I feel like there is so much to say but feel mute. Like ideas are percolating. I feel shame for having started a journal post last week but not finishing or posting it… maybe that is the bump in the road this week. Or it could be that change in pattern from having been in one of Earth’s most beautiful places for three days disconnected and relaxing. So many reasons and excuses.
The root of it all however seems to be talking about writing as a way of attracting more clients which I did with my writing coach last Thursday rather than writing the story that wants to be told or even the story of who I really am and how I am here to help people. There is a distinct difference. Writing to attract clients feels… icky. It feels wholly un-me.
The thought of having a formula, an anatomy of a post totally blocks any sort of storytelling vibe I feel…any flow that I have come to recognize as being plugged in to a greater source in order to tell a story that has a broader implication than just me.
So I am not going to do that. I am not going to write to attract clients.
I commit to you now that the only things that I will be writing are those stories that come through me as needing to be told, of who I am, and how I help.
When have you felt un-you?
What story have you been putting off telling that wants to be told?
xoxo, s
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February 27, 2014
by suzanne Comments Off on Houston, we have a problem…
The two times in recent memory that I have asked for help were during major life events — the purchase of my co-op apartment in 2006 and our wedding in 2011. Both circumstances were bigger than me, than us. Asking for help came back 10-fold… beyond any expectation I could have ever had.
In the case of my apartment, every surface was touched. Countless friends helped me remove vinyl over plywood flooring in the kitchen and bathroom with a crowbar, re-tile the bathroom, lay cork flooring in the kitchen, uninstall and reinstall the bathroom sink and toilet, paint every room, and move me in all for meals and beverages.
We got married within a budget of $3,000 for a barbecue the night before as we had a bunch of folks coming in from out of town to the ceremony and reception. Due to our amazing friends coming together finishing decorations, decorating the reception venue, picking up glasses, performing the ceremony, runs to Costco, grilling, constructing the most amazing croquembouche (our wedding cake), the entire event felt much more rich like a wedding at least 10x the price. And what still blows me away is how personal it all felt and so full of love.
It is with these images in my heart that I open up once again. It feels difficult. There is hesitation. Similar to admitting defeat in my mind for I tend to be the one that helps, cares for another, usually behind the scenes. This request is all about standing in my power and being seen and ultimately opening myself up to feeling loved.
I left my former job four and a half months ago (after prolonged notice given) thinking that I would just jump into seeing clients full-time. That hasn’t happened for a number of reasons. Mainly just needing a break from running on all cylinders all the time… also known as burn-out recovery. The funny thing being that when working with clients, I feel full of energy and light, as do my clients, along with being grounded, centered, de-stressed, and more present in this life. Making my work the perfect antidote to burn-out for both me and my clients.
After what felt like a set-back in moving forward into my being last week and after prodding form a friend, I initiated a distance healing with John of God. My request was for a full recovery from burn-out and a blessing for my new career as a healer so that I am able to fully show up and help others fulfill their contracts for this time around and live the life they are meant to be living.
I felt a shift from the moment I sent the email. And in so doing allowed space for all those things stated in my request to John of God to happen.
It occurred to me in the days following that I should just ask my community for help and allow the Universe to support me so that I can support you by fully stepping into my new role.
I am asking for help in spreading the word about my work. Is that help you?
Do you have any ideas regarding ways to spread the word about my work?
If you have worked with me, do you know anyone who would benefit from working with me? Could you refer them? Would you write a testimonial?
I’d love to hear your suggestions either in the comments below or privately. And transversely, do you find it difficult to ask for help? Has there been a time that you asked for help and the response whelmed your heart? Where are those spaces where I can help you?
Honored and grateful… xoxo, s
Photo: Screen shot from the movie Nebraska
Post written with our wedding playlist in the background
February 20, 2014
by suzanne Comments Off on Shed to be Reborn
In September after many months of internal battle, I stepped into the concept that I was indeed a mentor. And I am pretty sure that I was born this way. This after many years, decades even, of being a mentee to amazing mentors, a lineage that I honor every day.
This gift had been hidden from me for, like, forever. I hadn’t been able to stand in my power fully enough to see it or embody it or believe it.
The most recent incarnation started last summer when a shining light asked about mentoring. My first impulse was to reference other people in spite of seeing myself with that cadre of mentors. Shortly thereafter I was blessed to have a conversation with my mentor who pointed out that I wouldn’t have seen myself with those other mentors if I wasn’t one myself.
This mentoring spark was incubating while attending the Burning Man Festival last year. The experience of Burning Man can be anything you want it to be. For me, it centers around working for a theme camp, ShamanDome, doing 1-on-1 healings as I am a conduit for a high frequency energy I’ve started calling all-encompassing light. This means that I am up at sunrise, do not do drugs, maybe have one alcoholic beverage during the week, and sleep at night. Plus, my person works for the org setting up and taking down all the things. My experience is pretty unique… just like every one else’s experience.
The real kicker can be that the lesson you walk away from Burning Man with may or may not be one that you are ready to face. The desert strips you bare and can easily accelerate learning and growth.
My lesson brought me face-to-face with my mentoring abilities. After each opening circle at ShamanDome, there was another shiny bright healer soul asking me to work with them 1-on-1 prior to the 1-on-1 healings open to the public. And when I was working with folks outside of the healer realm, those seeking mentorship came my way time and time again with one of my favorites crowd funding her way to massage and holistic healing school.
So I listened. I meditated. And, then, I mentored my passenger on the ride home back to Seattle.
This thing that I had been ducking all this time… this gift that I had shared naturally my entire life… entered my world at the time I was ready to step into it. So much so that in my mentee notes from September 22, I wrote “I am celebrating being a mentor.”
It wasn’t until a retreat in October, however, that I understood how this mentoring would emerge. When I was lucky enough to have found the perfect person, to ask the perfect questions, at the perfect time.
The roots of mentoring move the Why not me? Manifesto into action through empowering sweet souls to speak their personal truth by fully grounding in their personal power, reverence for the individual, and honoring who and where one is in their human journey. In so doing, each of us steps into living life as we are meant to and in turn empower others to do the same.
I am so excited to co-create the perfect mentoring program for you which intersects what you want to birth into the world with the knowledge and gifts I have to offer in this life. We will create a roadmap to the life you want to be living by drawing upon all-encompassing light, art/design, intuitive insight, ritual, Kundalini yoga, energy healing modalities (Reiki, Alchemical Healing, Shamanism, Shamanic Herbalism), business in the new economy, fundraising, pr, and Law of Attraction + energy management techniques.
Let’s create some magic by tapping into the life your light body wants to be living and breaking through the blocks that this human experience has created.
What could you do if you shone brightly in the world as if you were a crystal container? What could you do if you were fully grounded, standing in your personal power, and in alignment with your knowledge, gifts, and higher purpose?
Join me for the journey.
xoxo, s
February 13, 2014
by suzanne Comments Off on Safe to be Seen
These are the phrases that I am repeating in my head as I write today.
For the past eight days, I have been butting up against “It is not safe to be seen” this little thing that I learned from being the target of jokes in elementary school because I was different and then reinforced by my family in the guise of meaning well.
Lots of us have been here. It could have been our weight (in my case), color of our hair, awkwardness, sexual orientation, really, anything that made us other.
This being such a deep-seated feeling, this not being safe, it isn’t surprising that it has been a recurring theme in my life. This last time really felt as though it came out of left field (though as I typed that… don’t the triggers always feel like that; always coming when you least expect them?). And it focused on how I am writing about certain topics here not the writing itself. The writing criticism actually happened a year ago which basically put a kibosh on my blog for the rest of the year and the newsletter I send to clients.
At the time, I blamed not having time between my full-time job, seeing clients, mentoring, and online classes. Now, however, I realize that I stopped writing because I didn’t want to be seen because when I am seen I am not safe.
Last week brought me face to face with little elementary school Suzanne and I got to hug her and tell her it was going to be okay. That she was safe. That it was safe to be seen. And, in so doing, a self-induced soul retrieval occurred in which a crystal container opened the length of my major chakras with my 3rd chakra, that place of personal power, feeling open for the first time in my adult life.
It was in the face of this perceived criticism and truly wanting to shrink away that I instead wrote a blog post about folks speaking their personal truth and being fully seen that got more traction than anything I have written thus far, created and mailed an exclusive gift for the Be Your Own Guru program full of magic, and launched the beta session of the Luminosity Mentoring Program.
And guess what? I am safe to be seen.
Where in your life do you not feel safe to be seen? What have you been putting off doing?
I had put off writing for a year when the thing I deeply crave is connection and engagement. My life feels much more whole when I am writing. Magical.
Until next week…
xoxo, s
February 6, 2014
by suzanne Comments Off on Why not you? Manifesto
For months I have been stringing together a theory based on how to operate in the world. The threads are from people and happenings coming out of my adopted hometown of Seattle, the place I’ve called home for thirteen years this week.
Thread #1
I was introduced to Macklemore’s song Thrift Shop during last year’s Super Bowl by a friend with teenage daughters as an example of what “all the kids were listening to”. My fascination with him, however, did not start until the Can’t Hold Us video came out in April 2013… and there was a frackin’ shaman at the beginning of the video. I was like… who is this guy running through a snow-covered outcropping of birch trees wearing a wolf totem!?! But it wasn’t until being gifted a ticket (still so grateful) to his first Seattle show in December (there were three sold-out shows) that the full-on gushing started.
And it boils down to him telling the story of his personal truth of addiction + recovery + self-empowerment, reverence for what and who has come before, and honoring his home. The visuals for the show, e.g. props and video, are essentially a love letter to this city, this place. Seeing his performance; their performance, really, because there is a whole crew of folks making it happen; opened and expanded my heart chakra to near outer orbit dimension.
Thread #2
Kshama Sawant is a socialist Seattle council member elected this past November, who made headlines two weeks ago for only taking home $40,000 after taxes of her $117,000 salary, with the balance going to a Solidarity Fund she is setting up to distribute the remaining funds to different social causes. Her platform included: Fund Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed; Environmental Sanity; Affordable Housing (a huge issue in this city); Fight Police Brutality + Racism; and Quality Public Schools. I voted for her, even though I am not a socialist, because she was the only one speaking her personal truth in that election race and she is following through on her promises.
And then two weeks ago she responded to President Obama’s State of the Union Address:
Kshama is standing fully in her seat of personal power with the vision of lifting everyone up during a time when corporations and non-profits are downsizing more senior employees in order to hire folks for less. A distressing event to witness first-hand and one that was the final push I needed out of the 9-5 world after it happened to friends and co-workers that I had known for twelve years.
Thread #3
Even before winning Super Bowl 48, the Seahawks Program has been on my radar since Pete Carroll took the helm and more so this past year when articles began appearing that yoga and meditation were mandatory for all players and John Moffitt quitting the NFL last November after being traded to the Broncos from Seattle. Early stories told of the difference in team culture between the Seahawks and just about every other team in the league.
And then this amazing story surfaced from Russell Wilson of what his dad used to say to him… “Why not you?” and that he posed this same question to his team at the start of this year’s season… “Why not us?”
I get chills. Tears well. These are the same reactions I have to seeing Macklemore & Ryan Lewis live and watching Kshama’s YouTube video response to the President.
“Why not you?” may be the most basic third chakra question in the Universe and the key to standing within your personal power.… for those times when you just don’t feel as though you are enough; when you cannot find your voice to speak your truth; when you find it difficult showing up in the world. These are all things that I have experienced but this little phrase is so empowering.
Why not you?
Why not me?
Why not us?
The culture difference is even more palpable after yesterday, where the Twelves welcomed their team home to the awe of their players. Seven hundred thousand people, in a city of 600,000, lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the Vince Lombardi Trophy glint in the sun. And at the end of the route which took two hours to complete, Marshawn Lynch carried with him a shaman’s drum and Pete Carroll spoke of his gratitude.
You may say… oh, it’s just football. But the reality is that a whole city, region, state had it’s heart chakra opened and expanded by a man who created a football program based on lifting people up.
Pete Carroll believes in competition to the point of religious fervor saying “Always compete… Everything You do counts”. His belief in competition comes from the latin root of the word meaning “strive together” a wholly different meaning than in, dare I say, any other form of sports in America at this point in history. Strive together is about raising every one around you so we can all do good work. I say this, specifically, based on his work in providing a way out of gang life for at-risk youth in Los Angeles and Seattle so they can take control of their lives and strive for better futures.
There is something happening here. Something outside of the status quo and most definitely out of the box. And that something is about creating a better life for ourselves and those around us by self-empowerment, each of us speaking our own personal truth with a reverence and an honor for people and place, and lifting up those around us so that they are also empowered to step into a bigger version of themselves and in turn empower others.
My heart is so full of this time, this place… and my heart chakra expands to infinity as I vocalize this theory that I have been stringing together because in a way this is the basis of my work too. And it is such a gift to step forward into this place of possibility each and every day, an honor to have found my teachers who brought me here, and truly empowering to finally speak my own personal truth once again.
In what ways can you lift yourself up and those around you to make this life, this world, a better place for all?
Why not you?
xoxo, s
Research for this post is linked above with an additional source here:
The Stranger Seattle Has Stolen the Microphone by Charles Mudede – With a special shout-out of thanks to Bellen Drake, the person behind the lens for the gorgeous portrait on this site, for posting this article last night. It was the inspiring kick needed to finally commit this theory to etheric space.
I feel like there is so much to say but feel mute. Like ideas are percolating. I feel shame for having started a journal post last week but not finishing or posting it… maybe that is the bump in the road this week. Or it could be that change in pattern from having been in one of Earth’s most beautiful places for three days disconnected and relaxing. So many reasons and excuses.
