Welcome to my Blog.   There must always be a deep why behind your life purpose.  Thank you Mom for your beautiful journals that showed me both your humanity and divinity and inspired my next purpose in a fresh way.  Your love, encouragement, and faith have continued to bring a little piece of Heaven to Earth!

Early one Monday morning in the Spring of March, 2021 I was living as I “should”, a bit tired, overscheduled, and maybe even resentful that I had no time for myself, but life was good at least on the outside.  I had a wonderful husband, three healthy children, a job I enjoyed, and a new puppy.  Our kids had just returned to school for a few short weeks since Covid 19 and a long journey of remote learning!  And today was going to be my first moment to have a few hours to myself. I was soul searching and very “mid-lifey!” I felt chronically overwhelmed from living the last two years of a pandemic trying to do it all. For months or truthfully years, I had been aware of old life patterns that maybe didn’t work anymore, but I was busy and the pain was not enough to make significant changes. I had an inner drive rooted somewhere deep within to always… just keep going.  Taking care of myself had never been a top priority of mine! Looking back, I probably cared about my image more than my authentic, true self.  

I dropped the kids off at school, walked the dog, and was just about to dive into a bit of time to reflect on life.   Little did I know, it would turn out to be a full time job to reflect on the entire meaning of life when I answered my cell phone.  My parents had been in a tragic car accident.  As I drove only five minutes to the scene, my world flashed before my eyes.

I was the first to arrive on the scene. After discovering Dad had already been flown out by helicopter and was not there, I asked the policeman if he could take me to get my mom and tell her what had happened.  I will never forget how he led me to sit in the driver’s seat of his car, looked deeply in my eyes, and said words I could never have imagined only moments before.  “Your mom was driving the car and she did not make it.”  Fast forward to weeks in the hospital and taking a leave of absence from my job and the life I had known. I later resigned to assist my Dad in his recovery from severe injuries, help my children grieve the loss of the only grandmother they had known, and discover my mother’s journals which inspired my current work.

We all have a story. What I discovered in my mother’s journals and through writing my own letters to her almost daily for an entire year was that my mom shared many of same internal struggles I did.  She was a helper.  She felt like she always had to be busy and do the right thing living in a “should” world.  She took care of everyone else and put herself last. She did it with a smile and carried on often tired, resentful, and longing for a moment.  She did it because she cared deeply for others.  She and I had discussed this way of life briefly, and she always encouraged my work in helping others.  She reminded me to try and find space to take care of myself as she got older.  What I know now as I have talked with countless women is that Mom and I aren’t the only ones that struggled in how to manage all of the roles of being a woman that feels like she needs to do it all.  I think there are generations of women that need to discover the same key that locked so many of us into a life of “shoulds” can be turned the other direction to unlock you into a new way of living with much more freedom. It was through my dark night of the soul that I discovered there is a new way to live, love, and lead with purpose. 

During the months that followed my mother’s death I was lost. I didn’t know how to find my worth without being busy and without every moment being accounted for. I didn’t know how to think of my own needs and receive help although countless people showed me the face of God’s love in a ways I have never experienced.  I didn’t even know what I thought about God.  I didn’t know my purpose anymore; and I had little energy to find it. What I did know is this.  I would never be the same!  I needed to learn a new way to exist in order to find my way through and make meaning of this tragedy.  I needed a new way to live!  I walked the beaches everyday searching for my own truth.   On those beach walks my mother and I united in a way that led me home to my truth about God, my emerging purpose, and myself. In my very private grief journey, I began to allow my humanity and divinity to become friends holding space for my whole self, allowing the paradox of life to exist.  There is now room to hold both joy and sorrow, life and death, new and old ways.  I had enough tools from decades of inner work studying my passions of spirituality, psychology, and neuroscience that I could finally see I had created this world I lived in, even if I blamed it on external circumstances.    “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung.

I began asking myself what I really wanted?  Why did I play small sometimes in certain areas of life?  Why didn’t I create more space for myself?  Why were some of my relationships so hard? Who am I and what is my purpose? I began to invest in a relationship with myself, learning to love all the parts that make up my whole self. I never knew the quality of my relationship with myself, or lack thereof had so much to do with how I chose to exist in this world?    What I know now is that the quality of the relationship you have with yourself directly impacts the quality of your life!

At my mom’s funeral I spoke about her essence.  I called out the areas of her life where she had “brought a little piece of Heaven to Earth.”  I was blessed to see both her divinity and her humanity as her daughter and witness to her life.  In the months that followed I went on my own personal mission to figure out how I could consistently bring a little piece of Heaven to Earth in my second half of life. Those words became my life mission! And I wanted this not only for myself, but for every woman and the daughters of our next generation. This became my daily question, “How can I create a life to help others become their truest selves and share it with the world?”  How can we live in a way that brings Heaven to Earth?  What I had learned as I walked hundred of miles was we must all go on a journey to “return home to love, and to our true self”.  While death and grief is the price of great love, the process eventually leads to asking the big questions and living into the answers.  As a dear friend of mine says, “Life finds a way” to create new life, new beginnings.  I have now created a life that I don’t need a vacation from, a life that has space for me and for you, for my family, my health, and meaningful work. I discovered my purpose is to help others become free too. You don’t have to stay stuck, but you do have to go on a quest to discover your own inner GPS that leads you to your destiny of choosing your life.   You too were created to “bring a little piece of Heaven to the Earth.” 

You are not broken! You are full of potential and possibility.

Moms, choose to live your life.  Choose it for you; and choose it for the daughters of our world.

“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.”  – Carl Jung