On January 1, 2020 I woke up inspired, renewed, and took a spontaneous trip to the desert. Just as I was about to enter through the windy mountainside where I’d be stuck for hours, a long trail of bumper to bumper cars stopped me at the base.

In a risky move in my 2005 VW Golf, I cut through the steep terrain, turned my car around, and drove the two hours right back home. On the first day of the year I spent 5 hours in the car “for no reason.” A friend of mine sent me the reminder that I was being redirected. I went with it.

A few days later I ventured back out and made it to my cabin. The plan was to work on my Annual Review, a tradition I have of reflecting on the year before and feeling into the year to come.

This process is typically exciting and creative, but this time it felt incredibly difficult, like something inside me was being tortured. Anger pulsed through my veins so I let it flow through my hands and onto the screen.

I’m giving some context to these words, though they need none, because it feels like I felt into the tone of the year on that first day. It’s been almost four months since I’ve looked at what I wrote, but this reminder echoing in my heart that what I see outside of me is within me pulled me back. There is this feeling that something inside of me, some mirrors of structures I no longer consent to, needs to die

So I pulled out those words I wrote in a fit of anger and anguish and decided that instead of letting them decay in a hard drive in a deep hole somewhere, that I should share them. Instead, maybe they will find their way to a waking soul. So here they are:

I don’t have to fight anymore.
I don’t have to prove myself to anyone.
I don’t have to explain myself.
I don’t have to try.
I don’t have to know.
I don’t have to speak.

I don’t have to.

I don’t have to care if you’re judging me.
I don’t have to care if you like me.
I don’t have to be nice.
I don’t have to be fair.
I don’t have to play by the rules.
I don’t owe anyone anything.
I don’t have to be anything for anyone else.

I have only to reckon with my own soul.

I can say what I want.
I can claim my freedom.
I can try if I want to.
I can share if I’m called.
I can change my mind.
I can have doubts.
I can be wrong.
I can be bad.
I can do whatever I want.
I can know some things.
I can reclaim my truth.
I can be lost.
I can be clear.
I can be me.

I can be me.

I can be complicated.
I can be out of control.
I can be angry.
I can be love.
I can be joyful.
I can be intense.
I can stand my ground.
I can back down.
I can give up the fight.

I can give up the fight.

I can choose love.
I can choose to stay silent.
I can stop judging.
I can start loving.
I can change my mind.
I can know nothing.
I can be everything.
I can be no thing.
I can give no fucks what you think of me.
I can let you hurt me.
I can let me hurt me.
I can reclaim my power.
I can share my wisdom.
I can connect to truth.
I can be all things.

I can be all things.

I can be a contradiction. 
I can choose my path.
I can be afraid.
I can be fearless.
I can be me.
I can be me.

I have only to reckon with my own soul. 

This year is a time for living outside the matrix. Not doing what they say I should, and not just The Man who Says but also The Counter Culture who Says, The Just Warriors who Say, The Causes I Believe In who Say, and everyone in between.

This is a time for breaking the rules, setting the house on fire, and running naked in the streets. It’s about laying, bare chest up, in the ocean while the sea is flat and surrendering as the storm comes through to toss my body in whatever way life chooses.

I am in control of so little, and I am in control of so much.

I have to allow it all to be torn down to learn these next lessons. I have to trust in something I have only tasted in lives past. I have to surrender to the journey in a way I have never done before. It means not knowing anything and claiming all my knowing. It means being a walking contradiction, being willing to be crucified, being willing to be canceled.

It doesn’t mean I will always be brave or that my heart won’t break when I’m misunderstood or I get it “wrong” publicly. It means some part of me has chosen to learn lessons outside of the scope of this reality. I know everything and nothing at once. This walking paradox feels better to me than everything that’s come before. It feels right for now. It feels where I need to journey. 

I am being pushed and pulled and pushed again. My face is being violently shoved up against sand. It’s in my gums and teeth, and it’s fucking uncomfortable. And then a wave washes me clean, and I am at peace once more. 

It does’t actually get easier. It gets different.
It doesn’t actually get better. It gets truer.
It doesn’t actually get clearer. It changes. 

And that’s ok.
And that’s OK.
And that’s OKAY.

There are things in life we can control and things we can't. I'd argue that one of the things we're here to learn is how to master what we can control in a way that serves the highest parts of ourselves. In other words, it's your work to change your perspective and your attitude in order to create the life that serves your highest good.

Notice that I'm not saying, "to create the life you want." Sometimes, the things we want aren't for our highest good. Sometimes we want to stay in relationships that don't honor our growth. Sometimes we want to be an "influencer" to finally make us feel worthy or boost our egos.

Sometimes the things that serve our highest good are the experiences that we'll do anything to avoid.

We often control aspects of ourselves and our lives in order to stay out of pain or discomfort. We do this because, well, pain is unpleasant. But we also do this because we're afraid we're not worthy of something better. Many of us don't trust that we're supported and that something better is on its way to us.

I have learned this lesson the hard way, many times over. I have created my own suffering by resisting my pain and perpetuating old patterns and belief systems that kept me stuck in lack and fear. 

Eventually, I made my way through. I committed to relentless healing, and I learned the most difficult lessons of acknowledging my worth and truly trusting that I am supported (in spite of things not happening in my desired timeline).

I spent far too much time complaining to myself and others that, "I've been doing this work for so long!" and, "All I do is cry!" and, "But what if it doesn't happen for me?" oh, and I can't forget about, "But when is he gonna get here?"

The tales we tell ourselves about our healing journey impact the journey itself.

When I would tell myself that I have been doing this work for so long, what I was really saying was, "I should be somewhere else by now." When I really broke that down I found that even if intellectually I knew there was no finish line, a part of me hoped there was one. And who can blame me? This shit (a.k.a. being with your emotions) can be intense. 

When I told myself that all I do is cry, I was letting my dramatic side shine through. No shame in that. Drama can serve us well in clearing deeper layers of emotions. Crying on the daily can actually feel cleansing instead of burdensome. I had to learn how to allow my sadness to move through me with love instead of judgment to allow myself to see its beauty and learn its wisdom.

When I wondered if it would ever happen for me, I was speaking from the 12-year-old version of myself who somehow took on (or reconnected with) the belief that she'd been forgotten and abandoned for good. I had to nurture that part of myself on repeat and teach her to take up space, live in a humble heart, and claim her worth.

When I wondered when he would get here I was challenging the divinity of my life timing. There are times when we really want things to happen a certain way or at a certain time. I had to repair my relationship with Spirit to trust that it is all happening and in the time that serves my greater good. Sometimes we can only see how perfect it all is in hindsight, but we can learn to trust in it before it's clear.

I will say this on repeat if necessary: There is no finish line to healing.

You chose this, whether you remember that you did or not, and now you're here. So get in the game and do your work. If you’re truly showing up, willing to take responsibility for what’s within you consistently, and you’re looking inward more than you’re looking out, and you don’t see things changing than you’re focusing on the wrong thing.

I get this, and I have been there. It's incredibly easy to miss our growth when we're in it, but it's even easier to miss it because we're focusing on the pain and the speed of the results. This will get you stuck if you continue in this space.

If you focus on your pain more than on your blessings you’ll see more pain.

You have to be willing to have amusement with the life process otherwise it’s going to be harder to get through the challenging moments. So what if there are more tears? These are more layers inside yourself that you get to explore. You’re setting free more false beliefs which makes you freer.

I'm going to offer you a practice that I still work with to this day that has helped me see the magic of co-creation with the Universe. I recognize that when I acknowledge something, it grows. I don't want my pain to grow, so I don't make a problem out of it. This is not spiritual bypassing because I am doing shadow work on the regular (Breathwork is shadow work). 

The practice is to write down everything I notice that is related to healing the wound or belief I am working with until it clears. Nothing is too small because everything is a communication with the universe.

For example, if I’m working with the wound of loneliness (which is related to beliefs of being unsupported and unworthy), I would slow down and paying really close attention to everything happening in my experience. I’d notice (and write down) the dog that approaches me panting and wagging her tail, the stranger who smiles sweetly, the text from my Dad saying, “Hi, beautiful,” the small note from a friend saying she misses me, and anything else that registers are support, love, or the antidote to loneliness.

For those new to healing work, I suggest writing down anything that you interpret to be a sign from the Universe even if you only partly believe it. When you begin to work through specific wounding you can keep track of everything that is coming through to teach you that lesson. 

When it feels like nothing is changing in our lives, it’s more important than ever to open our eyes and choose to focus on the things that are actually happening. When we feel lonely, we might dismiss the casual friend complimenting us or the continued support from someone we might be taking for granted.

You are not in complete control of your healing journey, but you have much more control than you believe.

Your ability to love yourself dictates the way you feel in your body, in your relationships, and in every other area of your life. It’s not a code you crack and the work is done. In fact, there are moments you might spiral into self-doubt, wake up halfway down the hill, and climb your way back to your heart.

Self-love is a journey that you get to decide to be on or not.

This is how you love yourself:

It starts with choosing to listen. You slow down enough to hear one little whisper from your soul telling you that it’s time for more. Instead of begging for the pain to go away, you choose to hear what your pain is begging of you. You open yourself up just enough to allow in the possibility of a new way of being.

You choose to see the truth. You keep looking until you find even a glimmer of honesty in your bones. You stop giving your allegiance to the parts of you that look for proof that life is against you, that you’re too much, and that it’s for everyone else but not for you. You devote yourself to the crackle of your soul.

Maybe you stop buying things and instead start listening to the ways your heart hurts. You make space in your life to feel your feelings. You listen for the tiny whispers that tell you that you’re worthy, and you keep reminding yourself it’s going to be OK in the face of the voices that inundate you with reminders of your faults.

You decide to take a risk and start being on your own side.

Then you show up for yourself in as many moments as you can, and you realize that loving yourself looks different than you thought it did. You find out that loving yourself isn’t easy or simple. It isn’t something you experience one time and then attain some form of mastery.

When someone you love decides you are no longer for them, you let yourself feel the pain but you don’t entertain beliefs that there is something wrong with you. You wrap your arms around your own heart as you cry, and you commit to becoming the best partner of your life.

When you find your self-esteem deflating, you stop Internet stalking people who you believe have something you don’t. You put down the phone and say to yourself, “It’s OK. I’m alright. I’m beautiful. I’m worthy. I’m here for a reason.”

You say it even if you don’t feel like it’s true. You find the part in your heart that needs that love and you send it right there. You may or may not feel better. That is irrelevant. You’re in the long game of self-love.

You pull yourself away from your Netflix binge and lay down and breathe into your belly and then your heart, and you do that over and over again for thirty minutes or maybe just fifteen minutes or however long it takes for your heart to crack open and the love to flood in.

You stop measuring yourself by how far you have to go and instead look at how far you’ve come.

When your heart aches and you feel unlovable, you walk yourself to the the mirror, look into eyes full of pain, and you say, “I love you.” You say it through the resistance and in spite of a mind that tells you it’s cheesy and pointless. You turn your back to the judgmental parts of you and speak directly to the parts that feels helpless and alone.

When grief takes you to your knees, and you’re face to face with the parts of you that say you won’t make it through, you surrender to the ride and hold yourself tightly along the way. You soothe yourself through the fear and the hurt. And though it might feel like you won’t at times, you will make it.

Instead of fighting yourself you choose to let your own love in. You let it in once, then twice, and then each time you need it. You let it in when it feels hard. And when it feels impossible, you let it in even then.

When you wake up to see that you’ve been beating up and blaming yourself, you decide to stop wasting energy on guilt. Instead you say, “It’s OK. You’ll get it next time.” And one day you realize that that is you loving yourself, too.

When you have flashbacks of your abuses or when you feel the heavy injustice of a society that doesn’t honor your existence, you reach your hand into your throat and pull up the screams that have lay dormant for too long. You let your voice be heard because you’re ready. When you’re not ready you honor your process, and maybe you place a hand on your heart and let out tears for your betrayals.

You let your heart speak what your voice cannot.

You stop trying to get the people around you to validate your truth, and you do it for yourself. As the tears spill or in a fit of rage, you say to yourself, “I believe you. I see you. You matter. You belong.”

And then one day you begin to see yourself through the eyes of someone who thinks you are divinely beautiful (because you are). Instead of seeing features that were once too this or not that, you see your essence shining through. Instead of feeling too much or not enough, you know you are just as you should be.

Somewhere along your self-love journey you realize that loving yourself doesn’t mean you will feel good all the time. Loving yourself means you’re on your own side. You have your own back. You believe in yourself. And when you “fail” you love yourself even harder.

You love yourself through the pain from all of the moments when you didn’t love yourself. You love yourself like you are your own child. You love yourself like your life depends on it—because it just might.

There is a part of you that is desperately waiting for you to choose yourself.

So go do it.

And then do it again and again and again. This is how you love yourself.

Your partner breaks up with you, your boss fires you, or your cat dies. You fall into a depression, and we say this is normal. In other words, something has happened to cause your depression. 

You feel depressed over and over again throughout your life or you suddenly fall into a deep depression, each for no apparent reason. We often refer to this form of depression like the plague—some affliction with no known origin. The belief is that some people just happen to have “it” and probably always will.

I didn’t know why I was cutting my body when I was 13. Or why I felt so terrible when, throughout high school, my bubbly best friend who was living with Cystic Fibrosis would tell me to smile more. Or why knowing that mental illness, depression, and anxiety ran in my family didn’t give me any peace. 

I didn’t know why it felt so hard for me to just be me.

I never went to a psychiatrist, but if I did I’d likely have been diagnosed with clinical depression. I experienced depression throughout my life for no apparent reason. Sometimes I also experienced situational depression like when all of my friends ostracized me in sixth grade or when, two years later, one of my only remaining friends died from a sudden brain aneurism. 

It wasn’t until I was 32, when I fell into the deepest depression of my life, that I was able to understand that depression had been trying to communicate with me all along.

I discovered that my depression was always a response to something. 

The Ways We Suffer

Although more than 300 million people around the world suffer from depression, it is a lonely and isolating experience. I felt emotions like shame, guilt, self-pity, apathy, and well, sometimes I felt like I was crazy.

Depression made me believe there was something fundamentally wrong with me. It’s an understandable belief, really. Depression has often been described as seeing the world through a thick layer of glass. There’s this sense that we can’t quite fit into the world out there and that we’re trapped in some inescapable lab experiment.  

In my worst experience of depression as an adult, I felt as if my soul was slowly dying. There was an immense weight sitting in my heart. I was desperate for a way out, but not only did I not know what to do about it, I also didn’t have the energy to do anything. 

Whenever I went through a breakup, the hole of my depression grew wider and deeper. In 2013, I was working with a mentor who gently said to me, “You know, depression is a choice.” I had felt low energy and apathetic for over a month, but I immediately felt anger and clarity move from deep within me to declare, “This is not a choice.”

It didn’t feel like a choice. In fact, it felt like the opposite of a choice—it felt like a prison sentence. 

When thinking positive, practicing yoga and meditation, and seeing a therapist don’t seem to make a difference, it’s understandable to feel helpless, hopeless, and even cynical. Learned helplessness, a condition that occurs when we believe we have no way out of our circumstances, can contribute to our inability to heal.

Fitting with our cultural mottos to treat the branch rather than the root, we have more medicines for attempting to make our depression go away than we do for actually understanding why it’s happening. We shrug our collective shoulders and do our best to get through the toughest moments.

Why We’re So Depressed

While I do believe there are experiential differences between very deep, can’t-find-the-desire-to-live depression and bland, low-energy every-once-in-a-while depression, neither is happening for no reason. There is always an important message being signaled.

Depression can tell us that our relationship to ourselves is in need of healing. 

While we can slice and dice the causes of depression in a variety of ways, I have found there to be three main contributions worth addressing here, some of which will overlap:

1. Your relationship to your life is off-purpose.

2. Unprocessed emotions from a lifetime of unmet needs are living in your body.

3. Limiting beliefs, unprocessed emotion, and stagnant energy has been passed down to you from your lineage.

REASON 1: YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO YOUR LIFE IS OFF-PURPOSE.

Suicide rates are climbing along with our search for happiness. We are becoming desperate for something our cultures aren’t providing: a sense of purpose and belonging. 

In Emily Esfahani Smith’s book, The Power of Meaning, she says:

“It’s difficult, of course, to measure a concept like meaning in the lab, but, according to psychologists, when people say that their lives have meaning, it’s because three conditions have been satisfied: they evaluate their lives as significant and worthwhile—as part of something bigger; they believe their lives make sense; and they feel their lives are driven by a sense of purpose.” 

In contrast, when we feel lost, insignificant, worthless, like our lives don’t makes sense, and that we have no purpose—we’re depressed. 

Purpose is often equated to career, but being off-purpose can mean you aren’t speaking your truth, you’re in a relationship where you feel devalued, or you believe false things about yourself. 

At the core, being off-purpose means that your feelings about yourself are not in alignment with who you truly are.

If you paid very close attention to the way you talk to yourself you might find a slew of derogatory, false, and just plain mean thought patterns. Some of these beliefs are passed down from our families (see Reason 3), and they keep us stuck in patterns that limit our potential and contribute to the unhealthy ways we feel about ourselves.

There is another part of yourself (I liken it to the soul) that is ready to get on with the big exciting work of living your purpose. When your thoughts and beliefs are out of alignment with this part of yourself it creates discontent. 

REASONS 2: WE’RE STORING UNPROCESSED EMOTIONS FROM A LIFETIME OF UNMET NEEDS.

Far before we actually become depressed, we receive warning signals through the emotional body. As a culture we have been conditioned to repress our feelings, and we haven’t been given tools to decipher what our emotions are telling us about ourselves. 

No matter how loving our parents might have been, we all have experienced needing something that our caretakers were unable to give us. For example, I desperately needed to feel understood. While there may have been times when I did feel that way, there were enough moments of feeling misunderstood that it created a lot of pain within me.

These experiences transformed into beliefs rippling through my nervous system that said, “No one understands me. I’m alone. I don’t belong.” As I went through my life, I found evidence of this everywhere because I believed it was true, and I didn’t have the self-worth to make choices that put myself in situations to prove to me otherwise. 

A lifetime of experiences that told me, “You don’t matter,” created an enormous amount of grief. This unprocessed pain, layers of sadness and anger, were emotions I denied over and over again until they presented as the heavy weight that we know as depression.

After years of silencing our souls, depression is the spirit’s way of calling for an SOS.

REASON 3: WE’RE CARRYING UNPROCESSED EMOTIONS AND LIMITING BELIEFS FROM OUR LINEAGE.

I was taught that mental illness, depression, and anxiety were in my genes. The study of Epigentics shows us that, just as Holocaust survivors passed down altered levels of stress hormones to their children, those who suffer from depression likely pass it on to their offspring.

While this may be true, the common belief embedded in that statement is that we are victims of our heritage. In reality, our genes and our energy are not fixed, but are instead influenced by our choices and beliefs. 

Like Deepak Chopra speaks about in his book Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul:

“Your genes adapted to how you think, feel, and act. Identical twins, born with exactly the same DNA, look very different genetically when they grow up: certain genes have been switched on, others switched off. By age seventy, images taken of the chromosomes of two twins don't look remotely the same. As life diverges, genes adapt.”

What becomes part of your energy, whether through lineage or life circumstance, is now your responsibility. The beliefs we take on from our families are not ones we have to continue to live with. We have the power to rewire our nervous systems and clear out energy and emotion that don’t belong in our bodies. 

DEPRESSION AS A TEACHER

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally began to piece together why I had been depressed from age 13 till 30. The combination of unprocessed emotional pain, false beliefs stuck on loop in my mind, lack of purpose and meaning, and an unhealthy relationship to myself, left me in chronic cycles of depression. 

Each time I found myself depressed, I had been given an opportunity to look at my fears, feelings, and beliefs. For thirty years I made the pain of my depression the focal point. If I had dug just a little underf the surface I would have seen a long, pulsing vein leading to a wound. The agonizing pain of depression was only a dull throb compared to the rotted root beneath. It hurt so badly, that I had done everything I could to avoid feeling it. 

That meant some part of me actually preferred depression to feeling.

This is why so many of us are depressed. There is a whole lot of very deep, very painful emotion that needs to be healed, and we are wired to avoid pain. 

Depression had been trying to show me the truth about my relationship to myself, and it was always too painful to look. It’s easier to blame your pain on someone leaving you or your genes or your society or your parents, than it is to take a hard look at the ways you have abandoned yourself. 

When I chose to face the truth my depression was pointing to I began to see that my worth was contingent upon other people making me feel lovable. Anything, as small as a social media comment or as big as a breakup, could ignite that belief that sounded off in my head, “See, you really don’t belong here. No one understands you. You are all alone. What’s the point? There is none. Nothing matters.”

I was giving all of my power away, and it was a long journey to learn how to love myself and gain it back.

Our emotions are only scary when we haven’t gotten familiar with them. Things that we push away are scary. We disempower ourselves every single time we choose to ignore the truth, every single time we decide that we aren’t strong enough to face it, every single time we choose to believe that we are incapable.

Actually, we are incredibly strong and unbelievably brave. We can learn to release our grief, fear, and shame. We can take all of the pain from our ancestors, scoop it up in our arms, and tenderly set ourselves free. 

I fully believe we can learn how to build loving, purposeful relationships with ourselves, that we can learn how to work with our emotions, and that our depression can be a great teacher.

For many of us, the path out of depression is through the pain. 

I know from experience that this is not an easy path. Moving through the tendrils of the deepest human emotion is a path for spiritual warriors. It takes some deep soul searching to de-program those false beliefs and make new choices that honor ourselves. 

Not everyone is going to choose this journey, but I wanted you to know that it’s available to you. Ask your soul if you’re ready. I have a feeling you are more courageous than you might know. 

Here are some things that have changed since I committed to healing with Breathwork almost 5 years ago:

1. I stopped hiding from the world—and myself.
Hide-and-go-seek is only fun if someone actually finds you. When I was a teen I decided to disappear from everyone—myself included. When I began my Breathwork practice in my late twenties, I no longer had the option of hiding from the truth.

If you’re willing to let go enough, Breathwork will help your mind quiet down and give you access to your body. In my body I found a whole lotta pain from all the times I had betrayed and abandoned myself. I also found the wisdom of my soul, and it was from this place I knew it was safe to stop hiding.
 

2. I learned to love myself.
Breathwork is moving up the popularity line in the wellness world these days, but back when I began practicing it was tough to find an article online let alone a practitioner.

No one ever told me I could learn to love myself through Breathwork—but I did.

The term self-love was never uttered from the first healer I worked with, but I learned the great lesson naturally through the work. Breathwork connected me to the truth that I was lovable just as I was. It helped me see that nothing about me needed to change in order for me to love myself.

3. My skin cleared up.
If you suffer with acne, I have felt your pain. I have a memory (OK, maybe several) of looking in the mirror as a young girl and begging God to clear up my skin. I tried pretty much everything from Proactive to going vegan. Nothing ever worked long term.

Looking back, I can see that my breakouts were the worst in my early to mid-twenties when I was most anxious, lost, and insecure in my life. The first Breathwork teacher I worked with waived his hand at me like a confidant wizard when I told him that I had chronic skin issues.

“That’ll be taken care of,” he said.

It was. I didn’t practice Breathwork to clear my skin up, but only a few weeks in I noticed I wasn’t breaking out much anymore. Fast forward four years, and my breakouts are 95% diminished. Craters be gone. 

(Note: I once told an acupuncturist this bit of information, and she told me that in Chinese Medicine the lungs and skin are linked, surprise, suprise.) 
 

4. I know how to get clear.
Confusion is a symptom of being stuck in the mind and distrusting of life. In this world of option-overload, we question who the right partner is, what we should be doing with our lives, and what color shoes we should buy.

For years before I created Pushing Beauty I was incredibly confused. I had a feeling that there was something else I needed to be doing with my life, but I had no idea what it was. If I rummaged through my old hard drive, I’d find numerous documents full of ideas of what “it” might be.

As soon as I started practicing Breathwork, I felt a clear channel to my soul and began writing from that place. As my practice has deepened, I continue to get to know myself and pay attention to what the Universe has in store for me.
 

5. I feel comfortable in my skin.
The body can be a scary place for many of us, because it’s the place we’ve stowed away our most painful experiences and emotions. I increasingly felt less comfortable in my skin as I grew. At a frat party during my Freshman year of college, a guy I had a crush on announced how uncomfortable I looked to our friends. It was obvious.

Post college mortification, my Breathwork practice showed me that my body was actually safe. I began to feel those bottled up feelings, and with each release I felt lighter and more comfortable in my skin.

6. I believe dreams come true.
You don’t have to look far to find magical manifestation stories these days. I have always loved hearing those stories because they connected me to the magic of life, but I didn’t really believe they could happen to me.

Through Breathwork, my connection to Spirit has deepened. I have been through some incredibly challenging experiences that have given me the opportunity to discover my worth, how courageous I am, and that I am supported.

As I began to trust that I was a co-creator with the Spirit, I began to look for proof. What we look for, we find. I live more and more of my dreams each day, including buying a 1956 Homestead in the High Desert (a dream that has been in the works for years).

7. My stone-cold disposition has melted.
When I was in college in Philadelphia, I was walking down the street past these two guys. One nudged his buddy and pointed at me, “She look like she mad at her boyfriend.”

I looked mad all the time partly because I was mad and partly because I felt like I had to look mad to protect myself. My energy was telling people to Stay.The.Fuck.Back. I didn’t feel safe sharing myself with the world because I didn’t believe people would love me.

Pretty quickly after beginning my Breathwork practice I started to soften. I even remember one friend telling me he felt a warmth from me he’d never experienced before. I was feeling more comfortable letting my guard down because I was learning to love myself just as I was.
 

8. I am strong AF.
I went through two breakups after discovering Breathwork and the second knocked me on my ass. It forced me to look at all the things I had still been hiding from. The Universe was asking me to truly own my worth.

Discovering your worth when your partner suddenly leaves and semi-ghosts you, is incredibly challenging and the most important time to do so. Any guard I had ever used to protect me from emotional pain was defective, and I was flooded with all the unprocessed emotional pain from my life. Like, “Here, you deal with this shit now.”

I dealt with it. I released loads of grief that had been stored in my body. I was so raw that I cried walking down supermarket aisles and my body was so open I was easily deep into poses that were once extremely uncomfortable.

I devoted myself to healing, and no longer cared how long it would take or what I would have to endure. Through surrendering I found my warrior spirit.

9. I no longer suffer from depression and anxiety.
Depression can be a sign that we aren’t listening to our souls. It can also be a build up of unprocessed emotion that weighs the body down. I find they are often connected. Anxiety shows up when we feel unsupported, insecure, and live from limiting beliefs. Anxiety is a build up of fear in the body.

Committing to a Breathwork practice allowed me to release a lot of sadness and anger stored in my body. As I mentioned in the previous points, I developed a trust in the Universe and also developed a deep love and respect for myself that diminished my anxiety.

While I am not immune to experiencing depression or anxiety, I now have the knowledge, experience, and tools to work through them.
 

10. I trust the journey.
After my breakup I woke up to the fact that there were some really big lessons I needed to learn while I’m alive, and it was really time for me to stop avoiding any of the truth. There are some things I have a say in and some things I don’t. I wanted to fall in love again and fast. The Universe had some other things in store for me, and having gone through these past two years solo I am incredibly grateful that I have been trusting.

If I didn’t trust this journey of mine, I would be creating a whole lotta suffering for myself. I’d be feeling lonely and unworthy. I’d be hunting down men on dating sites and spending a lot of my energy talking about guy problems with my friends.

Instead, I’m trusting. I am loving every single moment of getting to know myself—even the times that feel uncomfortable. This time with myself is precious, and I am making the difficult choices that keep me open for the right love to come into my life when the time is right. 

Though we can certainly learn from one another, I believe we each have the power to heal ourselves. I’m a big proponent of working with one or two trusted people to support us on our healing journeys, but we don’t all have the financial means to do so.

Many people don’t have the self-discipline to do the work on their own, but if you are committed and willing, you can make huge changes in your life spending little to no money on healing services. 

I have done a huge portion of my healing on my own with little to no money. 

There have certainly been times in my life when I couldn’t spare $14 for an audio file let alone $200 for a private session. In those times I was resourceful and utilized a variety of tools and resources to heal myself. Everyone has a right to heal, and please don’t let anyone convince you that you need to spend large sums of money in order to do so.

I do want to note that not having money for healing and not wanting to spend money on healing are two very different things. I’m not one to tell anyone how to spend their money, but if you find a way to pay for designer clothes and eating out but can’t fathom a healing session there is probably something to look at around self-worth and self-love. 

I have worked deeply on my relationship to money and my worth because when I started to increase my income I was still resistant to spending money on healing. The truth was that my priorities weren’t in order, and I didn’t believe my healing was worthy of spending money on.

It’s true that I have also invested in myself when I could by going on retreats and workshops, purchasing online courses, and private sessions with my teacher. It’s made me incredibly happy to be able to exchange my money for healing offerings, but I am also very aware that I don’t need to do so in order to heal.

Be very wary if someone tries to tell you that you need them in order to heal.

Healing is an inside job, and there are wonderful teachers and facilitators who can guide you there and support you along the way, but the work itself is yours to do.

I have created a resource guide that fits your needs no matter what financial circumstance you’re in. If there is a need that I have missed please reach out and let me know. I want to make sure this guide is accessible for everyone. 

I’m listing my resources according to cost and am only supplying tools that I have used in my personal healing process because I teach from experience. I know there are many other modalities that could also be beneficial, but these are the ones I can vouch for.

Heal Yourself for Free

Breathwork 
Your breath is free, and in my opinion it’s the most powerful tool you have. I made you a guided Breathwork video which you can use as often as you like. 

Nature
When I’m depressed, anxious, or feeling unclear I go for long hikes in nature. The practice of earthing is powerful for grounding your energy and relaxing your nervous system. You can put your feet on the soil for about 15 minutes. 

You can also connect with animals, trees, and plants in nature. I like to give my attention to the elements and feel the wind on my face, the sun on my skin, and smell the scents from plants and soil.

If you live in the city, try to find a park or patch of grass or tree that you can connect to and build a relationship with. If you allow, nature will fully support you.

Writing
My teacher, David Elliott, often says that creativity is a shortcut to healing. This could show up in a variety of ways, but I find writing to be one of the most potent forms of healing. 

From a young age, I would use writing as a way to process my pain and make sense of my life. I wrote bad poetry and some pretty good creative stories. When I went through the biggest heartbreak of my life and dark night of the soul, I wrote a book as I healed. 

If you take the time and effort to sit down with a laptop or a pen and paper, you can learn a lot about yourself, your pain, and your soul through writing.

Online Teachings
People often overlook information that is given away for free. So many healers, teachers, and guides are sharing big wisdom on their websites and social media platforms.

Soak this information up and allow yourself to transform through what resonates with you. Often times one sentence can hit the soul and crack you open. 

Someone reached out to me last year to tell me that her life changed after listening to my free audio course, following the guidelines I provided, and doing the work on her own. She donated a generous $100 to me when she had the money. There is information everywhere that can assist in your healing if you allow it in.

I taught a free workshop in 2023 called When You’re Not Where You Want To Be.

How To Love Yourself is a free workshop I taught in 2023 which includes Breathwork.

The Slow Down Challenge is a free 11-day email series.

You can read my free writing here and here.

My Instagram feed.

My newsletter here with new writing every Monday.

My YouTube videos.

My podcast archives.

Use The Library
I love supporting authors by buying their books, but when you can’t, you can use the library for free. I have always been an avid reader and am often shocked when I meet people who don’t read books. If the library doesn’t have the book you’re looking for, you can have it transferred to your branch. 

If you own a Kindle you can also use the Libby app to download library books right to your device. There’s no excuse not to read—unless you don’t know how. When I lived in Philadelphia years ago I used to teach adults to read. It’s never too late to learn.

You can find an adult literacy program in most cities like this one in Los Angeles. Look into your local library or community center for resources. Alternatively, audio books can also be borrowed from the library.

Additional Resources Listed by Exchange Fee (Low to High)

$6
Grounding Meditation: A mediation that can be used daily to connect you to your body and calm your nervous system.

$16
The Bright Side of a Broken Heart: the book I wrote about healing from heartbreak and reclaiming the lost parts of myself.

$22
Getting Started with Breathwork: a complete guide to begin your Breathwork practice including 3 audios, a 30-page ebook, FAQs, and 30-day challenge.

$22
Divine Passage: A living Breathwork library with over 30 themed meditations, workbooks, and teachings.

$33
Breathwork kits for working through specific themes like Clearing Anger & Calling On Love, Releasing Sadness, or Getting Unstuck.

$44
A kit designed to support you in Overcoming Fear of Being Seen & Heard in Your Business.

$250
Private 1:1 sessions: each month I offer a select number of private sessions. If $250 is outside of your reach but you need support in going deeper, if you can, set aside a certain amount each month to save. Qapital is my favorite app for doing this.

$300
Grounded Soul is my 4-month program to deeply explore the inner self, release unprocessed pain, and connect to your soul.

Practice Breathwork for Free

In this video, I guide you through a healing Breathwork session. I'm a certified Breathwork teacher and have been studying and teaching David Elliott's work since 2013.

When I was a young girl I made an agreement with myself. The first time I made this agreement I swallowed a dark seedy energy that wove its way through my jaw, sealing it shut. 

The agreement was to stay quiet and hide the parts of myself that were too much for other people. I didn’t feel like it was safe to be me, and I believed that hiding parts of myself would protect me from the dark pain of loneliness.

I would make this agreement with myself over and over again. Each time I risked sharing myself, albeit through clunky, overwhelming emotion, I was rejected and taught I wasn’t behaving “the right way.”

Growing up I learned:

• It’s okay to feel sadness, but it’s not okay to express anger.

• I will still be loved even though I am angry, but I will not necessarily be liked. 

• Being happy and carefree is the best way to be.

• Feeling sad means that there is something wrong that needs to be fixed.

The most accurate way to describe my emotions in my youthful years is overwhelming. They overwhelmed me, my family, and put a damp mask of drama over our home. 

But I wasn’t just sad—I was also really angry. I was angry that I didn’t feel heard, and I was tired of feeling misunderstood. But I always knew I was loved. So, I was loved and alone, and it as confusing as hell—and that made me mad.

My anger would build and erupt when I felt my aloneness become too much to bear. 

I would scream at my parents, feeling like I couldn’t control what was coming through me, a desperate attempt to finally be heard. In turn, I was told to go my room. I was shunned, pushed away, and punished for expressing my anger. In my room the sadness took hold, and I would cry like there was no end to the depth of my pain.

My family gave me love. But even with their good intentions, I didn’t feel loved in the way I needed to be loved. I didn’t feel seen or heard or understood. I felt very, very alone. 

Feeling alone is probably the scariest feeling I have known. 

Loneliness is isolating, overwhelming, and seemingly eternal. Loneliness has made me believe that I am not worth loving, that I will never know true love, and that I am not worthy of being seen or heard. 

I felt that loneliness, and I mourned it. Those were the moments when I made an agreement to myself that I was only safe with me. I told myself I wouldn’t try to share who I was or how I felt with anyone anymore because no one would understand me. 

I told myself that I was alone.

My mother felt alone growing up, too, in her house full of family. She probably passed some of her loneliness down to me, an irony in that she always vowed to give her children the love she felt she didn’t get. She did her best, but I think she saw in me what she hadn’t been able to give herself up to that point—her own love. 

I didn’t see my mother loving herself, and so I didn’t know how to love myself. I didn’t know that loving myself was something I could do. I thought I had to get love out there.

So when I couldn’t get the love I wanted from my family I moved on to my friends. In a lot of ways I was a really good friend: loyal, a good listener, compassionate. But over the years most of my closest friends would abandon or betray me. Some of it probably had to do with me pulling on their thread, yearning for more and more love until they unraveled and no longer existed for my purpose. 

Once friendship didn’t seem to feel the void, I began to long for romantic love. I believed it would be the love that would save me. I believed that there would be someone who would really see me, honor me, stand by my side, and give me the feeling of home like I had never felt before. 

And I found my heart broken over and over again by men who couldn’t love me. I have been broken, crumbled into dust from heartbreak and found these dark truths. I have fallen into the depth of my pain and discovered my fear and my unspoken agreements. 

If you believe you’re alone, you’ll find evidence of it everywhere.

The truth continues to shine a light on the darkness so I can heal. I see more and more of the picture, understand myself a little better, and heal a little more. The sadness moves through me, and I know it can not destroy me. I know I can not get lost in it. I know I am strong. I know I can follow the signs, connect the dots, and continue to live my best life.

I know that I will have a person who sees me and honors me and stands by my side and really loves me. But he won’t be the first—I will be. 

I don’t need anyone to give me purpose because purpose is inherently mine. I don’t need anyone to make me feel less alone because I belong within myself everywhere I am. I don’t need anyone to save me from myself because I love who I am. 

So that repeated agreement that I made to myself as a young girl—that it’s only safe to be alone—is not one I subscribe to anymore. I terminate that contract, and I have created a new one. This one says it’s safe for me to be me, that I can trust love, and through my own love I have discovered that I am never alone.

Once or twice a year I go on retreat in the beautiful Sandia Mountains of New Mexico. In this place I feel held by the mountains, the love of other sensitive souls, my teacher, and my own heart. I often leave this place with a deeper connection to my spirit, my creativity, and with a full heart.

We all need a place to reconnect to our souls and heal our hearts.

We are always on a journey inward whether we are conscious of it or not. Our souls are always communicating with us. For those of us who have heard the cries, there are still times when we get derailed, and that's ok. We just need to start listening again.

Every single time I listen I find myself back to the three words that changed my life. They are words many of my students come to me seeking connection to. They are words that, once embodied, are life-changing.

They are words whose truth poured out of me on the way home from the airport after a soul retreat in New Mexico. I glanced out at some beautiful trees, felt my soul ignite, and wrote this:

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love the choices I’ve made.
All the ones that have spilt tears, bellowed laughter, and spouted anger.
They have all lead me to here.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love my spirit, my soul, and my ego.
I love any and every aspect that makes up this complex being of mine.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love the way my eyes change colors, the auburn tint the sun beckons from my hair, and the beautiful bones that flirt under the surface of my skin.
Every ounce of my physical form is perfect exactly as it is.
This truth was true when my big heart sprouted in my mother’s womb.
And it will be true when my skin wrinkles with time, when my bones open their pores, and when my body breathes its last breath.
It will always be exactly perfect.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love the way my laugh falls out of my chest, the way my tears well when I feel someone’s pain, and the way I’m willing to sop up my flaws with love.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love the way my soul cries and that I have learned to hear it.
I love the way my voice sometimes cracks when I sing, the way my hips and shoulders have decided they need to move to music every day, and the deep satisfaction my soul feels when I honor its wishes.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love that I loved a dog so deeply I let it throw me off these scales.
I love that I loved a man so completely it felt impossible to heal the wounds of his absence. 
I love that my heart has broken, that I have met darkness, and that I have been blessed with life.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love that I have walked through a foreign land all alone, that I have made my own fires, and that I have slept under starry skies.
I love that I have looked into the eyes of strangers, given love to lifeless bodies, and felt babies sleeping on my chest.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love that my Grandfather comes to me in my dreams and that there are people in this world who know there is so much more.
I love that coyotes show up on my doorstep, that trees have begun whispering hellos, and that the stars shift me into a state of awe that leaves fireworks in my chest and lumps in my throat.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love that I choose to be vulnerable even when it’s hard.
I love the way I keep showing up for myself, the way I know how to sit in silence, and the way I’m learning to let go.
I love the things I have decided are important, the people who always show up for me, and the home I have made my own.

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love that it’s always ok even when it feels like it’s not.
I love becoming a new person every day, a freer person, a lighter person, a more loved person, a wiser person, a more joyful person.
I love changing. 

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love the way I can feel my heart open when I really feel these words.
I love the way my entire life changed when I began to breathe, when my breath opened my heart, when I learned to love myself. 

I LOVE MYSELF.

I love that loving myself is a choice I get to make each moment.
I love that I can let go of control and still be safe, that being exactly where I am is the most exciting place to be, and that I always find my way back to my own love.

Self love is everything. It's the foundation from which we step out into the world to do all the incredible things we strive to do. If you want to learn to love yourself download my free audio course below.
 

How To Stop The Self-Love Struggle

Free Your Mind of Negative Self-Talk & Finally Feel Good About Your Life 

The truth is that I lost myself long before he left me. That's probably partly why he did. Or maybe it really was all because he was lost and completely disconnected from his emotions.

Maybe I was living in some fairytale delusion of my making. Who knows? I don’t, and may never, have the privilege of knowing how he ever truly felt. In some ways I guess it doesn’t matter. 

I have fallen far. Very far. I was in an amazing place, and then some big things brought me down. They were things I did my best to handle well, but they slowly chipped away at me.

One of those situations was being on lock down with my dog for close to 6 months. I had no freedom, no balance, no energy. It was one of the worst times in my life—until now.

He was my saving grace. He was the only light, my only true support during those times. He was everything to me, and I treated him as such. I focused so much on him and my love for him that I lost what was left of myself.

In hindsight, I can see that I clung to him to avoid my own pain.

So I was already lost when he left. He was just my last thread of hope. While we were together I remember thinking, in some deep unconscious place where we can't go until we've lost it all, that as long as I had him in my life I could get through anything.

Well now that he’s gone I’m not getting through. I’m laying in molasses waiting for someone to pull me out, and deep down I know it’s him I want to be dripping sticky with me.

It’s not fair for anyone to be responsible for pulling another out of anything. I know very well we can’t save one another. But I have always been a loyal person, someone who can’t fathom leaving without trying, someone who has always valued being there. And I believed he would always be there, on the sidelines ready to hose me down once I pulled myself out. 

In that time, when I was losing myself, I wasn’t really aware of what was happening to me. Back then, if you asked me, I would have laughed at the idea of being lost or low. I was so consumed with surviving that my lowness wasn’t a priority.

What I really needed was my partner to take my hand, look me in the eye and say, “My love, you have lost your way, and I will be here for you while you find it.” I know I deserve that. We all do. 

But that was not what happened to me, and now I am lost and looking for myself in the darkness. I was already low, and now I am gone, and I am the only person who can get myself out of here. I feel like I’m stuck in some weird alternate reality. I am no where to be found, but I know I used to be here somewhere.

My mind is smart. It tells me all of the things I need to hear. But my body feels defeated. It feels weak and heavy and oh so sad. 

I am weak. The last time I saw him he told me I was the strongest person he knows. But I’m not really strong. I have pretended to be strong all my life because I was afraid of being weak. But now I am weak because I have no strength to pretend.

So I need it to be ok that I am weak. I need to accept that right now I am the most vulnerable I have ever been in my life, so raw and open that this kind of vulnerability has been imperceivable to me. I know, somewhere in this body and mind of mine, that through this weakness I will find true strength.

I have all of the tools. I use them. Sometimes too much, and I need to pull back because I’m just too fragile right now. And that is ok. I am learning to let it be ok to be fragile, in the dark, and scared that I don’t know how to get out.

I need to be ok with being at my lowest and feeling abandoned and empty and the loneliest I have ever felt in my life. And I need to do it alone. Because no one can rescue me. I know because I’ve already tried to get them to do it. It doesn’t work. This is all on me. 

This moment is the greatest challenge of my life, and that is why I am sharing it with you.

It’s important for us to share all of the moments of life and especially the lows because they can be so scary. You may have been through your greatest challenge already or maybe you are going through it now.

Maybe you’re like I was, and you can’t imagine things will ever get that bad for you again. We all know that our most difficult moments, when we really feel them and learn from them, are the moments that change our lives.

This moment, right now, is the most painful experience I have ever been through, and I’ve been through my fair share of heartache. This moment is challenging me in ways I have never been challenged before. 

I do have small moments of clarity, glimpses into myself and who I know I am. Unfortunately for me right now, they are short lived and dampened by the lurking shadow of grief that weighs me down.

It’s a feeling that starts to build up in my body. Or maybe a better way of describing it is a lack of a feeling. It’s an emptiness, a hollowness, but it’s heavy and looming. It starts as a dull shadow that slowly grows so heavy within my body that it spills out onto my face through tears I have no control over.

It’s not just crying, it’s an aching within my soul. I hurt so deeply, in a way I never thought it was possible to hurt. And so I pray to get home quickly so I can cradle myself in my arms and tell myself it’s ok as I wail in bed. 

When my tears cease, there is no anger, there is no frustration, there is nothing but hurt.

And then, sometimes, there is just nothing. From this nothingness I have to find my way out — or maybe my way back in. I have to find myself again. I don’t know exactly how to describe that to you, what that thing is that pulls me up. It’s the important part, I know. It’s the part we need to understand in order to get up and keep living. But I don’t know exactly how to tell you about it when I’m this low.

I think it’s simply my will to be alive. I think it’s the part of me that still exists within me even though I can’t seem to feel it. I don’t hear my soul shouting, I think it’s too clouded with the grief of this death. The death of my partner who has transformed into someone I don’t know, the death of a beautiful love, the death of a future together.

But I have had several moments of pulling myself up, whether it’s to host some new friends or to simply brush my teeth. In those moments I don’t feel myself being lifted. 

I don’t know how I’m doing it, but somehow I’m rising. 

One day I know I will rise into myself again. I will be new. I will be different. I will be forever changed. But I will be me. I can’t tell you how much I long to meet myself again.

Author’s Note: That day happened! Woohoo! This heartbreak turned out to be the greatest gift of my life. This piece was my first honest writing about my devastating heartbreak which I eventually wrote a book about.

Fear wants to ruin my life, and I'm not going to let it anymore. All of the worst choices I’ve made in my life have been because I was acting out of fear. On the other hand, fear has also been my one of my greatest teachers. When I’ve let myself see beneath the mask of fear I have discovered great insights about who I am and what I believe, things I wouldn’t have noticed without fear. 

Here are some signs that will show you that you’re living in fear and what these fears might be pointing to.

When I’m afraid I…

am controlling. I have a difficult time allowing, letting things be as they are, trusting in life. When I’m afraid I want to feel safe, and I have a belief that I can create my own safety by controlling everything around me. 
What it points to: I don’t trust in life. I don’t feel supported by the universe. 

hide. I let my mind create stories about why things happened the way they did instead of looking directly at my pain. 
What it points to: I don’t want to hurt. Even if I’m hurting because I’m hiding, the truths I’m hiding from are even more painful because they are deeply held beliefs that are holding me back from living the life I deserve.

am pushy. I have a desperate desire to be understood and supported. 
What it points to: I feel misunderstood and unseen.

shut down. I keep my mouth shut. I don’t take risks in letting people see who I really am. 
What it points to: I don’t feel like I will be accepted for who I am.

am manipulative. I try to convince others to see things the way I do or do things the way I do.
What it points to: I believe my relationships will be in jeopardy if we don’t feel the same way. 

feel paralyzed. I’m stuck doing the same things even though I’m not happy. I’m unwilling to take risks. I convince myself that keeping things as they are is the best. 
What it points to: I don’t feel the universe will support me. I feel unworthy of true happiness. 

am confused. My thoughts and emotions seem to be in conflict. I never know the right decision to make. 
What it points to: I feel that if I allow myself to be vulnerable I won’t be supported. I am avoiding living from my heart.

make rash decisions. I make quick, emotional decisions without sitting with my feelings. I feel vulnerable and uncomfortable taking things slowly. 
What it points to: I feel like I will be disappointed, abandoned, or let down. I’m afraid things won’t turn out the way I want them to because I don’t trust that I'm supported.

am angry. I respond to situations with rage, frustration, or passive agressiveness. 
What it points to: I have deep emotional pain I don’t want to face like guilt, shame, or unworthiness.

run away. I convince myself that being on my own is best. I don’t let other people in.
What it points to: I don't believe I am lovable. I refuse to stand in my power. 

Fear is manipulative. It reinforces the ego, but it keeps us shut out from our true selves. It creates separation. It keeps us farther away from knowing ourselves and even farther away from really knowing anyone else. It leaves us feeling hollow and lonely. It lowers our vibration, leaving us in a depressive state. It blinds us, tricking us into seeing anything but the truth.

Seeing through my fear has created the greatest liberations of my life.

It has helped me see where I need growth and how I’m recreating unhealthy patterns. The beautiful thing about seeing our fears is that we can begin to see that we have a choice. When I notice I’m acting in any of the ways mentioned above, I can slow down and ask myself, "What I’m really afraid of?" In that space I can then choose who I want to be. 

I want to be someone who listens closely, who isn’t monopolizing the conversation in conflict because I’m afraid I’ll be misunderstood. I want to really hear the other person, to really see who they are. I want to be someone who stays put when I want to run. I want to choose to open my heart instead of closing it down. I want to be someone who isn’t afraid to live in uncertainty, to make decisions slowly and carefully. I want to be someone who can show my deepest pain, not only to myself, but to those around me. I want to choose love. I want to choose to trust that I am supported. I want to choose love. I want to be someone who lives without hiding, who shows up even when it’s hard, who gives love even when it’s not certain it will be reciprocated, someone who is willing to trust that everything is always ok. 

I know the truth is that I always have a choice.

I can choose love, and I will. I can be someone who lives without hiding, who shows up even when it’s hard, who gives love even when it’s not certain, and who trusts in life. And not only that, but I can choose to trust that when I don’t hide I will be met by another great soul, when I show up I will be received with open arms, when I give love I will get it back, and when I trust in life it will provide for me.