These last couple of months have been very difficult for me. All the rushing around and effort I expended led me to stop my self care routine of meditation, healing, getting plenty of rest and balancing my work with play. In the end, my body was so run down and depleted, I got sick. It's taken me almost two months to move through this growth period and get back to a more balanced place of health and wellness.

Through this process, I struggled with accepting where I was so I could heal, vs. forcing my self to get to where I wanted to be. And finally, this morning, I surrendered. By surrendering and accepting one's  circumstances, it immediately brings one right into present time, back from the regrets of the past and the what ifs of the future.

Only by acknowledging what is is one able to change. I'm self employed, and the worry about money and paying my bills is constant. But I chose
this! It didn't just happen to me. This uncertainty is part of my daily scenery. So I surrendered and accepted. This is where I am at right now. I only have so much energy to spend each day creating opportunities to bring financial flow into my life. I can only do a certain number of tasks today. And that's ok. Tomorrow always brings more opportunities.

Surrender and acceptance go hand in hand. The act of surrendering has always gotten a bad rap. People think it's giving up, but it's not! Until you surrender to what is, you can never accept it! And if you don't accept it, you can't change it. You will always be in resistance to what you don't accept. And resistance sets up the energetic equivalent of a police barricade: Nothing Can Cross This Line! Which means you are blocking out the assistance of the Universe, your angels and any other divine force from helping you shift your life for the better.Resistance comes from a place of fear, of not knowing.

Fear is irrational, but it stops you dead in your tracks. Like a frightened horse that refuses to move forward, that fear is irrational, but it feels very real.

I recently watched this amazing documentary Wild Horse, Wild Ride about rounding up wild mustangs and gentling them down to make them ready for adoption. One of the trainers put a blindfold over the horse's eyes to help create trust. That horse had no choice but to trust the trainer to lead him forward safely. Only when that horse surrendered, accepted his circumstances and opened his heart to trusting the trainer was he able to move forward. He was led over a bridge, and down a slight incline by that trainer, and little by little that horse began to trust the trainer and have faith that he would be safe. He surrendered, accepted and opened his heart up to what is and could then move forward.

It was a beautiful thing to see, and such a reflection of where I am right now. Surrender the fear and resistance. Accept my present circumstances; this is what is right now. And then trust that when the time is right, a window will open, a pathway will clear, leading me forward, safely, to what is coming next.

It's Fourth of July, also known as Independence Day here in America. What does this mean? You hear it bandied about in all sorts of contexts, but have you ever really thought about what it means for you, personally?

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, primarily because I've been going through some massive changes in my personal and professional life, and much of it revolves around my sense of personal freedom and my right to chose for myself what the best course of action is. It really boils down to a simple, yet complex subject: Free Will.

Thirteen years ago, July 1, 2000, almost to the date today, I bought my first house. It was a cute little townhouse style condo, surrounded by towering pines and redwood trees, and wonderful kind neighbors. I had just come through a painful divorce, and was just starting my record company, Gearhead Records, and it seemed the beginning of a great new life. Everything good was opening up before me and I felt strong and powerful and so ready to experience a state of stability and creativity.

Unfortunately, that brief period of calm and excitement gave way to a turbulent painful time that would not end until yesterday, July 3 2013, when I signed the papers selling my house.

It has been a mixed period of relief, sadness, and introspection as I reviewed the last thirteen years in my mind, taking a slow final walk through my little house, trying to make sense of the sometimes incredibly painful lessons and experiences I'd endured since first claiming ownership all those years ago: the meteoric success of my record company with the record release by a band called The Hives; the expansion of my business into a full service line of clothing and accessories; the extensive music catalog created, leading to almost eighty titles; the bitter breakup and dissolution of my business partnership; the opening of my retail store and the rebuilding of my business; meeting my current romantic partner; the terrifying downward spiral of financial ruin and eventual personal bankruptcy; the subsequent years of healing and clearing and reorganizing, and now finally, saying goodbye to the last episode in the story, selling my house and clearing out all remaining debts, while starting once again to rebuild my business.

Through all this, I've had the free will to chose the paths I've taken and the experiences and people I've brought into my life. Many times they were clearly the wrong choices, but at the time seemed like the best course of action based on the information I had at hand. I always had the freedom, the choice, to say "No Thank You" and to walk away, but I didn't, instead choosing to see the decision through to the end.

The one thing I never realized before recently was that I didn't have to make these decisions alone. I always had access to prayer and spiritual guidance, and I always could have requested help from the Universe to choose the course of action that would serve my highest good.

It just never occurred to me that I could ask for Divine Assistance in shaping the course of my life and my experiences, although often through the sense of intuition (or clairsentience as it is also called) I would get little "gut feelings" about what direction I should go. As humans, we have free will to choose our experiences and live our lives as we see fit, and our angels, spirit guides, or God himself cannot intervene without our permission unless it is life-threatening and not our time to cross over.

But we ALWAYS have the right to ask for help, and must do so to open the door for Divine Assistance to guide us towards the best possible outcome. However, once we get that guidance, we have the choice,  and the freedom, to say yes or no, and take action as we see fit. But before we get help, we must ask for it.

Holy moly, if I knew then what I know now, my life would have taken an entirely different trajectory, but I must have needed to learn certain lessons, which is why only now, after going through so much pain, I'm ready to open the door on my next series of choices with a lot more knowledge and certainty in my tool kit!

I know for instance that I make very rash decisions, and that knowing this about myself, before I choose what my next step is, I must step back, get quiet and go within, seeking guidance from God or The Universe or whatever you want to call "The All" energy that surrounds all living creatures. I have learned to wait until I know all my ego is removed from the decision-making process, and that I am taking the next course of action based on the clear knowledge that it will serve the highest good.

It's easier said than done, I know, trust me! I struggle with this every day. But the lessons these last thirteen years have taught me are that I'm not patient, and I don't ever learn things the easy way, and that often I'm functioning from the reactive state of a petulant child, rather than the proactive state of wisdom and knowledge. I have the freedom to choose to be proactive instead of reactive, weighing the pros and cons and possible ramifications from my decisions before I make them.

Martina McBride sings a song called Independence Day that has always resonated very strongly with me, because the lyrics dance around the pain of domestic violence, which I myself have experienced, and the call to personal freedom, free will and choices, which I'm constantly faced with:

Let Freedom Ring Let The White Dove Sing
Let The Whole World Know That Today Is A Day Of Reckoning
Let The Weak Be Strong Let The Right Be Wrong
Roll The Stone Away Let The Guilty Pay It's Independence Day
                              -Martina McBride

On this day of Independence, I choose to celebrate my right to choose the best course of action for myself, using prayer, meditation and accessing Divine Guidance and my higher self to take the best path, knowing if I move forward in this way, ultimately, it will benefit all I come in contact with. Isn't that what freedom is?

Being honest with ourselves is probably one of the hardest things for humans. There's always reasons and excuses about why we can't move forward, why we are stuck, why we can't do and achieve the things we long to do.

But the truth is, we create those limits for ourselves. I often hear clients say, "I'd do this BUT, I don't have enough time, money, help, experience...".Blah blah blah....insert whatever excuse you want here. But the truth really is that you've created a block to not take a step forward. No one else does that to you, you do it to yourself. You have no one else to blame but yourself for the place you're at right now.

Now I'm not trying to be mean here or judge you or critique you. I'm simply stating a fact. And I know this because I do it to myself all the time, but am only just now starting to see the repercussions in my own life. 

I discovered this quite by accident. I've been doing alot of work on getting honest with myself about my self-made limiting beliefs of what I can and can't do. I've really worked hard to be truthful with myself about where I place limits on what I can have and create in my life. I have been stuck in this cycle of lack for a long long time, but every time I think I've finally healed, and moved past it, something would smack me upside the head, and I'd be right back in that limiting place: I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not creative enough, my boyfriend and family won't let me do this, I don't have enough experience, education, resources....blah blah blah! ARRRGGGHHHH!!!! When will it stop!? I'm so done with these limiting beliefs! I want to shine and thrive!!

Recently, some friends hired me to redesign their backyard for them. I'm thrilled-it's exactly the type of garden work I love! They want a backyard that is filled with native, water-wise plants that attract birds, butterflies, beneficial insects, hummingbirds and all God's wonderful creatures. This is the sort of gardening that I wish everyone would do! Of course I told them yes, I can help them. I went to their garden to  see what I had to work with, and I was so excited. There was so much potential there, once the overgrown foliage had been cleared out!

 I didn't have to do the work; they already had someone to do the labor.
All I had to do was come up with the design and plant list! However, I could feel the fear start to creep in as I spoke with them, and I started looking at all the excuses that were popping up in my mind about why I shouldn't take this job: I never got my landscape architect degree, I don't have the experience or skills to create what they want, I don't have the resources to put in the hard-scape, it's gonna be really expensive and maybe they won't have the budget to pull off this job....blah blah blah! I could see they were starting to get frustrated with me, and I was starting to get frustrated with myself.

I left their house petrified out of my mind. Oh my God, I can't do this! What was I thinking!!?? This is an enormous job, and there's no way I can pull this off. I better call and tell them to find someone else....wham! There were those limits and excuses, again, hitting me square in the face.

I was so tired when I got home, all I could do was go sit in a sea-salt bath and pray for guidance. I could see the limits in my space, but wasn't sure how to move past them. I went to bed and decided I'd look at these pictures again when I woke up.

I woke up with an answer about what was going on. Yes, I had done a tremendous amount of work, clearing my own fears, limits and insecurities. But because I was so used to limiting myself, I put my pictures of lack and limit in the energetic fields of the people around me. So that when I started to move past my own limits, I'd bump into them again, reflected back to me from the people I loved! Those weren't their beliefs, those were mine!! And so the cycle would start over again. Of course I could never get away from these limits because I was constantly bumping into them outside of my space, thinking they were what other people thought of me and my skills, when in fact it was my own beliefs. I created my own prison.

Are you starting to get the picture here? We create our own self-fulfilling experiences of failure and lack by unconsciously giving other people the power, thinking it's their judgements when in fact, it's really our own, put outside of our consciousness, to reflect back to us when we start to move beyond our comfort zone of what we think we can have or do or be.

We assume our loved ones won't let us fly, when the truth is, it's our own fears and insecurities limiting us. We simply don't own it for ourselves because that kind of truth is pretty hard to swallow.

Think back on the last time you really just went for it and didn't worry about what you thought you could do, or not do. When you totally trusted yourself and your inner knowing. For me, there's two distinct time periods that pop into my mind: when I was 11 and when I was 18.

At 11 years old, I was a strange kid. I admit it! I totally marched to the beat of my own drummer and didn't think twice about what anyone else around me thought or did. I fully listened to my inner voice and followed my creative ideals. I was obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie
books, and got my mom to make me a pinafore and sunbonnet set, which I wore to school all the time. I still remember my teacher, Mr. Ricci, looking at me like I was nuts, but I was so certain about what I wanted to do, I didn't worry about it. I took my sunbonnet off, and hung it up on the hook every day, just like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember my mom and brothers and sisters begging me to not wear that stupid sunbonnet everywhere I went, but I didn't listen to them. It made me happy and that was all that mattered! Eventually, I grew out of that phase, but I still remember how much pleasure it brought me to totally trust myself and what I wanted and to do it with totally faith and confidence!

When I was 18, it was a very similar thing. I had some deep strong inner knowing that I was powerful beyond belief, and I could make a difference in the world. I started a recycling program at the high school (this was way before it was an accepted thing) and put recycle boxes I had made in every class room. I went around once a week and collected the recycling and regularly shared with students and teachers what could and could not be put in those boxes! People thought I was nuts, but they humored me and started recycling.

I became vegetarian, long before it was an accepted practice, and of course my family and friends were stunned and totally didn't understand me at all! But it didn't matter, I knew it was what I needed to do for myself, and I didn't cave into the pressure around me. Eventually I stopped being vegetarian, guided by my body as to what I needed, and I didn't question it. I entered college that fall and took graduate level classes because they interested me, not caring that my advisor said the classes were too advanced for me. I excelled at them because it was what I wanted to do! That summer, I became the head dinner cook at a field station in Eastern Oregon, Malheur Field Station, planning all the menus, doing all the shopping and doing all the cooking, sometimes for up to 200 people. It never occurred to me I couldn't do it. I had such a strong inner knowing and confidence I just figured it out and I loved it!

I don't know why that confidence went away, why I started limiting myself and my abilities. It doesn't really matter. It's taken me 30 years to finally realize that I've created this prison of limiting beliefs for myself by expecting eveyone around me to hold those same limiting beliefs. And now that I've finally gotten to the truth for myself, I am ready to move past these excuses and step into my power.

Yes, I am fully capable of creating miracles and joy and abundance and wonderful new opportunities to grow and expand my life. I own the truth that I created the excuses to limit myself, and now I'm owning that I can destroy those limits. I'm ready to fly high. And so can you.

I had a lovely client come to me recently for guidance. She was in so much pain, it was radiating out of her like heat from a fever. While she felt like she would never feel better, I assured her she would. She looked at me like I was nuts and commented that she longed to be as calm as I was. I told her she had taken the first step on her path to bringing calm and serenity back into her life and that she too would one day feel the peace I feel.

My story is no different than hundreds of others who have gone before me. Amazing people with stories of heartache, destruction, abuse, despair. Somehow, by the Grace of God, I have healed. I have survived. And now, I am on a path of thriving as I help others to find their way as well.

Like many teenagers, I felt I was invincible, powerful and capable of doing anything I set my mind to. Working my way through college, I graduated with honors and set out to explore the world, eager to taste all the treasures and treats that lay before me. I found myself in San Francisco, and fell madly in love with a man whom I can only say I thought was a genius. I was swept off my feet, and nine months later we were married.

Shortly after that, my fairytale romance started to crumble. The man was an alcoholic, and while I knew that, I was certain it wouldn't affect my life. I was that confident that I had everything under control and could handle anything that came my way that I overlooked this seemingly small detail.

The abuse started in very subtle ways. Critiquing my choices of activities and friends. Jealousy and pouting when I would make plans to spend time with friends. Making comments that left me feeling I was not good enough. My strong confidence in myself started to erode, and I found myself giving up my activities, my friends and spending all my time worrying about keeping him happy.

The first time he hit me, I was in shock and denial. It was stupid-he threw the TV remote control at me and hit me square in the face. I had bruises running from my forehead to my chin, and when friends asked about it, I laughed and told them what had happened. The second time he hit me, it was in front of my sister, standing at a bus stop on a busy street in San Francisco. He was drunk and we were arguing, and while I was hurt and angry and pissed off, I made excuses to my sister. The next day he apologized and said it would never happen again, and I believed him.

Three years into our marriage,  I knew I was in hell. I was the sole breadwinner by this time, he having lost his job, and too messed up to go find another one. My days were spent working, coming home, making dinner he wouldn't eat till the next day, afraid I might poison him, so he'd wait to see if I died from the food I ate, and being on edge constantly, wondering when the next outburst would come.

The day I decided to leave him, he called me to tell me he wasn't feeling good and could I come home from work to help him. When I got there, he was vomiting blood. I called for an ambulance and waiting by the door while they worked on him, securing him to a stretcher to move him to the hospital. He had internal bleeding brought on by an extensive amount of alcohol and drugs.

I knew by this time I no longer had control of my life but had no idea what to do. I started seeing a therapist who kept suggesting I was the one with the problem, not him. Again, denial blinded me. I wasn't the drunk. I wasn't the one who wasn't working. I was just trying to help him! I fired that therapist and tried to figure it out by myself.

When he finally got out of the hospital, a nightmarish experience of detoxing that I would never wish on my worst enemy, I set my boundaries. We were moving, getting away from all the drugs and the alcohol, and going to live someplace calmer and more quiet so we could get our marriage back on track.

A few months after the move, he started drinking again, telling me that beer was not drinking, that now he was just the same as everyone else. He was working again, and felt like having a beer to unwind from work, and in my ignorance and denial, I wanted to believe him. When the shouting, control, and name calling started again, I kept telling myself he was just adjusting to our new life. I walked around on egg-shells, never knowing when he would lose it. I started seeing a therapist again who somehow finally got through to me that I was in an abusive relationship, and that he would not change, that I was the one who had to change. A friend suggested I read Melody Beattie's book Codependent No More, and I was shocked to see myself in those mind-blowing pages. He suggested I attend an Al Anon meeting too, or at least start reading the literature, and again, I was flabbergasted to see myself reflected in those pages.

The night my husband pulled a knife on me, and threatened to slit me from navel to nose, I finally realized I was in trouble. I never told a soul, too afraid people would judge me for the mistakes I'd made in wanting to trust him. That was the first time I started praying.

I had no idea where to go, or what to do, or how to get out of the situation I was in. After months of living in fear, going to bed each night with him standing over me flicking a knife open and shut, talking about Charles Manson and how much he admired him, I was not sure I would live to even move out, but I did.

But I still was unclear about God. Being raised Catholic, I was taught alot of things that really didn't make sense to me and how I saw God. But who was I to question? So I just stopped believing, stopped having faith in a higher power that wanted good for me and watched out for me. But now, I had no where else to turn, so I started talking to God regularly, and asking for help.

I started to get an inkling my prayers might be getting answered when I had managed to secretly secure a new apartment in a town that had a .5% vacancy rate. I called my parents and told them what was going on and asked for help. They drove all night and the next morning were there when he woke up to find me packing my stuff to move.

While I would like to say this is the last time I found myself in this situation, it wasn't. Despite months of abuse therapy and healing, I ended up repeating this type of relationship with a business partner with the verbal abuse, and accompanying loss of self-confidence.

When I finally worked up the courage after six years to end the partnership, I was really aware I had a problem with owning my own power. I constantly gave away my power and my seniority to those I thought knew more than I, were cooler than I, had more of an idea of how life should go than I.

I finally knew I couldn't live like that anymore, and found courage from deep with in, as well as from the new spiritual community I was becoming involved with. And again, lots of prayers.

As my life continued to melt down, I prayed harder and harder for help, until one day, I knew I had to just let go. It was like this sudden calm in a storm. I knew I could no longer fix my life despite all my efforts. I found myself in tears on the floor begging for help to end it all. To end the pain, the suffering, the fear, the stress, the constant worry that had followed me for almost fifteen years by this point. I was done. So with financial pressure crushing the life out of me, banks suing me, and my whole business headed for the cliff, I filed for bankruptcy and just let go. I surrendered. I couldn't control it anymore, and frankly didn't want to.

And that's when the miracle happened. And the healing began. I was guided to a decent compassionate lawyer (I know!) who helped me and emotionoally supported me through the bankruptcy, which ended up going so easily and smoothly, I knew a higher power was watching over me.

I started meditating, exercising, and going to spiritual awareness classes, and now, almost 5 years later, I find myself in this place of peace and joy, wholeness and calm.

I can honestly tell my clients that they too can find their way to this place by surrendering the control, and just having faith that they can change their lives because they're willing. Finding life affirming activities like meditation, prayer, spiritual support, and faith. But most of all, having courage that while it may seem rough right now, they will feel better, happy, and even want to laugh again.

I know without a doubt, because I've been there. The path is rocky, but I know I will always come to a place where it's smooth sailing for a while. But when the rough patches come, I know how to navigate now by leaning on God/The Universe/Source, praying, letting go of control, asking for help from friends and family, and stepping out in faith. There but for the Grace of God I go.