Before I began this life changing journey I lived from negativity on the regular.  I was so stuck in the negative mindset that I didn’t even realize every time I focused on those things, I was asking the universe to send them.  You know what she sent me…. all those things.

We often forget that our words hold an immense amount of power.  What we think and speak are often the things that come into our lives.  When those things are not great things, we find ourselves saying, why me?

I began making a gratitude list about a year ago.  It has become one of my most powerful tools of manifestation.  Why, you ask?  It helps me stay aligned in the positive. To acknowledge all that I have to be thankful for.  It has helped me to bring my focus to all that I have.  To realize when I am living in a lack or scarcity mindset and provided me the ability to instantly re-frame and bring myself back to abundance.

Once I realized this, I decided to make this part of my weekly ritual.  Generally, I complete my gratitude list as part of my Monday morning routine.  I sit down after doing my Reiki self-treatment, pulling my cards and drinking my CBD latte and write a list of all of the things I am thankful for from the previous week.

This list always includes my family, my dogs, my husband, my friends, my clients, my home & car, clean clothes, laundry, and water.  Yes, these are things that I have in my life all the time.  I believe these are more important to be grateful for because it is so easy for us to take them for granted.  Putting these on my list every week helps me to be mindful of them.  To recognize that I have so much in my life even when it seems like I do not. 

I always make sure to add things I have purchased, money I have made and spent, plants, the weather, and the little luxuries I have.  I also always add trips I get to take and entertainment we’ve been able to have that week. 
Gratitude doesn’t have to be extravagant or flashy.  Your list doesn’t have to be filled with expensive items and trips.  It doesn’t have to include anything new. It just needs to be your list to remind you that your life is filled with great things and people.  A little reminder when life seems hard AF that you live in abundance and the moment will pass.
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Don’t wait to start your gratitude list.  Make one today! Show yourself all that you have in life. 
 
*This is not meant to disregard the difficult moments or lessons to be learned.  Just a reminder to help you find the good in your life and hold it in front of you regularly. *

I used to spend my birthday’s comparing myself and my life.  I used to think of all the things I hadn’t done yet and my lack of success.  I would celebrate my birthday excessively so that I didn’t have to feel all the things I was feeling.

I hated my birthday for many years.  When I was little it always seemed like it was a terrible day.  When I turned 15 my father tried to take his life on my birthday.  For many years, I took that to heart. Years later he explained that he didn’t purposely pick that day.  Basically, I carried a lot of bad shit around and tied it to my birthday.  SUPER UNHEALTHY.

Around my 25th year, I decided that I was going to take my birthday back. 

I get to live another 365 days on this flying circle of water and stone.  What isn’t there to celebrate? Once I journeyed down this path of self-love, I started really embracing my birthday and finding the joy in celebrating me, right now, without comparison.  I stopped making lists of what I hadn’t accomplished and started making lists of why I am fucking grateful.

Stepping into 34 feels really good.  I am so damn happy in my life right now and I cannot wait to see what I can do with my next 366 days (leap year ya know).  I started my own company and I get to help womxn take back their lives and live as the badasses they are. I have taught myself how to build a website, be a social media manager and marketer, I got certified as a life coach and a level II Reiki therapist.  I spent 33 learning, growing, building and healing.

So here is to 34, celebrating everything I have and everything that is yet to come!  To my husband, dogs, family, friends, readers, followers, and clients thank you for being with my on this journey.  Here is to new adventures, new goals, new wealth, living in unlimited abundance and the power of being authentically me. 

Have you ever felt a connect to a word but weren’t sure why? For me, this word has always been badass.

I use this phrase regularly.  It makes me feel empowered and free.  I always envisioned myself a badass woman who lives her life fearlessly and in her power.  I am finally walking this path…mostly.  Sometimes fear still creeps in but I don’t believe living fearlessly means you are without fear, it just means you still do the things you want regardless of that fear.

I didn’t realize why I was using this phrase and what it really means to me until last week.  I was reading Witch: Unleashed. Untamed. Unapologetic. by Lisa Lister and she talked about being a badass.  In that moment it all clicked for me.  I’ve been a witch my entire life and this word has always been there in my subconscious telling me that I AM A BADASS.

I am a strong woman. I have survived so much fucking pain.  I built walls and buried things because I had to and 2018 was the year, I took down those walls and began truly healing.  Not to get rid of those things, but to accept that they will always be part of who I am. To recognize that I can let go of the survival mentality and truly have a great life.  Fearless, powerful, authentic, and badass!!

This is part of my WHY.  Women embracing the divine feminine energy they were given.  Finding the power in the feminine.  Recognizing that you do not have to continue trying to make it in a patriarchal world.  You weren’t meant to make it in a patriarchal world.  Literally, it was created for men to succeed and women to be kept in their place of submission.

Taking back your power is one of the best forms of rebellion.  Saying I am a woman, I am powerful, and I am here to fucking change the world is beautiful and badass.

Embrace the badass that you are.  Heal your societal wounds.  Understand that you are powerful and your voice matters.
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BE A BADASS!!!

 This past week I carried more stress than I have in months.  I used to deal with my stress by drinking and sleeping excessively.  I would ignore, avoid, and dull it any way I could. 

Throughout my healing process I have learned to lean into my stress and really feel it.  To explore where it is coming from so that I can truly release it.  I acknowledged this growth this week and it felt amazing. 

It was so awesome to recognize that I didn’t instantly go to booze or sleep to numb myself to the stress.  I realized that it was coming from a place of worry and fear.  What an eye-opener to see that most of my life I have created stress because I didn’t want to acknowledge that I cannot control everything in my life.

Understanding where my stress was coming from helped me to really move through it and release it.  I wanted to share 5 things you can use to help you cope and work through your stress.
 
5 Ways to Cope with Stress:

1. Do not avoid and dull your stress.  Really feel it.  Explore what moments are brining up stress.  Write them down or make a little video when you are in those moments so that you can truly examine what is and why you are feeling it.
2. Lean into the discomfort of your stress. It is natural and totally human to avoid things that bring us discomfort.  However, discomfort is generally where we will get a great deal of insights and growth.  So, don’t avoid it just lean into it and see what you can learn from your own discomfort.
3. Journal about your stress.  This helped bring me a great deal of clarity this week.  I wrote 2 pages about stress and so many things came up that I didn’t even realize were attached to the stress. 
4. Meditate.  Sit with your stress.  Talk to it and see what it wants to share with you.  Often when we go inside ourselves, we learn things we can’t even imagine. 
5. Use your magick.  Often when moments of stress happen, I will pull out my tarot deck.  I am sure some would disagree with this since your tarot takes on the energy you give and provides you with insights from that energy.  The reason I like using my tarot during these moments is it gives me a deeper insight into what is going on and what I could do to work through it.  Don’t be afraid of magick in the shadow moments.  Powerful magick and information lies in the darkness, embrace it.  As above, so below.

Finally, if you are really stuck in your stress don’t be afraid to talk to someone about it.  Even if you just need to purge and don’t really want advice or guidance.  Sometimes the best way to release is to verbally release.  Clear your throat chakra and let that shit go.  

 As I was pondering my word for 2019 freedom really stuck out to me. I started thinking about what freedom means to me. 

Freedom from expectations of me as a woman, freedom from the patriarchal work mindset, freedom from debt, freedom from my own fears and doubts.  While I was thinking about all the thing’s freedom means I started to examine how to gain these freedoms.

What came up for me was the word SURRENDER.

As a previous perfectionist and a minor control freak, this word makes me a little anxious. It is not something I have ever been able to do.  Every time I attempted to surrender in any way, I would let fear grab hold and tell me I had to control it or fix it. Talk about some unhealthy ego issues.

I’ve really been trying to lean into surrender the past week.  Lean into the discomfort and anxiety that come up with surrender.  To examine what it really means for me to surrender.  In what ways I can surrender this year, and to set an intention around what I want to gain from surrender.

I have started journaling again this week and have been writing about fear and surrender almost daily.  It has given me a clearer understanding of why surrender causes anxiety and fear to come to the surface for me. I recognize now that it is my ego, that long held habitual belief that I can control the universe and make things happen by never giving away that control.  This was truly eye opening for me and has helped me really embrace surrender the past few days.

I recognize now that surrender doesn’t mean I am giving away any of my power or my voice.  That truly surrendering is actually quite peaceful and safe.  I have been reading Rise Sister Rise by Rebecca Campbell and I recently read the section on being held. It was amazing to look at surrendering the way she explains it. (Read the book, it is amazing)

Out of all of this I am moving forward with two words for 2019, surrender and freedom. I truly feel like they are synonymous as you cannot have one without the other.  I cannot wait to see where surrender takes me and the freedom it will bring into my life.

“If you let go, you get to grow.” Erin Stump, PeaceLove&Bubbly

t I’m here again to talk about why I threw away the notion of setting a New Year’s Resolution. 

I would set them every year.  They usually were something along the lines of I’m going to eat healthy, get skinny, and get a good job.  It usually went well for about 3-4 weeks and then I would fall right back into the same old routine I was always in. 

When I went on my journey of self-love and acceptance of who I am, I realized that I was setting those resolutions from a place of self-loathing.  I wasn’t making those decisions for myself, I was making them because it was NYE and I was supposed to.  Isn’t everyone who doesn’t fit into the idealized body type or lifestyle supposed to make a resolution to put themselves into a box?

NYE 2017 I decided I was going to create an affirmation that encompassed what I wanted from my life and for myself in 2018.  It wasn’t anything fancy.  It was three simple and powerful words.  I tried to say it every morning when I woke up to remind myself why I was here and what I wanted to accomplish. When I would have bad moments, I would say my affirmation to remind myself that life is no hard it only has hard moments.

Throwing away resolutions was one of the best things I did for myself.  I didn’t wake up every day with resolutions hanging over my head.  Feeling like a failure if I didn’t accomplish that daunting to-do list I had made at the end of 2017. I simply stepped forward with trust every day that I was on the path I was put on this earth to walk.  Trust that all of the things I desired and dreamed would be mine if I just continued to walk with trust.

Trust has always been so difficult for me.  I like to know things will work out, to know what and how things will happen, so trust and I have not always been great friends. Turns out trust is the one thing I needed most in my life and had I not decided to throw away resolutions I am not sure I would have found it this year.

So, if you have been on the resolutions wheel for most of your life. If you continue to fall and then feel guilty because you didn’t win that to-do list again.  Let me help you create an affirmation that you can carry with you for all of 2019.  Take back that power and stop trying to cram your amazing being into that tiny little box society wants to keep you in.

My affirmation for 2019: Prosperity, Stability, and Fun are coming to me in 2019!
 

I spent my entire life feeling out of place.  I always felt like I was the weird person…like that was something bad.  I knew things other people didn’t and I spent a good majority of my life living from a place of fear.  Fear that people would see the real me…afraid of my own power. 

I cannot put into words the freedom that came last year when I said: I am A Witch.  I’ve always been a witch.  I stopped shutting out my voice and my power.  I am still in a place of struggle with fully embracing all that I am, but it has been an amazing journey so far. 

I cannot wait to see where my truth will take me.  The changes I get to make in this world because I stopped being afraid of myself. 

There is something so unbelievably powerful about taking hold of your authentic self.  Embracing who you really are without worrying about the world around you.  The freedom that comes from accepting that you are weird and that it is beautiful. 

Speaking my own truth and stepping into my power has changed me and my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined.  I get to live my life making magick, helping womyn take back their power and live in their truth, helping people heal their traumas.

I am no longer living from a place of fear and it feels so fucking amazing.
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Are you ready to live your truth? What steps can you take today to stop hiding who you are?  Take back your power, embrace your weird, and live in your truth. 

 Some things have been coming to the surface for me the past few days.  Looking through social media and seeing all the terrible things happening all over the world, and in my country (America) it can be suffocating.  I often find myself feeling like I cannot make a difference.  Like nothing I do will help make things better.  I find myself feeling guilty that I cannot financially donate right now. 

In these moments I find I can either focus on and digest all the negative…. or I can speak to myself gently and remind myself that ripples make waves and waves can change everything.

It is easy to get sucked into the mindset that you cannot change anything, and the world will forever suck.  That is not true and is no place to live.  Even though I am just one person; I can make a difference in this world.  I get to serve women as a life coach.  To help them love themselves and take that love and put it into the world. 

Even helping one person, helps create change.  Perhaps it isn’t the huge changes we all so desperately desire that are most important.  If we all just helped make a difference for one human being imagine the possibilities.

These are the things we must remember when we start to get sucked into the mindset that the world is terrible.  The world is actually pretty damn amazing, terrible things just happen here.  We need to remind ourselves that even though we cannot help all the people we would love to help right now, if we stay focused and continue walking our path, we will be able to do those things one day soon.

We must remember we are on our own path and that will eventually lead to the things we desire in this world.  One of those things for me is creating a world that is better.  A place where human beings care about one another.  A place where women and children are not being tear gassed at the American boarder. 

It can be so difficult to read and see all the awful things happening.  We must remember that one small act can help create changes in larger ways.

Instead of feeling helpless and hopeless take a moment to focus on what you are working towards.  The small ways we can make a difference in the world.  I like to visual the women I will get to serve and the ways they will change the world around them.  Each drop of love we send out into the Universe gets multiplied.  When we continue coming from a place of love, that love grows. 

So, take a big huge breath and move forward with love and light.  Send that into the Universe and continue making the small changes that you can.  You matter and so does every small act of love you can make.

I spent many years of my life feeling lost. Working jobs that I hated because I believed I need them.  I was depressed, miserable, and full of anger.  I stuck with it because I thought working hard would get me a promotion and I would one day reach a point where I was happy with life.  This was not the case.

In 2016 I moved back to Colorado with my husband and started the application game.  Two-hundred applications later I still hadn’t found a job.  It was in this moment that I started to really think about what I wanted from my life and decided to start my blog.

I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with my blog, but I knew I had a message I needed to share.  I had spent time doing the work to learn and love myself.  I spent time stretching my confidence muscles and growing in bravery every day.  I leaned into my discomfort and started working to overcome my limiting beliefs. 

I began looking into getting my life coaching certification around this time.  It was something I was really called to but kept coming up with reasons I couldn’t.  Holding myself back has been a staple of my life.  I spent so many years listening to my fear that I started to believe everything it said to me.

It wasn’t until June of this year (2018) that I finally told my fear to be quiet and figured out a way to make it work. 
I truly believe that becoming a life coach chose me.  It is something I have a calling to do.  I realized that I want all women to truly love themselves, to find their confidence and take back their power.  I knew my blog was touching lives, but I wanted to do something that inspired and touched lives on a deeper level. 

I have this burning desire to help women create the foundations to live the life they dream.  To stop holding themselves back because of fear.  To acknowledge and accept that self-love is necessary and that they are worthy of all that they desire.

I cannot wait to serve my clients and am so thankful that this path found me or that I found it (the universe works in amazing ways).   

Last Sunday my husband and I were hiking.  I had been fighting a mild cold all week and really wanted to sleep in, but we got out of bed and got outside.  We hiked a trail that we had done earlier in the summer and I was worried it was going to take us longer than the previous time (it did, but only 10 minutes). 

As we were hiking I was talking to him about the days that I dreamed about being a person that went on hikes and enjoyed being outside.  I used to tell myself when I get skinny again, or when I lose weight…then I will start doing the things I really want to do.  Now that I can look back at that version of myself, I realize that is no way to live.

I was not in physical shape to be hiking up a mountain at the time, however, putting off my dreams until I lost weight or looked like society thinks I should is unacceptable.  In fact, it wasn’t actually living at all. It was just a way for me to ignore my dreams and stay in the same place. An excuse to not leave my comfort zone and grow as a human being and a woman.

I am not saying everyone needs to get out and hike, but we all have things we want to do with our lives and we need to stop waiting.  If you put your life on hold until you have the ideal body or enough money, you may never do the things you desire.  I didn’t just take a giant leap from hoping for a better, healthier version of myself to hiking.  It took many small decisions to learn and love myself and my body, to eating better and finally to working out again.  I am so damn happy I did the work and continue to do the work. 

If you have something you have been putting off because you are waiting for the perfect moment, remember that moment might be right now. Sometimes you must take a deep breath and go for it. Whatever that dream is that you are holding on too, figure out how you can make small changes and choices to start working towards that. 
Life doesn’t stop and wait until we are ready.  Almost everything that matters in life takes a leap of faith and a lot of work. 

​So just go for it!