together. My characters weren’t talking to me yet, and if they were, I couldn’t hear them.

I went off all form of social media and email for over a week when I went on retreat. Again, it was a tough decision when we’re wired to be connected all the time. And I fought the urge to break my intention to go off. Slowly but surely, the fire inside got re-lit. Since I was in a cabin, I had some experience starting a real fire. It was harder than expected. You have to get the right balance of wood, paper, and flames to keep it going and make sure it doesn’t smoke too much.

Balance. That marvelous, and sometimes challenging place we all seek inside ourselves. When the outside world is all topsy turvy, the only quiet place is deep within ourselves. I reconnected to that place and began to tend my newly lit fire.

It’s been going for a while now, and the words have come. At first there was a trickle and then a rush and then a trickle again. But I kept going, conserving my energy and tending to that fire, saying no to distractions and drains.

Happiness is writing again.

The characters are talking. The magic is flowing again. All is well in the world. Mostly. This coveted space, this most sacred of contracts, cannot be disrupted. Happiness will always return to us. Especially when we seek it with all we are.

I reached out for mine.

What do you need to reach for right now?

There have been moments in my life where I felt like I was waking up from a long sleep. That which I’d thought was real was not. And that which I had dreamed—well, that was the real stuff.

Right now, I am waking up again to a whole new level of living. I am in a new area and surrounded by newness everywhere I go, everywhere I look. It’s like I clapped my hands and said, “Wake up.” Life is so much bigger than I thought, and with each step forward, I discover more magic.

The old realities are gone. Mostly. There’s the ping of them every once in a while. They usually come from old relationships, ones that haven’t completely awoken to the new reality I’m inhabiting.

Happiness is waking up.

Sleepwalking through life is no longer allowed. No more perpetual somnambulation. Life is about being awake, being alive. It’s time to see the brilliant threads of sunlight as they cascade through the trees. Listen to the birds chirp in the air. Observe the people around us and listen to what they are telling us. Are they awake? Are they asleep? I always can tell.

Right now there’s a collective call to wake up. It’s the call to authenticity, to living your true self, to embodying your soul purpose.

It’s time to wake up. Are you ready?

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Well, this isn’t what I planned to write this morning when I awoke, but I always follow the highest truth.
I’m in that messy place again, of preparing potentially for my best friend to leave me again. She’s had cancer on and off for going on seven years now, and she’s back in the hospital. She’s been in a steady decline for months, and this isn’t the first time it’s looked like she’s going to let go. I know she’s in pain. It’s hard to watch her suffer.

But this week something else happened, something scary, and I know it’s changed things. Her husband got sick too suddenly and was in the hospital this past weekend too. He’s been her stalwart champion these long years, always there, often stoic, which suits his personality. But how much could he take before his own body broke down too? It scared me, when I saw the sallowness of his skin a few nights ago. It so mirrored the skin of my beloved friend. When he went to leave, I simply held him, and he let me, rare for him. It felt like he was bleeding out.
I found myself needing to lie on a blanket in the grass in the full light of the sun after I’d heard the news this morning. I was crying. I’d offered to take their cousin to the hospital, who is here from Europe taking care of my friend. She was crying, and I held her too. There is so much sadness now.

I found myself saying that I needed to gather the pieces of myself together, and then I realized that wasn’t what I needed. That implied the pieces of me were scattered and incomplete. And I remembered the truth. I am complete and whole in this moment—and so is my friend and her family.

I didn’t realize until that moment why I’d read my book, The Bridge to a Better Life, last night way into the wee hours of morning. It’s about a woman who’d lost her best friend to cancer too, and how she feared losing her, grieving her. Part of me was still scared too. I didn’t want to feel the pain, to have to let go of all the things we’d talked about doing together: riding horses some day on my farm; walking down the red carpet; and having tea in my new house after I’d come down from writing.

I love her. I love them. They’d been the best neighbors and friends anyone could ever hope to have. And I feel it all slipping away.

But I’m feeling it all, and that’s what I need to do right now.

Happiness is feeling it, all of it, without resistance, without judgment.

I’ve redefined my definition of happiness lately, and it makes more sense now. Happiness is how you feel when you do what you need to do for yourself in the moment. Happiness is serving your emotions, your body, your spirit.

And I just did that. And I’ll keep doing it.

Because I love myself as much as I love my friends.

P.S. I heard minutes after I returned from seeing my friend at the hospital that my beloved book, THE CHOCOLATE GARDEN, had made the USA Today Bestseller list. I cried tears of joy and sadness (there was still sorrow from my visit to the hospital) and then I popped the champagne. Today was about feeling it ALL. And I am so grateful.

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My growth lately has been epic. I’m making new connections. I’m trying new things. I’m traveling more. I’m giving voice to new gifts.

In sum: I’m being me.

Sometimes you have to put it all out there. Just today, I published all of these happiness reflections into my first nonfiction work with a little more of my back story. It’s funny, but sending all my reflections further out into the world was big for me. There’s no more dancing on the corner and playing it safe. No, it’s time to dance on the table for everyone to see—which I actually did in Paris a few weeks ago when a man asked me if I wanted to.

Happiness is bursting out.

And then last night, I had to paint. I mean the kind of painting that involved me grabbing my rarely used easel from upstairs and pulling out all my paints and brushes. I painted and painted, telling myself not to think too much. We stop ourselves when we do. We nitpick. We criticize. And all of that stifles us. I let my hand move. I let it burst free from all past constraints, teachers who’d said I couldn’t draw, that I had no artistic talents, that my brothers were the artists in the family and not me. They were wrong to say it, and I was wrong to believe it for a time. But they can silence the truth no more. Nothing can.

I drew a mermaid (the picture you see here). Nothing could hold the mermaids back either, you see. They swam amidst sharks in the mighty ocean without fear. They laid on the warm rocks and played, letting the mist cool their skin. They were free and beautiful and powerful. Like me. Like we all are.

I am bursting out. Bursting all the confines that have kept me small, down, silent. It’s time to expand and allow everything I am inside to unfurl—like the most beautiful, fragrant rose in the garden.
Are you bursting? Or are you hiding some of your greatness like I used to? Come on. Join me. Take my hand. We’ll burst out together.

Picture painted by Ava Miles

I came across a phrase when I was making a new vision board not too long ago. It said: The Art of Living.

My heart seemed to explode, but a part of me scratched my head. What exactly did that mean? There’s an art to living? For much of my life until my major rebirth, life was about struggle and perseverance. There wasn’t much art to it. Life was a pretty gritty thing.

Fast forward to where I am now. I’ve been ditching those old programs with new intentions, and opening up to learning, experiencing, and feeling more love and joy in my life. This whole art of living thing seemed like the perfect next step.

The meaning came to me slowly at first, through a dear friend who has the art of living down: international bestselling author and showstopper, Kate Perry. We clicked in that magical way we sometimes do with people and talked about going on a writing retreat together. It ended up being in Paris when she invited me to join her there since she was going there for holiday.

I said yes, and this choice seemed to unleash something. Something powerful. Something new.

In the run up to this trip, I kept coming across dance references for tango and ballet. As part of this art of living, I looked for classes in the area and decided I needed to sign up. Honestly, I didn’t even know they had ballet classes for big people (haha). But wouldn’t you know it. They have a class four blocks from my house. Talk about synchronicity.

The art of living is a revolution in my life, and I am all too happy to unleash it.

So, I’m now the kind of person who goes on writing retreats for book research in Paris and drinks pink champagne while talking her way into famous restaurant kitchens for a cooking demonstration and their wine cave where dusty bottles from 1837 wait on the shelf to be savored hundreds of years later. I’m also the person who takes tango lessons and also puts on a red leotard with tights and ballet shoes. Even better, I finally stopped waiting on something I’ve wanted for a long time: my first ever new car.

The revolution is unleashed. The art of living is now my new normal, and I’m calling in even more experiences to bring me to new heights of happiness. I have to thank my friend, Kate, and all the divine helpers who are always around us, showing us the way to more love and joy.

Come join the revolution, folks. It’s brilliant here.

Photo: That’s Kate Perry and Moi at Paris’ Magical Eatery, Fauchon, having pink champagne, which is sold everywhere. I call it joy water now.

As a woman who was the oldest in the family, went to Catholic schools, and pretty much hated conflict, I was always “the good one.” I forced myself to fit into this box for decades. At times, all the emotion I would suppress would come surging out like water in a pot that boils over.

Emotions are life. They aren’t who we are, but we have this body, and it has this mysterious, mystical thing called emotions. In the past, I could feel the build-up coming, but I didn’t know what to do with it. Okay, that’s not true. I did. I tried all the harder to keep the lid on. It never worked. If the stuff couldn’t come out, it simply rooted itself in me in harmful ways. Illness, depression, avoidance. You know the ways.

This week, my energy hasn’t been completely in the happy jumping-for-joy category, and I decided to make my peace with it and say, “Screw it.” If my language offends you, well…you can stop reading.

But seriously. It’s not that I’m screwing being happy. No, that’s still my number one desire. I’m saying “Screw it” to all my stories that are keeping me from feeling it every moment of the day.

Happiness is saying, “Screw it.”

This is a loving act, a bold one—the kind of intention that leads to more freedom. I can feel it emanate and radiate from my very bones. Screw all this scarcity thinking. Screw all this negative thinking that I won’t manifest this beautiful dream I’ve been believing in and pursuing for five long years. Screw all the people who politely nod when I talk about still believing in it. I’ve had these polite nods before when I pursued the dream of being a writer before I became published. I am good at picking out the naysayers who hide behind their artificial masks, thinking you’re crazy under it all.

Screw the struggle to be happy, make something awesome happen. Simply screw it.

I surrender. I let it happen. I let it come, trusting somehow, someway it will. It has before.

In the meantime, I’m listening to tango music and dancing more, freeing myself up from this mind that really needs to take a holiday from its doubting thoughts. Dance is my physical way of saying Screw it all. I will dance and I will keep dancing. And as I do, all my earlier unhappiness starts to vanish, and I throw my hands up in the air with a half-smile, already restored.

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Have you ever felt like you were on the cusp of something big? I’ve been here before, and I’m getting more discerning about what it feels like. I feel that way again. There’s a part of me that feels overwhelmed by the potentiality of it all, and I’ll delete that thought the minute I write it. There’s also a part of me that is so freaking excited by the limitlessness of growth. What might happen? Now I can embrace the deliciousness of that question. Before, since I was trained as a conflict expert, I used to imagine and plan for the worst. But after a lot of work on those old patterns, I now am mastering the art of imagining the best.

Happiness is growth.

With this feeling being so strong, I am planning again. I know I need more help in my career as an author. I am growing in ways I never imagined—which is awesome—but it also takes time away from the one thing that makes me the happiest: the writing. And let’s face it, there are just some things I don’t want to do, things like spreadsheets and number crunching and such. Not my thing. I know it, and I’m happy to delegate it. Now, it’s all about finding more wonderful, highly consciousness people to work with me. So far, I have done really well in this. Sure, some people have been temporary helpers, but I am rolling with the waves.

At one time, growth seemed unmanageable. Now, I know things will work out. If it takes a while to handle some of the outcomes of rapid growth, well, then it simply does. I only have to rush as much as I want.

Yet, even as I write that, I feel like I’m moving quickly to prepare for the huge wave of abundance coming that is going to blow all my old conceptions of abundance to bits. I can already hear the divine saying, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

I say, “Bring it.”

In so many ways, I have outgrown my life, my house. Even my very skin. I feel like a million seeds that have burst their skins in a greenhouse and are ready to be planted in a much larger field.

So, here’s to growth. Lots of it. And to the support needed to manage it and cultivate it and ride it. What’s growing in your life?

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This whole week, I have felt two days behind. Everyone around me seems to be running late too. I’m even writing this post a day later than usual. I’ve felt overwhelmed with my upcoming book release—not my usual energy. My mantras this week have been many: I have more than enough time; everything will get done somehow; I trust others to get things done; it’s all going to turn out awesome.

I was just discussing the need to trust others when things are running late with my sister. Most of us work in some form of a team, even if it’s our personal life. I remember how I had a few other sisters who always ran late when we were trying to leave for church. I was “always” on time back then and found it frustrating to wait. Now, I’ve allowed myself to be late and go with the flow when it feels like there’s nothing I can do to change it. When I’m caught in traffic and know I’m going to be late for an appointment, I don’t sweat it as much. I call if it’s going to be more than ten minutes and simply do my best. I don’t drive faster anymore. What’s the hurry when I want to stay calm and safe?

Happiness is Being Late.

The other thing I have learned about being late is that sometimes you’re right on time. Have you ever had that happen? You think you need something on x date only to discover two days later that something better came along out of the blue.

Giving myself—and others—a break for being late has also been one of my new pieces of compassion. We all have run late at least one time. Sometimes I don’t know the reason someone else is late, so I don’t get angry with them anymore. I bless them and simply hold the intention of it all working out beautifully in the end.

This week I felt so behind that I even thought about cancelling my special lunch and fun time with a best friend. I fought the urge. There’s an old Buddhist saying: when you’re busy, meditate twenty minutes; when you’re really busy, mediate an hour. I meditated longer and went on my fun date. And then did the work needed when I could. It’s easy to get lured into sacrificing the fun stuff in our lives. The truth is that there is always stuff to do and that somehow it will get done. Deciding what’s critical and what can wait is part of growing up.

Have you been running late? Have you been trusting others to come through for you in the end? Join with me and give yourself a hug when you’re being late. Heck, maybe even go a step further. Hug the people in your life who are running late. We could all use a break out there.

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