Education and career were very important in my family.
My Grandpa worked for the IRS and my Dad was in Marketing. My Dad got his degree a little later in life when I was in HS. First he had to fall in love with my Mom (in Jr. High!) and get married.

After I graduated it was assumed that I would go to college. I put myself through college and on my Mom’s side of the family I was the first one to EVER graduate from college. I didn’t learn this till my Uncle told me after I graduated. He was so proud. So there was a lot of status and kudos that I got by following that path. Lot’s of pats on the back…which I kinda thrive on ; )
After college, career was next. I was working at a restaurant and was promoted to an assistant manager and after that I applied with Starbucks. Which I LOVED! What recently graduated college student wouldn’t love that job!?

So, I graduated from HS, graduated from college and got a corporate job with benefits and stock options…all the things I was supposed to.

But after 8 years I was exhausted! I was just going through the motions day after day, year after year and living someone else’s dream.

I felt depressed and empty, like I was dragging around my body but I was not even inside.

I was unfulfilled.
I realized that I just kept trying to BE fulfilled doing what I was doing because that’s what was supposed to fulfill me. I had all the things that were supposed to make me happy. But I wasn’t. I was ignoring what I really felt and really wanted.
I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted MORE! I wanted to feel fulfilled, I wanted to be doing exactly what I wanted to be doing and be living my OWN DREAM.

So, My plan was to leave my career. I gave my district manager 30 days and stayed with my team through the holidays. I didn’t have a plan beyond that. Just some savings and a knowingness that this was what was right for ME, NOT what everyone else thought I should do.

Very soon after I quit I was at an event with my Mom up in Northern California. We met this amazing man who I was so drawn to. He was talking about a 3 day event coming up called the Great Weekend and it sounded EXACTLY like what I was looking for! At that event I decided that this year long transformational program was exactly what I wanted to do! I came home, told my roommate I was moving out, got out of my apartment and my Dad, and my friends Harley and Stephen helped me pack up my Grandparent’s RV and we drove me up to Northern California.
I was so excited!!! I had always wanted to live in the bay area. I wanted to go to San Francisco State for college but I followed a boy to San Diego instead…story for another time.

So there I was. Living my dream, living where I wanted and doing personal development which is SO my thing! I knew this was where I was meant to be and I would never leave.
But that’s not what life had in mind. In 2009 half way into my program my Mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

I remember sitting in class in a circle with all my other classmates not knowing what to do. I was crying and then not crying and trying to figure out what the heck was going on in my life. My mom and I were very into alternative healing and had seen amazing healings in people…so I didn’t really see it as a death sentence.
But I was so conflicted! I felt pulled to “save the day” and move back home to be with my family. BUT I also felt very strong about completing my program and getting what I needed from it. I was neck deep in questioning everything about my life. What I believed, what I wanted, who I really was. If I moved back home what would happen to all the positive changes I was making? Would I just revert back to the “hero” of my family taking on responsibilities that were not mine to take on?
Would all this be for nothing?

After so much internal struggle with the right thing to do for me…I decided to stay and complete my program.

It was the hardest decision I have ever made. To say NO to my family. To say YES to me and what I needed. Everything in me wanted to react and go into action (or reaction mode). But something in me knew that I needed something different.
I graduated in 2009 and completed my program. I achieved my goal and stayed the course. My Mom and Dad and my brother all came to the ceremony and it was such a rich time with them. My relationship with all of them was SO much better because I stayed. I needed to grow out of some behaviors I had in my family and I needed to grow into me.

My Mom was still battling cancer and I would go down to be with her from time to time but I still lived in the bay. In 2010 I was talking to my Dad and since I really wasn’t there for the every day reality I really wasn’t sure how she was doing.

One day I was standing out on our deck in Oakland near our hot tub looking at our garden and talking to my Dad.
I said “Dad, I just need you to tell me when it’s time to come home”
He said…”It’s time.”
I packed up my life and moved home within a week.

I spent about a year with my Mom organizing pills, taking her to appointments, trimming her rose bushes and painting her toe nails. My mom was my bestie. She passed in 2011.

As a result of this journey I have become a deeper and more resourced woman. A woman of deep feeling and soul.
A woman with the ability to go through hard hard stuff but with grace and ease and dare I say joy.

I learned how to mix deep soul wrenching pain with joy and love. To be grateful that I even have a Mom and family I love so much. To feel that blessing even amidst the pain. To have something like this happen and not make it mean that my life sucks now because of this horrible thing that happened. To be able to take the gifts from it and make my life better because of it. Not to use it as an excuse for why my life isn’t the way I want it.
My ability to love is so much deeper now and my compassion and acceptance of others is so much greater.
I really get it now that people are really, really doing the very best they can no matter what it looks like on the outside.

I’m now able to move through challenging situations seeing the opportunities rather than what can hold me back, seeing the best case scenario…not the worst.

I don’t see my world as happening “to me”. I see me as the cause of my reality.
That I am at choice in how I see my world and what I make things mean in my life.
I said goodbye to any victim mentality that made me at the effect of what happened to me or out in the world. I took 100% responsibility for my experience and now I make my life exactly how I want it.
I’m able to make the best out of every situation in my life. To take the gold nuggets and leave the rest. To make everything work in my favor and if it doesn’t appear that way…change the way I think about it.