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Learning the Process: Grief with Guilt

It seems like more and more people are working to protect their peace, and for many of us that includes going no contact with friends, family, and even parents. The worry and anxiety that can follow that is overwhelming, and what do you do when there are curveball thrown your way while trying to manage an estranged relationship?

You see, I’ve got an exclusive membership that I don’t want. It’s not illustrious or anything, there’s no wait list, and it’s certainly not envied by anyone that I know. I’m a card carrying member of the “Dead Dad Club”. The hardest part of being in the club is that prior to joining I had been in therapy working on re-parenting myself and healing my inner child, when my brother showed up at my apartment one Monday morning in October, a cloud hung low above his head, with the news that granted me access to this club.

My father and I had a tricky relationship since adolescence and as an adult I was focused on managing the relationship as best as I could within a space that was healthy for me, which resulted in on and off periods of estrangement. We were in one of those periods when he passed suddenly and unexpectedly. There are times when I feel thrust back into those weeks following his death, when I forget that he isn’t just living in Florida, and that I haven’t heard from him in a while. As Kacey Musgraves sings in her song Justified, released the same year I lost my dad, “healing doesn’t happen in a straight line” and I had expected my journey through this grief to at least be some sort of roller coaster ride with highs and lows, but to at least have some sort of flow, but there are moments when I blink and I am back at the starting line.

The unexpected stage of grief

We all know the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. No one goes through a picture perfect grief period however, and those stages come and go in whichever order they please. On my personal grief journey, wedged in there somewhere between Anger and Depression, is Guilt. Everytime I find myself in that phase, it’s almost like there is a separate group of stages compounded on that, where the normal stages of grief come to screeching halt, and I have to put all my attention on working through the guilt before I can allow my body and mind to get back to processing the grief. 

I feel an everlasting amount of guilt that the last few times that we had communicated he was angry with me. I had been trying to set some boundaries with him while I worked through things in therapy, and he was not happy with it one bit. He always struggled with boundaries, and took them personally. My mom and him had been divorced for years but she still held out hope that if I kept explaining my boundaries to him that one day, a light bulb would go off and he would get it. That was a feeling that was hard to let go of while he was living, and I thought I had, but when he died I had realized how wrong I was. My dad was one of mushy-love kind of parents while my mom wasn’t as attached her own emotions, so from my Dad it always felt over the top, but he always had to tell us how much he loved us, so that if anything ever happened, the last thing said between us was from a place of love.

My first introduction to guilt within this personalized grieving process came pretty quickly in the week after. It started as a little intrusive voice in my head, telling me that I wasn’t allowed to feel so sad, because my dad and I weren’t even talking in the year before his death. In therapy I had been coming to terms with the potential that my dad might not ever be able to respect my boundaries, and that he might not ever be able to be welcomed back into my life. I was already grieving the death of the relationship that I wanted to have with my dad, and in some way I felt that others were more justified in their grief. It had been me that was pushing him away, and because of that, I wasn’t worthy of being equals with my siblings as we walked behind his casket in church. I was there to support them, but as the estranged daughter, I was the odd one out. There was guilt the first time I genuinely laughed after his death. The first fathers day, on his birthday, on the first anniversary of his passing. The biggest was when I was moving into my first home, since my dad was a borderline professional mover. He could always be counted on to rent the truck and show up, ready to haul boxes and furniture.

Forgiveness is healing

The cycle of the stages of guilt, within the stages of grief, are still there but I have learned the hard lesson of how to better process those feelings. There is always the glimmer of guilt that I could have done better at maintaining that relationship, that I could have told him one last time that I still loved him, even though I needed space. That I could have explained more clearly that my boundaries were an effort to maintain the relationship, that they were not designed to hurt him. I remind myself that I did the best I could as the child within the relationship, that the anger I felt towards him is the anger from my inner Teenager after healing the inner child, and to give grace to that inner version of myself, to find “therapeutic forgiveness”, as my therapist calls it. I am here now, and the person that I would ask for forgiveness from for that, is no longer living. So as I am working on my own reparenting, I must also now forgive myself in his absence.

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Breaking the Chains of Chronic Illness

Illness. That word can have different meanings to many. It can be getting sick with an acute onset of something such as the flu or strep throat, you go to the doctor, get some meds and you’re better in a couple of days. Or it can be an acute onset of something such as appendicitis, you go to the hospital, get surgical intervention, and then two weeks later your good as new. Chronic illness, however, is an entirely different animal. 

Chronic illness is when nothing gets better, you’re going from doctor to doctor, treatment to treatment and it can take years to really find the problem, and if you are lucky enough to find the root cause of the illness, it most likely requires medications that can cause unbearable side effects. It becomes a never ending circle. Chronic is life long. And if I am being honest, I never really gave much thought to people with chronic illness, naively, I did not realize it existed, to the staggering amount of numbers it is at today. I thought of it as rare… and then it happened to my youngest daughter…and then my oldest not long after.

The beginning

My youngest daughter at 15 started to experience pain and extreme redness in her feet and legs while walking or standing. It started out very sporadic, though I thought it was odd, it was not happening enough to really be concerned. Until, it did. The pain started increasing and it got to the point where the pain was becoming a part of her daily life. That began the journey for her and our family to find out what was happening. I could probably write an entire book alone, on the beginning of our journey. We began searching the best area hospitals, Mayo Clinic, a number of different doctors that each helped in her diagnoses, but nothing much was offered as far as a cure, a treatment and most of all relief of symptoms. The main diagnoses we were dealing with were Erythermalgia, Small Fiber Peripheral Neuropathy and POTS syndrome (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia). Unfortunately, there are not very good treatments for these illnesses (syndromes) and some of the medications given to  relieve the pain, had such horrible side effects for her, that she could not function. 

Which was worse? 

There had to be something else out there? I would not let her live this way, if I could help it.

Another change

Meanwhile, my oldest daughter was moving out of state, thousands of miles away to pursue her graduate degree in Arizona. A few months out there, she had started mentioning to me she really was not feeling herself. I attributed this to stress of a rigorous school program, new surroundings and possible anxiety about what was happening at home with her sister. Several months went by and her health was not improving and she was ultimately diagnosed with Lyme Disease. 

Here she was, thousands of miles away sicker than she had ever been, I could not believe this was happening. Here I am with, not one, but two kids, with serious illnesses. I had urged her to come home as I just did not know what else to do. I cannot help one in AZ and the other in IL. In the end she, alongside her boyfriend decided to stay and deal with her new found diagnoses, without me. As hard as it was for me not to be with her, it was probably the best decision she could have made. After doing her fair share of bouncing around from doctor to doctor out in Arizona she stumbled upon a functional medicine doctor who would introduce her to IV therapy.

A new hope

At first, I was skeptical. 

What the heck is Ozone Therapy, High Dose Vitamin C, Glutathione, Myer’s Cocktail? 

Are they safe? 

Why have I not heard of these before? 

Probably because we just never looked, or rather, we never needed to. After much research, we learned Ozone Therapy can help to combat bacteria, viruses and yeast, it also improves your circulatory system. High Dose Vitamin C is also used to help combat viruses and Glutathione is helpful to detoxify and boost your immune system. Myer’s Cocktail IV’s are loaded with vitamins and minerals that are better absorbed by IV versus pill form.

My oldest daughter decided to embark on this method of healing, and while the treatment was pricey, there wasn’t much to lose in trying. After many months of IV treatments for her Lyme disease, my daughter began planting the seed for me to bring my youngest daughter down from IL to AZ to visit with this doctor and see if maybe these therapies could help her too. We were pretty much running out of options, so we went and I am glad we did. 

In time, the first symptoms that slowly started to improve was the fatigue (that debilitating type fatigue where you just cannot get out of bed) was starting to lift and the girls were starting to feel more energized. That feeling created hope, for us all, that maybe they could get over the worst of their illnesses.

Healing is not linear

I also do not want to give the wrong impression that IV therapy is a magical “cure-all” for Chronic diseases, but rather a tool you can utilize, especially if you don’t see any end in sight to your suffering. Keep in mind it does not happen overnight. It takes time, persistence and patience. Healing is NOT linear and I learned that through this journey. There will not be one pill, one doctor visit, one treatment that will be the answer for chronic illness, but a culmination of many things. Both my girls still have issues respective to their individual diagnoses. My daughter with Lyme still suffers from some gut issues and food aversions and my youngest daughter with Small Fiber Neuropathy and POTS still has many days of pain and lingering circulatory issues, but most definitely not as severe as once was. 

We still use IV therapy as needed to help when flares arise and with this, they are able to continue living their life, maybe a little differently, but they are living it nonetheless. There was a point in their illnesses when I seriously questioned if “normal” life was going to happen. Normal as in going to school, working, taking vacations as a family, not being debilitated every day. Thankfully they are able to, and I attribute a lot of that, if not most of their progress to functional medicine and IV therapy, alongside western medicine.

A word of encouragement

If you have been suffering with a chronic illness and you have not been able to feel better, or even if you still are searching for a diagnoses, I would urge you to find a good reputable functional medicine practitioner and see if IV therapy may be a good fit for you.

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A Mother’s Greatest Fear

Imagine sitting in a room of 100 people. A spokesperson walks onto the stage at the front of the room and announces that twenty five of you will be selected. You have no idea what is awaiting you, though know that one in four means your chances are not too bad.

At random, you get selected and are directed to move into the room next door. Part of you is excited, while part of you is nervous. As you make your way through a doorway and into the next room, you wonder to yourself, “Do I get a prize? What is this about?” 

The spokesperson walks into the room and stands before you and the other twenty-four candidates. He looks very formal and has a flat affect. It’s hard to tell if the information he is going to share is good or bad. You find yourself holding your breath in anticipation of what you hope to be some kind of reward. 

Without hesitation or remorse, he tells you that you will experience the death of your baby. 

Your throat tightens. A heaviness creeps into your chest and you feel like you’re going to be sick. What kind of cruel joke is this?  

It’s not a joke. These are the actual numbers faced for women experiencing pregnancy. I share this not to scare you, only  to reinforce a reality faced by so many women. 

Statistics reveal that approximately 25% of all pregnancies, will end before the second trimester. Some studies have calculated this number to be as high as 50%. Additionally , the CDC calculates that approximately 1 in 100 pregnancies will result in stillbirth. 

Do these numbers shock you? I was certainly shocked when I came to discover the facts.

The truth is, the conversation I had with my healthcare providers about pregnancy loss was brief. So brief, it could be captured in four words, “it’s a small percentage.” I wish I had known more and felt better prepared. 

Because in my case, I am not even considered 1 in 4.

I am not even considered 1 in 100. 

In the scenario above, I didn’t get selected. 

I thought I was safe. I made it into my second trimester. Then into my third. 

It was a challenging pregnancy, though at each of my ultrasounds, my daughter was content. She was stubborn; she refused to allow any photos of her face to be captured, though she was what we all thought to be healthy and strong. 

It wasn’t until a few days before my daughter’s birth that we were told she wouldn’t live independently outside of my womb. The only reason we found out when we did, was because my membranes ruptured early at 31 weeks gestation. As a result, I was flown out of the province and to a larger centre with advanced equipment. It was this equipment that revealed a long list of complications that would make our baby’s survival unlikely.

Her diagnosis? We don’t know. 

We may never know. 

July 2023 will mark three years since her passing. Immediately following her death, we began collaborating with a team of researchers within the scientific community to try and find a cause. To date, the team is not aware of any other known cases or what would have caused our daughter’s complications and symptoms.  

Not having answers has weighed on my mind over the years. 

Just as others who experience pregnancy and infant loss, we are left with “why?” 

“Why me?”

“Why my baby?”

“What could I have done differently?”

“What if I did things differently?”

So many questions, most without answers. Questions that loss moms carry with us, alongside our grief.  

Pregnancy and infant death is something we carry with us each and every day. 

It’s heavy. It can be loud. It can be all consuming and messy. 

Our babies were small, though the experience of baby loss is not. 

Finding the path forward

The current culture and societal views on pregnancy and infant death command that women suppress, hide, and isolate the pain, grief, and experiences that accompany baby loss. It’s important to highlight that within this silence, shame, resentment, anger, and stigma breeds.

I am here to advocate and demonstrate that by doing the opposite, each of us can contribute to changing this culture.

When I began sharing my story, almost immediately following I had family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances step forward and open up about their own experiences of baby loss. Some of which had never spoken about or processed the death of their babies previously.

The death of my daughter Kailani not only opened my eyes to the realities faced by others, though it also guided me to create safe spaces for my fellow loss parents. It’s through our stories of pain that we can connect and support one another in being seen, heard, and valued.

Based on the statistics alone, someone you know or someone you love, has experienced pregnancy or infant loss. What’s needed is a safe and supportive space to be able to openly share and grieve the death of our babies. I invite you to create these spaces for others by offering a listening, compassionate and non-judgemental ear for those in your life.

Grief is not meant to be done in isolation or in hiding. No parent should have to navigate the life long pain and grief that accompanies baby loss.

Each of these babies has left an impact and an everlasting change in our world. They will always be carried in the hearts of those they left behind.

Together we remember. Together we keep their memory alive. Together we carry the weight of our grief.

Forever Loved
Kailani Mary Randall
July 25, 2020

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Creating a Life That Lights Up Your Soul

For the past 4 months, I’ve been closing a chapter and starting a new one. I finished my studies and took the first real steps into adulthood. While there was a sense of uncertainty, more space was being created to welcome in all the new things that would set the tone for this next chapter in my life.

I’ve always had this voice telling me that I’m meant for something drastically different and big. Marching to the beat of my own drum and paving a less walked path has been the undertone of my life and even though I still can’t see what the purpose of it is, I know it’ll reveal itself soon. This inner knowing has been my lifelong inspiration and even in the darkest of times when I felt I was veering off path, it would get me back on track.

Never in a million years did I think I was going to be living the life I’m currently living. I thought I was supposed to be a medical doctor still studying and losing sleep over something I wasn’t even really passionate about. The urge to help all sentient beings has always been prominent for me. I thought that being a doctor was the only way I could do this, but really I was just seeking external validation from my family, a god complex, and a sense of entitlement.

As I shed the identity that was never mine in the first place, I realized that the desire to help others stemmed from my innate strong sense of empathy and I know I am here to leave the Earth in a better state than when I arrived. I know fellow empaths share this same soul mission and that reality can unfold in many different ways.

I never just studied or practiced one thing. I wanted to delve deep into different subjects, teachings, and experiences. This well roundedness has left me with a wide array of healing modalities I use in my sessions with clients. I have a background in biomedicine, I’m a reiki practitioner, I work with energy, and I have strong psychic abilities. These all come together in my sessions to help others create a life that lights up their soul.

The new age spiritual community has become quite oversaturated with misinformation and misinterpretation of what it truly means to deliberately co-create with the universe. Many practitioners work from a standpoint of ego. I like to see myself as an equal with the individual I am working with. I am not better than others because I sense more, or know how to work with energy. We learn from each other and it’s a symbiotic relationship that we each benefit from.

I also think that many of these “healing” sessions disempower so many individuals. We are innately intuitive, powerful, and deliberate. Leaving our fate in the hands of others because we might think they know better is not something we should pursue.

Instead, I like to empower human beings in developing their own intuitive abilities and placing the power back in their hands. I share the tools, facilitate the awakening, and it’s all coming from within them, not me. This is why I don’t like calling my sessions ‘healings’. None of us are broken and we don’t need fixing. We just need support and light shining in from different sources to illuminate our own.

My sessions are divided into practices that work on different auric levels. I have mentorship which is pragmatic and grounded meant to help you find tangible ways to create fruitful habits and deconstruct self limiting beliefs. In these coaching sessions, we work with the mental, emotional, and physical layers of the aura.

I also perform energy work through energy chelation and deliver energy through the practice of reiki. Depending on the state of your chakras and energetic field, I will modify what layers I must work on, but I usually work intuitively with guides and galactic beings who help me work on the etheric, celestial, or spiritual layers. This is meant for those of you seeking to strengthen your connection to your higher self and spirit guides as well as optimizing chakra function for more wellbeing.

The last category of my sessions are the psychic offerings where I streamline divine guidance through channeling, freewriting, and other intuitive work. I take messages from your guides and others who are supporting you on your human experience. This is the perfect choice for you if you’re looking to receive guidance on any life aspect. It’s a way to offer support when you’re struggling to find it within yourself.

I’ve noticed there’s a recurring theme throughout all of my clients. They come to me looking for answers to so many questions and while this curiosity is beautiful, it can also enable us to place power outside of ourselves. The work I do with my clients helps us locate answers and frequencies within us that fill voids we’ve been searching external solutions for.

It’s also about realizing that our guides are always with us and are connected to all of us. It’s a matter of finding ourselves to strengthen that connection. There’s so much empowerment that comes through my work with others. There’s a new perspective that’s born that helps my clients understand everything they’re searching for can be found internally.

I am not here to ‘heal’ you because you’re not broken. I am here to offer support and guidance when you feel called to take aligned action and make a change in your life. My mission is to help you get closer to who you truly are, and that’s a being with an innate ability to create a life that lights up your soul

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Boosting your Balance

Life’s a balancing act; we try to be in balance but then we get thrown off balance. At the macro level, society is addressing balance in power and communities are balancing their priorities against their checklists, and at the micro level, families are balancing their checkbooks and their busy schedules. It’s all a balancing act and the scales are forever tipping this way and that way.

Lately, I’ve been primarily concerned with two areas of balance in my life.

The first is maybe one you wouldn’t expect but can most likely relate to. It’s the balance in art and design. You see, at the age of 42, I’m building my forever home, and I guess I realized that even though I’m into aesthetics and home decor, I don’t have a very strong visual-spatial sense. Good thing my sister-in-law is a professional photographer and an interior designer; she’s a huge support during this process. In building and furnishing, I’m looking to balance the energy in my home by means of space, light, objects, colors, texture, and the like. One change in the balance of the layout was to include two big windows on each side of the fireplace; a change in color was to add opaque colored paneling to the appliances so they more naturally integrate into the open concept. These examples seem simple and actually not very important compared to the well-balanced family life we’ll be living in the home. However, that is a balance we have—we have worked to make that a reality in our daily lives, and so now, we focus on our new physical home.

Then there’s our other physical home—our body as our physical vessel. In recent weeks I have been made very aware of my grandma and my mom’s imbalances—mostly losing balance while walking. It’s nerve wracking to worry about them falling, and it’s terrifying to see them fall. It’s made me more aware of the importance of balance and range of motion. So, I started up my yoga practice again. I was super into it when I went through my 200-hour yoga teacher training experience a few years back but then became uninterested. Well, I’m back for the benefits. Most recently, I’ve been attending 90-minute hot yoga classes. Balance practices are the most challenging when it comes to yoga postures as it’s likely to shake and teeter and fall out of poses. So, I’m learning about balance from the inside out. Some everyday tips you can even use out of the yoga studio are as follows: focus on your breathing, lock your gaze, check your alignment, and feel grounded in the earth. The balance I’m developing and strengthening is physical, but it’s also emotional and spiritual, and that is a beautiful benefit.

Next up in the realm of what I’d like to balance in my world…

I plan to tackle balancing my plate. The recent and temporary move into our apartment while our house is being built has me cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen yielding meals that are a bit uninspired and most definitely imbalanced—I haven’t even been going to the grocery store with a shopping list. I’m looking forward to bringing back some freshness and color and balance to my breakfast, lunch and dinner plate. Think: colorful fruits and veggies, leaner proteins, whole grains, and the right nutrients. Think: less standing up and eating mindlessly out of a Pringles can and more sitting down and being present while nourishing myself with something that has ingredients I can pronounce.

A final word…

I’ll leave you with the quintessential image of balance—the yin and yang. That white and black representation shows a balance between two opposites with a portion of the opposite element embedded in the other. There’s a duality there, which is the reminder we need to promote balance among the opposing elements that exist in our lives because life, in fact, is not so black and white.

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Energetic Un-coupling: Regenerating Depleted Relationships without Divorce

This pandemic has been intense for long term-relationships, no matter how solid they were before COVID came knocking. Extreme stress can be an incredible clarifier on where the pressure points are in a relationship, especially when the stress comes in the form of spending way more time together to survive and having our unhealed individual and relationship wounds get displayed in all their painful glory.

My husband and I have been together for almost 10 years. We met when walking the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage that runs from one side of Spain to the other. So yes, we literally did walk 500 miles to fall down at each other’s proverbial doors.

Our courtship was EXTREMELY short before I became pregnant with our son, about 1.5 months from meeting each other to a positive pregnancy test. By that point we had seen each other in a variety of extreme situations. We had been exhausted, stinky, sore, trying to survive in a foreign country, cohabitating in a sailboat the size of a bathroom, and navigated the fallout of him having a live-in girlfriend when we met. From the very beginning, I used to say, “Well, we’ve seen each other at our worst so if we still like each other, it’s definitely a good sign.”

We became first-time parents before we had known each other for a full year, had moved from one country to another, and were living on my parent’s property when our son was born. We had life on fast forward and both of us had significant childhood trauma which at that time, was only partially recognized and mostly unresolved.

I can tell you, that wherever your relationship is at when you have kids is where it will stay unless you actively prioritize growing it. But with or without kids, at some point in a long-term relationship, you will come face to face with all the unresolved wounds you still carry from early trauma or abuse.

Over the next nine years as a couple, we weathered post-partum depression, chronic illness, miscarriage, brain surgery, starting a new business, going back to graduate school, and remembering abuse from childhood which had been repressed for over 35 years. We lost grandparents, beloved pets and grew more emotionally distant from each other without knowing why. Our sex life was virtually non-existant and had been for the majority of our partnership.

By the time we were two years into the pandemic, we looked at each other and realized we did not want to do another ten years like this. The moment came when we were in a group coaching session for a Sacred Union workshop about how to work with our wounded inner children within a relationship. In a moment of vulnerability and courage, I related the arc and highlights of our relationship and asked for their input on how to save our marriage. Without missing a beat, the response came back, “You need to write the energetic divorce papers, do your inner work, and then see if there’s something you both want to build together.”

Jaw drop. In that instant both of us knew she was right. We had to do something profound if we were going to shift our patterns of abandonment, retreat, projection, and distance.

Immediately after the session I got on the internet and started searching for “energetic divorce process” and “energetic de-coupling” but found exactly nothing. The only resources I discovered related to Conscious Un-coupling which is a process meant to help folks going through an actual, 3D divorce heal and take responsibility for their part in why the relationship ended. Interesting, but not what I had in mind.

We both wanted to stay married but it needed to be a completely different experience than what we’d had up to that point. We needed processes, rituals, and ways to acknowledge the wounds of our relationship, heal them, release them, and then germinate our seedling of a connected, intimate, trust-filled, collaborative partnership.

As I realized that there were no clear templates for what we were attempting to do, it became clear that we would have to create the transformational crucible for our own evolution. Thankfully, we had both been doing deep personal work all throughout our relationship so we had tools for discovering our shadows and connecting with our wounded inner children…the tricky part would be weaving our existing tools together and supplementing with additional resources as we co-created our energetic divorce and reseeding.

To be fully transparent, we are still in the process of finding and creating our path for navigating a complete composting of our current relationship. It is my hope that by sharing the steps and skills we have called upon in this unfolding landscape, you will find the courage to embark upon your own regenerative relationship journey.

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Your Relationship with Food, Body Image, and You

I was 8 or 9 tagging along to my mom’s Diet Workshop classes. I was 9 or 10 when my dad commented on my “giant pulkies”—the Yiddush word referring to chunky thighs, supposedly a term of endearment said with “affection.” These are just two of the stand out memories of how I learned to view food and myself. Not very helpful, actually kinda hurtful. Thinking about which diet brownie bar I was going to pack for a snack or how my thighs looked in those cool, flare jeans wasn’t the healthiest headspace.

Now at 42, I consistently work on how I view food and how I view myself— undoing some of the programming all the while learning about a healthy, intuitive relationship with food, with myself.

Food can be nourishment, and it can be comfort, it can be tradition, and it can be social. Food can also be controlled, limited, excessive, and restrictive.

I can be helpful, fun-loving, productive, sexy, and rested. I can be anyone and anything I desire.

I can also be consumed by self-limited actions, behaviors and thoughts.

When I take a moment to intentionally honor a few things about my relationship with food, I’m currently grateful for food as social and fun, and I’m also grateful for food as a creative, learning experiment. For instance, this morning when making a shopping list, I opened Pinterest and looked for a tasty cast iron skillet recipe to make for dinner tonight since I have a spacious afternoon to tinker around the kitchen. P.S. it was this delectable french onion chicken recipe.

With that said, when I take a moment to intentionally recognize some issues about my relationship with food, I acknowledge I’m currently triggered by how some foods activate me in that I don’t trust myself around them. Currently, these are chips and candy; I’d be more specific, but I’m pretty non-discriminatory at the moment. So, I don’t always trust myself to eat intentionally and leisurely so I can mindfully enjoy. As a result, I’m looking to be more conscious about moderation and responsibility when savoring food.

I think about how consumption translates into other areas of my life. I consume too much social media. Ya feel me? I enjoy consuming music—currently Fleetwood Mac, Cat Stevens, and Pitbull. I like consuming books—just finished Colleen Hoover’s Verity and it was so good. I also finished Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, and it was too sad. There is so much more I consume in a day, but I’m slowly shifting to creating…especially an aligned way of eating mindfully and loving myself.

If something I wrote about food and body image resonated, you’d want to know that I’m teaming up with Registered Dietitian Diana Savani (@eatingwithadietician on Instagram) to bring you a very gentle and realistic view of how to relate to yourself and how to relate to food in a healthy, loving way.

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Unwinding the Mother Wound

My mother and I have a turbulent relationship—but it wasn’t always this way. I remember us being super close, like inseparable best friends. Until the high school years happened—you know, the years of rebellion, self-exploration and experimenting with things that high school kids experiment with. The impact to this seemingly typical behavior was actually the devolution of the relationship I had with my mother up until this point or, rather, the devolution of the grip my mother truly had on my life.

I say this now as someone who has spent a number of years assessing the relationship with my mother. More directly after I became a mom. I hadn’t realized how much of my life and my decisions revolved around her approval or permission. This is what has become known as shadow work. Simply, looking at life through memories like a photo album, trying to figure out what the heck happened, how we got here and what I can do now.

Part of uncovering the mother wound is really taking a hard look at your past as objectively as you can. Whatever comes up, have a safe space to share these realizations, whether that be a friend, significant other, out loud to yourself, or writing in a journal. This practice provides additional perspective and insight. I always write things down because I can go back and reference it later if I remember something that is relatable to see if I can find the pattern.

Once you start finding patterns and trends in behaviors, you can start to reprogram those patterns and behaviors. Often, these can be done by affirmations, opposite behavior changes, a ton of discipline, and consistency. It’s hard work trying to deprogram and reprogram yourself from something you’ve been used to for so long. Consistent small actions like affirmations (written or verbal) go a long way, in my opinion. Give yourself grace during this process because it can be pretty intense at times depending on your current state of being.

What Healing a Mother Wound Can Look Like

I’ll give an example regarding weight. My grandmother and mother both have an unhealthy relationship with food and weight. They are both incredibly skinny and suffer health problems as a result. It was always a topic of discussion because I was never considered skinny, even after I had my daughter. So when I reached the heaviest point in my life post-pregnancy and breastfeeding, I had to do something. I had to figure out why a change of diet and exercise wasn’t working. I had heard about affirmations before but never tried it but I decided to try it. It felt weird at first because these were unknown words I had spoken to myself. I started telling myself in the mirror that I loved myself and that I was beautiful. The more I said it out loud and wrote it, the more I felt it and the more I could see it. I changed that programming. I gave myself what I didn’t have.

I bring up this particular example because part of uncovering the mother wound is also uncovering your grandmother’s wounds—it’s generational. It’s important because the trifecta is connected. When our grandmother is carrying our mother, her womb and ovaries are being formed. The very ones that would ultimately make up us. We are all connected by the foods we ate and stress we endured during that lifetime and on forward until conception from the mother with you. It is all connected and we are all connected.

I inherited negative self talk from the experiences my mother inherited from her mother. Please know, I don’t hold any of this against them because it wasn’t their fault. A lot of abuse, assault and poverty occurred in their lifetimes. They lived in a predominantly male run, backwoods area in the Appalachian mountains during the 1940s and 1980s. It was a whole different vibe back then. I mention this because it is very much a part of recognizing patterns that we have or we have adopted by proxy. A book that does a fantastic job highlighting the wounds we carry from our parents is It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn. I highly suggest this book if you’re looking for a place to start.

With help from health coaches, therapists, social media, books, meditation, daily practices, you too can determine what’s stopping you from living the way that feels natural to you. You will be able to release those beliefs you have or think you have about yourself so you can start living life free from the hold others have placed on you. When you change, your whole family line benefits. You can be the cycle breaker for your whole family.

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Moving Solo Across the Country at 30

Why am I packing up and moving across the country solo at 30-years-old?

That’s a loaded question, isn’t it? But it’s the season of my life I’m in, and it feels unaligned to write about anything else right now.

So many people have asked why. Why now? Why Los Angeles? Solo? Are you sure? And I get it; I absolutely do. It’s bold, it’s brave, it’s a big move. It’s a long drive. It’s a commitment. It’s a lot of things.

I visited a soul sister in California in March of 2020, right before the pandemic altered everything. I can still feel the feelings in my body from that trip, now two years later—a new sense of being, a feeling of home, an aliveness within my blood and bones.

Those 5 days of sunshine, ocean air, sand between my toes, and remembrance shifted something within me. I returned back to Chicago, to my corporate job that I was on the verge of leaving, and told everyone in my life “I need to move to California.” I said it to anyone who would listen, but everyone brushed it off.

Fast forward 6 months and my life looked like someone else’s. I had taken the leap I planned on making—to become a Spiritual Healer and Coach. I was living back with my parents at nearly 29, I was working on building a book of clients, I was beginning again. I felt refreshed and revived. My life started to feel full of purpose.

California was still on my mind. The ocean, the beach, the sunsets were calling. “Next spring,” my soul said. I needed to settle more, I wasn’t “ready.”

I settled in Chicago for another year. In September 2021, I made my way back to Southern California for a quick work trip and the peace I felt in my bones was deeper than before. This time I knew, it was time. No more waiting, no more excuses. I may never be fully “ready.”

“Spring 2022,” my soul said, “it’s time to make moves.” In less than 48-hours in a place I will soon call home, I had never been so sure of my decision. My mind almost couldn’t keep up with my soul and spirit. My body was moving faster than my emotions. My body was ready. I was more than ready for this change.

I had spent so much of my 20s struggling through grief, depression, and finding my footing in life. I spent so much of my life living for others, putting them first. But it was time for that to truly shift once again. To take the biggest leap of my life.

I made a declaration at the end of 2021, that in 2022 no matter how it looked, these conscious decisions were for me. It was time to live my life for myself. Truly for no one else, but me.

The drive itself represents freedom. Open road with endless time for reflection. A new city allows for new beginnings. With a move like this, there’s endless release and space for expansion. It feels as though it’s been a cycle of full moons and new moons almost daily in my life. It’s been full of every emotion possible the last two months. Intense, beautiful, draining, scary, and excitement, just to name a few. But at last, I am ready. I am READY.

And so here I am, about to set off on a cross country drive, solo, at 30. Some say it’s brave, some say it’s bold. Some say I can come back if it doesn’t work out.

What I say is, it’s living. And that’s what we’re meant to do. We’re meant to live. It looks different for all of us. It’s okay if some people don’t understand how you live your life. What matters most is that you love how you live.

So, how will you live? How can you live for yourself?

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Where Joy and Grief Co-Exist

It’s been almost 7 years since the first person I ever fell in love with died. We met when we were 14, and I instantly fell in love with everything about him—his smile, his unmatchable charm, and the way he carried himself talking about philosophers yet was a “bad boy” all around. Our relationship was complicated, but what kind of first love isn’t? All that mattered, was that we understood, and I held onto hope for as long as I could.

The day he died was a day I dreaded for as long as I could remember, though it hit me like a ton of bricks. Sudden, unexpected, yet something I feared for nearly a decade.

Grief was a place I had been before, but this time, it was different. This grief shaped my 20s. I comfortably sat in the middle of this ocean of grief for what felt like would be the rest of my life. I saw no way out, and after months and months of unfathomable grief, I accepted that the ebbs and flows of this pain would be present forever. I would ride the waves and let them wash over me.

Slowly, as the months turned into a year, I began to crawl my way out of the hole I was in. I sought out support. I began to explore every modality from therapy, movement, western medicine, energy healing, Chinese medicine, coaching, and more.

As I weaved these new experiences into my life, I found myself shifting. I was slowly beginning to choose myself. Making subtle changes and choices that allowed me to be present and an active participant in my life. My grief started to soften. The pain was still there. The waves of grief still rocked me, but I found hope. I began to write, to express myself, to feel the depth of my emotions.

Once I accepted that grief will not disappear, it’s tight grip loosened. I allowed myself to welcome other emotions and feelings back in, for more than just a fleeting moment. I let myself fully feel the breadth of my experiences. I stopped going through the motions. I began to live my life again, to truly live. I remember the first time I felt true joy again, it’s as clear as day. I had forgotten what it felt like, in fact, I didn’t believe I could ever feel it again, like I had before. And in that moment, I knew it was possible. Joy and grief can co-exist. Love and sadness. Happiness and fear. Celebration and longing. Shadows and light. More and more, the joy, celebration, love, happiness, and light, began to fill my life again.

The grief and pain has made me who I am today. It’s led me to my purpose and shown me the power of duality. He’s shaped me in so many ways. And with that acceptance, I’ve found peace.

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