Tag Archives: support

Reinventing Your Relationship with Women

“She craves men but women are her most abiding lovers. Her friends are her soul mates, all the love without the consumption of sex and romance, a different kind of intimacy. Women make love by admiring each other, studying and envying each other and mixing it all up in a pot of devotion.”― G.G. Renee Hill, The Beautiful Disruption

I remember wanting to be part of the popular group when I was younger. That shifted one day when I realized that when one of them left the room she became the topic of conversation. I recognized then that they might have plans every weekend but they didn’t have anyone to trust when they really needed a friend. What I realize now is that they also didn’t have anyone who could see them and accept them for who they were.

Over the years, friendships have come and gone (and some have come back around), and I have learned so much about myself, friendship, and what it means to be in relationship with other women. Here are a few things I’ve learned:

Friendships (like ogres and onions for all your Shrek fans) have layers.
Holding expectations of others does not usually work out well.
We grow as individuals, and sometimes that means we grow closer to others, sometimes further apart.
There is ebb and flow in relationships, as with anything else.

When we find our women, the ones with whom we can finally let down our guard and expose our vulnerability to without fear of judgment, we have the chance to give and receive such a beautiful gift.

We have the chance to hear and be heard.
We have the chance to see and be seen.
We have the chance to explore our vulnerability instead of hide from it.
We have the chance to be open to who we were, who we are, and who we are becoming.

As we prepare ourselves for any new becoming, be it preparation for conception and pregnancy, motherhood, or as we step into the new version of ourselves that we are currently calling forth, this type of support can create such a huge different in how we allow ourselves to be seen.

In being seen by others without the cloud of judgement, we start to drop our own self judgment too.

I’ll be honest with you, for a long time I thought this type of intimate friendship was a dream that was not based in reality. I thought that women didn’t have the capacity to hold in this gentleness in the realm of friendship because I had not seen in, felt it, experienced it.

Just because you have not experienced something does not mean it does not exist.

I want to tell you that it’s here and you can find it. As I’ve learned many times before, the finding often comes when you stop searching, striving. Sink in, sink deeply in where you find love and joy, and there will be your circle of women, finding their way to you, holding you up and being held by you in turn. It is pure love, pure magic.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Quieting the Fight Inside of You

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We fight ourselves so hard. We make things more complicated and more difficult than they have to be. We do this with the little things (what to eat, doing dishes and laundry) and with the big things. But it’s the fighting with all of the little things that really gets us stuck because it’s happening all the time. It’s the pattern so many of us run constantly, like music in the background that is always playing. So how do you stop it, or at least practice quieting that fight?

First, you recognize that it’s happening. This alone can create huge shifts, because this type of message from your inner critic is often so ingrained in how you function that you don’t even notice it anymore. Cues that it’s happening include negative self talk like:

“I can’t do anything right”
“I messed up again”
“I don’t deserve…”
“I don’t have enough time”
“I have other people whose needs have to come before my own”

Sometimes the cues come in your behaviors more than the self talk:

Resistance
Procrastination
Distraction

These fights can go on for so long and when they do, they start to influence who we are at sour core. Quieting the fight allows you to grow into your authentic self.

When you recognize that you are fighting yourself, you open the door to learning more about what you really want.

In this place of possibility you can ask yourself a simple question, “What do I want right now?”

The question is certainly easier to ask than answer much of the time, but the next step is asking the question and listening for an honest response.

I’ll share an example of a situation that comes up in my life because it serves as a good reminder that this is all practice and that there is not some simple quick-fix that is going to work 100% of the time.

It gets to be dinner time but I’m rushing around trying to finish things from my day. I begin to notice my hunger so I go into the kitchen to see what I have to eat. I open the fridge, and then close it deciding there’s nothing there that I want. I open the cupboard door. Same thing. I check the counter to see what’s out and none of that really appeals to me either. I’ll do this many times, sometimes taking a break to check my email as if somehow, magically, new food will appear in my kitchen and it will be exactly what I want. Each time that I go back, my hunger (and my frustration) is rising.

Many days, I’ll stop myself at some point and say to myself, “Wait. What do I really want right now?”

Sometimes the answer will be “I don’t know” and the loop of frustration will continue. Most of the time though, when I can step away from what I have and don’t have, what feels easy or difficult, I can tune into my body and discover what it is I want, whether it’s protein, salad, a refreshing smoothie or one of my easy go-to meals.

The recognizing and asking are keys to quieting the fight, but the foundation of it all is in creating ritual.

When you create ritual within your day to day life, all of the little places start to be infused with ease instead of overwhelm.

You create ritual in your closet by filling it only with clothing that you love. Then getting dressed each morning becomes an act of self-love, everyday.

You create ritual in your eating habits by filling your kitchen with nourishing choices, so no matter what you choose to eat, it fills you on many levels.

You create ritual around the seemingly mundane tasks and suddenly the dishes, the laundry, the cleaning up the clutter become ways to care for your environment, and by extension, yourself and your family.

Ritual does not have to mean whatever you have been taught by others that it means. Ritual is yours to create and define.

In the month of October, we will be gathering as a community to explore in the Sacred Ritual Everyday. If you join us for this journey, by the end of October, you will have taken great strides in quieting the fight within you.

Learn more and join us today.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Growing Every Day by Pushing Your Edges

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I held her in my arms and she felt safe. As I slowly lowered her into the water, I could feel her excitement and trepidation build.

“This is funny but I don’t like it,” she said through nervous laughter, and I picked her up again.

“This is funny but I still don’t like it,” she said when we tried again.

“I can do it!” she said with excitement, and by the next day, she was walking around the pool without even holding my hand. “I just learned how to do this yesterday!” she exclaimed with pride.

New things, especially when they involve water up to your chin, feel scary at first. It is the trust and pushing through the fear, which allows you to experience the empowered excitement of accomplishment.

You grow when you push your edges. You stay the same, and sometimes even wither, when you stay in the safety of the arms you have always known. I wrote about this last year and it’s a lesson that I try to teach my clients and myself all the time.

This can be a hard lesson when it feels like the ground is shifting underneath you and everything feels like it is somehow outside of your comfort zone. It can feel easy to run back to the things that give you comfort – old patterns, safety nets that you know are holding you back, and decisions that seem okay in the moment but that you end up regretting.

So what can you do to keep stretching yourself without feeling like you are about to drown? You reach out for someone’s hand, hold on just as long as you need to, and then let go so you can experience your own freedom.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Toxins, Preparing for Conception, and Simplicity

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Do you know what's in your products

It’s really all about simplicity. When I interviewed Dr. Laurel Standley for the Creating Fertile Ground Conference, she shared that even as a scientist, she doesn’t know what all of the ingredients in our products are. After all, there are over 6000!

So what are we supposed to do?

Memorize lists of ever-changing chemicals to be concerned with? I tried that; it’s not so easy.

Ignore the issue and hope for the best? The stakes seem too high for that, as we’re talking about not just our health, but also the health of generations to come.

As I’ve learned more and more over the years, especially when it comes to toxins and the childbearing years, I’ve come to discover a way to do the best you can without getting yourself overwhelmed by tons of information – keep it simple.

I recently had an in person session with a client. She and her husband are planning to start trying to conceive soon, and she is thinking about what’s in her products in an entirely new way now that she’s thinking about her future baby. It was a deep dive into this topic, and after our time together she said, “Thanks again! It was all really helpful and encouraging.” Encouraging. That’s key. You can gather all the information you want online, and you’ll likely find some of it to be helpful and much of it to be scary. That’s not really my idea of helpful, simple, or empowering at all.

Here’s what I taught her about simplicity when it comes to the products we’re using on a daily basis:

Use fewer products. On average, women use a dozen products daily. How many do you use? Often, many of them are ancillary to our needs, and they come at a huge price. One thing that my client realized was that she was seeing the same ingredients again and again as she checked her labels. Not only are we exposing ourselves to these chemicals, but we’re getting exposed multiple times by our products. How can you use fewer products in your routine?

Keep the ingredients list short and readable. One exercise that I have my clients do is you write out all of the ingredients that are in their products. For each one, they make two columns – the ingredients that they recognize and know what purpose they serve and the ingredients that they don’t recognize. The same reaction comes up again and again – so many of the ingredients are difficult to spell, let alone understand. Looking for products that have simple ingredients (ideally 10 or fewer ingredients and that you can recognize) is a great way to release the fear and overwhelm about your products. Check your labels. Do you know what you’re putting in and on your body?

Don’t feel like you need to do all the research on your own. We are surrounded by so much information these days, much of it full of unnecessary fear, much of it contradictory, and it can easily be overwhelming and confusing. Getting lost in a sea of information is not my idea of simplicity. Is it yours? If not, choose simplicity by starting where you can and finding support from those who have a passion for digging for the information and sharing just what you need to make this journey an empowering one. How can you reach out to get support so you can find more simplicity?

I’d love to know what was most helpful and how you plan to bring more simplicity to your daily routine. Join the conversation by sharing in the comments below.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Birthing Your Dream through Visioning

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I create vision pages in chunks. When I participate in one of Hannah’s programs, I find myself catching up with 10 prompts in one night, scraps of paper flying, recycling bag filling, as I rip, cut, glue, repeat. Again and again. And then, when I stop to take a breath hours later and look back at what I’ve done, I’m in awe.

Sometimes it’s a few days later, sometimes a few months, that the messages on the pages begin to have meaning for me. During the recent intense full moon energy (did you feel it?), I didn’t know what the messages coming across meant. At one point I did something unusual for me – I pulled off some words that I had glued down. Suddenly, they didn’t feel right.

The next day the energy was still with me, and two more pages came out, in black and white, and they terrified me. I’ve kept them open on my desk. As I shared with friends my fear in these words, they helped me peel back the layers so I could begin to uncover the meaning. I was scared because of what I thought they could mean. Then I opened up and accepted what they did mean.

“Look, it’s hard to let go, take the leap…”

And just like that, I hired an amazing virtual assistant (who I know in real life) to help me with parts of my business that drain me so I could let them go.

“The making of magic, search for excellence…”

And then I had a conversation with an incredible woman who has worked in the infertility field for 30+ years (and probably held me in the NICU when I was born) and we are meeting for lunch to discuss how we can work together to support women during this incredibly intense time.

“Authentic life, designed by you.”

Another women signed up to work with me and I was so aware of how freeing it feels to get to create my own schedule and work with women who are ready to do what it takes to see their dreams fulfilled.

This all came just from the last two pages, black and white, from a couple of days ago.

I’ve been so enthralled with these pages that I have barely begun to comb over the 16 pages that led to this. Well, except for my favorite. Here’s C.C.:

And here’s one that I created a while ago for you but finally glued down the other night:

When we open ourselves up to the process of visioning, we get to imagine and begin to create the life we want to be living. We get to breathe life into our dreams.

The soulwork around visioning is an incredibly powerful place to start your journey (or the next leg of your journey) because you get to throw out all of your preconceived ideas, what you think you should be doing or thinking or feeling, what others think you should be doing or thinking or feeling, and you get to play. You get to step into that place of possibility and say this is what I want. You get to claim it.

When we gather for the Creating Fertile Ground Circle at the beginning of June, our first month will be all about stepping into the vision. From there, we’ll get to explore how to bring that vision to life, bit by bit, as we explore deeper each month.

Visioning will continue throughout the 6 months because there are always new messages, new layers to uncover and explore.

If you are ready to begin to breathe life into your dreams, if you’re curious about what creating a vision for your future can help your manifest, I encourage you to join us for the Circle.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

What the Process of Growing a Business Has Taught Me about Preparing to Grow a Baby

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When I started Womb to World Wellness in 2011, I already knew the feeling of desire very well, as I had experienced it through the desire for a baby. I learned a lot along that journey, but sometimes we need to learn lessons more than once before we can fully begin to integrate them into our lives. As I open the Creating Fertile Ground Circle, some of that vulnerability comes back for me, and I wanted to share that with you today.

This is not the first time I have launched a group program. I have now run a few successful programs (my favorite until now being Growing with Gratitude), but back in 2012 I tried for the first time, and what felt then like failure left me feeling raw and unsure of myself.

I had just run I Want One (or another one) for the first time, and it was amazing. More women than I had expected joined me for that week of gentle emails, welcoming them to see what this journey could be like. I was excited at the idea of having some of them join me as we dove deeper into that content, exploring and beginning to flesh out how they could start creating these changes with ease. So I opened registration, spread the word, and waited. Crickets. Nothing. Nada. And as quickly as my excitement had risen, it deflated.

I questioned myself, I questioned the work I was doing, I questioned my business, and I looked for new paths to travel. I ran a couple of programs geared towards mamas instead of those dreaming about becoming mamas, and while they were well received, they didn’t light me up like this preconception work does.

As I just shared with my mastermind group, “we drive ourselves crazy with expectations.” This is true whether our expectations are about our businesses, our future babies, or simply our daily lives.

Everything shifted for me when I surrendered, released the expectations and let myself be guided by my passion.

Surrender means to cease resistance. Do you often find yourself fighting, struggling, and working what feels like too hard to reach your dream? That is the resistance, and I can promise you that most of the time it will keep you stuck. When you surrender to what is, you gain a clearer vision of what is possible, what needs to happen to get you unstuck and moving with flow towards your dream.

Releasing expectations means to open up and let go. Let go for a moment of what you expect this journey to look like. Let go for a moment of what others expect of you. Open up to understanding that your path is unfolding as it is for some reason. It might suck. It might hurt like hell. It might make you question what you’re doing right or wrong. And I’m sorry if you’re feeling that – I know those feelings too. It is about trust.

Being guided by your passion means focusing your energy on what makes you thrive. When you create the space to fill your life with what lights you up, what brings you joy, and what brings you happiness, you create an energy about you that attracts what you most desire, because you are in flow.

It was awful when I put myself out there 2 years ago and heard crickets, but you know what? I wasn’t ready like I am now.

I wasn’t ready like I am now to hold space for those women.

I wasn’t ready like I am now to run a program that feels completely in flow.

I wasn’t ready like I am now to surrender to the process.

I wasn’t ready like I am now to release the expectations and enjoy the journey.

I wasn’t really like I am now to trust in my passion and let it guide me.

I just spent a day at a mini-retreat, creating much of the content for the Creating Fertile Ground Circle, and let me tell you, it’s nothing like I could have created two years ago. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me now to have the chance to experience it.

I know now that the women who are meant to Circle together in this group will be drawn to it and know that it is what is the right next step for them. If you are one of them, I look forward to connecting with you more deeply soon! You can learn more and join us here.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Gathering in Community So We Can be Mirrors for One Another

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When I step onto my mat, I take myself on a journey inward. Yoga is not just a way to move my body; it is also my spiritual practice. I reconnect to myself deeply, and most of the time, if you watched me practice, you would see that my eyes are closed. This helps me to keep the focus on what’s going on for me internally – What am I feeling? Where do I want to create more space? What connections can I make between my body and my mind?

Recently, I have been practicing in two spaces that have mirrors, and this was a first for me. In the beginning, it threw me off balance – literally. I’d be searching for a drishti (a focal point), the small hole in the window blinds at my old studio now gone, and I’d see moving parts of the other people in the class, and sometimes, if I was close enough, I’d see me. As I’ve gotten used to it, my own eye is my best drishti for poses like eagle, wrapped up in myself, focusing on the one eye that is visible, a reminder to myself that I will always be there.

I’ve been thinking about mirrors a lot lately, not just because they are becoming part of my practice. I’ve been thinking about how we are not only mirrors for ourselves, but about how we are mirrors for others.

I’ve spent days trying to find the words to explain this, because in my heart I feel it so deeply.

It is so easy for each one of us to feel incredibly alone in our life – in our day-to-day struggles and triumphs, both big and small. It is so easy to tell ourselves that no one else could possibly understand, that no one else has experienced something quite like this, that no one else is like us, and therefore that something must be wrong with us.

We are so good at weaving these stories for ourselves, at closing our eyes and bringing our practice inward, that sometimes it’s not until we feel so off balance that we’re about to topple over that we open our eyes. When we do, what do we see?

When we have been lucky enough to find our community, our tribe, we open our eyes and see that we are surrounded by love and support, and that we are absolutely not alone. We reach out, we find the courage to speak our fears, our desires, our deepest hurts, and we find that we are not alone.

Being a mirror for another can be a powerful act of community and spiritual communion. We can do this in each and every action and reaction that we have, with ourselves and with others. Holding space for one another so that we all come to learn that we are not alone is what gives us the strength to take the next step, and the next, and the next, on this journey that at times feels painful and overwhelming but is always, no matter what, a blessing.

Some questions to think about as your journey through your day…

How am I a mirror for myself?
How am I a mirror for others?
What makes me feel most alone?
Where can I go to find my community, my tribe?

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Why the Health of Your Relationships Matters before You Start Trying to Conceive

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Anxiety. Waiting. Insecurities. Hormones. Fears. Excitement. Identity. Big Changes.

I could keep this post as simple as that. With any of those, it’s important to have a partner you can lean on, trust, and communicate with as challenges and triumphs arise.

All of us, even when we’re in the best and healthiest relationships of our lives, have things that we can be working on and so do our partners. You are about to embark on a life changing adventure together, and it can be incredibly helpful to work out some of the kinks before diving into this time.

Before you start trying to conceive, a phase of this journey that no one can predict how long it will last.

Before your hormones are all over the place and you struggle to keep your emotions in check.

Before baby comes and you find yourselves overjoyed and sleep deprived all at once.

Before it sets in how much has changed, it’s important to be able to communicate what’s most important to you, individually and as a couple, and it’s important to know that you can always count on each other.

Your relationship will shift.

Your communication skills will need to be clearer than ever.

Your money stories will come up and possibly collide.

Your sex life will change but it can be in positive ways.

That’s why I am bringing 4 experts to share with you next week during the Creating Fertile Ground Virtual Conference. They will cover these key pieces and share with you what you can be doing now so you have a strong foundation, built together, from the very beginning of this journey.

While you wait to soak up their knowledge, I encourage you to start thinking about one thing in your partnership that you would like to strengthen. If you feel comfortable, please share it in the comments below and get the conversation started!

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

How I’m Setting the Foundation for 2014 with My Guiding Word

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I recently had the opportunity to preview Digging Into 2014: Discovering Your Guiding Word, the most recent creation of my friend Tara Wagner. I sat myself on my balcony with a cup of tea, a pen, and the printed out pages of this guide and I dug in.

Let me say this – I have tried to come up with guiding words in the past (I think my word for 2013 was Simplicity but it speaks volumes that I don’t even remember). I was determined to make this coming year different, and as I was working through Digging into 2014, I found my word. More accurately, it found me.

I soaked in the process, uncovered what I learned from 2013, and as I wrote through the exercises, my word found me. Written here, then there, then bigger, then with building excitement and I knew it had found me….THRIVE

It felt so right, and when I looked up the dictionary definition, I knew it fit me perfectly.

thrive: to prosper or flourish; to be successful esp. as the result of economic management; to grow vigorously or luxuriantly; improve physically

I continued on with Digging into 2014, learning more as I was aware of the prompts that got me feeling stuck (that’s always a tell-tale sign of where more work, more support, more energy is needed).

I am so grateful to Tara for putting this together and for giving me a new way to approach discovering my guiding word for the coming year.

I encourage you to explore this work yourself, and once you do, please come back and share your guiding word in the comments!

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Is this what’s blocking your fertility and creative power?

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Happiness and bliss come in many forms. For me, one of them is snow. I got giddy when I saw the first few snowflakes fall on Sunday and I had no idea that it was going to turn into 4-6 inches. Talk about blissful! Another thing that brings me happiness is sharing information with you that can shift your life and boost your fertility. I’m sharing some of that in today’s newsletter. If it triggers you, I encourage you to keep reading, and if you’re really brave, to schedule some time to talk to me about it!

Recently, I read an article by Chris Brogan where he talked about the difference between spending and investing. Here’s part of what he had to say:

“You spend on what gets spent. You invest on what develops into even more value.”

This is a distinction that many people often miss, especially when it comes to our health and well being. Spending can actually come more easily, because it has become so ingrained in our nature. Even when we feel like we need to keep a close eye on where our money is going, we spend on things like coffee and candy bars, things that are actually often detrimental to our future well being.

So why does investment feel harder to do? Investing in yourself is a deep act of self care and a stretch because it can be scary – it means change, it means growth, it means letting go of what isn’t working and shifting to ideas that do work. (tweet this)

Now all of that sounds good, but many people feel more comfortable living within their comfort zones. When it’s what you know, it can feel safe, even if it’s causing you pain and suffering.

So what does all of this talk about spending and investing have to do with fertility?

Your second chakra (located about an inch below your belly button) is associated with fertility, the uterus, the ovaries and with finances and person power! It’s also associated with the color orange.

When you have blocks around money, you are often also blocking your personal power and fertility. To me, this makes a lot of sense because when we feel like we can’t invest in ourselves (even if we know that’s what it takes to pull us out of a rut), we keep feeling stuck. When we experience that stuck and stagnant energy, it’s no surprise that our creative and reproductive energy is dampened. We’re not in the flow of creation.

So how can you strengthen your second chakra, learn to feel comfortable investing in yourself, and boost your fertility all at the same time?

Practice Malasana – This was my favorite yoga pose when I was pregnant because I felt like it gave me such a sense of power. Squats are known to strengthen the second chakra so it’s a perfect act of self-care to spend some time here.

Drink water – Water is associated with the second chakra, representing flow and movement. Make sure that you are drinking plenty of water (add a little lemon or opt for coconut water if it’s not your favorite thing to drink on it’s own).

Create a vision board of personal power – Tap into your creativity by making a visual representation of your personal power. This can get your creative juices flowing and help you to focus on what feels powerful and blissful to you.

Invest in yourself – Stretch yourself out of your comfort zone and reach out for support, knowing that this is not spending but investing, in yourself and the future of your family. Bringing together finances, fertility, and personal power in one action can melt barriers that once felt like impenetrable walls.

If you’re wondering what investing in yourself can look like, here’s what a client had to say about our time together:

“Initially I couldn’t even talk about wanting to have a baby; by the time we were nearing the end of our work, I was actively trying to get pregnant. That’s a huge leap for me.”

I hope this helps you to see in a new light something that you can be doing to increase your fertility, whether you are still dreaming of baby or actively trying.

And if you’re ready to step out of that comfort zone and have a hand to hold and support you as you do, know that I’m here for you. If you’re curious about what that looks like, I encourage you to sign up for one of the remaining Creating Fertile Ground Strategy Sessions this year.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,