“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tomorrow starts my tenth Natural Products Expo West show, and yesterday, as I was setting up my booth space I was overcome with both the sweet memories of the decade past and the recognition of the vast shift that has happened to this industry. I started out with...
“The way you make loveis the way God will be with you.” -Rumi
Everyone knows the power of makeup sex to sand down the remaining rough edges and offer a soothing balm of acceptance after painful breaks in relationships. Yet, rarely do we consider sexual intimacy as the transformative healing force in dealing with the overwhelming grief that comes with death. It hadn’t really occurred to me...
It has been a long time since I recalled being a little girl, in love with her dad; but since my father has passed away, the block that prevented me from recalling what it felt like to be loved by him, to trust him completely, has fallen away. Mostly it makes me feel really sad about all the things that kept me from feeling that way about him again. Even with all of the efforts I made in the last...
One of the things that death clarifies like a magnifying glass on a dying leaf in the summer sun is the regrets that collect inside of us over a lifetime. These regrets are kind of like soul missions that we missed the cues on. They require an immense capacity for forgiveness. I began to understand the quality of these regrets while listening to the outpouring of love for a young woman who...
Sometimes, waking up on Monday gives me a stomach ache. I think about all the things before me and am overwhelmed before I put my feet on the floor. I don’t want to have this relationship to life on any day. So I have come up with a few antidotes to the Monday internal crunch. First, I meditate, usually on the powerful Shakti goddesses that fill me up with protective energy and the feeling of...
“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.” -Martin Luther King Jr.
My father died last weekend, peacefully in his sleep. He was sick and unhappy for a very long time, so while his death was anticipated, the reality of it still surprised me. Even as I worked with hospice and caregivers daily over the last few weeks anticipating the moment, when death arrives, it turns...
“Whenever we perceive ourselves as less than worthy of love we need forgiveness.”
I have spent the last four years seeking forgiveness with my father. Multiple trips with my family to Florida, a cruise for his 80thbirthday… nothing softened him. He was consistent with his anger and demeaning ways right to the end, but now that he is laying in his final hours in a hospice, the secret door to the...
The Olympic coverage has to make you think about how we learn courage. Watching people throw themselves in the air for 3 or 4 spins to land perfectly on their feet is mind boggling when you consider what happened inside of them on the first day they decided they were going to learn how to do this trick. What is that special energy that opens us up to the unknown, the potential of serious injury...
When I believe that I am unlovable, the world closes in. This is true for all of us. The only real opening any of us can work towards, pray for and believe in is our own inherent loveablity. For this we need only practice being loving. Most difficult, especially when things are not working is to love ourselves. I have been praying and chanting and suffering these last days, waking up anxious,...
“To set up what you like against what you dislike, this is the disease of the mind.” -Sengcan
What we most love about someone, given enough time, we usually come to find repulsive. It is an odd but insistent phenomenon that moves through most all intimate relationships, usually at regular intervals. One useful way to think about this swinging attraction- rejection response is as an energy wave...
A week ago I was on the East Coast for a few meetings. One of my flights was cancelled and the closest I could get was to Washington DC, which was going to oblige me to drive to Pennsylvania to meet with Rite Aid. One way cars are the most expensive ones to rent, and as it happened on Hotwire, the cheapest car to get was a luxury model. On arriving they offered me a Cadillac with no CD player- or...
I think something is happening to me. This new attention to positivity is going in deeper than before- and I am able to feel grateful and generous at times that used to be taken over by anxiety. The other day, on my trip to see Rite Aid and Kroger, I stopped in CVS and saw a couple of my main natural competitors on the shelf.
At first, my old insecurities popped up, but then,all by itself, it was...
