A Mother’s Epiphany: What is Motherhood + Being a “Perfect” Mother?
May.12.13

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This is a submitted epiphany from one of our awesome readers / members of our community. Happy Mothers’ Day!

“There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.”

~Jill Churchill

As a kid I thought that grown-ups were perfect, or at the very least I thought they knew a lot more than I did. They seemed infallible, these tall people who walked through my life freely telling me what I should do, how I should act, what I should say. I trusted them, rarely questioned them and if I did speak up I would usually feel guilty afterwards…as if I had done something wrong.

So when, at twenty-six, I had a baby of my own I half expected some kind of holistic wisdom to dawn on me, to take over my mind and instill the kind of confidence that all other parents appeared to have.

It didn’t.

Instead I felt nervous, inadequate and constantly overwhelmed. My daughter, Noelle, was perfect…and demanding. And somehow that shift from the naive child to the all-knowing adult eluded me. I still felt at the mercy of someone, only instead of my own parents, it was now this tiny little being I held in my arms.

It wasn’t until years later that it would occur to me (my epiphany): These feelings, this unworthiness…it began and ended with me. No one was telling me I was inept except me. No one was saying “You don’t know what you’re doing.” Only I did that.

Motherhood is a layer that lies within us that can be accessed at any time. It is a wisdom born many millenia ago that beats in the breast of everyone. I was too scared to look. I hid behind the belief that everyone else knew better than I did, when the truth is: we’re all the same. I believe we all come from the same place and that we’re headed back there too. And while we’re here, we’re meant to help one another.

My children are my greatest teachers. And while much of the time they are gleaning from my experience, often I am learning just as much from them. They show me my impatience, my tendency to people-please, and my temper. They also show me my infinite capacity to love and feel compassion. I have never been inept, but there have been times where I have been unwilling to accept my God-given power. Being a mother has shown me that it does no one any good to play small. We need one another. My children need me to be as bright a light as I can in order to help shine a way for them, but so do my brothers and sisters. And for them, I am willing. I can look at the world as a classroom filled with fellow students whose sole purpose is to help me remember the infinite Love I came from, just as my children do each and every day. Yes, I can do that.

~Danielle Boonstra, Ancaster Canada
(above photo provided by Danielle with her daughter, Noelle. All rights reserved.)

Do you have any epiphanies about being a parent? We’d love to hear…You can share with us on Facebook, Twitter, or right here on the site. Thank you!

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Want An Epiphany About Your Health? 10 Health Habits Not Taught in Med School
May.1.13

Here at Epiphany Channel, we not only are reporting and sharing epiphany stories, but also information that we hope can help spark epiphanies.

Dr. Lissa Rankin is a fellow blogger on PositivelyPositive.com and she has a new book out called Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself. I’m  a huge believer in utilizing both traditional medicine and complementary/alternative therapies to heal and stay healthy. Many of the epiphanies in my book such as Kate Milliken and Nancy Ballard‘s stories deal with healing. In fact, there is a whole section of the book dedicated to it.

I have found through my work with epiphanies that the beliefs and mind sets of the people who want to heal are ultra-important, and many times are the ultimate key to healing. Belief + Action. (Always taking action to support your beliefs!)

Lissa asked me to share some of the insights she shares in the book and I couldn’t be happier to do so. Here are 10 Health Habits we can all incorporate in our lives, complete with her commentary and an opportunity for a FREE online event she’s leading with Martha Beck (one of my all-time favorites!) — Happy Reading and Happy Healing! “See” you at the event!

10 Health Habits They Don’t Teach In Medical School by Lissa Rankin, M.D.

As a health-conscious person, you’re already in the loop about the importance of eating your veggies, skipping the booze, cigarettes, and fake foods, daily exercise, plenty of zzzzz’s, and regular check-ups. But as a physician fascinated by why some health nuts still suffer from chronic illness, I dug deep into the medical literature to study what else really makes us healthy – and what predisposes us to illness.

What I found shocked me.  What I discovered was certainly never introduced to me in medical school. As I wrote about in my upcoming book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself and as I discussed in my latest TEDx talk, the scientific data proves that there are ten key habits that lead to optimal health.  (I’ll bet your doctor never wrote these on a prescription pad!)

  1. Alleviate loneliness. The Italian immigrants of Roseto, Pennsylvania ate meatballs fried in lard, gorged on pasta, and smoked, but they had half the risk of heart disease as the rest of the country. Why? Researchers concluded that it was because they lived communally, celebrated regularly, and had a huge network of friends. Dinner party, anyone?

  2. Couple up. A UCLA study reviewed census data and found that those who never marry are 58% more likely to die at a young age than those who exchange vows. But only healthy marriages count if you’re seeking optimal health. Studies show that, when it comes to health, you’re better off alone than stuck in a toxic relationship.

  3. Get it on.  Those with healthy, happy sex lives live longer, have a lower risk of heart disease and stroke, get less breast cancer, bolster their immune systems, sleep better, appear more youthful, enjoy improved fitness, have enhanced fertility, get relief from chronic pain, experience fewer migraines, suffer from less depression, and enjoy an improved quality of life.

  4. Engage in work you love.  Those stuck in soul-sucking jobs are at greater risk for sudden death. In Japan, they call it “karoshi”- death by overwork. But it’s not just the Japanese who are at risk. Studies suggest Americans are at even greater risk of sudden death from heart disease and stroke due to overwork.  If work is stressing you out, you may be shortening your life. However, when you’ve found your calling and are doing what you love, your nervous system relaxes, and this flips on your body’s natural self-healing mechanisms.

  5. Take vacations. Not only are vacations fun – they’re good for your health! Failure to use accrued vacation time has been associated with early death. One study looked at 12,000 men over nine years and found that those who failed to take annual vacations had a 21% higher risk of death from all causes, and they were 32% more likely to die of a heart attack. Another study found that women who vacationed once every six years or less were almost eight times more likely to develop coronary heart disease or have a heart attack than women who vacationed twice a year.  So take time off – doctor’s orders.

  6. Express your creativity. We tend to dismiss the importance of creative expression in a society that devalues the arts as mere “hobbies” you can fit in after you’ve earned a living and spent quality time with your family. But expressing yourself creatively is a key tool for preventative health – or treatment of existing disease.  Health benefits of creative expression include improved sleep, better overall health, fewer doctor’s visits, diminished use of medication, and fewer vision problems.  Creative expression also decreases symptoms of distress and improves quality of life for women with cancer, strengthens positive feelings, reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, reduces anxiety, and improves social functioning and self-esteem.

  7. Attend religious services. Individuals who attend religious services regularly live 7 ½ years longer (almost 14 years longer for African-Americans) than those who never or rarely attend religious gatherings. One study found that high levels of religious involvement were associated with lower rates of circulatory diseases, digestive diseases, respiratory diseases, and just about every other disease studied. But this is only the case if your religion is in alignment with your authentic self. If going to church or temple or the mosque relaxes your nervous system, it’s good for your health. But if it stresses you out, you’re better off staying home.

  8. Be optimistic. Seeing the glass half full instead of half empty doesn’t just make you more pleasant to hang around.  Optimistic people are also healthier. Optimists fare better when suffering from cancer, recover better from coronary bypass surgery, enjoy healthier immune systems, and live longer than pessimists. People with a positive outlook are 45% less likely to die from any cause than negative thinkers (and 77% less likely to die from heart disease). If you’re ready to convert from pessimism to optimism, read Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism.

  9. Get happy. Happy people live up to ten years longer than those who are unhappy, depressed, or anxious. Depression increases your cancer risk, is a major risk factor for heart disease, and is linked to a variety of pain disorders, while chronic anxiety has been shown to increase cancer risk and carotid artery atherosclerosis, which predisposes to stroke. In a study of nuns, researchers found that 90% of the most cheerful nuns were still alive at age 84, compared to only 34% of the least cheerful.

  10. Meditate. Toxic relationships, work stress, pessimism, loneliness, and depression all trigger “fight-or-flight” stress responses in the body, and when the stress response is activated, the body’s natural self-healing mechanisms are flipped off. The average person experiences 50-100 stress responses per day, which, over time, poisons the body. But meditation can reverse this process.  Harvard physician Herbert Benson studied “the relaxation response” that meditation induces and found it instrumental in treatment of conditions as wide ranging as cardiac arrhythmias, asthma, allergies, herpes, diabetes, ulcers, hypertension, infertility, PMS, AIDS, and chronic pain.  Check out Leo Babauta’s tips for how to meditate.

Learn More In Mind Over Medicine

If you order one copy of Mind Over Medicine before May 13th, 2013 you’ll get access to a FREE 2 hour Live Online Event I’m doing with O magazine columnist and self-healing supergoddess Martha Beck.  Click here for more details.

Make Your Own Diagnosis & Write Your Own Prescription:

What might be out of balance in your life? Which health habits might you adopt? What Prescription will you write to live a more optimally healthy life? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Lissa Rankin, MD: Creator of the health and wellness communities LissaRankin.com and OwningPink.com, author of Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013), TEDx speaker, and Health Care Evolutionary. 

Join her newsletter list for free guidance on healing yourself, and check her out on Twitter and Facebook.

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An Epiphany of a Reformed Perfectionist
Apr.14.13

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“LIFE ISN’T NECESSARILY SUPPOSED TO BE A CAKEWALK.”
~ TRACY HAFEN

I was always the kind of kid who had to excel and be the best at everything. I had to break the school record on every fitness test; I had to get straight As every year; I was valedictorian of my high school class. My mom said I was always like this from the time I was tiny, so I think I was just largely born with this perfectionist type A personality. I also believe myself to be a fairly capable person. I think when you have that combination, you do end up largely creating a very good life for yourself that you feel quite in control of. Growing up, I felt a direct cause and effect between what I chose to do and the outcome. I could get the outcomes I wanted by doing what was necessary to get that outcome—for example, studying hard to become valedictorian. That’s just the way life works, I assumed.

I was married in my early twenties and living in Chicago with my husband and eighteen-month-old son and was pregnant with our second child. My husband and I were resident heads on the University of Chicago campus while he was getting his Ph.D. In the middle of the night, when I was nineteen weeks pregnant, I felt a sudden a gush of fluid come out of me. The bed was soaking wet. My water had obviously broken and I knew it probably wasn’t good, but I just didn’t know how serious it was. We went to the emergency room, and the doctors didn’t believe my water had broken.

I insisted it wasn’t just my bladder, so they finally did an ultra- sound to check fluid levels. The fluid levels were on the low side of normal, so there was still some fluid present. They sent me home and told me to stay down and not get up for anything. I called my parents, and they flew out, picked up our baby son, and took him back to Utah with them so that I didn’t have to do anything but stay still. They said there was nothing they could do in terms of helping me until I got to twenty-four weeks, when a fetus is technically viable.

I sat for the next five weeks. I literally sat up on the couch for five weeks straight, night and day. I never lay down. I never did anything. I used a bedpan. Every time I lay down, the amniotic fluid would start gushing out, but as long as I stayed sitting up, it leaked out a lot slower. By the end of those five weeks, I had horrible open sores from just having the pressure always in the same place.

My doctor had me come in once a week to do an ultrasound, and they saw the fluid levels go down, down, down to where there was no fluid. When I hit twenty-four weeks, I was hospitalized for the next four weeks, and literally my feet never touched the floor, and again, I stayed as still as I could. I did everything in my power at the time to keep this baby. The whole time that I was lying there, the doctors thought that we had a 5 percent chance that our baby would be born and be fine.

Ultrasounds work by bouncing off fluid. By this point, since the baby wasn’t in any fluid, they couldn’t get much of a read on the baby, including the gender, even though I was having ultrasounds every week.

The doctor prepared us for what would most likely happen when I went into labor or when they decided to induce. The baby would probably live for a minute or two and die because it wouldn’t be able to breathe. The baby would not have lungs that could expand and contract. The alveoli, the air sacs in the lungs, develop from the baby breathing in amniotic fluid. The baby breathes this fluid in and out throughout the pregnancy. If the baby has no fluid to take in and out, the air sacs never become pliable and able to expand and contract. So that’s what I was mentally prepared for, although I certainly hoped for a miracle.

They decided to induce labor at twenty-eight weeks. They took me down to labor and delivery, and it was right off the ICU, because they knew this baby was going to go right into the neonatal intensive care unit. We were pretty much all expecting the worst, hoping for the best.

When she was born, the doctor just started crying, and then she said, “It’s a girl.” And our little baby girl was just screaming her head off! She was crying and yelling like any healthy baby. It was very clear that she could breathe just fine and had great lungs, her color was great, her reflexes were good, she was a good weight, everything about her was just robust and healthy. And so, of course, it was a very emotional experience for everybody because no one had known what to expect. They even kept her off a ventilator for a few hours because she was breathing normally. She was fine. Everything just looked great. Basically I had done everything in my power to keep my baby and it had worked and I had my miracle.

She had to stay in ICU for a while, though, as all premature babies do, so we were there pretty much day and night. When she was eleven days old, I wrote in my journal, “Something is different with Chaya. Something’s wrong. And I don’t know what it is. But something has changed.” Something had changed.

Soon thereafter, our doctor told us that she had periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) and probably would have cerebral palsy. It meant that she may never walk. It was a 50 percent chance that she might be close to normal and just walk with a limp, but you can’t tell with babies and you just have to wait and see how the baby develops.

Chaya never rolled over. She couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t drink well without choking. She couldn’t grasp toys. So we knew from fairly early on that she was not developing in any way normally.

She never hit any of the milestones you look for in child development. She’s never been able to take a step, she’s never talked, she only was able to eat on her own for a few years and was developing aspiration pneumonia, so she had to be put on a feeding tube when she was six. Basically none of her muscles work. She has the understanding now at fourteen of about a four-year-old. Her case of cerebral palsy is extremely severe. She is one of the most incredible people I know and one of the greatest joys in all of our family members’ lives, but she is definitely severely handicapped.

When she was somewhere between ten months old and a year, we were watching a videotape of our family. I had not even remembered my husband filming me while I was in a wheelchair outside the hospital the day after Chaya was born.

My hair is blowing in the wind, and I look so happy. And he said, “So, what do you think?” And I said to the camera, “She’s just perfect. She’s perfect.”

And that’s all—that’s all I said. I was smiling, saying she’s perfect.

It was that moment for me. I just remember staring at the screen with this sinking, amazed feeling. I was so clueless. It wasn’t that I was smug, because I wasn’t. I did seem grateful. But I definitely had this air of inevitability. As if I was saying, “Of course she is. I did everything I could and it worked, just like it’s supposed to. She’s perfect. We beat the odds. We got our miracle and that’s how it works.”

Knowing what was to come, it was shocking to see me the day after she was born saying those words. The reality was, I didn’t do it. I didn’t save her. I didn’t. She’s not perfect. Now, I think she’s the most perfect person I know, but in terms of her physical condition she’s very far from it. The whole time I fought to save my baby, even though I was preparing for the worst, I think the whole time I honestly did expect things would work out like I wanted them to because I was doing everything I could and was willing it to happen.

We don’t know to this day why she is the way she is. We found out in going back through the records that on day eleven during the nursing shift change she had pulled out her ventilator tube, and in the records it said she was found dusky and desaturated, meaning bluish. Two weeks later her brain ultrasounds show this problem. It could be that there was a hostile uterine environment that they could never detect. There are things called cytokines, which can cause brain damage in utero that may not show up for a while. So we don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It is what it is.

It didn’t hit me that I had this belief or notion or air of inevitability until I saw that video. I was so naive. I realized in that moment that life is not easy, nor is it fair, and I believe it’s not necessarily meant to be. Now I don’t expect life to be easy. I don’t expect it to be fair. I don’t expect things to go the way I want them to just because I do everything right anymore. I hope they will. I still do everything in my power to create my own circumstances and the outcomes that I want. I always have to try to create a good life for myself and for my kids and for the people around me. But I don’t expect that it’s always going to work. And I don’t think it’s supposed to. I don’t think life is necessarily supposed to be a cakewalk. I don’t think it’s supposed to be fair from the outside—from what we as human mortal beings view as fair.

It does change a life when you come at things from that perspective. It changed mine. Seeing that and realizing it and also then just dealing with and growing with a handicapped child has greatly changed me and my outlook and approach to life.

I see things differently than I used to. Things that would have been big deals to me before just really aren’t anymore. I have eight children now, and I am not a parent who tries to overly protect or control my children. I am very much into letting them fail. I do not put the same kinds of pressures on my kids to be like I was, and I think if it were not for this epiphany, I would have expected or tried to demand them to be. I appreciate more other people’s way of doing things and what they bring to a situation.

I’m still somewhat of a perfectionist, and I’m far from perfect, but I truly do believe myself to be one of the happiest people that I know, in terms of just finding joy in life and even in finding very difficult and hard things rewarding. I believe it’s because I know that, while I can control much of what happens in my life, there are plenty of things that remain outside of my control and ultimately all I can do in any given situation is act to the best of my ability.  ~ Tracy Hafen, Epiphany  

To Read More About Tracy and the Behind-the-Scenes of our Interview, Click HERE.

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G.W. Bailey’s Greatest Epiphany in Life, As Told to Elise Ballard
Mar.12.13

artwork by SimpleReminders.com

When one life changes, many lives are changed. —G.W. Bailey

BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE INTERVIEW

G.W. and I met doing the play in Austin that sparked the epiphany for me that led to my book and this project. When it all started taking off, I called him right away. He is a consummate storyteller and I knew he’d have an amazing account for me. I was right. I open the book with this story because he summarizes a through-line about epiphanies that I noticed and am talking and writing about now – The Ripple Effect.

G.W. BAILEY’S EPIPHANY

I think about an epiphany as something that happens, say, as you are coming around a corner and suddenly an event takes place that changes your life—it is completely unexpected and unanticipated.

Consequently, it also changes the lives of many others because we are all connected. That moment for me happened to take place in Breckenridge, Colorado, about twenty-five years ago.

My goddaughter, Brandy, was diagnosed with cancer at age twelve. I was very close to her and to her little sister and parents, whom I’ve known since college. When she was diagnosed we were all, of course, devastated by it. Brandy had a very difficult first year fighting the disease because she was homebound and isolated, which is terrible for anyone, especially a teenager.

Through a series of circumstances, after this first year of battling cancer Brandy was invited on a ski trip with a group of kids—all of whom had cancer—with an organization called Sunshine Kids that was about three years old at the time. On this ski trip, something amazing happened for her. The experience completely changed her approach to her disease. For the first time, she was around a lot of other kids who were just like her. Nobody cared about whether you were bald or not; nobody cared about scars or amputations or central lines; and they were able to share a lot of stories and common experiences. Suddenly she wasn’t isolated in her experience anymore, and it was wonderful. She was so excited when she got back and told me all about it.

That summer, Sunshine Kids had another trip, but this time it was a family trip. So Brandy and her family went to Breckenridge, Colorado, with families of kids from all over the country for a week of activities. On the first day of this trip, Brandy called me and wanted me to come join them. I’m an actor by profession, and at the time (in the 1980s) I was doing a series of movies that were enormously popular with teenagers called Police Academy. I’d also done a couple of other light, silly movies that kids had liked, so my career was going very well in the feature business, and she wanted me to come up because I was her B-movie star, quasi-celebrity godfather. I told her I was so sorry but I couldn’t come, I was just too busy. She kept on and on, and I told her again that it wasn’t possible but as soon as she got back I’d have her come to Los Angeles and make it up to her, but I just couldn’t come to Colorado right now. So we hung up, and about five minutes later she called back. And very slowly and determinedly she said, “You are my godfather, and I want you here.” Pause. She meant it. I sighed and kidded her about manipulating me and told her I’d just get to come for a day, that it was going to be an ordeal getting there and would cost a lot, and she replied in typi- cal teenage Brandy fashion, “Whatever.” So of course I laughed and begrudgingly said I’d come—I couldn’t deny her anything. I got there the next day.

Brandy had given me their activity schedule, so I knew they’d be at the volunteer fire department when I arrived. They were having a battle with the water hoses, and the kids were all dressed up in fireman outfits and hats and all that stuff. When I got to the fire station, you could hear all the commotion of the kids playing outside in the back, so I walked toward the noise of the children, went out the back door, and rounded a corner. And what I saw forever changed my life.

I had seen one child with cancer. I had seen a couple of children with cancer. But I had never seen thirty children with cancer all together in the same place. They were all laughing—all having this exuberant celebration of their lives. I had this overwhelming emotional response I still can’t describe properly. It was all these kids—all ages, all sizes—and it was just like . . . what is this?

No one had seen me yet, so I turned around and went back out to my rental car, and I sat in it for ten or fifteen minutes. And I cried. I cried for her. I cried for all of them.

I ended up staying the entire week in Breckenridge, and then flew straight to Houston to meet with Rhoda, the founder of Sunshine Kids. I knew I had to be involved and be a part of this organization that helped these kids to celebrate their lives in spite of their illness. That was twenty-five years ago. I started as a volunteer at events, filling coolers, blowing up balloons, and also helped put events together and raised money. Eventually I became the executive director of the Sunshine Kids Foundation, which I still am today.

When I started, we only had the ski trip in the winter and the family trip in the summer, so we were only reaching forty to fifty kids a year. Sunshine Kids now has twelve national events and hundreds of regional and local events impacting thousands of kids and their families a year. Hundreds of volunteers and our staff work to help give a little bit of these kids’ childhoods back to them that’s been somewhat taken away because of their battle with their disease.

Through this epiphany, I have gained a great appreciation of time. I realized how important and precious our time here is. We lost Brandy when she was seventeen, and though many children that have been Sunshine Kids are now doctors and nurses and countless other professions as they’ve grown up and beaten their disease, I’ve also had to bury too many children over the years— though even one is too many. If there’s anything to be learned out of all of this, it’s that life goes on…it has to. And you have to celebrate life while you’re here, and celebrate our children—all children everywhere.

Rounding that corner that day in Breckenridge, Colorado, changed my life. It’s changed my family’s life. This idea of epiphanies is fascinating to me because one human being’s experience can have such an impact on so many people. And it’s not that they’re trying to have an impact. I’m not talking about Paul on the road to Damascus and the angel comes to visit him, and he feels compelled to change the world. That’s not at all what I’m talking about. It’s just that when one life changes, many lives are changed because all of the people connected to that one life are affected.

You can watch G.W. tell his story below and to read more about him, you can go here.

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What Would You Share If It Were Your Last Day On Earth?
Feb.19.13

When I first launched my book, a site called Inspire Me Today asked me to write an article answering the question: “If today were your last day on earth and you could share 500 words with people, what would you say?” My friend Jennifer Pastiloff is the kind of writer that will send a blog to me with a note saying “I just wrote this in 20 minutes, so I don’t know, what do you think?” And it’s the most amazing, poetic  piece that seems like it must have taken hours if not days to craft and will have me in tears and change me forever! Me, no. I am not that kind of writer – I will take hours writing something people will think took 20 minutes — I’ll even agonize over a Facebook comment or Twitter posting! So what is interesting to me about this piece is that I distinctly remember that I was about to miss the deadline and slammed it out. And I re-read it the other day and I think that though I have much deeper insight into all of this, and have much more to say now — like SHARE YOUR STORIES WITH YOUR LOVED ONES and other epiphany-related insights I now share on here and in my talks, classes and new projects I’m developing — but with 500 words, this still pretty much stands…so here you go.

If today were my last day on earth and I could share 500 words with people, I would say… 

If I can do it, you can do it — anyone can do it. And what I mean by “it” is “change / grow / heal.” If I can change and heal, anyone can. That may sound trite, but honestly, if you know me, you know it’s true. And I would say…

Know you are loved. Know you are magnificent. Know you are so very unique and special with unique talents and gifts to share with this world. I have come to believe through my Epiphany project that this is very true and is not arbitrary. Everyone has an interesting story to tell and wisdom to offer and special things to do in their lifetime. So many cliches I have learned are true. Don’t waste time like I have beating yourself up all the time and focusing on your flaws or weaknesses, and/or being around people who do it for you (unfortunately, sometimes even better than you). Focus on your strengths, your capacity for love, developing your mind and body and educate yourself, educate yourself, educate yourself – especially about your fears! The more education and knowledge you can gain about what scares you or any negative beliefs or fears that you’re holding on to that is driving you, the more power you have over it and over your life. It becomes something that might still be difficult but not scary once you have knowledge, understanding and awareness of it. And eventually, you can even transmute your fears into love…which is the goal. 

In the area of epiphanies, since I have been studying them over the past couple of years, I would say always PAY ATTENTION, BE LISTENING – don’t let moments of revelation only come in moments of crisis when you are finally desperately ready to notice them! And when you have them, no matter how crazy they might seem or what anyone else may say or think, BELIEVE IN THEM AND IN YOURSELF. Epiphanies, moments of revelation, I have found are not random incidences and are unique to each individual even though they contain universal wisdom, so TAKE ACTION on them! Go for it, act, change, trust, and you will see…the world will absolutely conspire to support you and usually in the most serendipitous ways and when it does, be GRATEFUL and EXCITED about that SERENDIPITY in your life. 

HAVE FUN, TAKE MOMENTS TO ENJOY LIFE – whatever that means to you. I believe we are here to get things done, to further our development, to help and serve others, to learn to love ourselves and others unconditionally and ENJOY this beautiful earth, these gorgeous, sensual bodies and have wonderful experiences. Having fun and enjoying ourselves is also part of growing into deeper human beings and is important to the human condition. All of us has different experiences, some much tougher than others, but none of us gets out of life unscathed to some degree — it’s how you handle those challenges and what you chose to do with your life circumstances that makes the difference of a life lived.

All of us, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, have the birthright to feel content, have fun and be loved along with everything else that goes on, so don’t lose sight of that and take the time to enjoy your senses once a day even if is just to stop to smell flowers for a minute. (See, another cliche! But they’re true!) Stopping and smelling the flowers or truly savoring your sips of coffee or really feeling the sun on your skin really can make all the difference in a day.

As a very wise woman once said to me, “Life is beautiful and it’s hard.” I love the simplicity of that and the absolute truth. Life is beautiful on so many levels but it can also be a very, very difficult ride,  and it’s quick — so very quick. Find and develop your strengths and gifts, you will find they serve others and energize you in the process. 

Believe in moments of revelation and believe in yourself. Take action in life. Love yourself and love and help others. Face and educate yourself about your fears, and what you will find more often or not is that they will not be fears any more. ENJOY YOURSELF – revel in being alive and in the gloriousness of this planet and what life has to offer. 

So that is what I would say in 500 words (which is really more than 500 words…but it’s my blog and I’ll write more words if I want to (cue the “It’s My Party…” song), and you know what else I’d say if it were my last day here?

THANK YOU. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s been a great ride. I have experienced and remembered what it is to love deeply and freely and have been greatly loved — and that is what it’s all about anyway. At least for me. So thank you for the love and thank you to all of you who have been part of my ride, – including those of you reading this article right now! Adios.

That is what I’d say. And I might also add:

Act as if you could be facing your last day on earth quite soon and let your loved ones know how you feel about them! Don’t leave anything left unsaid that you would regret! All the: I love you’s, I’m sorry’s, I forgive you’s…try to deal with them as quickly and as completely as possible. And any projects or experiences you want to complete or attempt – plan and do them! Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed firsthand a few instances where it wasn’t done and I realized how incredibly important it is not to live with regrets and things left unsaid or undone or un-attempted.

Okay. So that’s what I’d say.

What would you want to share if today were your last day on earth? 


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