For those of you who are afraid of getting old… 2024 was the year that I turned fifty and it was one of the best years ever! I was able to fulfill my goals of spending more time in nature and with my family.
I healed from heartbreak, completed two challenging statistics courses, moved closer to home and learned so much. I feel a little more confident than a year ago and have been able to face and heal core wounds. I was blessed with amazing new friends, clients and students.
Of course the year had many challenges and rock bottom moments but my faith and trust now run deep.
New, beautiful seeds have also been planted and my wish for 2025 is to keep nurturing them with mindfulness, patience and compassion.
Here’s to new alliances, collaborations and more light - Happy New Year everyone!
When you grow up in an environment where you need to perform or behave a certain way in order to get approval and love from your primary caregivers (oftentimes, parents), as an adult you will have the subconscious tendency to keep overgiving in attempt to fill the void that may result from not getting that energy from others.
In other words, loving and accepting yourself AS YOU ARE is almost impossible when you had no experience of love without conditions as a child. In order to make this happen, first you have to experience what it would feel like to be in a space of pure love, free of expectations. This takes time, imagination, guidance and support. There is a specific technique in ThetaHealing (an energy healing modality) to download these types of never-before-experienced templates, but mindfulness practice, reiki, even Yin yoga and certainly Meta or Loving-Kindness meditation tools can help with this.
Remember, you deserve to be loved without having to work for it.
When I was a young mom in my early thirties, I was living in New York City and working at the United Nations Headquarters. I was in the city that I had been dreaming of ever since I lived there during high school, and I was working in an organization that millions applied to every year. And yet, I clearly remember being in my neon lit office thinking “this is not living.” I was not happy. To top it all off, I had guilt about not being satisfied with where I was in my life, for wanting more. I had dragged my boyfriend from Geneva there and also moved away from my daughter from her father, which he was not okay with at all (understandably). And there I was, not feeling satisfied. Who was I to want more?
Every choice we make creates more impact than we imagine. And yet, there is no such thing as a mistake. Think of it as a GPS, always rerouting and adjusting, but with a destination that is unknown and ever changing. Our job is not to ignore that nudge when it shows up (and it always does), because it is pointing us to our authenticity, our power and our life purpose. Whether we choose to take one course of action over another (and no action is also a course of action), we must at least allow ourselves the space to reflect on this with full presence.
Having doubts about our lives is a sign of strength, not weakness. It takes strength to course correct when we realize we have been living a life built on other people’s expectations and dreams, for example. It takes strength to acknowledge we have been giving away our power to another person unknowingly or acting in am underhanded, manipulative manner.
There are no short-cuts, no quick fixes, and believe me I’ve shopped around. At the end of the day it’s our mind set every single morning, our decisions moment by moment. And yes, even healers, therapists, professors and experts are human. So while we try to figure stuff out, both together and alone, let’s just remember to enjoy life. It is a mistake to wait till the next vacation, retirement, quota reached, etc. Make it a point to actively and intentionally inject joy every single day, even when you are making those tough decisions and paying all those overdue bill or even feeling bored.
