The Loneliest I’ve ever been

Grief is one of the loneliest walks on earth. Every story and experience is so different. Every relationship unmatched. Every human so unique. And yet, everyone experiences this pain someway, somehow. 

For years, while my mom went through cancer treatment, I watched others around me living their lives seemingly innocently and freely while I felt hopeless, heavy and alone, often thinking, 

“Nobody gets it. No one knows what this feels like – to feel the weight of the unknown deep in my gut. To feel like I can’t make plans for my life or fully commit myself to the things I desire to experience because it could all take a turn at any moment, and then what will become of my life?! Of me?!”.  

Even though I was doing a lot, I felt like I couldn’t give my full attention where I truly wanted because at any moment a matter of life and death could require me to drop everything. I searched for ways to anchor myself into a bright, exciting feeling future that I sooo badly wanted to believe could be possible. 

But with the life and well-being of one of the most important people in my life on the line, trying to create a shiny vision for the future felt frivolous and fake.

I was a master at hiding my worry, anxiety, and fear, a master of appearing to ‘have my ish together’, but on the inside I remember so many days feeling dull, half alive, my mind swirling and my body lethargic.  As I denied my pain, grief and the impending doom of potential loss that often felt present, I tried to put my focus elsewhere and “just be happy, live in the moment”. But the suppressed emotions found their own way out - oozing through my skin as stress rashes on my eyelids and neck, appearing as sore throats and mystery illnesses, and sometimes even causing nausea that kept me from eating for a few days.

I pumped myself with caffeine hoping to feel something again and to find the energy to power through. I found a million things to distract myself with, from fitness classes to my business to going to Barnes and Nobel to buy more personal development books I’d never finish. Anything that would save me from what I was feeling inside.

I remember so many days trying to ‘just be normal’, trying to take the steps it seemed I should be taking, but I when I allowed myself to get still and just be,  tears welled in my eyes and it all felt shallow and hallow. What I really felt was despair. Hopelessness. Lost. Exhausted. Alone. 

I really wanted to do was lie on the floor or in my bed for hours, hoping the day would pass and tomorrow would feel different.

When my mom died, the loneliness hit another level.  To know that no one else in the world knew my exact pain meant that I wouldn’t likely hear the perfect words I yearned to hear from anyone else, which was devastating to realize.

No one else would be able to console me fully. 

No one else would know what I needed and how to perfectly take care of me.  

I would have to learn how to meet myself in this loneliness and console myself. 

That alone made me so angry.

In every moment of my early grief journey, I craved to be understood. Even though I was terrified to let anyone see what a mess I was inside, all I wanted was to be fully known in the pain of everything I had lost (even my before my mom died) as it felt like it was swallowing me whole.

I yearned to feel someone’s hand reach through the darkness to grab mine, offering me something to hold on to, to know where ‘up’ was so I could find my feet under me again amid the whirlwind of tears, anger, and inability to imagine how I would ever be ok again.  

Gratefully, those hands lovingly appeared when I got vulnerable enough to share how I really felt and asked for help. No one tried to save me because they knew the importance of what I was living. But they sat with me and guided me in finding my center again, in feeling and releasing the buildup of emotions I was so masterful at holding in, often unknowingly. And most importantly, they saw me and loved me in my brokenness, in my cracked-openness.

They listened not only through the tears and confusion, they listened to the pain, growth and guidance that were alive deep within me. They witnessed me in heartache without rushing me or diminishing my current experience, while also holding a higher vision for my life and who I would still become, despite it all. 

Some of these hands were of dear friends. Others of family members. Others of therapists, coaches and mentors.

As each reached a hand out to meet me, I stepped forward a little more to meet myself. And little by little the gaping whole of loneliness felt less suffocating. 

Instead of walking up each morning feeling paralyzed by the monumental task of walking through another day knowing I was ultimately alone in my experience, I began to feel stable enough to make a home within myself, where my wellbeing didn’t depend on if others got it, understood, or met me. I was able to sit up on my bed each morning, put a hand to my heart and say,

“I know this is soo scary and lonely. I know you crave to hear someone tell you you will be ok, that you will LIVE fully again, that life will be good again. I know it would be so much easier to stay in bed, and I also know you are resilient and stronger than you realize. I know you haven’t actually died with your mom, even though it feels like you did. And I know there is something available here for you today because you are still alive. You don’t need to go fast, you can go at your own pace. Just one step, one moment, at a time.”

I learned how to listen to myself - to my grief and my soul. I learned how to speak those perfect words to the parts of me that needed consoling. I began to sense, feel, and welcome in the woman I would become through this experience even though I had no idea what she would be like, and I regained enough strength and hope to take little steps toward being her. 

Slowly, I had the energy to begin to put my new website together and to dream about my business again, to work with new clients, to travel and to begin family therapy with my dad and sister.

I still needed others of course, I still needed loved ones to open and meet me as I had opened and met myself. Because I was no longer needing the impossible - for them to say or do the perfect thing - I was able to receive the love and company that they could offer.  I began to see the imperfect beauty of each person in my life with more awe and gratitude, accepting them as they were and laughing and crying with them about life more freely.

I was met with sweet softness and companionship from my husband, holding me and listening as I vulnerably shared my fears and longings. I received little gifts in the mail and unexpected phone calls and texts from friends that brought me to tears and evoked big belly laughs.

Years have since passed, but through it all, a devotion brewed in my heart: to become the one that can see through the dark and offer a loving hand when nothing else can be seen or determined, when the unknown feels as lonely, stifling and terrifying as a pitch black endless maze.

To become the one whose very presence offers you safety and space to take a breath, open, feel, and listen to your inner needs and knowings.

To become the one that lovingly witnesses you in your pain, through the brokenness of your heart, knowing that with time, your pain will not define you like it does now, and you are becoming someone greater than you could ever imagine as you embrace your path.

Today, I am humbled and honored to embody this devotion everyday, to be able to offer my hand to you in the loneliest moments you could ever walk, as a lantern of hope, warmth, healing, and support when you fear this will be how life feels forever.

I offer my hand and guidance as you find your way out of the dark so you have the energy and support to:

> Travel to see your friends and family without feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or afraid of how they will see or respond to who you are now;

> Bravely share that piece of writing you’ve been wanting to put on Substack and begin to build connection and community there;

> Speak up and share your heart with loved ones from a grounded energy of self-love and respect;

> Get on the apps again or walk up to that cute human making eyes at you at the park and ask for their number;

> Try to get pregnant [again];

> Leave your job, start your own company, and land your first clients;

> Go back to school and begin your dream career…

What's on your heart? What have you needed to push to the sidelines due to grief and loss that you crave to have the energy and support in your life to reclaim?

I offer you my hand. 

Are you ready to take it?

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One Year of ELLIE•FLOW

On Saturday, EllieFlow officially turned one! 

I’ll never forget sending the emails to reveal the (re)new(ed) platform for my work last year. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and I sat at the table in our back yard. I hadn’t expected to be at home that day – we had a wedding to attend out of town but a few days earlier my husband wasn’t feeling well and we opted not to make the trip.  In the liberated and unexpected space that became available, I felt the call, “It’s time, she’s ready, they’re ready, you’re ready.”

EllieFlow had first dropped in a year earlier, during a time when I could hardly move most days, so stricken with shock and grief, feeling quite empty and disconnected as everything I had placed value on previously didn’t seem relevant anymore. I had fully released my previous businesses a month or so earlier, and embarked on sabbatical as I grappled with what would come of me, of my life, of my marriage, of my home, of my family, of my future, and more.  

As I recall this, I am flooded with tearful remembrance of the simultaneous lost-ness and the unexpected peace that graced the suspended time where release of the past met the blank page of the future.  
 

There is something about those early days and months post-loss that is incomparable to anything else I’ve lived - it offered crystal clarity about what was important to me, what felt right and what didn’t, while also gently commanding daily surrender to the unknown because there was absolutely no other way of living within my reach.  At first, there was nothing to know, so everything that required knowing, I would dismiss or place on hold. As the weeks and months passed, that became more difficult, and I would try to fight the not knowing.  My top notch intellect jumped at the task of figuring “it” out or making a plan.  Maybe it would work for a day or two, but then I’d be kicked out of the illusion and sent right back to my on-going soul work of accepting exactly where I was and the fact that I had absolutely no idea what would come. 
 

Amidst a moment of complete acceptance while sitting on my couch in June 2021, fully tapped into the moment, the EllieFlow name and vision arrived.  I wrote it down, along with my interpretation and meaning of the fountain, but had little energy to do much more.  

So I let it go with a prayer “If this is what’s next, it will come when it’s ready, when I’m ready.” 

A month later, a friend and colleague referred someone to me for coaching. At the time, my old website had one phrase next to my picture and a ‘contact me’ section. Yet, this person felt the resonance and a week later we had an exploratory call (for which I was 40-minutes late because I lost track of time painting with my beloved friend Anna) while I sat on the floor of my soon-to-be-office in the house we were moving into. The walls were still a robin’s egg blue that felt so far from the vibe I hoped to create, and I worried she would hear the echo of the empty space as we spoke on the phone.  I was very transparent with her that I was amidst a season of immense grief and recalibration, but when she asked, I shared what I had lived in my own journey of transformation so far and what I offered to my clients. 

She felt the EllieFlow energy before it was anything tangible and we began working together.  

In the months that followed, my shock dissolved more and without its gentle and constant cushioning from the reality of life without my mom, I entered the darkest mind-body-soul grief void I have lived. Beyond the sessions with my new client (which I loved, cherished, and felt so alive in), I had little capacity to do anything with the idea after idea that popped into my head – all I dreamed of creating through EllieFlow.  I bounced between the bliss of the creative energy arising in moments, and the fear and doubt that it would never become anything or that I would be stuck in the void forever.

The first days of 2022 felt especially bleak, but I felt called to update my resume for the first time since I started Deeply Nourished for Life in 2017.  What began as a mundane process became a magical journey of remembering what a fucking badass I am. As I read through everything I had led, supported, and co-created through Deeply Nourished For Life & The Well Together Collective, all amidst an international move, relocating to a new city, my mom’s multi-year journey with cancer, treatment, then death, and my own multi-dimensional healing journey, I saw myself and my life with renewed hope.

The process liberated and updated my energy, and shortly afterward, I could feel EllieFlow ready to take visible form. 

I played for hours with the colors, logo and heart-filled words that would represent this soul mission; 90% of the new platform for my offerings was created in 3 days in mid-January.

As you know, there were still multiple months of life and process I needed to live before I was ready to unveil her, but when I did finally share EllieFlow with you all last June, nothing felt more right. And yet again, I had no idea what would come next. 
 

If you’ve been following along since then, you know this year has been about stepping out of my grief cocoon and into the amplified capacity and vision my becoming has led me to so far. It has been about being consciously willing and open to take the inner and outer steps as they have presented themselves, to share what I offer and who I am with those that are ready, while simultaneously allowing myself to be seen and known in my imperfect process.

EllieFlow is the keeper of my soul work - inward and outward. 

This year has been a maturation from inner toddlerhood into rooted womanhood, trusting and allowing myself to fill the space I effortlessly command with softness, openness, love, vitality, passion and reverence for the depths that are often painful to journey into.

This year has been a year of getting to know the fullness of EllieFlow, and spending time with the sacred land of rejuvenation and restoration that I am here to steward.

Every step of the way she has required that I let go of what I think she needs to be and the timeline of where I think I need to be.  She has required vulnerability and openness, a willingness to meet the moment fully with deep trust that all is being nurtured and nourished to support growth and the greater mission in perfect timing. She has required that I be brave enough to embrace the often not-so-glamourusseeming missions I am here to support and carry out. 
 

Every time I sit with her, she is more full, luscious, and ample than I previously realized.  She is wise and patient, never in a rush, enjoying what is already flourishing amidst her forests, prairies, ponds, shores, around her benches.  And of course receiving what is flowing in her majestic fountain. She invites me to sit in the center and delight in her exactly as she is right now, especially when I am feeling impatient or discouraged. 

This year of playing in EllieFlow land has been a gift.

Every client session reveled in. Every writing vortex entered. Every newsletter breathed in. Every healing space held.

Every challenging moment I have met within myself or my life. Every moment of awe and richness felt in the simple beauty of being alive.

Every minute spent on a walk with my dog, talking out loud to myself and the trees or convening with the birds.

Every yoga class.

Every opportunity to share and teach I have been invited into. 

Every time I have sobbed alone, or to my husband, my friends, my Dad, my sister, my mentor, and to God in grief, fear, doubt or disappointment. 

Every moment of belief in what is to come.

Every moment of celebration for what is unfolding.

Every month I could feel the momentum building underground. Every month something new sprouted. Every month when it seemed like nothing was happening.

Every time I asked for a sign. Every time I received one.

Every word spoken to my mom. Every minute listening for her.

Every kitchen dance party. Every nap needed. Every pottery piece crafted.

Every cuddle and Saturday morning breakfast with my husband.

Every moment of acceptance of who I am and the fullness that is alive within, right here, right now.

Every offering. Every surrender.
 

All of it, and sharing it with you, a gift. 

Here’s to the vibrant year of flourishing flow ahead. While I feel the arrival of many blossoming creations, I won’t dare say that I know all it will hold.

But I trust the connection, wisdom, liberated energy and expression, healing, and beauty that is already supported here will only deepen. 

I invite you in.

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The power of surrender when you have nothing left to give: A personal REflection at the 2-year anniversary of my mom’s death

As I prepare to lead More Myself and the Community Circle this week, today I am making space to integrate this weekend's reflective, grief-filled, and also beautiful life-filled moments.  

As we crossed the threshold of 2 years without my mom yesterday, it felt like I transversed so many aspects of myself and all that I am willing to dance with to live fully, freely and in connection with mySelf, others, the Earth, God, and Life. 

Some moments this weekend were filled with laughter and entertainment as we saw a great theatrical rendition of The Hobbit at a local children's theater.  Others were spent silently sobbing or with my eyes closed remembering the last precious day with my mom, and mourning the version of myself that was innocent then around what it would be like to lose her. I remembered all of the things I didn't yet know then or that I wish that I would have done differently. Other moments were filled with hugs, walks in the sunshine and snow, flower deliveries and text messages that reminded me yet again of all of the love and beautiful people that surround me - of all the ways I have let people in and allowed their love to reach my heart in the last few years (and that I have hoped to reach theirs).

I even surprised myself in new ways this weekend, first by buying a last minute single ticket to last night's Maggie Rogers' concert.  I had looked at these tickets on and off for months but somehow it never registered that the concert was on the anniversary of my mom's death.  But when I got an alert on Saturday morning that there were some resale tickets left for her Feral Joy tour, I couldn't stop thinking about joining thousands as we danced to songs that had cradled me through the process of losing my mom and so much more in 2021.

Maggie's music first spoke to me on my birthday in 2020.  I was lying on the floor of my office in our old apartment, doing a 1:1 breath work session, and the facilitator's playlist included her song Falling Water.  I remember tears running down my face as the song started, and I wanted to sing along but felt like I couldn't, like my voice didn't work. Later on that day I listened to that song over and over again, moving to it and letting it move me.  The energy of it felt so freeing and alive, and it quickly became the soundtrack for my healing and blossoming authentic expression, followed by her songs Alaska, Light On, Back in My Body, and more.

On Saturday, the thought of going to the show excited me and gave me the opportunity to anchor even more deeply into the playfulness and joy of being fully alive that I have been sinking into in the last many months.  Through the cloud of thoughts questioning  “Do you really need to go? What if you're not feeling up to it tomorrow? Is this a weird thing to do on a such a sensitive day?", I decided to trust the liberating, powerful, ALIVE energy I could feel deep within. I began to see attending the concert as its own ceremonious moment where the past version of me that felt like her voice didn't work could belt it out, once again letting the music move and heal her.  When I bought the ticket on Saturday, nothing felt more right.

The last many years of my mom’s life, she aimed to feel more joy. Something about the tour name Feral Joy felt like a tribute to her and an ode to letting my spontaneous, adventurous, playful Ellie claim her place.

However on Sunday morning, I was feeling quiet and inward, without many words or desire to be with a lot of people. I just wanted to do my own thing.  After taking it hour-by-hour for most of the day, at 4pm my husband and I attended a yoga workshop at our studio.  As we arrived I felt very little emotional and mental energy in my tank, and was ready to simply lie on my mat to rest if that is what felt best during the class. But as the meditation began, and my body began to warm up, I felt really good to move.  

As we flowed through many mini-series stacked together, I found myself in a deep state of surrender, with willingness to continue as long as my body felt good doing – I was willing to just keep moving from one posture to the next until it didn't feel good anymore.  An hour or so into the workshop, we had one series left and it was 100 degrees in the room (even warmer than it normally is). People groaned in exertion all around the room, taking rests as they needed. I knew I could stop at any moment, but my body felt good moving so that’s what I did and soon I had a powerful realization, which I have thought many times but this time is settled into my cells: I have lived through and survived my deepest fear, and continue to come out the other side liking who I am and consciously cultivating a life I want to keep living. As long as I wasn’t pushing myself in an unhealthy way, the challenge of continuing on brought me gratitude, energy, and joyous exploration of what is possible, in and through my body and being.

Soon we paused for water and I saw myself in a mirror, drenched in sweat but refreshed and invigorated rather than tired.  I felt like I had been reborn in the last hour - I had walked in with nothing left to give and by simply being willing to meet the moment, and surrendering to my capacity and greater wisdom minute-to-minute, I was finishing the class remembering how strong, resilient, and alive I am.  I remembered how much ‘Feral Joy’ is available to me if I continue to show up and meet each moment with openness and heart. 

I left the yoga studio in a completely different state – so grounded in my vibrancy in awe of the process of being stripped down to the core once again, but this time in willingness and curiosity. I quickly became excited about the concert again, and later as I danced and sang to my favorite Maggie lyrics, “I walked off you, and I walked off an old me” and “If devotion is a river, then I'm floating away”, I smiled in delight of all that is available to us in this human existence. Life opens to us when we open to it.

My journey from Broken-open to More Myself

This morning I cried so. many. tears. Through the phone, my dad read me pieces of his journal from the weeks leading up to my mom’s death 2 years ago (almost to the date).  He beautifully recorded things I said, things Mom said, etc.  Then, I sent him photos I have of her from 6 days before she departed.

They are painful to look at, odd yet potent memories, and looking at them now I can see things I couldn't then - I can see she was so much further ‘advanced’ in her process at that point than I remember.   

What we couldn’t see or know then, for our own protection so we could stay hopeful and present, always amazes me.  There are so many deeply private and indescribable pieces of being with someone as they die, and in beginning the journey into a life without them. There is no way to prepare. Those weeks broke me open beyond words and understanding. I have been forever changed and carved by the past 2+ years.

One year ago I still felt like I was drowning in the dark many days - wondering who I was, what life would be - without vision for the future, and it scared the hell out of me.  At the same time I could also feel a very faint call to life that I was willing to keep holding on to as I surrendered to the void of grief.

I didn't know how to talk about it, nothing I could say felt profound enough to match everything I was feeling inside.   

The day before the 1st anniversary date last February, I was sitting in my sister's apartment in silence, taking a moment to reset after a particularly hard few days, and I felt a nudge that said “Stay present to the breaking open.”

I didn't quite understand it but I could feel the importance of once again inviting compassion into the heartbreak that was so palpable in and around me. I could feel the importance of allowing myself to be as I was, painfully blown open by love and loss, without needing to be glued back together again.

Last March, I felt like a baby being born, slowly exiting my grief cocoon with tiny (or not so tiny) steps I could commit to one-by-one; first a trip to Chile to be with our family.  While we were there, I was able to see myself from a new light as I realized that I had more energy and capacity than my fears and inner-protections had allowed me to see.  When we returned from our trip, I felt called to go back to yoga, and from there the next tiny steps unfolded. 

Each month of 2022 built on the previous, guiding me into deeper trust, surrender, and belief that while I would carry and honor my story and my mom very closely forever, through this experience new ways of being and living were available to me. And actually, most felt more alive and true to my being than life before (tangible) loss.

Today I am in awe of this on-going journey as I continue to hold space for the pain,  AND I feel free and open in my expressions of joy, creativity, curiosity, uncertainty and grief.  This is particularly beautiful, as I remember the 30+ years of my life when this wasn’t the case- when I was exhaustingly holding it all in, just trying to manage life and “keep it together”.

There are of course still moments when I feel the inner ‘crunchiness’ (contraction) of my system trying to suppress or numb, but after many years of practice and cultivation, I now know how to work with myself in every moment.  

I openly listen inward for the voice that is crying out in pain, despair, anger, or fear.  I welcome presence into those places because I trust myself with myself. 

I lead myself through the overwhelm and moments that make me want to harden, and follow my breath and pulse to guide me back my soft, open, Ellie Flow state. 

And when I get to parts I don’t know what to do with, I allow them be and invite Divine love to pour into those corners of myself.

I am imperfectly free to feel, and through the feeling the power of my energy-in-motion (emotion) releases.  As it does, space is liberated for a deeper connection with mySelf and Life, for more wholeness that is SO ALIVE I can feel it vibrating in my body, for More of Myself.

I’m so proud of the foundation I have cultivated.  With each day of the past many years, a new brick has been laid, and the More Myself experience was silently being created.  

It is such an honor to stand on solid ground today,  forever still ‘in process,’  and offer this container so that you can be held and guided in your broken-openness as you open to the faint call of life again.  I know there is so much available to you through what you have lived – pieces of yourself to release, and pieces of yourself to welcome in. 

I know that the foundation for your next steps forward, no matter how large or small, can be created with love and gentle intention, making space for all of you, at a pace that is born from your heart and body.

This is a sacred journey, one that probably feels scary (better read: TERRIFYING) to say yes to.  What if on the the other side of this terrifying step there was….

+ Safety to feel yourself and your experience fully.

+ Trust that you can learn to be with all of yourself - your pain, your joy, your dreams, your fears…all of it.

+ So much space and energy liberated in your body and being because you allowed yourself to release what you’ve been holding.

+ Belief that others in your life can meet you in your pain and in your joy.

+ Love and compassion for your past versions of self and who you are today.

+ Liberation in not needing to compartmentalize your life anymore because it can all flow together.

+ Creativity and (re)new(ed) vision (with time).

+ Confidence that you can move at your attuned pace, without pushing or force, and you will be in lock step with your soul.

While I can’t tell you exactly what awaits you (because only through your openness, capacity, and readiness will that be revealed), I believe you will be met, held, and guided exactly where you need to be. I believe you will be invited in to awe of yourSelf and process, and all that is possible.  

You are invited into a path of healing and freedom, and you will be supported and equipped every step of the way.

If you’re ready to say yes to the call into More of  Yourself, join me here.

~ 6 weekly calls starting Tuesday, including intimate guidance and tending, expansive teachings and coaching that will help you cultivate your new foundation for Life

~ $999 pay in full or 2 payments of $511

~ Hit reply for any questions.

Also, I recorded a great Instagram live yesterday with teachings and explorations of two foundational areas we will sink into during the first weeks of the program.  No matter where you find yourself today, I believe it will support and enlighten you in your process. 

You can watch the replay (even if you don't have social media) or listen to it in podcast form here!

Allowing Life to break me open (& INTRODUCING THE MORE MYSELF GROUP PROGRAM)

Doors are fully open to my new LIVE Group Program Experience, ‘More Myself’. 

You can dive into the complete exploration of it here. We begin on Tuesday February 21st, and I'm offering $111 off the price through Sunday, 2/12 using the code REBIRTH.

 This program is a 6-week group experience for those that have walked through things they didn’t (consciously) choose, and are willing to honor the pain and grief of this process, while simultaneously opening to all of the ways it has profoundly changed and expanded them.

When life broke me open, everything I knew it to be was shattered.  Not only had I lost my Mom, but huge pieces of who I thought I was felt like they were stripped away with her.  I had already been engaged in deep internal renewal for years leading up to this time, but when she died, things that used to matter didn’t matter at all anymore.  Things I used to like and want in my life no longer felt alive and important at all.

A year later I still felt incredibly lost, alone, and confused- this was a piece of loss no one had ever told me about. Probably because the ‘in between’ of who you used to be and who you are becoming is quite indescribable.

While I'll forever be deeply engaged in the life-long processes of both living with loss and expanding into to my own becoming, I now know that when we allow ourselves to be fully broken open there is tremendous pain and there are astounding gifts.

We don't get to control what breaks us or when it happens, but if we are willing to move through these times in our lives and the remains they leave with an open heart, they can offer us so much.

The transformation and the grief don’t need to compete, they actually go hand-in-hand. 

Together they open a portal full of possibility - seeing, being, and leading through a different lens - one that I believe has the potential to change the world.

If we make the space for our breaking-open to be a conscious process,  it brings deeper connection to ourselves and deeper connection to life as we move through it.

If we tune in and make space, there is so much richness alive in the messiness of it all, included but not limited to vibrant creativity, passion, meaning, full-being gratitude and awe…aliveness.

The More Myself program was created for those that are open and ready to both honor the pain and be awe-struck by the gifts. This program is for those that can feel something within saying, “there is no going back to who I used to be” and who desire to trust and explore the potent medicine of their experience. 

Maybe you’ve lost a loved one.

Maybe you’ve received difficult news or a diagnosis about your health or that of someone important in your life.

Maybe you’re unsure if you’ll be able to have kids.

Maybe a relationship you treasured has concluded.

Maybe a career or dream you poured yourself into has been challenged.

Maybe you did all the ‘right things’ but it doesn’t’ feel like you thought it would and you're not sure how to move forward. 

It doesn't matter what has broken you open, or how long it's been, if you feel called to more of yourself, this is for you.

“HOW IRONIC THAT THE DIFFICULT TIMES WE FEAR MIGHT RUIN US ARE THE VERY ONES THAT CAN BREAK US OPEN AND HELP US BLOSSOM INTO WHO WE WERE MEANT TO BE.”

— Elizabeth Lesser

All the details are here & the More Myself doors are wide open.

Use code REBIRTH for $111 now through Sunday, 2/12.

I am incredibly humbled and honored to create this program, and I can't wait to meet you inside.

Questions about the program or working together? Reach out here.

there is Grief in every Layer of healing

Written originally on August 5th, this is a stream of consciousness writing that came out of me in a moment of deep realization. It is meant to witness, open, and offer compassion to any and all that are moving through the softer, less traumatic moments of a loss and grief yet still feeling the pain. I do still have a powerful relationship and connection to my mom, when I speak of her absence in this writing, I am referencing her physical presence and life.

Today I tapped into the grief of this week. It is a gentle sadness, ever existing with this state of calm and peace I have arrived to as I sink into the expansion this summer has opened me to.
It is a low grade sadness, there but not bubbling to the surface with a vengeance.

I can feel it put it isn’t sharp like it sometimes is.

A few times this week I noticed myself thinking about how I was getting used to daily wife with out Mom alive, and in a lot of ways I’m so grateful to have arrive here - to a place I feel free to look forward with excitement and potential - and this place also comes with a new layer of deep sadness, sadness that I am used to life without her, sadness that starting to dream forward means I’m more ready to imagine a full life without her.

In my journal I wrote about it being like a timeline jump that is both extremely relieving, expansive, and natural, while simultaneously devastating.

I have arrived to the state I wasn’t sure I’d ever arrive to - a state of deeper integration of acceptance that allows space for the new, the possible, hope and excitement. And also there is grief that I have arrived to this moment of peace and acceptance, where every step and dream forward naturally exists without my Mom in it, where I know that every step forward means a step further from the reality when we had her with us.

This is a new kind of heartbreak.

A portal of rebirth: a One year reflection

Looking back to one year ago

August has been all about reflecting, resetting, and grounding into the places I have expanded into this summer (you can watch an instagram live I did about this here).

This week I felt deeply emotional multiple days thinking back to a year ago and how much has shifted since then. Late August through early October last year I hit some of my lowest grief moments. The shock of my mom’s death started wearing off more (I have learned to not underestimate shock in the grief & loss process - it lasts much much longer than we realize), we had just moved into our first 100yr old home that we were pouring love and energy into to make it our own, a place where my mom would never visit (physically), and a lot of other details of life were stirring the anxiety pot like never before. It was combination of deep joy, gratitude, pain and grief.

It took all of my energy to move through the day in as grounded of a way as I could without collapsing, which inevitably happened often too.

It wasn’t my last rock bottom grief moment, but it was yet again a point of surrender, or a million points of surrender of control, of my fears that that’s how it’d be forever, surrender of fears that I’d never have energy again or mental clarity or creativity again even though I new there was so much to experience and offer in life still. Surrender of all relationships, plans and hopes and dreams, because I only had capacity to move at an hour-by-hour pace. Surrender to the reactions my body was having to the level of stress hormones that had likely been circulating for so long.

I was still learning how to find the words to even talk to loved ones about what it felt like. I’m so grateful for the people that sat with me on the phone or in person while I spoke, or cried, or just sat in silence on numb days.

There were many more moments, easier and hard lived, before a bigger shift was ready to unfold and a lot more support along the way, but it’s pretty amazing to be here today feeling ALIVE, with a deep desire for life, inspired to share, create, and carry out pieces of the mission I came to offer, grounded into myself in a renewed and calm way, open to grief and also open to life. Surrender is still a daily piece of the puzzle, and I’ve leaned that there is grief in every layer of healing (which likely isn’t concluding anytime soon).

And this home has held us through so much, with so much love, light, coziness and expansiveness all at once. Supporting us with trees in every direction, a lush and breathtaking park just a few blocks away for daily conversations, tears or dance parties with the trees, birds, and flowers. It’s almost like this house’s soul smiled at us and opened its arms for a welcoming embrace, saying “it you love me and all of my quirks, I will abundantly love you and hold you in all of your moments”, and it has.

It has offered space for our Chileans to come for months at a time, enough stability for my nervous system and enough project opportunities for my visionary husband, space to rest, play, read in the hammock, introduce many new plant friends, our first holiday season without Mom, and so much more.

The unraveling is deeply painful, and learning to be with myself in love through it has been one of my biggest challenges to date, AND the magical portal of transformation and rebirth it offers never ceases to amaze and humble me.

Now to look forward to one year from now, knowing I could never even grasp the possibilities of all that may unfold, but I can look forward with love, excitement, openness, surrender, and freedom to trust I will be held and can hold myself and others beautifully through it all.

If you take a moment and a breath, what has this last year been like for you? How have life’s wild unfoldings transformed your being?

The internal grief clock (a poem for compassionate witnessing)

I wrote this poem in the summer of 2021, a raw 5ish months after my mother’s passing (Feb 19th). This expression explores and puts words to the quiet hardening that often happens as any anniversaries or important dates approach when living with grief and loss.

In my experience, grief can can creep up or come on suddenly, and now almost a year later the way it makes itself present in different than when I wrote this, but my body remains powerfully synched with my internal grief clock.

I have learned, and am still learning every day, to treat my internal grief clock with deep respect, honoring, and sacredness, even when my mind tendency is to want to bypass this process and overcome it.

For me, Grief is a never-ending initiation into softening and surrendering yet again, into opening and listening yet again, into feeling with my whole heart and body, even though protective patterns in of my mind want to keep me from the potential pain.

My hope in sharing this poem and experience is to extend compassionate witnessing and holding to others experiencing deep grief of any kind, as well as space and love to invite the sacredness back in to your process.

Today I grant you an invitation to tap in and listen to your inner grief clock, and remember, there is nothing wrong with you no matter how you feel your grief today.

The Internal Grief Clock

Like clockwork

Even when my brain doesn’t realize it

My body can feel it.

The heaviness comes

The helplessness

The numb, dull, stay-in-bed depression.

This again?! Grief is this you?

I can’t even feel the answer.

Everything feels so dark

I go searching for every other reason I could feel like this, yet again

Disconnected

Hopeless

Stuck

Dead inside.

I see the date on my phone - the 16th, not the 19th

It mustn’t be grief this time, I think

It must be me.

No matter what I do

Here I am again.

The next day passes, and then the next

Glimpses of light and lightness

Moments of feeling alive again, but mostly

I am constantly weighing how to move through the day, what I can muster the energy for.

Until I can’t fight it anymore, and I roll over and stay in bed

Surrendering to the nothingness

To the missing motivation

To the missing desire.

Then I see that date again

The 19th.

I ask again, could this be grief?

At first I shake my head, but then

The tears begin to fall

My voice returns, and I can

Speak my thoughts and fears.

I miss my mom

I talk to her

I call my sister, text my dad

I tell my husband it’s been 5 months.

I ask him if it feels longer or shorter to him and he replies

“Some days it feels closer, and some days it feels further away.”

And he is exactly right.

On the 19th she feels so close, yet so far away all at once.

On the 19th’s and the days leading up

My body remembers first, even when my head can’t connect the dots

And there is nothing to do or change, even when it doesn’t make sense.

Then the 20th comes, and I feel

Half human again

Half alive again

Able to breathe again

Hungry again

Awake again

Able to move again.

And everything still hurts

But it all somehow looks brighter too.