Changing for today.

Each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning this week, at 9:10am, I walk into an overstimulating environment, where purple and yellow surround me.

I smile at the adorable young man standing behind the counter, trying to pretend that I don't look and feel like a frumpy, exhausted 42 year old with yesterday's make-up on. I walk to the bathroom first. Pee. Then walk by the mirror.

I wish they had better lighting so I could see myself instead bathed in warm candle light and pretend to have a few less wrinkles and the thickness that my hair had, just a year ago.

The other day I thought maybe if I 'dressed up' for the gym I would feel more confident when I was there. So I did an experiment. Instead of yesterday's eyeliner dripping down my face and the dreadlocks in my hair and the stained t-shirt cut down the center I put on clothes that I felt more beautiful in. I put a little bronzer on my cheeks. 

Who do I want to be when I show up at the gym?

I want to be strong, empowered, confident. I want to feel beautiful. Before my body changes from the lifting of the weights. I want to feel beautiful now.

I want to walk in the gym, even though I am not showered and have been awake since 6:30am getting 5 kids ready for school and feel beautiful. I don't feel beautiful unless I dress that part of myself for that feeling.

And it matters. My work outs are more intense. I look people in the eye. Smile.

This is what I need to feel beautiful at the gym. So I don't spend the 40 minutes I am there telling myself how ashamed I am of my body or the weakness in my muscles. 

This is a new part of myself, excavated from the past. The gym was the main ingredient of my life in my twenties. I am not that girl anymore. Seeing myself in the mirrors I often think she should be the one looking back at me.

I can see her so clearly. Her work out shorts that barely covered any of her legs. Her short hair, with little clips all over. Her face clear of make-up. Wearing a size AB bra. So tiny, barely taking up space.

Finding the me now inside of this new ritual has meant letting go of that past self so that I can find the woman now who longs to feel her strength again. Who knows that time has shifted her metabolism and energy. Who knows that she must work extra hard to understand this new body.

This part of me is something I am discovering. I am playing inside of. Wondering what I can wear to feel more at home in my skin when I am doing leg presses. Wondering how this ritual will shape-shift the woman I am becoming.

I want to feel beautiful as I am empowering my body and reclaiming my energy.

I can be new and change and show up for the woman I am today. Who wears a C cup but only wears a bra to the gym. Long wavy tangled hair. Leg warmers over her sneakers. Who takes up a whole lot of space in the world now.

Spiritstyle. A 10 day discovery.

 

When :: January 5th-14th

Cost :: A gift from me to you

Discover your spiritstyle.

.......

this is my spiritstyle. a collection of time and feelings.

the things that if i layer on i become more me.

the colors of cream, mocha, black.

buttery soft. high waist. layered tanks. no bra. simple mala to ground me. fabric draped, falling off a shoulder. hints of sexy and sanguine. 

this is my spiritstyle. the parts of who i am communicated on the outside.

after the dishes are done, rings find my fingers. a final layer.

boots, worn, loved. leg warmers bunched.

a color story that washes over us.

this is my spiritstyle. a woman matching the parts of herself with how she shows up each day.

.......

she said ::

"i feel like i am so many different people in one hour. the little girl, the woman, the bad ass, the asshole, the warrior. they get jumbled together and instead of feeling them i'm trying to ignore them."

she said ::

"i feel that way all the time. and i have been thinking about it a lot lately actually... and how trying to allow space for all of it often leaves me feeling exhausted and depleted. we need all these parts of ourselves. they are vital. because how amazing is that we have these selves to call upon to guide us through what is in front of us in any given moment. and even the ones that appear to be wounds or gaping holes are guides too."

this is how my women talk, daily. these women are my team, my inspirations, my heart. and we don't let any part of who we are get away with not being seen and loved.

one of my wishes last year was to be the most amazing mom i could be, meaning less anger and exhaustion and more fun and loving moments. i could see her. she used to be part of me. she is fun and spontaneous and she includes her kids in all the parts of her life.

.......

becoming a mother changed my body. the shape and size were unfamiliar. my breasts went from an ab to a swelling c. nursing was my life for about 7 years, welcoming each baby with a mother who felt more confident each time.

i started wearing tank tops that i could pull down, instead of up, to nurse. skinny spaghetti straps with a shelf bra from target or old navy at first. then i started to like the thicker straps, hold the shelf bra. now my every day (no longer nursing) tank is from h&m and i own every color. i get the long ones that go over my bum so i can wear them over leggings. 

going from college free spirit to mama challenged something in me. i didn't know how to show up. i tried to fit into a button down blouse with mom jeans look for a while. i put on a bra and bought some shirts from that never felt like me.

i spent years uncomfortable and confused. when i went back to school in 2008 i found myself back inside of the free spirit world. from 3 inch heels to dreadlocks, the women were gorgeous. alive. themselves. the freedom of style and expression sucked me back to the girl of 17 who had no doubt who she was.

she didn't look like everyone else. she followed not a single fashion rule. her hair was wild and she knew that she was alive wearing clogs and leg warmers and leggings that hugged her body. she adored showing up in her spiritstyle because it felt like freedom.

this is spiritstyle. the feeling and witness of who we are.

.......

For 10 days through simple prompts and story we will ::

• look at the different parts of who we are. name them. make a list.
• find the feelings inside each of these parts.
• look back at who we were. remember times that we felt most alive and free.
• go into our closets. unearth past. clear space for how we want to feel in our now.
• play with the feelings inside of how we are showing up and being seen.
• purge what is no longer part of our spiritstyle.
• find the pieces and layers that communicate.
• understand dressing and layering a highly sensitive body.
• discover our color stories.
• vision into our spiritstyle becomings.
• allow change to align us with the feeling of freedom and beauty.
• practice showing up for the different parts of who we are.
• share photos on our private facebook group
• be new.

.......

Discover your spiritstyle.

How to make an egg sandwich.

I got up a little early. Found the carton of eggs from the fridge and lit the heat under a tiny little egg pan. I put the little finger rolls in the oven to toast while I scooped coffee beans into the pot.

Eggs cracked and fried, two by two.

My coffee made the little spitting sputtering noise beside me, telling me I could warm my insides as I prepared their breakfast. Cream in the mug. Rolls out of the oven.

Then each little roll was split down the middle and spread with mayo. The eggs were topped with cheese.

The first sleepy head with the crazy man-bun dreaded from wild sleep wanders in.

"Would you like an egg sandwich?"

"No. I would like two please."

The mess was huge. The kitchen covered in the story of our morning. The bathroom was occupied by the one learning to put contacts in. Two of the boys were trying to get computer time by playing math games. Where are my shoes? Can I eat my sandwich in the car? Can I have another one? It doesn't make sense to brush teeth in the mornings. 

I get the lunches together and I am warm and pulled in so many directions while just trying to breathe through and get them all out the door on time. Hopefully with shoes on both feet.

And eight little egg sandwiches later. 
.......

I walk into the kitchen 2 hours after leaving to do the drop offs to school and it is warm from the sun peeking in the glass door. The shells from the eggs piled high in a bowl waiting for the compost bin. 

The next hour will be spent cleaning up from the story we are living together. For just this one moment I need to remember my why. Why the egg sandwiches are how I love. Why waking up early for my coffee is like meditation space. Why being mama is the millionth time I clean up the crumbs and fill the dishwasher and find the lost socks and crack the eggs as it all goes unseen, but felt in the ritual of the story I am searching to catch and put into words.

I move every part of the mess to the left and to the right of the bowl of eggshells. The white of the counter glows. Reminding me of the clean space I will have soon.

I frame the bowl in my lens and grab my why in a photo, in a blink of time where I will remember the little egg sandwiches in this beautiful kitchen in the urban farmhouse. 

My movements return to the cleaning, the wiping, the rinsing, the placing of mixed matched plates back in their space on the shelf. My why. The eggshells. The way I love. The way mothering is my heart and really hard work. I joke with him on the hard days that I am asking for a raise. He always gives me one. His adoration for me clear in how he loves, inside of his why.

.......

I wander back into the kitchen as I hear him talking on his call. 

"OK, but those are feelings, not numbers."

I try to not laugh out loud. Our lives intersecting are so perfect. He is numbers. I am feelings. I am the early waking with the coffee mug and cracking the eggs. He is the one who infuses us with fun and safety. We are living our whys inside this story.

The clean kitchen waiting for the explosion when they walk through the door. The pumpkins muffins we'll make. Covering the white countertops in gluten-free flours and more eggshells. Continuing to go unseen but feeling why.

How to drive a Dodge Durango.

We rented the car online through some site offering a deal for $12.00 a day. When I hit pay now it said the car would be small. Compact. 

When I got to Nashville and stepped off the plane immediately I felt seen. I have travelled to North Carolina, New York, Oregon and California for the last 5 years and I feel like I melt into them. Nashville was not melting me, even with my 1974 cowboy boots on. I adjusted my utility belt, pulled my kimono up on my shoulder and made my way to the rental car place. 

When I got there it was easy. Easiest rental ever. Sign here, initial here, go walk a mile to get your car. I arrive after 7 hours of airports and travel and blurry eyes and the eager guy waiting to help me takes my papers and says, "Oh, you have the special. Come to this row. Pick any car that has the trunk open. Keys are in the cupholder. Have a nice day."

I stand there looking at the sea of cars. Big cars. Pick any car? No walk around to look for dents? No nothing? Just pick a car? 

I walked down the row of cars and was watching people grab them up fast. The two small compact cars got their trunks closed fast. I had no idea what to pick. But I like gray. So I close the trunk of a gray Dodge. When I close it I realize how big it is. I kind of want to open it back up but there are people on both sides of me and I freeze up.

Keys in the cupholder. OK. Found it. It is dark in the row of cars and I have no idea how to turn the car light on. 
.......

Let me pause the story here to tell you a couple of things. 

1. I am highly sensitive to the thousandth degree. Meaning. I like what I know, what is familiar and comfortable. I don't like surprises or change and adapting to newness takes me time. I thrive on change and it also destroys my nervous system for a while.

2. The other day Dave says, "Babe, when we buy our house one day, I am going to make you a circular driveway. Because I love you and reverse just isn't your thing."

3. I hate feeling embarrassed or looking wrong or admitting that I might be wrong or confused or just completely overwhelmed. I will go out of my way to pretend. It is something I'm ready to be done with, but it still exists as my go to.

4. I drive a 2003 Honda Odyssey Mini Van. Enough said.

Back to the Dodge.

.......

I am sitting in this dark car, knowing I totally screwed up my choice but I can see the rental guys around so I just continue forward pretending to be totally cool.

The key has no key. Nothing. It is just the thing that has the buttons to unlock and lock on it. No little silver button that pushes the key out like Dave's car does.

I start to sweat. In Nashville 80 degree heat. I am having hot flashes. I see this little silver sliding thing on the key, so I slide it and all of a sudden the key goes flying out of it, landing under the drivers seat, or somewhere.

*Cue panic. *Cue nervous system shut down. *Cue every voice that has ever said I can't do just about anything.

Now I am on a mission. Find that f***ing key. Fast. I open the back door, move the front seat up, grab my phone, turn on the light, search.

I found it. I breathe a little better. Climb into the car that is pretty much a low lying bus and look for the place to put the key.

And. It doesn't exist. Nothing. Nada. Hot flashes pale in comparison to my life at this moment.

OK. Great. I found the one car that has nowhere to put the key. I am moving my hands everywhere on the dash and searching for something. And kind of praying that my right to rent this car doesn't get revoked.

And then. I see it. A button. Start. Stop. A button. A button. To start the car. Yup. A button.

I close the door slowly, hoping no one has noticed me yet. I push the button. The car starts. Then I search for how to put it in reverse. A little nobby thing. Ok, I can do this.

.......

Please refer now to number 2 from up above.

.......

As soon as I go into reverse this screen that has a million words and numbers and clearly wants to play me music, tell me my fortune, promise me the weather of my dreams and is also yelling at me to not get distracted by all the things it wants to do for me to make my life complete, that screen turns into a loud bright video camera of my reversing.

I start to pull back and then turn the wheel and then freak out. I have no idea how close to the cars behind me I am. I am not looking at the screen because it just yelled at me to stop looking at it. I pull forward. I try again.

One of the rental guys comes up and says, "You are fine, you have plenty of room." I try again. I slam on the breaks. He says, "You are fine, keep going." 

.......

Side note. The gas and break are so sensitive to my touch that if I put my foot on the gas I am flying. So then I put my foot on the break and the car lunges forward. Stop start stop start. 

Yup.

.......

Then another rental guy who is with a couple who is renting a car in my row come up to my window. They tell me I am fine, have plenty of room. The other guy is now standing right behind the car trying to get me to back up into him.

I refuse to run over a human today. So I go back to start and stop. And he says, "You are fine, just back up."

The couple is in my window telling me I am fine. I look at them. I want run. I can't even speak.

Finally, I just say a prayer and put my foot on the gas and reverse, knowing full well I am not only going to run over this man but also crash into the car behind me.

I do it and the car is flying back, in like a second.

All of a sudden the car comes halting, fast. A crazy noise happens. The screen is flashing.

The man is alive. The car stopped itself before I ran him over.

All four of them are saying yay and I look out the window and I stutter... refer to number 3 above.

"It is sensitive, not like my mini van. I drive a mini van. I have kids. I swear I keep them alive on a daily basis."

.......

I make it out of the parking lot and get to my first red light. The car stops running. Stops. The light turns green. I take my foot off the gas pedal to test what is happening. And the car starts itself back up. Every single time I put my foot on the break.

My nerves are like the class castles from Fraggle Rock. The car stops, the little glass inside me shatters. Starts up again. My nerves are now like inside of a bug zapper. Stop. Start. Zap. Zap.

Refer to number 1 above.

.......

How do you drive a Dodge Durango? You just do. And you look like a fool. And you are a pile of shattered nerves. And you strategically park the whole weekend so when you have to reverse you will not run anyone or thing over.

You just drive it. Sweating. Freaking out. Wishing you had put the 'key' back in the cup holder and opened back up the trunk and continued down the row of cars until you found one that felt like you. But you didn't. And this is your lesson. That you can do it. All of it. Even when you are so uncomfortable. In a place, in a car, in an auditorium filled with 3,000 women who have a religious affiliation that is quite different from your own, in a city that you can't feel as comfort. You just do it.

You let yourself order the same salad for three nights because every place you try to eat has an hour and half waiting time and you have just spent the last 11 hours learning, talking all day to people you don't know. You let yourself go to bed when you are tired and you drink extra tea rather than go into a city you don't know alone and drink and try to be social. You wear your utility belt and leggings and leg warmers and quietly notice that you are the only one that you have seen with a nose piercing. You pay almost $5.00 each morning for a decaf coffee because that is your comfort. 

You drive. You talk to the car. (Refer to number 4, my mini van really shouldn't still be running and it just does. And when it is almost running out of gas, I talk to it, and I always always make it to a gas station. Sometimes the next day.) As you are driving and feeling out of control on the highway, not even sure you are within the lane you are in because it is the craziest car you have ever driven. You feel stupid. You cry. You sit in the car and cry before you talk to him on the phone, because you don't want him to know how freaked out you are. Because you want him to be proud of you, not worried or affirmed that you are completely whacked out and incapable. 

You long for someone you know to be near you. Then you drive. You get the salad. You make tea. You think about how inspired you are from what you have learned. The next morning you drive to a little coffee shop. The parking is easy, on the street, no reverse required.

You go in. It feels like you. Everything is gluten-free. They can make you eggs with kale. They have tattoos and you feel at home. You sit and sip. The glass castle is starting to build back up.

Another sip. Nerves repairing. Less zapping.

You climb back in the car. Push the button. Look at the screen yelling at you to not become distracted by it.

You drive forward. 

Your glass castle expands.

Your knowing of who you are is pure and true. 

1. 2. 3, and 4. All true. All OK. It is OK to be you. You are loved. Even if you can't drive in reverse and eat the same salad every night for dinner. 

All true. How do you drive a Dodge Durango? I truly am manifesting to never have to know again.

Sweeping the wooden floor.

The new broom has a spot to hang in the stairwell leading down to the basement in the Urban Farmhouse. I've never had an actual spot for a broom. At The Loft, my last home in the old mill building there were no closets or doors (well, a door for the bathroom) and so the broom got stuck in a corner.

In the Bungalow, the home I lived in for 9 years in the tiny 900 square feet of home, I tucked the broom on the side of fridge. When we moved into the bungalow, so many years ago, a little boy then growing inside my belly, I had more dreams for that house than I could get on paper. I started a little book of all the things I wanted to do inside of that home.

I went to Home Depot once and found these little samples of a bamboo floor that you could take. I took a few. Then went back for more. When we moved into the Bungalow, the last owners had a giant fish tank that had left a water stain all over the wooden floor. So we painted the floor. White. It was gorgeous but impossible to clean. So I dreamt of putting in this bamboo floor as I lined up the pieces of sample flooring as if I was learning to install boards. 

The bamboo floor never happened. There.

When I met Dave and we went to his home in New Hampshire, in the bedroom was a bamboo floor, just like the samples I had lined up along my floor, so many years ago. I told him the story of my bamboo samples. He told me that he put in the floor just for me. He knew I was coming to him.

Today I was sweeping the wide dark floor boards in the Urban Farmhouse, seeing all the floors I have swept before in my mind and how over time we learn all the spots that catch dirt or the way somehow all the dust piles and swirls in corners. I am learning these floors as I collect the dirt that sticks to our bare feet at night as we fall into bed.

As I sweep I think about how I manifested this home, these boards, the wood stove in my bedroom, the window over the sink in the kitchen. As my place of safety for my family and for me. Each pile of dirt I collect becomes a little meditation. I hear him talking on the phone and I know he is walking around me but I am lost in the movements of the broom, quieting my mind. The ritual of cleaning cathartic and familiar. 

I hang the broom back in its spot. In the kitchen are a few potatoes in a bowl and my body wants to cook. To feel the knife in my hand and smell the garlic. Olive oil, onion, garlic. The red potatoes cut into little squares covered now in paprika and cumin and crunchy bits of sea salt.

The meditation of the broom always leads to the next. The smell spreads around the house. He is behind me, "Babe, are you ready to talk?"

The night before our communication hurt and we are learning how to say sorry. How to wait out the anger before saying more. How to love and give space through the pain neither wishes to give to the other, but we still do.

I turn down the flame under the potatoes now crisping up. I go into the living room and pick up a blanket to fold. We sit down together and I look at the boards making up the floor, peeking out from under the red rug. I remember why I am here, in this home. Why I manifested it for us. Why it is my safety right now.

My hand is over his heart. The place where he is learning to feel truth. Truths that can't live any where but the center of our heart and faith, that feeling place that most were never taught to speak from. Truths that fight with the head, the words that try to hold onto the past, the stories that fear wins.

And the truths that make no sense inside logic. Truths like putting in the floor I had been dreaming of before he knew me, for me. How I knew what his name would be and when we would meet, before I knew him, because I knew he was coming.

The truth of now knowing someone so intimately after learning them, practicing with them, taking the time to sweep away their dirt and dust so that the minds can quiet and the hearts can open and just be together. 

We are holding hands. I rub his arm. A few tears pass down my cheek.

"This is going to be a newsletter isn't it?"

"Hopefully."

I am in the kitchen again cracking eggs in hot oil. The floor under my feet swept, smooth, cool. The rain has started to make little pings of sound all over the house.

I flip the eggs over, find the ketchup from the fridge and listen as his feet walk across the floor, the floor that I will sweep over and over, calming my mind, collecting the dirt and dust, living in the beauty of knowing something so intimately. And loving hard. Deep. Strong.

The words he says that trigger me.

Dave has said the words before. We are both entrepreneurs, both in a world of sales and marketing. His is a language I have been learning to translate for years for the women I work with. I can take a heavy left-brain marketing book and translate it into a soft sexy vibration that pulls from the right side, the story side, the emotional places.

The words that make me crazy? Safety net. We were talking about drive and desire and motivators. The juice that fuels us. That thing inside. And he was talking about my drive and my success as something I had to have because I have no safety net. We are madly in love and we speak different languages. My Unicorn brain heard that as... You left your husband, you have no financial support for your kids, you have never been financially responsible for yourself on your own before...I won't be here to catch you if you fall...You are alone...We aren't a team...Did I mention you are alone...blah blah blah.

It triggers the shit out me. My Unicorn tongue freezes up and I struggle to find words to continue talking. He uses it again when talking about a candidate he would love to hire to do just about anything because she is so driven and brilliant and a rock star in anything she decides to do. He says it again, "She has no safety net. It is just her. She will get anything done, make anything happen."

Finally my magic making brain can't be quiet anymore. I tell him I get really triggered when he uses those words. I tell him what comes up for me when he says them. He kind of laughs. Then I see his brain trying to find my Unicorn words. Communication has been our greatest battle to overcome.

He explains what he means about the safety net. For him it is his way of talking about the why. Why we do what we do. Why we have this deep, deep drive for success. We talk about how I never felt safe around money. It had been a source of fear for me and this thing that pulls people apart.

I remember writing years ago about my money story. I had about $12 in the bank to feed my kids. My dog had just broken my computer, which was my only access to this new baby business I was desperate to grow. We had agreed to not touch credit cards any more. I would go to the gas station and put in $5 of gas at a time. A huge melting point had come in my marriage and I was devastated. I remember standing in the kitchen looking out over the back yard crying. I wasn't crying because I felt hopeless. I was crying because I could feel this power rising inside of me that I had to succeed. I had to manifest my life into the visions I knew it could be. I would feed my kids on $12 as I prayed inside of surrender. I would make it happen. I would. The feeling inside still held fear and sadness but the calm that took over me was one of those moments when you can feel God's arms, the Universe's embrace.

As I was staring out the window I heard the dog bark at the mailman. I went out to the porch and grabbed the mail. Inside of it was a letter from my grandfather, the only one like it in the 14 years I've been a mom. A little hand written note in his writing that I adore. Telling me that he knew how hard raising 3 kids was and that he wanted to send a little gift to help. And there was a check. Enough to feed my kids and put gas in the car. Enough to get a new computer so I could work. The work that would change my life. Start to bring in an income that would allow me to feel freedom. That would become my ability to be a stay at home mom while making money. That ultimately would allow me to rent a space of my own and learn to take care of myself.

It is that moment Dave is talking about, I think. That moment when you are staring out the window, that tiny inhale when you have no safety net meeting the exhale when you know, when faith is so strong inside of you, that you will become your version of success. You can't teach that. You can't give that motivation to someone. But once it is inside of you, for whatever reason it arrives, you can then go on the journey to learn how to make magic out of that desire.

This last year my walking prayer has been safety inside of love. My focus was on healing past wounds so I could fully open up to this new love. Every fear resurfaced, wounds re-opened, stories that beat you up. Terrified that I would never truly be able to feel safe and trust love. Scared to actually even entertain the idea of letting Dave catch me if I fell, because there is no way I am falling...no safety net. 

We went on a walk the other day and it felt like that moment had arrived inside of love where I was standing looking out the window, with $12 in my heart. My crying had turned to a calm. All the fears were washed away as we spoke truth and became more vulnerable and transparent than ever before. I could feel it again, that moment, that tiny inhale when you have no safety net because you have been so scared of this kind of love, pushing it and fighting it, meeting the exhale when you know, when faith is so strong inside of you, that you can feel his love and you can give him the kind of love that will heal his cells, his stories, his heart. I knew that we would do anything, anything to create our life together inside of this crazy love we hold. The words, the truths were like the check from my grandfather. And again, the feeling of God's arms, the Universe's embrace.

For the first time in my adult life I feel safe. It is a calm that has come since finding this beautiful home. It is a falling back in love with my business after pretty major burn out. It is the way I see him chasing his version of success inside of loving me. It is how much we have manifested together, discovering the power of two. 

I am crazy driven. I am a dreamer. I believe in action and faith as one power. I have lived without safety nets.  I get it. I am a translator into Unicorn speak, which is story and feeling as teachers.

This feeling of safety is brand new. The drive is still the same, that desire for freedom which is safety in my life. The safety inside of love that is freedom of the soul. 

I am ready to let Dave be the one to hold out his arms along side mine, to catch each other. Both of us coming from that place of no safety net into a trust and a desire to dream and create the most beautiful life together. One of healing and family and passion and freedom and ease and safety. To allow the feeling that came from no safety net to guide you into calling forth your most amazing truth and time here on this earth. 

To accept nothing less than the feeling you want to live inside of every day. To know who you shall be each morning when you wake. 

I am sitting at the dining room table, sipping my coffee with cinnamon. Wearing my oldest, coziest sweater, leg warmers and socks and no pants, I work better without pants. I begin with major emptiness and that place where no words take me into my head as I remember the stories that become my teachings. I remember sitting in the back yard with him and asking him why my business was able to become so special and draw in women that I adore and want for so deeply. I remember him saying no safety net. I remember the way it triggered me and brought up all my fears, again, of being alone. I remember standing in the kitchen looking out into the backyard and tears well up in my eyes. It is like I am there. I can feel her. 

And inside this life that was born from no safety net, I sip my coffee and let the calm that is action and faith as one surround me. I am home. I am safe. I am love. 

I don't wear a bra.

I bought the kimono in North Carolina years ago. The invitation to teach at Serendipity retreat came just after I wrote on my dream list, be asked to teach at a retreat. At the last minute I added the words North Carolina to the top of the page. I hadn't been back to my childhood home since I was 10 and I was finding myself inside of a huge awakening which felt like a pull back in time as my layers were peeling back.

Less than a week later I had a message about teaching at the retreat. In North Carolina, just a couple hours away from where I grew up. No one had seen the vision page I made. I didn't talk about it, though often I do, because when our desires are known by others, they can help us manifest them into reality.

I've become a powerful manifestor. Using that word used to scare me. I would go out of my way to not say manifest or sales in my teaching. I was sure that using those words in my two Magic Making circles would scare people away. So I danced around them.

It also scares me to say, I've become a powerful manifestor! I have moved through discomfort in droves over the years. Writing blogs. Posting pictures of myself on Instagram. Telling big truths on social media. Showing my life in mostly real time and using that life to create my programs and build community.

When I stopped wearing a bra and jeans and 'fancier' clothes I was nervous. I wear yoga pants daily. My belly and legs feel at home in them. Layering tanks became my bra. I adore looking and feeling like me. My red lipstick phase made me initially nervous. I have a draw towards constantly challenging myself to be uncomfortable, on edges, so that I can feel fears and strengthen my spirit from those feelings. 

And so the word manifest is now a word I embrace. Some teachers call it core desired feelings. Some call it the vortex. You've heard the phrase, your thoughts create your reality. These things are all lessons and practices in manifesting. Nothing is more important than how you want to feel. In your home. In your sexuality. In your work. In your body. What I teach starts with the feeling inside our dreams. It is a practice.

If you don't feel (good, turned on, lit up, empowered, blessed...) selling or marketing your work, you won't be dancing with abundance. If you don't feel (good, adored, beautiful, spirit connected, ease, joy, bliss, love...)  looking at your naked body in the mirror, you won't have the kind of sex that opens you up to the kind of intimacy and vulnerability that comes with feeling gorgeous in your skin.

I've become so good at manifesting that for a while I was scared to keep going as purposefully as I had been. Because when we call in what we want, we can never know quite how the journey will look getting there. When we choose to live inside of powerful questions and secret messages and make space for magic what shows up will take us to new edges. And living on edges can be a tiny bit exhausting.

Manifesting isn't pinning pictures and words up on a board and then waiting for it to happen. It is the way we want to feel pulled into our now. It is the work we put behind the dreams. It is the ratio of action versus visioning inside of the ways we want to feel.

Manifesting is living your I am. Taking off your bra to become the version of you that brings you into how you want to feel... when you work, when you love, when you mother, when you make home. Feel lit up by I am. Flow into your becoming from all that you have risked to be in this space now.

Every time I put on that kimono I feel its gift as a result of my manifesting. Of how I make magic inside my life, call my dreams into reality. I feel sexy and abundant and blessed and soft and so grateful to this life.

Now when I teach sales I use the word. I infuse it with the feeling I want to have. I know that I if I had no one to sell to, I would not be teaching women compassion, lifting, sorting, surrender, sanguine, awakening, creating, dreaming, action, permission, vulnerability, truth telling, dharma, soul-infused business. 

If I don't share my stories. Like 2 years ago sitting at my own retreat in Maine, on a dock, on a lake I said, "I will have my own retreat spot on a lake. I can feel it inside, this is my next dream." And how 6 months later my beloved sat on my couch in The Loft after one of our early make-out sessions where you feel like you are electrically charged to the other person (I actually still feel that), and he told me about his lake house. The one he had had as his dream since he was 8 years old, and how he made that dream happen. The house he now calls our home. The house where I have been gathering women on the lake to lift, to tell stories, to retreat together. The house where I first told him I loved him. The house where two dreams collided.

I can pull myself back into my blessings and the feelings I want to be inside of now, on the days when it is a struggle and feels so hard. I slip my legs into my yoga pants. I layer on some tank tops. I add some leg warmers and boots. Then I wrap myself in a kimono, look in the mirror, and find my feeling.

Then I sit down with my mug of tea, and type my stories. On a Tuesday. On a Sunday. 

Sometimes even on a Friday.

What I can't teach you. I speak Unicorn.

"Mom, your camera roll is filled with selfies and our house."

"Yes. True. Because..."

"I know, for your 'business.' Hey Mom, I am going to start a business too, watch." (And the camera clicks away at his hilarious selfie face.)

They know I work, they know how blessed we are to have a stay-at-home mom who works all the hours around their time and needs and often while they are doing homework. They know I work, they have seen the website, they wear the Coyoteloon shirts like they were a uniform, they go to the bookstore and buy the Bella Grace magazine I was last published in with huge pride. 

This is all they have known of me as their mama. They are asked not to follow me on Instagram or read my website, which at some point becomes honor system and which at some point becomes something they will do.

I've talked to them about how I use self-portrait to create connection, tell a story, look people in the eye who I may never meet in person, find softness and love for myself more. They live inside my business. They are deeply part of my work. 

And they speak Unicorn.

manifest. magical. surrender. journey. expand. universe. blessings. release. call forth. meditate. iterate. 

Ask them what I do and they struggle to find a way to explain it. Ask my partner what I do and he will say I am a consultant for women, adding a few more words that I can't remember now. Ask me what I do and I will speak Unicorn.

I have learned and studied elevator pitches. I have been to conferences and done the worksheets. I've worked one on one with incredible wordsmiths who were guiding me to figure out the elevator pitch version of what I do.

When I started out my business I used three words...

Writer. Coach. Mom.

That is about as basic as it gets. But then I felt more like a guide. Or perhaps a teacher. I create online courses for women around anything and everything that feels like woman-goddess-mama-spirit soul work.

What value do I deliver? What about the Lift Ups? Do I mention raising vibrations or that I teach how to manifest a lover from a sticky note and a jar?

Crap. I speak Unicorn. 

And so.

I am a story-teller. A magic-maker. A prompt-magician. A high vibration shape-shifter. I am the one who records the details in photo and words and then spins them into tellings of future becomings in the feeling world.

I am of a spirit that longs to guide yours when you desire compassion, lifting, sorting, surrender, sanguine, awakening, creating, dreaming, action, permission and the essence of your own knowing. (Which is magic.)

A woman wrapping story and prayer into words as teachings that want to settle inside of you and become the inspiration for your next story and prayer and teaching.

Which means.

There is a part of business that I can't teach you. The part where you try to fit inside the lines of a worksheet or explain your brilliance in the span of an elevator ride. Because I speak Unicorn. I believe that there is more than one way. I don't care that when I am faced with the question of what I do that no one answer exists that will ever please me enough to be satisfied. I find the words. I believe in finding the simplest, easiest words to share. 

I have struggled with wanting this for years. The ease in communicating what I do. I've asked women I work with to help. I have made vision pages and read books. 

One day I was at a work party for an incredibly successful business man who was retiring from the company he built. I started to ask him questions in my Hannah sort of way. It was a good question with 5 parts, I can't remember now what it was.

He started to answer and then stopped. He looked at me and said, "I will answer you. I will. But not in front of everyone here. Because I know what you do. You bring out the emotion and the things inside we don't even realize are there. I know what you do. And I will answer you."

He knows what I do. He sees this woman who wears leg warmers and a utility belt and a kimono at every event she has attended with her man. Who looks people in the eye. Who asks questions. Tells stories. Who speaks Unicorn. The language of faith and truth and permission. 

The women I work with speak Unicorn. My man now speaks Unicorn. The kids make fun of it, but they are fluent. 

I get tagged in Instagram self-portraits of other women. They tell me that learning to look at their own eyes through the lens or move through the fear of being seen or finally are seeing their beauty unfold before them-they tell me these things that give me goosebumps. And remind me why there are some things I can't teach. 

They know what I do. And so it is.

Becoming 42.

He wants to know the story of our first kiss. At 11, he is starting to have feelings creeping up around passion, love, relationship. And there is a girl. One who has been in his life for as long as he can remember. She is his best friend, he hers. When Dave and I were dreaming and joking around that we wanted to build a wedding dock some day, that extended out to the water so one of our kids could be married at the Magic Lake, he was the first one to claim it. 

He wants to know the story of our first kiss because his first kiss is in his becoming. Because he adores our love.

I made a deal that if Dave and I share the story with him, he has to agree to share his story, some day in the future. 

"Well, I need to think about that..."

.......

Becoming 42 scared me. I actually tried to slip right by it, un-noticed. The opposite of how I have spent the last three birthdays. For the last three years I have celebrated and let myself be celebrated. I loved turning 39 and 40. 41 was beautiful, now including my beloved.

I think it scared me because I am now inside of the rise. You know the ashes and the burn happened. And happened. Then happened a little more. For the last few weeks the shift, the flow, the newness has become obvious. I don't feel like the same person. My cells have changed. I look different. I move different. I am showing up in relationship differently and looking at my business differently.

A dream cycle finding its completion. Surprises waiting. Love deeper than I ever imagined and that depth equal in pain when things are off.

Becoming 42 scared me. It is the rise and I have been burning down for so long, I forgot what it feels like to no longer have flames around my spirit. I forgot what it feels like to become so beautiful and whole and loved and magical. Because the burn, the down, the pain are familiar touch points.

As I rise I try to fight it. 42 is almost 45, 45 is almost 50, I barely have any time left for the unbelievably amazing life I am drawing in. Why is it going so fast? Why does my neck look so old? I don't want to do this, to step into this, to let go of the burn.

.......

She texts me and tells me that I am now entering another 7 year cycle. Of course my cells are different. Of course it feels unsteady. Of course I am pushing against something so brand new I have yet to understand it or feel it.

She texts me and says she has this vision of 42 being a magical age, that it somehow has become a year she imagines is for tackling the impossible. 

He calls me, "Babe, I know you are having a hard time around turning 42, but I want you to know that I am OK with growing older. I want to grow older. You and I are like 8 years old in our spirits but we are going to grow older. All I want is to grow old with you, with you by my side forever."

.......

They surprise me with a visit on my birthday. They bring babies and laughter and the only thing I ever want for my birthday.

Time. They give me time. To feel loved up. They tell me how beautiful the house is. They are my people in this life. The ones that will also grow old with me, by my side in all our chaos with our families, together.

Time. The most magical gift I can ever receive, time with the ones I love. As the year turns over and I am looking at time inside the rise. 

I understand it now. The rise in all its magnificence has sped up time, not time as in minutes ticking on a clock but time as a feeling space, as a place that is living, feeling, knowing, learning, loving. It is time felt at a different pace, in a new reality with new cells with everything changing changed inside of change.

I changed time when burned it all down. The most magical gift I could ever give myself.

She left me a note on the dining room table. 

Once again proof of the magic you are able to create and call in. So like...withe your superpowers...I am eager to see the awesomeness you continue to make happen. At any age. Shit just keeps getting better.

.......

Our first kiss happened the second time we were together. He had brought his tools over to fix some cabinets that were broken. He told me later he wasn't sure he could fix them because his hands wouldn't stop shaking, because he wanted to ask me if he could kiss me.

I poured us both some water and we sat on the couch. I can't remember what we talked about but I let my leg touch his so that we would both relax, I knew touch was his love language the moment I met him.

Somewhere during that time he asked if he could kiss me. I looked him in the eyes and put my coffee down. Without words I climbed onto his lap, facing him, legs on either side of his body.

Yes.

I felt his surprise and joy and fear flow through me. I feel him in a way I have never felt another person. His feelings become part of me almost before he knows he is experiencing them.

Then he kissed me. Soft. Almost like a tease. Our mouths together but barely. The tenderness and gentleness. Tongues touching and playing in the most delicate way. It took my breath away. It filled me with longing. I felt like I was melting into him.

I am not sure which parts of the story I will share with our 11 year old. Maybe I will let Dave tell it so I can hear it from his perspective. 

Time will bring his first kiss and I imagine he will share parts of his story with us, it is who he is. A story teller. 

I might be 42 or 45 (I have requested 45). 

Time. I get it now. It is my gift. My favorite gift. It just keeps getting better.

No, I don't get child support.

"Oh Hannah, I'm so sorry."

The response was becoming one where I was feeling strange share any details of my divorce. I've walked an intuitively beautiful path of truth telling and story telling and knowing what is mine to share and what might be too close to others for me to talk about. I trust my instincts, my gut, around my transparency.

When I tell people I don't get child support the reaction is one of pity or that I somehow am being wronged.

There is a piece of myself that is afraid to share my success, my blessing of being a stay at home mom who runs a business and supports herself and her children on her own. One of the motivators for me in creating a business to support me was freedom. Being able to claim my freedom and move into my next iteration.

When I was in the heart of divorce, even though he and I are quite close and loving, I was falling apart. And in my falling apart holding space for my business was challenging me. I was pulling out my hair, literally. I thought about how I might live in my van and how he would get the kids full time. I imagined and told myself that keeping a business like mine alive long term would be impossible and I would one day find myself without income to feed my kids and my now growing family. I got scared. I lived on fumes. I was scared to run programs, to bring in money because I had no where to hold it, the energy of it. My energy was surrounded by grief and loss and then partnered with finding a new kind of love, loving a man in a new way while surrendering to the pain of divorce.

I was exhausted. My bank account was dangerously empty. I felt stuck like I was walking in mud and I was scared.

Money is energy. When I open to the energy exchange that allows me to do this work and raise my family, the flow of success (my definition of success) is intensely real. Fear stops that flow. I needed to call in a pause and look at who I wanted to be now.

I don't get child support. It is not a statement on my beliefs of what anyone else should be doing. It is not me playing a martyr. It is not anything to feel sorry for. When I knew it was time to end our soul/marriage contract I wanted both of us to be free to create futures of joy and surprise and peace and ease. To be connected by the energy of money felt to me like not being able to release one another.

But the truth is. I don't need it. I need to provide for myself and give myself freedom from this work that I can only describe as pure loving joy. (Also, it is the hardest thing I do.)

I send him money each month for a credit card payment that we still have to make. It is the only piece of our relationship that feels unfinished and I am working to pay it off so we can both be free from that tie that must come undone. We share the kids time and hearts and parent like we always have, including the expenses of raising them. We have found success inside of our untangling and we are blessed with our children, our past, our knowing it was time to let our contract complete.

This work, this life is my blessing. Success to me is being able to work from anywhere in the world that has internet. It is how I can co-host a work event for my beloved while having a live chat with my Magic Making Circle. Success is living and working in clothes that feel like me, leggings and leg warmers and feet in the earth holding my coffee mug. Success is paying rent for a beautiful home, never running out of money to feed my family, and the way the sun is spilling out over my tattooed arms while I type this story to you. Success is every email from one of you, giving me back words and gratitude and fueling me with your hearts so that I can let the fears move through me, thank them, and write the next story. Lead the next circle. Offer my transparency as an offering of hope or change or truth or connection or sameness.

This is the story I will tell today. Sitting in the sun. Typing these words. I want to feel proud of this life I am creating. I want to make tacos (my favorite meal). I want to step back into the energy of my work, open the flow, teach what turns me on.

I want you to look at what success is to you. To find your definition. To write it on sticky notes. To use it as your gratitude.

Success is the kiss from each of our kids as they cuddle down into bed at night. Success is the way I have learned how to love him, take care of him, provide for him and our kids. (And learning how to receive from him.) Success is this business that allows me this life of ease mixed with fear mixed with risks mixed with failures mixed with all the things promising me that it is all OK. 

The response when I tell someone I don't get any child support? The one that feels like success?

"Oh Hannah, that is so completely amazing."

When the ground falls out.

I woke up around 1:15am to go up to the bathroom and then put the $3 I had next to my bed under our youngest little one's pillow. A front tooth knocked out and ready for the tooth fairy.

The stairs were unfamiliar as we were 'camping' at our friend's, staying in the magical tree house, gorgeous, new addition they are building to their home on their own.  I felt wobbly and unsettled. I made my way to the room where the boys were sleeping and I couldn't walk straight. I fumbled and somehow managed to put the money just under the pillow, as I was unable to lift it or bend down without falling.

I got to the toilet and was sure I was going to throw up. I made it down the stairs, laid down and my body started shaking with shivers and it took all my breath to not throw up. 

If I turned my head to the right I could make the room stop spinning just enough to feel like I could go back to sleep. I have had some vertigo in the past and thought that my allergies must have blocked my ears up and was sure it would pass.

Around 3am I had to go to the bathroom again and this time I could hardly walk. I was embarrassed for anyone to know so I crawled up the stairs on my hands and knees, went pee and started back down. I went to find the ground and it wasn't there.

The ground wasn't there. I was grabbing the railing and the wall, I could feel that there were sides, a left and right. But top and bottom, the ground and the sky were gone.

I screamed for Dave. "I need you."

In seconds he was there holding onto my body that didn't know how to move, how to find its next step. 

"Babe, I'm dizzy, everything is spinning, I can't find the ground."

He got me to bed and I found the same position for my head and slowly stopped feeling like I would puke.

A few hours later we had a puppy and multiple children jumping all over our air mattress. I prayed that it was gone. I needed to pee again.

I sat up just a tiny bit and there it was. Dave started helping me to the bathroom up the stairs again and it was like the stairs were jello. And they were everywhere and nowhere. I screamed for a bowl to throw up in. I was shivering again. Freezing. Crying. Scared.

.......

In the last two years I have left my home. My marriage of 18 years. Learned to live financially on my own with no help running a business I create daily with three kids. Started a new business. Fallen in love with a man who was also leaving a marriage. Fallen in love with two kids from this man. Divorced. Lost friendships inside of all this change. Left the Loft that was my home and retreat space in all the transition years. Put everything into storage. Created a new retreat spot in NH. Lost our family dog. Lived in NH with 5 kids for the summer. Visioned and dreamt around manifesting a new home. Found the new home. Moved boxes out of storage into the new home. All while trying to mother and partner and love and run a business and nurture the women who circle with me.

And it felt like I was doing nothing well. At the same time, I knew. For an HSP who lives and breathes by home and ritual and routine and knowing what to expect, this was pure chaos. Even if it was all the things I was drawing forth.

The scramble of change and iterating. Before the reality of what now can be. 

If I could just wake up and make pancakes with a warm cup of coffee and know that everyone I loved was with me and safe and that I wasn't failing my life could it all be ok again?

.......

I don't manifest slowly. It is usually so fast that I have to be careful what I am calling in. Sometimes I am scared to dream more or bigger. But I have no choice. This is who I am.

I kept saying that I couldn't find the ground beneath my feet. Until one day I woke up and literally couldn't find the ground. It was gone and the world was spinning.

The metaphor and the reality. Fused. One. Seamless.

The boxes have stayed unpacked. The visions of surprising the kids with their rooms set up and decorated by the time school started are now visions of having enough room for them to walk through the house.

The deadlines are going unmet. Even though they are my deadlines, my Stories from a Friday that I never missed sending are now coming out on a Wed or a Sunday. I have 3 calendars all in different places and no internet at the new house and I am working to get the NH lake house ready for the next retreat.

And I am so dizzy. I wake up dizzy. I go to bed dizzy.

.......

They got me from the bathroom and moved me to a bedroom upstairs. I couldn't open my eyes. My head needed to stay just to the right.

I could hear them talking. Jenny told Dave she had found a technique on YouTube that could help with the vertigo. They were watching it a few times to learn it.

They asked if I wanted the kids in the room or not. I asked if there were kids in there. They laughed. "Yes, a few."

I opened my eyes and saw some of our 5 and some of Jenny's 3 sitting around the room, quiet, watching. They are such loves. And they were scared and confused.

I remember doing the movements to help with the vertigo and then laying back down in bed with a wash cloth. Every now and then one of the kids would come and rub my back or my arm. Jenny rubbed oils on my chest and my feet, behind my ears. Dave tried to make me laugh and was the most amazing partner. He was supposed to be spending his morning on a dirt bike and instead was by my side, helping with all the kids and the packing up and me.

.......

I drove to Starbucks and parked right outside of the door. If I get the right spot I can use the free internet from the van. I took out my computer and phone and got on my live coaching call for my magic making circle. Then I went to pick up my daughter for school shopping. Then I went home to unpack just a bit before heading back to NH to help host a work event for Dave.

In and out of dizzy. Grateful each time my feet can feel the ground. 

It is still there. I can feel it, find it, trust it, honor it.

Living the metaphor that I can't find the ground beneath my feet. Grateful for everything I have and am calling in. Watching all the chaos from the last two years start to unscramble, like the stairs that seemed to be turning to jello, now solidifying again as I watch.

Each week I send my newsletter out and no one can respond because the email got tagged as spam or something. So each week, lonely, as I send out the words and nothing comes back. I can't feel the ground.

So many details that need to be tended to and fixed. Today I am switching newsletter services, hoping I will once again be able to receive words. Two kids in middle school. Five different homes between me, Dave and our kids. Businesses that no longer make sense the way they used to with new social media algorithms and networking and marketing not as cozy and loving as they had been in the past. Trying to keep up, stay ahead. Looking for the ground, the ground. 

.......

How do we do it all?

We don't. We just take a step. Then another step. We let go of the perfectionism and send the letter on Sunday instead of Friday when the dizziness calms down. We let them come to the new house with boxes everywhere instead of beautifully decorated rooms, and let them be part of creating the magic. We continue to say prayers with our morning coffee, because that ritual is our touchpoint of knowing who we are.

We step again trusting that the ground will be there and knowing that if we can't find it, someone who loves us will be there to take our arm. To guide us. To remind us that we don't have to do it all alone.

For this year.

This year on September 2oth I will turn 42.

Often I still wonder when I will grow up. And how I got here.

The three pregnancies I lost before my daughter was born. The colic she had for months as we learned to become parents inside of the chaos of a little body struggling to find peace. The decision to stay home with her and learn how to eventually create my own business. The surprise baby years later.

Co-parenting with their dad and learning how to do this all in such a new way. Witnessing the way he has dealt with his grief and is creating space for surprises and joy for all of them.

Co-parenting with my love, who we manifested into our life. The man who teaches us so much and gives us play and adoration and safety. Kids who call each other 'bonus siblings' as we blend our families together inside of our love. We are in awe of how blessed we are and the gems of wisdom these kids are teaching us about ourselves.

Watching them grow and change, learn to swim, have a first girl (or boy) friend, honor their needs while creating boundaries.

My love calls the moments we are inside of with these little ones, the stories of our lives. We are trying to write them down, record them, honor them, hold them tight as days pass and more are written.

The hardest part for me in life is letting go of expectation of what it all should look like or feel like or become because we can never known how hard, how much love, how all of it will unfold.

And the guilt of manifesting a child for so long only to be met with the actual truth of becoming a mother. It is hard. Harder than anything else we will ever do. And the way it engulfed who I was as my woman-self and the ways I got lost. Disconnected. Scared.

As I walk towards my 42 year there is a clinging tight to ritual. To the little things that make the mornings work. Setting up a tower of blocks with some animals around it, a bowl of dry cereal and a mason jar of milk waiting in the fridge for the one who gets up at the earliest hour.

The stories my friends tell and the inspirations they give me inside of their mothering. The trips to the beach at sunset that splatter across Facebook in the summer, binding us all together no matter how we have chosen to mother. We are in this together.

The stew and wine dates on the deck with the man who has taken on the beautiful work of being inside this blended family with you, and loving the kids in ways that change everyone. The way you know you must give so much time to the core of this relationship, as this joy and love feed the kids.

When you know you need to be side by side the women who are living this crazy life with you and you pile all 7 of you in the truck to drive to see all 5 of them in the mountains and all of a sudden you can breathe again. Because the way they live reminds you constantly that you are strong enough and this is all so amazing.

On the drive we talk about how we are raising them to become who they want to be, as we are still learning about who we want to be.

Turning 42 doesn't have the same weight that 39/40 did. It is a bit less exciting. But it feels important. Important to continue to honor all the parts of me. The girl turned women turned wife turned mama turned business woman turned single mama turned girlfriend turned mama to more turned wise true self.

So for my birthday this year I am gathering inside of this circle of women, of mamas and we will be together in all our different parts and pieces. This is how I choose to celebrate. While I continue to wonder, when will I grow up...

Magic Making Business Circle :: Feeling the freedom.

I found out I was pregnant with Lucas, my third baby,  just as I was starting to feel like I was entering the world from a long deep stay inside of raising young children. I got scared that I would lose myself and yet I was so thrilled at the idea of another baby, surprise that he was.

I made a leap of faith to enroll in school to become a health coach. At that point in my life my second, Eli, was eating 'quesadilla pizzas' which were brown rice and seaweed in a tortilla, so food as health and medicine was my thing. (Disclaimer, no longer does quesadilla pizza filled with seaweed fly with my kids!)

I spent almost a year piling my whole family plus our dog into a tiny car (which is why we eventually got a minivan) and spending weekends in NYC going to school during the day, coming back at night to nurse the baby who would boycott a bottle all day long. He was four months old when I started and walking by the time I graduated.

I love food. I love food as medicine. But what really lit me up were the chunks of time at school when they would talk about business. I realized this was my turn-on. Marketing. Sales. Creating your own income based on your passion. Freedom.

My whole life I wanted my own business. I own a lot of domain names. A. Lot.

I come up with a new business idea almost daily.

When I started my business, called Hannah's Harvest, I didn't know how to send an attachment inside of an email. I had only just signed up for Facebook, clueless of the reach it would one day provide for my business. I had amazing mentors and coaches in my life. They patiently taught me step by step how to do everything from writing a blog post to editing a photo to starting a newsletter.

I studied businesses that I adored. I watched. I learned. I saw what I didn't like. I saw what I loved. I was patient. I accepted that I would fail a shit ton before I would succeed. Every 'failure' I flipped into a learning moment.

The second year of business I made about $2,000 and I was out of my mind happy. It took me 4 more years to make an income that provides my gorgeous home, my life, my freedom. More than anything I am so proud of myself. That I kept going. That I knew I would and could do this. I was born for this. I was made to create businesses that make others feel amazing, special, loved, understood, seen, held.

My dharma is making others feel special and know that they can do anything, anything, they dream of.

I am a manifestor of the life of my dreams. I am a magic maker. I am all I desire.

There are days when I worry. When I want to quit and give up and run away. When I am exhausted with single parenting three kids and running two businesses. Those days are part of the magic. The magic of knowing what we want.

I want more ease inside of my businesses and so I am constantly challenging my own business model. I still think most days that I am that tired mama making $2000 in the business she created out of nothing. Because she is my superhero. She is my motivation. She is my muse. I adore what she created for me. Because she never gave up. She doesn't give up. She knows she can do hard things and does them.

I am a magic maker. And so are you.

My invitation to you is to step inside a circle of women who are creating the businesses of their dreams or are dreaming of the businesses that will one day light them up, turn them on, create their freedom.

My invitation to you is to believe in your soulwork. In your dharma. In your joy.

My invitation to you is to become the magic maker who allows failure to fuel them, who tries, who doesn't give up. Who fights for what they know they were put here to do.

My invitation to you is to join our circle and find your magic. Your business. Your heart centered work.

My invitation to you is to say yes to all that you know you can create, inside of the most amazing circle of women you will ever meet.

My invitation to you is to say yes. And yes again. And again.

WE START october 15TH ON THE full MOON AND WILL CIRCLE TOGETHER FOR FIVE MONTHS. WHEN YOU SIGN UP THE FIRST PAYMENT COMES OUT NOW AND EACH MONTH AFTER THERE IS AN AUTO WITHDRAWAL ON THE SAME DATE EACH MONTH FOR THE FOUR MONTHS FOLLOWING.

$89.00 FOR FIVE MONTHS

INSIDE THIS CIRCLE ::

• weekly live group coaching calls, which will be recorded and shared
• weekly prompts to help you move forward, take risks, open yourself to marketing, dreaming and creating in a new way
• a circle of women working inside of their heart centered businesses to inspire and support
• live chats inside of our Facebook group circle to ask me anything and share with the circle
• the invitation to celebrate yourself and all that you bring to the world, to celebrate your gifts and superpowers

WE WILL EXPLORE ::

• marketing that allows you to feel authentic and true
• money. yes. money.
• communication with tribe and building that tribe
• blogging, newsletters, bios, sales pages... you know, the writing piece
• how to use social media for expanding and connecting
• failure and success
• upper limit ceilings and sicknesses (oh yes, this is a big one)
• patience and pacing and movement and inspired actions
• and you know, all the things that come up along the way

WORDS WOMEN WHO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN MMC FOR BUSINESS HAVE GIFTED ME WITH:

"Exploring business with Hannah is like doing anything with Hannah – filled with magic! If you are into smart, sexy, sacred work then this is place for you. The ways that this program changed my business (and me) are too many to be named here but I will share that for years the biggest struggle in my business was how to market my work in this world without the ick factor. One of the most important things I learned from working with Hannah was how to connect with my tribe and share my offerings in a way that feels heart-centered and authentic. Hannah’s program is filled with soul-stirring prompts to fuel your business (and your life) and a creative community to support you along the journey. Imagine a virtual living room full of like-minded businesswomen who will become your dear friends! Hannah gathers some of the most amazing women on the planet and the connection I’ve found in her circles is unmatched."   - Mindy Scime

"If you are ready and willing for your heart to lead the dance inside of your business... if you are ready to have faith in success that seems to have no roadmap but sure seems to have a lot of happy possibilities... If you are ready to surrender to the beautiful truth that your business, and your life, might in fact be better than you ever believed, then say OH YES and enjoy the ease that follows.     -Melissa Mulligan

"Sometimes the bits and pieces of running or starting a business can feel so dry and overwhelming, but not in Hannah's business circles!  She taught me how to bring the magic of manifestation and of loving insight into my business. During our time together in the circle, she gave both loving encouragement and the occasional ass-kicking as needed. As always, she brings her honesty, spot-on intuition, and big, big love to her people. The participants in the group were amazing too and the circle provided such a rich support where I could bring my questions and issues to the table and receive a wide variety of incredible perspectives.

As a result of working in the circle, my own business continues to grow and I began a second one. I always love my work with Hannah and bringing the magic to my businesses has been a whole other level of awesomeness!"  -

Marisa Donlin

Flowers, post office and crazy hair.

Today I shall be...

someone who gives herself flowers, because I need to provide the nurture that feels good.

lifting more boxes, getting exercise via the storage unit to the new home, rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.

led by the crazy hair that was slept on wet after intense sex in our exhaustion from moving.

going to the post office to mail the lease, the check, the form to finalize some loose ends of divorce and buying stamps to tack onto the cork board that now sits in a corner waiting for a spot to hang.

thinking about each of my kids and how I can make sacred space for all of them in our new home, so that each feels seen and celebrated and calm.

going to Home Depot for clippers and gardening gloves so that together as a family we can create a little backyard oasis.

visioning where the furniture will go and the way I want the flow of the house to be so it feels open and alive and gorgeous.

thinking about my beloved, as he takes steps today to move closer into the next stories of his life, grateful that he is holding my hand as his partner as we co-create this beautiful life.

honoring the new way I am choosing to show up, integrate, process, download, communicate and hold space by tending to my heart through quiet reflection.

shopping for a shower liner, pillow cases, trash bags, bed for my daughter, coffee for the morning and internet providers.

alive in the promise that my dreams are coming true as I fully soak in that I am only just getting started at living this life out loud and with belly laughs and tears of truth and patience for the one thing I have been praying for all year to manifest next (because it will when it is time).

Today I shall be...

making the red sauce for us to share for dinner under the light of the full moon while sweating under the joy of completing the move.

the most grateful human having him back in my arms again as we inside of a new practice of communication.

a mama who dreams of the rituals we will gather together here in our memories of that year that I manifested a little farmhouse, in the middle of the city, where our next iterations were born.

a free-flowing vessel of get shit done, starting with this list.

And you? What shall you be today?

When there is nowhere to poop.

They all made up their hot dogs (grass-fed, grilled) with bun, no bun, gluten-free bun, barbecue sauce, ketchup, mayo, lettuce, cheese. We piled outside on the deck to eat which happened in about 46 seconds. Then they went back for more.

After we devoured the best summer dinner ever they all jumped in the lake and swam for an hour while I heard my name called begging me to watch this and that about 46,000 times.

As they watched their show I went to clean up as we were expecting 6 people from my love's family the next day. I went to quickly check on the cleanliness of the kid bathroom first.

Water. Inches of water all over the floor of the bathroom. In the shower. I ran to my bathroom. Water. My shower. Water. Dirt.

We have easily 20-ish beach towels. I grabbed them and started soaking up the water that was now so deep I was getting that nervous feeling.

I didn't want the kids to feel my stress so I told them they could watch one more show. And also, that there would be nowhere to poop.

When you have 5 kids under one roof, nowhere to poop is not ideal. They love to pee outside so that part is always fun. They all announced that none of them had to go and went back to watching Kora.

I spent the next 4 hours plunging toilets and showers in rotation. I asked my 14 year old who speaks in puns to write down a list of poop puns to be waiting for when my love arrived to ease his stress of the situation. She refused. I tried to convince her. She refused again.

My son Eli always says that every conversation Dave and I have in our family always ends up in poop talk. My healer calls the work Dave and I are doing in coming together in partnership and all of our struggles part of the shit circle that we must be inside of to heal in relationship.

Pretty much.

He sent me a text after the falling apart we had inside of the chaos. "Thank you for being willing to stand in shit for our family."

We talked about how situations where he feels out of control trigger all his old shit to surface. (Yes, we think we are funny.) But they do. He still does not see that he is our hero.

And during the stress, the fights, the mopping up, the fear of running out of towels and coaching the kids to poop at camp even though they don't like public pooping something happened. Deep inside.

A part of myself that I do not like, that scares me, that fights for her own survival inside of the fear of not being loved was excavated. And she scares me. She is selfish and unable to trust that the spirit of her love, her nurture is enough. When the parts of herself that she does not like are triggered from another, I don't recognize her.

For years I struggled with Eli's melt downs and ADD and highly-sensitive high needs. I was not the same mother with him that I was with my other children. He triggered everything that was inside of me that I hold shame around.

And then the mama that I was showing up as was bringing me to my knees in pain. Here it is happening to me again with this man I love who I joke Eli was prepping me for.

The way I was able to heal my mama self with Eli was to see him as this beautiful creature who was here to have his own experience that I could love him through. I could hold space as a fully loving mama when I let him have his feelings without taking them on as me being a failure. When I could hold space to give him back some of the control he constantly felt he was without. And most importantly, when I could stop adding to his feelings of being a failure.

The same devastating moment I had before everything shifted with Eli and I happened again with my love. I hit the bottom. The shit circle was now literally engulfing me and I had to make a choice.

To let myself be woman-mama-goddess-nurturer-lover enough to let him have his feelings without taking them on as me being a failure. When I could find space to not make it about me. Letting go of this fight for love and just being love. For him.

What if I can show up inside of wanting to give him the greatest experience of my love, just as I do with my children. And allow his experience to be the beautiful journey he needs it to be, while choosing to hold him, love him and let him be free to have all his feelings as his own.

What if.

What if being mama is teaching me everything about deep devotion to another's experience and the safety inside of love?

The plumber just left and he will be back tomorrow to fix the pipes and when we all gather back together as a family we will have a place to poop again.

I feel like I have once again met myself in one of the darkest places. That something old was washed away. The shit circle became literal. I stood in it. I chose.

Being mama is becoming empathy for the one who will crack open as she is no longer just herself.

Being mama is finding our woman-self who will rise inside of the mama and love deep, hard, strong.

And this I choose.

Tea and toast.

They have an elaborate bed time ritual. It starts with tea and toast. Sometimes warm milk. They are always starving at night. I pile a plate high with buttery toast and the four of them make it disappear in moments.

A tea pot we found at the swap shop at our transfer station holds their ritual of honey tea. The ones who want warm milk use either a small mason jar or a tiny green butterfly mug and heat their milk to the perfect temperature for them.

Then we move onto their drops. Calm and sleep, 4 drops on each tongue.

Once the little tongues have the sweet drops they hold out their wrists for sweet repose. Sometimes I add another to either calm their nervous systemsor love up their heart center using my intuition on what they are needing.

Then things get a little silly. The first time we rubbed the oils on their wrists one of them told a story about how lemurs rub their wrists together to secrete their scent and mark their territory. So now they become little lemurs as they rub the oils on their wrists.

Each of them then take turns laying down and getting their foot cream, which now is belly button cream and foot cream. A belly rub and foot rub with each head in my lap on a sheep skin rug.

Then bed. Kisses (often lemur kisses). Nightlights and library books. Sleeping bags and giant stuffed bears. I need to pee. Can I have a glass of water? I forgot to tell you something. Did we have dinner?

This is how we create gorgeous secure attachment. This is how ritual guides us and eases them into the transition of wake to sleep.

Usually at bedtime I am exhausted and wanting to punch the time clock. This ritual and time together is something I look forward to all day. It is snuggles, giggles, words of affirmation, sleepy smiles. They are my joy bubbles.

.......

In one of my sessions with one of my magical, beautiful healers, she said that my work now was to learn how to create secure attachment inside of myself. She pointed out how the security and safety and calm and independence that my kids held inside was what I was longing for in my own body.

To trust in me. To know that I will always come back to self. To be the first place I seek when I am lost. To mama myself.

To trust my intuition of which metaphorical oil I need to nurture my nervous system, my heart, my longings. And learn the practices that will get me there.

Leaning into my rituals of morning coffee and prayers. Attaching to my strength and beauty rather than on the expectations of others. Letting my needs be spoken without attachment on someone else fulfilling them.

.......

The second time we were together he brought his tool bucket and fixed a cabinet in my Loft that had fallen off the hinge. He told me later that his hands were shaking so much he wasn't sure he would be able to fix it because all he wanted was to ask if he could kiss me.

Later on the couch when he did ask I climbed on his lap, looked in his eyes, put my arms around his neck and had the most amazing kiss of my life.

Since that kiss our work together has been learning to create the security and safety inside of our love. Creating our tea and toast rituals of trust and love without conditions, because holy shit did we arrive with conditions inside of so much pain and this unsatisfied desire to love.

We are both terrified of this attachment that seems to have been created between us in stardust (my most magical manifesting story) before we ever met. He is my tether to earth as I float in the sky. I am his anchor in the water as his fire burns strong.

I started a ritual of making a pot of stew as I would wait for him to arrive at night under the twinkle lights for our weekends together. We would eat and share stories for hours and then find ourselves naked together in front of the fire, starving for the other's touch and taste and words.

Our attachment created inside of those rituals, the rhythm of time. Stew. Stories. The touch that heals.

.......

After I pick them up from camp they get to organize their afternoon. They decide when they will swim, how much time they will get for tech, what the afternoon snack should be, early dinner or late dinner and if they need a family meeting to talk about anything. And for all the bickering they do, on this they always agree.

The other day I picked them up and told them that we could go to the library for an ice cream social at 6:30 that night. None of them were excited.

"Do you all not want to go?"

"Well, we really like how we do things every day and our systems. We don't actually want to break our routine."

Tea and toast. Toast and tea.

Children coming together from two families now creating another branch of family together. Attaching. Finding safety. Their own little tribe of ritual and connection.

.......

He arrives tonight. My bleed started yesterday and I am feeling tender and raw. I have the ingredients for stew. I feel like that woman shaking in the Loft with the anticipation of a first kiss that would feel like forever.

We'll have two nights together before the kids arrive.

Stew. Stories. Naked touch time.

And then we'll ready for the chaos and noise of the little ones who keep time in our hearts.

The beds are made. The tea pot is ready. The attachment strong.

xo

{Being mama} 42 days of practices and stories of nurturing, home and love...

{Being mama}

A 42 day practice in nurturing attachments, making home and becoming all the love.

When :: September 1st through Oct 12th 

Cost :: $42.00 or $75 for you and a gift to a mama you adore

$42.00 for you

$75.00 for you and a mama you adore

The four of them pile into the car and I hear them talking about planning a camping trip after their hike. The little voices are telling of how they want to rough it and bring only basic needs.

"I need to bring an apple though, can I bring an apple?"

"Oh totally, we should all bring apples."

"I want pistachios, can I have pistachios?"

"OK, pistachios and apples, but the rest we hunt for."

"Tacos. I am totally bringing tacos."

Being mama is the drives to camp, the wiping of tears, the band-aids, the stories, the amazement.

Being mama is the creation of a vibration of self turned into another. And becomes the setting of love.

We went out for dinner on the one year anniversary of our first date. He told me what surprised him the most about me was that I was like a Mother Earth, that my mothering and nurturing were my superpowers. He said that it wasn't just the way I mothered our kids, it was the way I mothered everyone. How deeply important taking care of people was to me, how it made me who I was.

All I ever wanted was to be a mama. To have a big family. To learn how to love inside of nurture, attachment and freedom.

When I met him I had healed so much inside of me that allowed my mothering to flow again in the ways that brought me and the kids alive. When we are lost, our mothering can become strained and broken. 

When I met him I had found that place again, the one that could see myself through his eyes, and know that I was once again being mama.

Being mama was not what I expected. It lifted me up, shook me out, challenged my knowledge of who I was.

Being mama is a journey I am constantly learning, adjusting and in awe of.

I fell to my knees crying in the kitchen. The kind of cry that rips you out from the inside and the noises primal and aching. The child who had challenged me for years mixed with the heartbreak inside of a marriage threatening to fall apart left me yelling and losing it. A mother lost. A woman longing for herself to come back. The result, pain and screams and melt downs and anger.

He came into the kitchen. He told me the truth. That the mother I had always longed to be, the mama that was born inside of me, was no longer there. I was lost. She was lost. What was left in her place was someone who had no idea who she was or what steps to take next.

And her heart was ripping. And on the kitchen floor, filled with sobs that became prayer she knew that all she ever wanted was to be mama. And she would do everything she could to find her way back to joy so she could adore once again being mama.

Being mama is becoming empathy for the one who will crack open as she is no longer just herself.

Being mama is finding our woman-self who will rise inside of the mama and love deep, hard, strong.

As I was learning to parent in a home as the only adult, we would have mac and cheese night when they would return to me from their dad's house. I would set the table with candles and use our beautiful blue platter with a little chip in it to serve. I could feel myself growing back into the mama I used to be. Inside of magical rituals. Waking the kids up with dance parties. Adventuring on road trips. Reading The Alchemist in the big bed together. Playing best thing/worst thing. Creating chore charts. Laughing after the lights go out and meditating to avoid homework.

Being mama was now led by pure joy, even inside of the devastating loss of a marriage. The middle one, the one who had brought me to my knees on the kitchen floor put his arm around me one day and said, "Mama, we are better now. I can feel it."

Within a year his melt downs and the anger that was inside of him started to ease. Being mama is believing that when we are our amazing woman-selves, we can create practices and attachments and the love that allows them to become completely themselves.

That is the beautiful work of being mama.

The stories, the learning, the play, the failures, the tantrums, the snuggles - all are being mama.

"Dear moon, when I splash the water on me could I please be able to fly?"

Their favorite rituals are around the moon. Full moon magical water, their crystals soaking up the energy and the little love notes. One of my boys always knows the night before a Full Moon, his body becomes wired and alive and he will feel sleepless.

"Mooooooooooommmmm, is it a Full Moon, my body is so crazy right now?"

They make New Moon wishes around the fire. Hang their wishes on the Dear Universe tree. The rituals and ceremonies and celebrations that allow me to infuse myself with my spirit gift them with honoring their rhythms and feel deep gratitude for their choices and feelings.

Each week we find a reason to have a celebration. These days it is celebrating on Thursday nights when my love returns to us for the weekend from his work in the city. They blow up balloons, plan dinner and cook it, pick out a dessert (because dessert). 

What I have learned from the other mamas in my life is invaluable. They have taught me how to make home, to deal with transitions (especially now with parenting after divorce), to handle a tantrum that lasts for hours, to make the every day special, to celebrate just because.

Being mama is the inspiration and connection to the tribe of mamas who circle us, teach us, become the everyday shamans of nurture.

Being mama is creating the simplest bits of magic for our little ones and creating beauty in tiny corners and moments.

The five little ones called a family meeting. I gave them each an ice cream cone, knowing that when our mouths are distracted just a bit, we listen that much better.

One wanted to talk about how he feels like his brother is being a bit mean to him and it is hurting his feelings. Another wanted to talk about getting positive attention rather than negative attention. And then there was the one who wanted to make us all laugh because she so loves when we all laugh. 

I told them I was starting to feel like a maid, that I needed more support around the house to keep things in rhythm. 

"Well, mom, here is the thing. You feel like a maid because you walk around cleaning up after us, picking up every little thing. If you stop doing that, you might not feel like such a maid."

Wisdom from the babes. 

"So I think you are right. Who will be cleaning up then if I stop being one step behind you?"

"Um, usssssssss I guess..." (And then he emptied the dishwasher in full amazement that I do that every day...)

Being mama is intuition, open hearts and ice-cream-cone wisdom.

Being mama is learning to guide them in picking up their banana peel and returning their shoes to the shoe corner and leaving the lunch box on the counter each day after school, especially when it is so much easier to just do it ourselves.

This year on September 2oth I will turn 42. 

Often I still wonder when I will grow up. And how I got here.

The three pregnancies I lost before my daughter was born. The colic she had for months as we learned to become parents inside of the chaos of a little body struggling to find peace. The decision to stay home with her and learn how to eventually create my own business. The surprise baby years later. 

Co-parenting with their dad who supports my new life and theirs as he stepped into his. Witnessing the way he has dealt with his grief and is creating space for surprises and joy for all of them.

Co-parenting with my love, who we manifested into our life. The man who teaches us so much and gives us play and adoration and safety. Kids who call each other 'bonus siblings' as we blend our families together inside of our love. We are in awe of how blessed we are and the gems of wisdom these kids are teaching us about ourselves.

Watching them grow and change, learn to swim, have a first girl (or boy) friend, honor their needs while creating boundaries.

My love calls the moments we are inside of with these little ones, the stories of our lives. We are trying to write them down, record them, honor them, hold them tight as days pass and more are written.

Being mama is letting go of expectation of what it will all look like or feel like or become because there is no way we could ever have known how hard, how much love, how all of it will unfold.

Being mama is the wonder and magic of time and tooth fairies and endless laundry piles and all the stories that become memories to anchor us together.

42 days of practices and stories and a circle of mamas

• the magic of ritual
• the woman-self inside the mama
• making home
• every day celebrations
• the love language of food
• sensuality of being a mama
• deep truths of the struggles
• prayer as morning coffee
• who are you now
• the woman that came before the mama
• sibling dynamics
• rhythms that flip it all around
• tribe support
• healing our hearts
• story prompts
• playful creativity
• photos that capture the stories of our lives
• mamas nurturing mamas
• beauty in the everyday
• honoring our needs and desires
• all the magic and joy and gifts of being mama

Each day for 42 days

• a morning prompt will arrive in your email inbox
• a private Facebook group will hold all the mamas in our tribe
• we will share the stories of our lives through words, photos and deep truths
• support from other mamas in every space of life
• videos filled with the inspiration of mamas (Mara Glatzel, Persephone Brown, Jenny Dunham, Lindsay Annana Mae Wilson, Kathy Hajduk Stowell, Amanda Arthur Krill, Keri Kettle, Cynthia Lee, Danielle Cohen and more) who have changed me inside of being mama
• the village of mamas to lift, witness, inspire, hold, adore and inspire you
• a virtual tribe swirling with all the magic of being mama

A 42 day practice in nurturing attachments, making home and becoming all the love.

When :: September 1st through Oct 12th 

Cost :: $42.00 or $75 for you and a gift to a mama you adore

$42.00 for you

$75.00 for you and a mama you adore

Being mama is the drives to camp, the wiping of tears, the band-aids, the stories, the amazement.

Being mama is the creation of a vibration of self turned into another. And becomes the setting of love.

Being mama was not what I expected. It lifted me up, shook me out, challenged my knowledge of who I was.

Being mama is a journey I am constantly learning, adjusting and in awe of.

Being mama is becoming empathy for the one who will crack open as she is no longer just herself.

Being mama is finding our woman-self who will rise inside of the mama and love deep, hard, strong.

Being mama is this beautiful work.

Being mama is all the stories, the learning, the play, the failures, the tantrums, the snuggles.

Being mama is the inspiration and connection to the tribe of mamas who circle us, teach us, become the everyday shamans of nurture.

Being mama is creating the simplest bits of magic for our little ones and creating beauty in tiny corners and moments.

Being mama is intuition, open hearts and ice-cream-cone wisdom.

Being mama is learning to guide them in picking up their banana peel and returning their shoes to the shoe corner and leaving the lunch box on the counter each day after school, especially when it is so much easier to just do it ourselves.

Being mama is letting go of expectation of what it will all look like or feel like or become because there is no way we could ever have known how hard, how much love, how all of it will unfold.

Being mama is the wonder and magic of time and tooth fairies and endless laundry piles and all the stories that become memories to anchor us together.

When transitions hurt.

I watched him drive away with all 5 of them in our truck and I slowly walked down the stairs to the house that has become my favorite place on earth.

I waved. Then turned. He honked the horn and inside of that sound I knew it was as hard for him to be inside of this new transition as it was for me. I turned and waved again.

I made my way through the house and found myself on the deck overlooking the water. The tears poured out of me in that way where you don't even realize you are about to cry, you just are.

This would be my first week with myself. Out of The Loft. Home at The Magic Lake House. I was out of the industrial mill building I had been calling home for the last two years, where there are people all around all the time. The week's without the kids were spent with my love sleeping next to me each night and with his daily visits as he works in the building.

The Lake House is quiet. Private. There aren't people walking to the coffee shop down the hall or sitting on the little cement deck. Cars don't come and go all day. The talking bus that stopped right outside my window, and would wake us at 6am each day doesn't have a route here.

It is birds. And the gray fox. And the sounds of boats on the water. The occasional squeal of delighted children jumping into the lake. The wind and rain are the sound machines.

I realized as I could feel my body shaking with the cry that had come over me, that this was the first time since leaving my house, since starting to co-parent, since divorcing, since the biggest transitions of my life that I wasn't inside of fight or flight.

There was someone at my side, caring for me. Offering me space to heal, to change, to find my next steps without fear.

My life for the last two years has been electricity charged fear and chaos. The fear has propelled me. Made me a bit crazy and alive but what it has done to my body feels devastating. And as I cried I could feel the hurt and the loss and the fear that have been lodged inside of me whisper that they were ready to go now. Their job was done. They protected the parts of me that had to survive on my own, to support these kids on my own, to be in constant fear of failing everything and everyone. And my body was exhausted. My belly bulging from the cortisol fight or flight that came from months of not knowing, from months of the most stress I have ever been inside of.

I haven't felt 'me' in so long.

Here I was on the deck of my favorite place on earth, sobbing, in the sunlight, releasing fears into the Universe to transform into my next becoming.

And for the last few days I have gifted myself water. And long walks. And yoga. And meditations. And a little jogging. And tinctures. And vitamins. And sleep. And eating what I want, when I want. Or not. Daydreaming into the water. Working in the way I used to, not about struggle for surviving but because this work is my dharma. It is about love and change and openings. And I miss them. And this is the greatest gift I will ever give them. Healing me so that they-he-we, all become safe.

I look in the mirror 6 days later, after the transition. A transition born of transitions. I can see me again. I can feel me again.

Last night he arrived.

We spent the first hour tangled in touch and words of adoration and the sexual charge that comes from having been apart. That first kiss after days without any touch from another human is bliss wielding joy.

Then I got on the computer under the setting sun over the water to chat with my magic making circle and he went down the dock to fish. I watched him as the sun melted down and the bugs were buzzing in my hair.

This is my new life. We have co-created it together. It has been hard. Work. The tearing down of old stories and the shit that has kept us fighting the other.

Flames. Ashes. Pain. Pushing. Struggle. Heart-break.

I could feel their gift as I watched his body relax from the week. As I could see his body physically relaxing now that he was back in my arms. On our dock. With his magic fish. Home. Transitioned. Loved more than any man has ever been loved before.

This is my new life. One born of co-creation inside of the magic of love. I am not meant to walk without him.

This is my new life. Learning to let him offer me support and nurture while I heal and love our children. While I let the Universe guide my dreams into a reality that I know will be better than what I have yet to vision.

This is our freedom plan Transitions that have become our new life.

The kiss of ease. Peace. The touch of everything we are dreaming inside of God's hands.

The kids come on Sunday and we will transition. I will line up the lunch boxes and water bottles and write the little notes about room assignments and projects and ways to be helpful and magical chores. I will be back inside of what is most comfortable to me. Being mama. Being love. Being surrounded by chaos and snuggles and bickering and feeding and the feeling at night when they are finally asleep and that first breath you take...

...as you transition again.

Coming home to the lake.

One of the little girls came up to me as I was picking the kids up from camp. She pointed to the words on my shirt, then looked around the room.

"Hey, there is someone else with the same words on their shirt. And yesterday there was another one."

I told her that those were my boys and the shirts were part of our family business in helping people feel amazing.

I am the only mom who shows up wearing a utility belt, leggings, cowboy hat and crazy hair. I remember being 17 and moving from Europe to this same state and having a bit of a different look and vibration. I loved it then because it played into my dramatic need to be all of me. And I love it now, because for the first time in a long, long time, I feel comfortable to show up as just me, all of me, again. Finding the freedom inside of authentically arriving each day (as mama-nurturer-business woman-lover-partner-home making goddess) instead of the safety inside of hiding behind the differences.

.......

I made a deal with myself when I moved out of The Loft that from the moment I stepped onto the earth, the sand, the ground at the Lake House, that I would allow myself to explore my next iteration fully.

There are a few layers to the exploration. One is my relationship with my lover, my best friend, my twin flame.

A few months ago I found an amazing healer to guide me through some crazy tough edges we were having inside of our relationship, which is the most intense thing either of us has ever felt.

At one of our sessions she said that we were both still showing up as protecting ourselves first, fighting for ourselves, for our safety. That most of our explosiveness and fights were because in our triggers we cut off our connection to empathy and compassion for the other and just start to save ourselves from the pain and fear of losing the other. Or of the hurt that has come from past experiences.

And then she talked about the water as metaphor.

How we can look into the water when it is still as glass and see ourselves clearly. And in partnership this happens when we aren't judging, placing our own fears on the other or being mean or manipulative. When we allow our love to be held with compassion and empathy, they can see themselves so clearly.

And then there are the ripples, the waves that come over the water and all of a sudden their image is shattered, broken up, morphed. They can't see themselves or be themselves. This is when we aren't giving them space and we are placing our own fears above our love for them. We take away their ability to see themselves, to feel themselves, to love us unconditionally because their own image is gone.

And then I started to cry.

Because metaphors. Because water. Because shit, that is how I want to love. I want him to feel safe and held and supported and to see himself as the amazing human he is.

And I want that. I want to have the adoration and care that will allow me to stand on the dock and see myself again. Or, for the first time.

.......

This past Sunday I came home to the lake. I cleaned the Loft from top to bottom, got in my van and drove all 5 kids home with me. There were tears from my Lucas when I showed him pictures of the Loft without anything inside of it. There was a beautiful conversation about how this is our home for the summer and how blessed we are, because who gets to live at a lake house all summer??? There was gratitude. There was the question over and over about when my love would arrive, they all love him beyond words.

And when he arrived I made waves. I could feel my entire body splashing the water and making it so rough he couldn't see himself or feel himself or be himself.

I was triggered and scared.

Then I remembered the promise I made to myself. That when I stepped onto the earth, the sand, the ground at the Lake House, that I would allow myself to explore my next iteration fully.

Inside of this iteration, inside of the trust of letting him care for me in ways I am still wrapping my head around, I want to stop fighting for safety. I want to stop showing up as my fear and making so many waves because I am terrified of being left.

This level of iteration changes us completely. If I choose to show up fully as me, fully fully fully me, all of me ... then he will be able to see himself, feel himself, trust himself.

What if I stop making these huge waves in the water and instead climb into our truck with my crazy hair and let the waves spill out of me as vibrational joy?

.......

Coming home to the lake. The earth. The sand. The water.

All of us together. All of us safe. All of us held.

Showing up like that shirt we all wear says...

Love 
Is 
My 
Super 
Power

Love is my superpower. It is time the reflections in the water allow us to feel that.

Leaving The Loft.

“If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire.”

― Haruki Murakami

We had decided to separate. The thought of moving out of the house was more than he could bare. Our pain was deep. The kids. Us. How do we navigate this newness. How do I allow him to have sadness and regret and start to crack open without trying to fix it, to fill in the cracks so he won't have to feel it?

.......

I woke up at 4am with a jolt.

I saw a circle of women. We were change and love and fierce because we were creating together.

In this circle all of the magic that was happening would ebb and flow through a space that held beauty and faith and change. That held light.

My life in that one moment changed and I find myself sitting here now, in this space of beauty, faith and change.

I was stepping into such deep truth in my life and this was the answer that came from the surrender into faith.

.......

It is a story I have told for 4 years. Of our decision to enter a soft separation. Of my decision to get The Loft.

It is a story of a disco ball manifested and hung as a symbol of all that was coming. That already was.

It is a story of letting go. Of loving someone enough to know that we would be happier inside of a new soul contract.

It is a story of the first young, alive lover to find me after a marriage decades long. New touch. Taste. Breath. And how he would crack me open.

It is a story of lifting up. Women brave enough to walk through her doors and sit in circle sharing words they didn't even know were there. The way they infused their spirits into these walls. The way they trusted this space to hold them.

It is a story of surprise and gifts. The one who helped me dream the space, gave me permission to leave inside of a secret note in my vision book, to make the crate wall, the dance in my truth. The tuna and cracker dates and the beauty she infused. And the one that would become my partner, my nurturer, the magic of coyoteloon. Who would come to pack boxes and bring me tea. The one who would teach me to release control. Who will lift a canoe onto her car or my heart when it is broken.

It is a story of creamy coffee in handmade mugs. In bed with new babies, best friends, snuggles, tears, giggles. Co-sleeping with friends. Attachment friendship-ing. The way one would share stories late at night as we piled into the big bed with the cool white sheets. The enchilada pie the other one made as she mid-wifed me through loss. The vision pages. The giggles. The coffee sipped. The complete unconditional love they taught me.

It is a story of Friday nights and Sunday fun-days. The huge bug that crawled all over the basement floor before the bed frame and how I would crack up when she described it to me. The way she made me feel at home in my own home. The letters to the Universe we would write sipping cocktails and wanting more. The good-byes we have said together. The nothing is the same now and today is amazing and amazing.

It is a story of sunsets. An old brick building filled with stories, framing a sky that held magic. Sitting on the deck having wine tastings and thai food and their birthday parties and wondering how something so urban and quite ugly could hold such amazing beauty. Coffee dates and tequila nights and magic cookie jars and surprise friendships and beauty and tears and change.

It is a story of space becoming a home. The three of them in our tribal living space downstairs. Moving them in, the first Christmas, the hamster who was freedom, the scooters in the hallways of their industrial home. Mac and cheese served on blue platters under the disco lights with cloth napkins and tellings of their day.

It is a story of a man. Manifested from a jar and a sticky note and a moth and his name and his gorgeous gray hair. The one that would ask to kiss me on our second date. And how instead of saying yes, I climbed onto his lap, my eyes looking into his eyes. The moment I knew he was my fire, and I his earth. Twin souls. The kiss that felt like melting into the person who had been searching for you his whole life.

It is a story of a brick wall. Photo shoots, videos, the stories told and the way I look back now and see the change in who I have become. Lines in new places on my face. Stress wrapped around my jaw. Deeper wisdom that only can be born through the manifestation of a life lived inside of the trust of surrendering to God, to the Universe, to the stardust that wants magic for us.

It is a story of saying good-bye. Today as walls become bare and the truck fills with the contents of a magical space filled with twinkle lights and faith, today we are saying good-bye. As he fills the holes in the walls and I drink a pot of coffee. As we make love for the last time in the big bed, under the white sheets, his fire and my earth connected.

It is a story of the eve of my new life. We are terrified, sad and filled with promise of what is to be. The gifts waiting inside of our new life. Together. The magic that swirls at the lake and our dreams of what we now can create and give and manifest. It started as a love story, became a love story and ends a love story.

.......

And the voices that came back echoed over and over… trust yourself, trust yourself.

And the signs appeared as if out of bubbles of trust.

Disco balls, texts with yes, Buddha heads, smiling eyes, women radiating me to open and trust.

In a deeply personal retreat circling with soul-sisters my own words found hanging on a wall that I might have forgotten I wrote:

When we step into the deepest level of care for ourselves, meaning we claim it, the dreams we never believed could come true start falling as though stars from the sky.

Magic.

Fierce, fierce magic.

.......

It is a story I have told, once before and over and over.

Today we say good-bye to The Loft.

Today is the Eve of my new life. The dream. The good-bye. The trust.

It is a story of prayer, which today is simply...

Thank you.