Have you had those persistent nudges?

Do you remember when you were a kid and you were missing a tooth and you just couldn't keep your tongue out of the space where the tooth once was, no matter how hard you tried to just leave it be?

Well, I have been prodded and nudged relentlessly by ideas and issues in that same way throughout my life -- my thoughts straying back over and over again to an idea that just would not leave me alone. Like the proverbial tongue probing the gum. 

The ideas that nudge me endlessly are usually things that scare the living shit out of me: getting sober back in my 20's, having a child, training to become a coach, starting a coaching business, living in Africa, pursuing a master's degree in my 40's FFS... the list goes on. I've been resistant and argumentative with most of the big decisions I've made in my life but in the end, I've never been sorry when I've said yes to those persistent nudges. 

I believe most, if not all of...

Abundance. 

Merriam-webster tells me that the word abundance is in the top 1% of words that are searched. The official definition of abundance that Merriam-Webster gives us follows:

This word, this idea is the cornerstone of what the women I work with say they truly want. 

An abundance of clients.

An abundance of clarity.

An abundance of love.

An abundance of experiences.

An abundance of money.

An abundance of safety.

An abundance of beauty. 

In fact, take a moment right now (I'll wait, I promise) to write down what you want to experience in abundance. 

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Take a moment with your list - some of the items on your...

Scarcity is real. Scarcity is also a lie.  

Scarcity is a profound and painful experience of lack. There are people everywhere who experience the desperation of real scarcity - a lack of food, water, safety, infrastructure, money, health care, education, support, encouragement - you name it, it is possible to experience scarcity in almost any way. Having lived in Zambia and traveled throughout Africa, scarcity of material resources is evident everywhere you look. Though there are (too many) people who experience real scarcity in the United States, far more people have ample resources who still feel the painful clutch of scarcity. How can that be?

The scarcity wound refers to an inner experience of scarcity in the present moment that is based primarily on past personal, familial, and societal experiences and/or narratives. In other words, the scarcity wound leads to suffering in the present moment that isn't based on the current reality. Make no mistake, this fear...

Self-responsibility is powerful medicine.

At the same time, the general insistence (especially in the spiritual, healing, and personal development realm) that personal challenge = being stuck in a story is frankly, complete bullshit. It draws the attention away from what is truly being offered to you via your experience and instead, adds insult to injury via the subtle judgment that you are “stuck in a story”.

Seriously, though — isn’t it interesting that we never consider ourselves to be “stuck in a story” if it makes us feel good? If it bolsters our sense of confidence? If it brings us a sense of clarity about who we are and how the world works?

You can try and gloss over, ignore, or positive affirmation your way past the very real conditions of life that create confusion, uncertainty, and hurts of the present and the past all day long but stories: our individual and collective stories (and the sorrow, grief, anger, fear, shame, and guilt that...

Beloved you. 

I care about the human experience of trauma. Having been diagnosed with PTS (post-traumatic stress) in my late 20's, I am deeply aware that true healing is about recovering our innate wholeness and reclaiming a sense of joy, aliveness, and connecting to self and others in meaningful ways. I am committed to this work because trauma is a human experience that we will be in relation to for the rest of our lives -- life is filled with challenges, difficulties, and stresses. Just as it is filled with beauty, joy, and delight. To understand trauma is to embrace the fullness of our human experience: both the fragility of our body psyche and the incredible resilience. 

We are taught that trauma is an event or a circumstance that is disturbing and overwhelming (see dictionary). This is a gross simplification of the truth of what trauma is, and how it impacts the body and therefore, the way we live. Not only is this a simplification, but it might incline you to dismiss...

"Money is just dirty paper." 

I worked in a bank in my early 20's. Believe me, when you count bills all day and your fingers turn black from the counting, stacking and wrapping of different denominations of money, that is the experience of money. Dirty paper.

But if it were just dirty paper, it wouldn't take so much of our time and attention.

What is money, really? 

Money IS dirty paper. And it's also so much more.

Money is a construct, a tool - something that we collectively created and continue to agree to use. It is a testament to human ingenuity and creativity. Money is symbolic. But of what? What does money symbolize?

Money is a representation of nature.

Money is an expression of nature. A symbol that we created (out of nature herself, I might add) to serve growing economies and populations - for ease of transportation, trade, and use. Collectively, we've mostly forgotten what money represents.

Take a $50.00 dollar bill. This $50.00 bill can transform...

You were born with an intact sense of self. 

However, early on, we are indoctrinated into ideas about worthiness that lead us to believe that worth is to be found outside of ourselves -- in how we are perceived and received by those around us: another’s assessment or gaze or our monetary value or the work we do or our beauty. 

This focus on recognition is the air we breathe.

Consider gender bias, not to mention racial and sexual bias — consider all the ways society narrowly defines who and what is worthy or most often, unworthy. Then there are the insidious ideas and lived experiences of needing to “earn” your keep, needing to perform, being expected to be pleasing (or not), or to be quiet, having your ideas dismissed, diminished, or worse, stolen. And the hits keep rolling, don't they? 

Let's not forget the ever-present societal focus on beauty: body shape, size, and image, looks, and fashion that keep many women from the very real work of...

We live in a very all-or-nothing society.

Here's the kind of stuff I heard growing up (and stuff a lot of my clients heard, too)... Either you are successful or you are a failure. You are either rich or you are poor. You do it right or you do it wrong. Either you have enough or you don't. You are happy or you are sad. You are worthy or you are not.

This is the language of scarcity.

Scarcity is a choice-less, contracted state. In scarcity, you cling to whatever perceived goodness is available, desperately hoping it won't change or go away. In scarcity, you desperately fight against what feels challenging - paralyzed by the fear that you may never have what you want.

Scarcity is rigid and brittle. Feeling like a victim yet trying desperately to control the outcome. You can be sure that if you are using words like either/or, black and white, all or nothing, I can't, or I have to - you are in the grip of scarcity mentally, emotionally, and energetically.

Let's shake that off.

Release...

Asking is a big deal for a lot of women. 

And when I say big deal, I mean, a lot of women abhor asking for what they want. I note that If a woman has difficulty asking for what she wants, she will most certainly struggle with receiving. 

If you are a woman who struggles with asking and/or receiving, if you are a woman who considers yourself a "giver" but you don't like to take from others or if you are a woman who is chronically underpaid or you don't have enough work coming to you in your business - you are going to want to consider learning the art of asking (and choiceful receiving). 

The Art of the Ask

From sex to asking men to step off and leave you alone, to asking for the raise, the job, psychic space - whatever it is you want, you really must ask for it and ask clearly. I know this from inviting the women I work with to strengthen the skill of asking and also from my own experience and discomfort around asking. I believe there are ways in which we've been told...

“Before helping others, put on your oxygen mask.”

How often do we hear this common flight instruction tossed around as a metaphor? We nod and agree, and then often, go back to throwing ourselves under the bus, doing the same things over and over, wishing for a different result. So, let’s be honest: this instruction is hard in the day-to-day doing.

It’s no simple thing.

When I said goodbye to corporate accounting many years ago, I left behind 80-hour workweeks, crushing deadlines, and painful posturing.

The last year I worked in a corporate setting full-time, I consciously decided to bring some balance back into my life. I stopped bringing my computer home on the weekends or weekday evenings. I took a lunch break away from my desk. I worked out in the company gym regularly (and it was nearly always deserted). Most importantly, I stopped reacting to the false sense of urgency that kept everyone amped up and on edge and started asking clarifying questions about...