EARLY LIFE

I was deeply spiritual and connected to my guardian angel as a child. Ironically, I became very separate from my spirituality through rigid religious conditioning in the community I grew up in. This conditioning changed my inner knowing about what that meant. I learned how to please people and fit in so that I would be accepted and not judged. I began to feel responsible for how my presence, my actions, and my decisions made everyone else feel. 

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LIVING IN SHAME

I developed a co-dependent relationship with my 'Good-Enoughness.' My need to be good led to my need to be needed for my goodness, and I never learned to love myself first. For 24 years, I worked with and taught at-risk teens who had experienced many forms of trauma. I had three children in 2 years during this time, and I was burnt out. I didn’t like who I was, didn’t know how to trust my intuition, gained weight, lacked confidence and joy, and had completely abandoned my desires. 

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WAKING UP

I began noticing that I was holding on by a thread.

• I didn't have the strength to hold solid boundaries with my new principal.

• I was struggling to feel patient with my students and kids.

• I was overwhelmed by not feeling capable of meeting my family's and student's needs.

• My son was showing that he had some needs that required more support as he transitioned to kindergarten.

 

To the surprise of everyone, including me, I decided to leave teaching.

 

In 2019, my sister took me to see a showing of Becoming Nobody about Ram Dass' teachings. It was the last year that I taught. I had already been listening to him for a few years, but I was particularly touched during this showing. Here's what I resonated with:

• Our old roles and disguises become increasingly burdensome.

• Being deeply loved for his whole self by his guru, Maharaji, brought him to loving awareness.

• Practicing loving awareness freed him from the attachments of his "somebody-ness."

 

The paradox of becoming unattached to our somebody-ness is that it is in this space that we can find who we truly are and who we are called to be in this lifetime, which may be many things, but at the core of all of them is Love.

 

MANIFESTING LOVING AWARENESS

I began taking small, consistent steps toward loving awareness that have led to my transformation. 

 

After watching the film, I went home and began this blog. I  didn't know if I'd ever add to it. What I knew was that I was marking what I wanted to become in ink. What I had yet to realize is that it was less about who I'd strive to become and more about how I would practice being.

 

I began a meditation practice, waking up before my family every morning.

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I enrolled in many online courses by different meditation teachers: Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Michael Singer, and Craig Hamilton stand out among them. Then I found myself being called to empower other women and trained as a woman's Transformative Coach and Facilitator with Dr. Claire Zammit. 

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I transformed my world by learning to hold myself in loving-kindness, developing a supportive meditation practice, and becoming more self-aware- approaching my behaviors with curiosity, exploration, and empathy rather than judgment. I found out how to LOVE from the inside out!