If you love something, set it free.  If it comes back to you, it’s yours.

God, I believe in that.  Oh yes, down to the bottom of my toes, I believe in it.

I’ve even experienced it in my own life.  A lot.  5 years ago, I set my husband free (and a whole house full of stuff I loved) and now 5 years later, it’s all back.

In case you are new here, I moved to Colorado at the beginning of January and my ex-husband moved with me.  He’s living with me and the kids.  And that meant all his stuff came too.  And his stuff was my stuff that I left behind when I moved out 5 years ago.  Seeing it again was trippy and fun.

So I KNOW it’s true.  I’ve experienced it.

And yet, it still comes up for me.  I want to hold on to what I love.  Grasp it tight.  Squeeze it to me and never let go.  And definitely never share it with anyone else.

Fortunately these days, I can recognize it.  Become aware of it.  And not emotionally react to it.

Once I see the pattern I can make a choice of how to be.

Like right now it’s coming up for me about a gal I absolutely adore.  Chelsea Moser.  I love her. She’s my protegee (two things about that: 1) I feel totally and completely pretentious saying that and yet it is how I feel and I hope she is not weirded out by that and 2) the dictionary said that you spell the woman version of protege with two “e”s, thus the two “e”s).

And suddenly Chelsea’s working with all these other women in the online world.  Andrea Lee.  Tina Forsyth. Ciara Daykin. And then I heard she was talking with Sarah Robinson the other day; so she could be next.

Let me say this before I say anything else – each of these women is a woman I adore, support, honor, respect, trust, work with, and believe in to the depths of my soul.

And yet, I want to hoard Chelsea.  Seeing her work with all these other amazing women makes me scared.  Maybe if she sees how amazing they are, she won’t want to work with me anymore.  Maybe she’ll stop having time for my projects.

But, I won’t let those patterned fear thoughts run my life.  Instead, I will recognize the pattern and break it by:

1. Talking about it here (even though this is really, really, really, REALLY hard for me to do)

and

2. Trusting that Chelsea will work with me if that serves her life and if it doesn’t, she won’t. Trust that everything is always unfolding exactly as it should for my highest good and the evolution of my soul.  And trust that I will always have everything I need (not necessarily everything I want) and I never need to hoard or hold on to anything too tightly.

Yes, when I remember that, I can breathe and relax and be.  It feels good.

In my experience, the saying should go a little differently … it’s not about what comes back to you.

If you love something, someone, some …, set it free.
And then you will be free too.

In the end, it’s about your own freedom really.

Within recent months, it has all started to become more clear than ever before.

I recently began working with Tim Kelley, author of the book “True Purpose”. What’s interesting is I thought I had already found my life purpose and was doing it.

And yet, I felt drawn to Tim’s work.  What I now see is that his work is taking me to another, much deeper level of my purpose.

I can now see that every single thing that has ever happened in my life, both those things I deemed to be “good” and those things I deemed to be “bad”, all happened to prepare me to fulfill my purpose as I now understand it in this moment.

Suddenly, it all makes sense.

There was a part of me that always knew this day was coming and I would occasionally catch enough of a glimpse of the future to know it was possible that one day I would really and truly get how everything fit together.

I’m grateful that it’s finally here.

Years of frustration, wonder, worry, uncertainty and fear have evaporated.  There are still threads left, but 90% of the concern has disappeared from my awareness.

Ok, so now I’m going to tell you what I now understand to be my purpose, even though I feel slightly embarrassed when I write it out like this.

I am here to shine the light into the dark corners of your business and your life with absolute and total love, acceptance and support.

I make the hard things easier.

Specifically, at this moment in time, I am focusing this purpose around business by helping people take a look at the things we all avoid because they are hard – the difficult conversations, the business of your business, the financials, the legal stuff, the employee stuff, the partnership stuff, the pending business break-up.

You know, the hard parts of being a business owner.  The stuff I can’t stand either.  Office politics, drama, conflict.  Ick.

I take the ick out and help you to discover how whatever is happening in your business is your greatest opportunity for growth.

You really want to be a conscious business owner?  For real?

Then, you’ve got to open your eyes, wake up to the truth.  Shine the light into the darkness.  The part you’ve been avoiding because it’s too hard, painful, difficult, embarrassing, shameful, guilt-ful, to look at.

When you are willing to open your eyes and shine the light into the dark corners, you will naturally run your business from a more expanded and enlightened perspective.

It’s hard to be enlightened and aware with your eyes closed and the lights off, right?

Decisions become much easier. You no longer worry about getting taken advantage of or what’s real and what’s not.  When you can see, you know.

Boundaries are easily established and conflicts are handled with an open heart.

Wow, it feels great to finally get all this.  These, of course, are my personal greatest life lessons so far.

6 years ago, I was attending a workshop held by one of my early coaches.  Scott had brought in a purpose expert named Kevin M McCarthy, author of the On Purpose Person.  And he walked us through a process to help us discover our own purpose.

What came through to me back then made no sense in the context of my life at the time.  I had just started my own law firm.  I was committed to being a lawyer.  Helping my clients.  Making a difference in their lives.

But, when I did Kevin’s process, I discovered my purpose was to “Shine the Light?!?”  Huh?

WTF?

I was a lawyer.  I didn’t know how to shine no stinkin’ light.  What was I supposed to do with that?  Shine the light?!? Um, ok.

But, there was a part of me that knew that was it and one day I’d figure out what it meant.

For the past 6 years, I’ve continued to put one foot in front of the other, learning how to move with my energy and get out of my own way.  It’s been a learning process for sure.  But, each step fo the way I trusted that if I just kept asking the right questions and moving forward, I’d one day get it.

And now I do.

Are you ready to know it too?  I know you are.  And you know you want it.

To begin, start to ask yourself what you’ve been avoiding.  What are the conversations you’ve had in your head, but you have held back from having with the person they really need to be with?  What are the things you know you need to do in your business, but haven’t done because they seem too hard?

Make a list of those things.  Bring them to awareness.  That’s all you have to do now.  It’s the first step and in some ways the most difficult.

You know how it is when you see someone every day and they look the same to you from one day to the next, but then you are apart for a week and suddenly the next time you see them, you notice they’ve grown or aged or lost weight or gained weight?

We are a lot like that with ourselves.  It’s hard to tell from one day or month or year to the next how much progress we are making.  And most of us are so focused on how far we have to go that we completely lose sight of how far we’ve come.

One of the best parts about blogging is being able to look back and become aware of the evolution.

Tonight, as I write this blog post on the eve of Thanksgiving, I’ve done just that.  I vaguely recalled being in a different emotional space last Thanksgiving, but couldn’t remember exactly what that space was.  Looking back to my blog post from last Thanksgiving, the emotions of where I was then have come flooding back in.

And along with them the awareness that a major shift has happened in my own consciousness regarding gratitude.  A shift that you can make here and now without waiting another year.

Last year, I didn’t know how to be grateful for EVERYthing.  My gratitude was conditional on the “good” things.  I even shared a gratitude exercise that helped me connect with all the good things happening in my life.

Here’s the big, exciting shift … you can be in extreme, deep gratitude even (especially) for the experiences you are having in your life that no one would call good.  And that’s something huge to realize as we move through a global shift that is impacting the economy, our weather patterns, and our old traditions.

With this shift is coming a lot of experiences that no one would call good – economic collapse of families, increase in bankruptcies, foreclosures, divorces, and a loss of jobs across the board.

What I’ve discovered is that it’s possible to find gratitude, even in these things.  And that’s where the real power is in your business and your life.

When you can find the gratitude even in the tragedy,  the heartache, and the pain, you have freedom.

So many of us claim freedom as one of our highest values and yet we are seeking it through on the exact things that will keep us in bondage.  More money, more time, more, more, more …

More is not where freedom comes from at all.  Freedom has nothing to do with the external circumstances of time, money or our work.

Freedom comes when you can be truly, deeply grateful for whatever is happening in your life right now.  Whatever is happening.  All. of. it.

To show you how serious I am about this.  Here are a few things I’m grateful for this year that I might not have been before I understand that gratitude for EVERYthing is the secret to true freedom.

The summer before last, my ex-husband got a DUI.  With our kids in the car.  You would think I’d be pissed, right?  Actually, I was grateful. GRATEFUL?!?  What?  You might be thinking (or even saying right now).

But, really I was.

For the 6 months before the DUI happened, I had been wondering fairly consistently “should I try to take full custody of the kids?” I really, really, really didn’t want to have to go there.  I knew it could mean a protracted court battle and I wasn’t willing to subject my kids to that. Plus, I wanted them to have a relationship with their dad.  And, frankly, I was working a lot and having them with him half the time worked for me from a business perspective. (It’s hard to admit that last part, but it is true).

I had been in Orlando teaching Personal Family Lawyers for a few days and flew to Virginia to speak to another group of lawyers about building a law business on a new model.  When I landed that morning, there was a message from my sister-in-law telling me everything was okay, but to call her as soon as possible.

That’s never a good sign.

When I called, she let me know that she had my kids.  My ex-husband (her brother) had been arrested for DUI with the kids in the car.

After I got over the initial shock, I felt an odd sense of calm.  My question had been answered.  I would have full custody of the kids and there would be no custody fight.  I didn’t know what else would happen.  But, I did know that.  And I was grateful.

As a result of my gratitude, I was able to respond to the situation in a way that resulted in the near complete healing of my relationship with my ex-husband.

Had I not been able to see the blessing in the situation, I would have been outraged, enraged, and in rage.  The ramifications of that would have been enormous for my family.  Perhaps my children would have been alienated from their dad.  Maybe he would have made it difficult for me to obtain custody of the kids.  Whatever it would have been, it would have been painful.

But, it wasn’t painful. Well, it’s been painful for my ex-husband.  He lost his license and his house and has been staying in a room above my garage while he gets back on his feet.  Even in that though, there’s freedom.

He’s finally found his passion and begun pursuing it.  He no longer feels as if he can’t be truthful or hide what he really wants.  We can have the hard conversations without too much drama.  And, of course, the kids absolutely love having him around.

So, that’s one thing.

Another thing like that is the circumstances that led to me closing my law firm.  My firm generated more than a million bucks in 2006 and 2007.  In 2008, I sold the firm to another lawyer so I could focus my attention on helping more people.

I sold it with the belief that he would take great care of my clients at the standards I had created and continue to build upon the foundation I had laid.

That’s not what happened though.

Within a few months, I began to see signs that he wasn’t handling things the way I did or would have.  I tried to ignore them and pretend it would get better.  It didn’t.  Within 6 months, he had stopped paying the bills.

It had been nearly a year since I’d seen new private clients, the firm had brought in nearly $700,000 for the year anyway, and I had to decide whether to come back in and take the reins at the firm again or close it down.

I decided to close it down and arrange for the Los Angeles area Personal Family Lawyers to service the ongoing needs of my clients.   An extremely painful, difficult decision to make.

That firm was my baby.  I had painstakingly designed the office.  Invested my heart and soul into it.  And it was still making great money.

But, I couldn’t trust that it would be run to the standards I set and so I had to let it go.  It cost me nearly three hundred thousand dollars to do it, not even counting the lost income I would have made if I would have kept the firm in the first place or kept it going.

What’s to be grateful for in that?

So much, it turns out.

As a result of my own experiences with building my law firm, selling it, and then closing it down, I learned a tremendous amount about the right way to set up a business and the wrong way, I got to see what it is that actually puts businesses out of business, and I gained confidence by seeing how hard it actually is to get to the point where a business cannot continue.

I also learned firsthand how important it is for entrepreneurs (especially those of us who identify as creative entrepreneurs) to understand legal, insurance, financial and tax issues.

It’s more than a little embarrassing that I had so many problems in these areas considering I’m a lawyer and I felt as if these were things I “should” have known about.

But I didn’t.  And my lack of knowledge cost me dearly.

And yet, I’m tremendously grateful for it because as a result I decided to learn everything I possibly could about legal, insurance, financial and tax and put all of that knowledge into a system for other entrepreneurs who, like me, are not good at those sorts of things.

This January, after nearly 9 months of intense effort, we will finally launch my LIFT Foundation System for business owners who are tired of wondering whether they have a solid foundation under their business, want to be able to count on their business surviving for the long haul no matter what happens, and are ready to cut through all the legal mumbo jumbo, hard pressure insurance and financial sales and want the straight truth on what is really needed to build a business the right way.

I never would have put this together had I not experienced a lawsuit myself without the proper insurance in place to cover it or made the mistakes I did when I sold my business.  Sure, I could beat myself up for those errors.   That would be normal, right?

But, I choose to be abnormal.  Instead, I’m grateful for these hard knocks.  Yes, they cost me a lot of money, but they taught me far more.  And now I get to teach it to you.

And to me, that’s what life’s all about folks.

This Thanksgiving season, do everything you can to find the blessing in each and everyone of the hardships you’ve experienced this year, this decade or this lifetime.

Write em’ down, thank God for them, and ask yourself how you can share the gift you’ve received from that challenging time in your life to make the world a better place.

Namaste.

I had just graduated law school was newly married and despite living where I grew up, really didn’t have any “in real life” friends.  The few friends I did have in high school were long gone.  And, at only 25, no one else I knew was pregnant yet.

So, I made friends online.

It was perfect.  I had spent the summer as a summer associate being wined and dined by one of the biggest law firms in the world.  I didn’t really have that much work and spent all day in my office surfing the internet researching anything to do with pregnancy and babies.

I stumbled across the November 1999 Moms Email group on Yahoo! Groups or it may have been somewhere else and we migrated over to Yahoo! after a big brouhaha within our original group regarding breastfeeding/formula or maybe it was cry it out/family bed.

Either way, I made my very first group of mommy friends and these amazing women supported me through my pregnancy and the first few years of mom life.  I don’t know what I would have done without them.

In my real life, I was so lonely it was painful. After my clerkship in Miami, I moved to California, away from my family, to start my prestigious full time job as an associate at a big law firm.

I was only 26 years old and from the outside it appeared all my dreams had come true – husband, baby, prestigious job, 6-figure paycheck, etc. …  But, I was so miserable.

My daughter who was just turning 1 cried constantly when I was at work.  My husband was staying home to take care of her and for part of the time his mother (who was dying of cancer) lived with us. I was the only new mom among my law firm colleagues and my husband had very little desire to make any mommy friends.

I felt so alone.  If it wasn’t for my online friends, especially the November 1999 Moms Like Me, I don’t know what I would have done.

Happy Birthday Ladies – each one of you has more than a little credit for the mom I am to Kaia and Noah today.  I love you.

I believe my blog readers are the most intelligent, creative and business-savvy people on the web.

For that reason, I’m asking you to help me make an “executive decision” and choose a logo for my latest venture—LIFT.

• LIFT stands for Legal, Insurance, Financial and Tax. And the LIFT program will help micro business owners get excited about building their business with a LIFT Foundation.

• Millions of small business owners each year lose money or face serious setbacks in their businesses because of lawsuits, conflicts, audits, bookkeeping issues, unnecessary tax bills and having the wrong type and amount of insurance in place.

• Lack of knowledge about these issues personally cost me nearly $750,000.  Combine that with my law school and undergraduate education and I’ve got a million dollar education to share with you about these topics.

I’m really excited about the launch of LIFT, but of course I can go no further until this logo is chosen.

So here are your choices below (double- click on the image to enlarge it if you’re having a hard time viewing the designs):

Please leave me a comment letting me know your preferred font choice (each column has it’s own font) as well as your preferred color scheme (each row has it’s own color). Also, and this is very important, please let me know whether you are a current business owner or an aspiring business owner. And, of course, if you have any other thoughts/feelings, please let me know that too.

Based on your feedback I’ll make my final decision!  Thank you so much in advance.  I can’t wait to hear what you think.

I’ve got a hot boyfriend who loves me and talking about business and growing spiritually and loves my kids to boot. I get to be on TV, write books, take classes at Agape and make a difference in the world.

And yet despite all the amazingness, I have periods (not necessarily short periods either) of some real unhappiness. Painful unhappiness.

Times when despite all of the great stuff happening in my life, all I can see are the not great things that are happening. Times of great frustration, annoyance, irritation, and even despair.

Can you relate?

I haven’t talked about this before because honestly I’ve felt shame about it. Plus, a part of me thought it was just the way things had to be while I was building my businesses and under a lot of stress to support my family. That it would go away when [fill in the blank].

But now, things are better than they’ve ever been and tons of the “whens” have happened that were supposed to clear the blues away and yet here they are – still present.

I’m not in financial fear any longer, I know I’m going to do all the things in my life that I want to do before I die, I have a strong connection with God, a great relationship with my ex and my kids are easier to be with than ever before.

Despite all that, the yuck within me is still here.

When I feel it, my habit has been to look for a reason and blame those around me. Used to be my husband. Then, it was my employees, my business, my mom. These days, it’s usually my boyfriend or my nanny because they are in my space the most. I’d blame the kids, if I could, but I already feel enough guilt as a working mom that I can’t saddle them with blame too.

I suspect by now you are probably somewhat shocked. I come across publicly as one of the happiest people you know.

Very few people would ever know I experience this yuckiness. I’m the poster child for happiness. I was even the butt of a joke on Twitter when some guy said I’d be a-okay if only I had some downers. [ed. note: I don't think that was the joke exactly and I can't find it, but it was funny and you get the point]

I even hid this side of me from my boyfriend for the first several months we were together. Not intentionally. But, I was just so warm and bubbly all the time back when we were first meeting. At least when he was around. I kept telling him there was this other side of me. But, he never saw it.

He’s seen it now though. And, it isn’t pretty.

It’s not like I’m a mega-bitch or anything. At least, I don’t think so. It’s more like I’m hyper-focused on work and cold. Inside, I feel numb. I don’t want to snuggle, or have sex, or go dancing, or do tantra or exercise. I want to talk about work and only work and sit in front of my computer and clear out my inbox.

My mind tells me I’ll relax and have fun later. Later never comes. Or if it does, it’s spread out quarterly. Binge relaxation, I call it. It’s about as healthy as every other kind of bingeing.

From a business perspective, I’m most productive during these periods of yuck. At least that’s what my mind tells me. New businesses are created, new websites launched, new products brainstormed, new books written. And so much gets done.

After each launch, I promise myself I’ll rest. But then more ideas come. And I get busy again.

I can’t live like this anymore. I deserve better.

Fortunately, I know what the answer is and it’s not more money and it’s not more theory and it’s not more information or education or affirmations.

It’s time for serious self-discipline. I’m no longer willing to settle for a life of unpredictable mood swings. I’ve allowed a belief system to be created in my mind that says I am at the mercy of my moods. In order to experience the highs, I had to experience the lows.

It’s just the way life is, I had convinced myself.  LIE.

I’ve been tolerating these lows in my life since I was a teenager, placing blame instead of taking responsibility for them and doing something about it.

I CAN experience a life in which I feel joy bubbling up on a consistent basis no matter what the external circumstances of my life look like and the shadow becomes what’s fleeting.

For that to happen, I have to abandon the thoughts that I’ll relax and have fun and be happy when we go to Hawaii. I have to take full responsibility for my well-being now and accept that if I can’t be happy now, I never will be. Not in Hawaii. Not after the next launch. Not never. The time is NOW. There is no other time besides now. This is what Eckhart Tolle has been trying to tell me for years.

It’s taken me a long while to get it and really understand his message, bodily. I do now. Fortunately, I also know exactly what I need to do and it’s not going to be easy.

I need to give myself what I’ve been craving more than anything else and is in the most limited of supply – me.

What does giving myself “me” look like?

* making conscious food choices everyday instead of grabbing one of the cookies the kids baked and popping it in my mouth for breakfast or a mid-day snack.

* it means exercising for 20 minutes every day, no matter what. Even (especially) when I don’t want to.

* daily practice of something uplifting spiritually or emotionally.

* going to sleep as frequently as possible by 10p.

Each of these things sounds ridiculously simple and yet they are the things I find most difficult in my life.

My mind screams to me that I don’t have the time for any of these things.

Here’s some of the BS my mind/ego spouts:

* 20 minutes of exercises really takes 30-40 minutes when all is said and done and you don’t have time and plus you look good in clothes anyway, so who needs it.

* one cookie won’t hurt you and it’s too time-consuming to figure out what food should be in the house and what shouldn’t and the nanny is doing a good enough job at heating up the Trader Joe’s each night. Plus, Trader Joe’s is pretty healthy.

* Asleep by 10p? Not possible. The kids aren’t asleep sometimes until after 9:30p by the time all the before bed kvetching stops. When will I get time to write? Read? Be on my computer for fun and not revenue-generating activity?

I need to be doing less and all of these things feel like I’ll be adding a whole lot more on to my already full plate.

The Truth is that my businesses are finally at a point where paying more attention to ME will pay bigger rewards for them than it would be for me to create anything more to do with the business. It’s time to let it be.

It’s time to let the passive revenue engine run, for me to create a consistent self-care schedule, which must take priority, and to say no to things that interfere with it.

I’m scared to death of that. But, this whole journey is about being afraid and doing it anyway, right?

So, over the next several weeks I’ll be taking you inside the journey for real. I’ll be sharing with you the self care schedule that I’m able to carve out, whether or not it’s working and where I’m not fulfilling on my promise to myself. Perhaps, if I’m writing to you about it, I’ll stay more on track and focused.

I hope you’ll root me on, tell all your friends and if you decide you want to come along and do what I’m doing, let me know how it’s going for you.

I’m going to be making these changes in the context of two coaching type programs

JJ Virgin, celebrity fitness trainer on Dr. Phil and member of my diamond coaching program with Ali Brown, is coaching me through the health side of things – eating right, exercising and sleeping.

Kristen and David Morelli, as part of their 40 days and 40 nights program, will be coaching me to raise my energetic vibration and while their program is about breaking through money blocks, I’m seeing it as breaking through my emotional blocks to happiness.  I have no doubt more money will follow.

I just noticed though that it’s 10p and time for me to go to bed, so we’ll have to continue this journey tomorrow!

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons Artist Irargerich

Now, this dog trainer had his act together.  He charges $875 for 5 sessions, which is pretty good considering most dog trainers make about $30/hour.  His schedule is booked weeks out and he’s clearly got the whole thing scripted out and down.

Of course, because I can’t help but coach everyone I meet about either starting a business or expanding their business, I immediately start talking to him about expanding his business by licensing others to use his systems and creating a dog training franchise empire.

Each time he came back for one of our sessions, I coached him a bit more and he got more and more excited.  He had considered writing a book or doing some TV in the past, but he’s so busy working all the time, he’d never gotten around to it.  By licensing others to use his systems, he could stop trading time for dollars and free up some time.

At the last of our 5 sessions, he admitted to me why hadn’t ever moved forward with any of his big dreams to expand his business and probably wouldn’t now either.  What he admitted is something that holds most people back and could be holding you back too.

It made me absolutely, positively, totally grateful for the kids in high school who made my life miserable.  Back then, I was devastated. Today, I’m grateful because it’s allowed me to experience massive success and take action where many others can’t.

The kids who excluded me taught me to deal with being judged, criticized, hated, taunted, teased, and bullied.  As it was happening, there were times I wanted to die.  But, I made it through and it made me strong.

I went within myself to discover the truth.  Was there something really wrong with me or was it them? How could I hold onto myself in the face of their cajoling?  Should I conform?  Hide?  Disappear? Or grow?

Through my introspection and inquiry, I discovered and accepted there was something about me that was threatening to them and they dealt with this threat by being mean.  I came to see it as a reflection on them,  not me.  To survive, I learned to embody that truth and stand tall in the face of yuck.

As a result, I am able to put myself out there as an entrepreneur in ways most others can’t.

The dog trainer made me realize how important this was when he told me that he hasn’t moved forward with his big dreams because he’s too sensitive.  The pain of criticism is too intense for him to bear.

He sees the lawsuits, flames and barbs that are tossed at Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer, and he can’t bear to experience it.  I understand.  Just imagine how Suze Orman feels when she reads this and this.

In the past several months as I’ve gotten more exposure, I’ve experienced some serious ugliness – criticism, lawsuits, threats, barbs, all of it.

And because I experienced and dealt with that pain in high school and discovered the truth of it and what it meant about me, I’ve been able to mostly let it roll off.  Mostly.

So, thank you mean people from high school,you have prepared me well to carry out my mission.  And thanks to your preparation of me, I’ll be able to make a big difference in the world.

My husband was staying home with our baby girl while I left the house at 6:30a to beat Los Angeles traffic and got home around 6:30p (if I was lucky), which was early by firm standards.

I had no time to make friends. I tried to find playgroups my husband would participate in, but he’s not a joiner to begin with and even less so with a group of moms!

I tried to hook him up with daddy groups, but this was before the stay at home dad became in fashion and there was slim pickings. It seemed most of them were centered around Agoura Hills, which was about an hour from where we lived.

He got together once with this one guy from Beverly Hills. They met at a park. His 2 year old was close to reading, ours was barely talking. My husband never went back. He couldn’t take the competition. I understood.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been that lonely in my life. I’m talking capital “L” lonely.

Just remembering back to that time fills me with sadness. On the weekends, I would pack up the baby for the beach and watch my husband surf.

With longing and envy, I’d watch the small groups of families with their children happily playing together while me and my little one sat by ourselves. I couldn’t figure out how to insert myself into their cute little enclaves of happiness without feeling like an intruder.

So I sat, sneaked glances and eavesdropped, hoping to come up with an opening that would be the perfect thing to say at just the right time.

I never did.

It all changed when I started looking at preschools for my daughter.

We found the perfect school and it was right down the street from our house.

I called it mud school because when I went for the tour, there were several kids playing naked in the mud. It was just our type of school!

Just before my daughter’s third birthday, she finally got to go to school and it was there that I finally found my tribe of women.

Joanne, who introduced me to God, was my first spiritual teacher, held me in her arms as I gave birth to my son (herself 6 months pregnant) and turned out to be my primary source of peace and hope as I navigated my divorce.

Martha, who hosted my beautiful blessingway ceremony prior to the birth of my son, had my daughter over to her house every day for months after he was born and attended La Leche League conferences and meetings with me (we were both leaders and radical breastfeeding advocates).

Judy, who I could always count on for a laugh, a sarcastic comment, and of late, a shared spiritual path.

Lisa, who had twins after I was done giving birth to my babies and gave me the joy of helping her take care of them on the night they were born.

These were my girlfriends. I had never had girlfriends in this way before and it was transformational.

Today, our kids are no longer babies. Four of us are divorced. We are each on a deep and everlasting spiritual path. Martha and Joanne live in Colorado. Judy in Ventura. Lisa is immersed in her twins. Joanne, Judy and Lisa are homeschooling. Martha is in law school. I’m busy as heck building big businesses.

And yet there is a bond between us that will never fade.  A bond created by raising children together.  A bond created by a shared parenting philosophy.  A bond created by supporting each other through births, deaths and divorces.

Tonight, for the first time in a lonnnggg time, I got to spend the evening with four of my best girlfriends, not as a business owner, or a TV expert or an author.  Just as me.   Boy, it felt good.

Can you relate when I talk about numbness?

Looking back on my 35 years with honesty, I’ve been mostly numb for a lot of it because the pain of feeling was too intense.

At 28, after years in an unhappy marriage that I was committed to staying in at all costs, I decided it would be fine if I just never had sex again.  That’s how shut down I was.

Fortunately, I had an experience that made me realize how crazy that was and just how numb I had become.  My body had literally shut off and when it began to come back alive, it was a massive shock to my system.

Shortly thereafter, I was divorced and rediscovering how to connect with myself, what it felt like to live inside my body, how to allow my body to become my own internal compass, and find all the answers I had spent years looking outside of myself for.

I’ll be sharing a whole lot more about this in the future and how you can turn your body into your primary guidance system, but for now, I want to let you in on what I’ve discovered about how I’ve been inadvertently passing on this numbness to my kids and you might be too.

Recently, we’ve been having some challenges come up with our nanny.

The long and the short of it for the purpose of this discussion is that Kaia doesn’t like my nanny.  Now, this is a huge inconvenience because our nanny is very good at taking care of the kids, getting dinner on the table and keeping things happening in an orderly fashion in our house.  Finding a new nanny and getting her trained is going to be a pain in the a$$, so I’ve been exploring with Kaia whether there is someway we can make this work.

My first inclination was to brush off her feelings completely.  “Oh, she’s not going to like anyone we hire because it’s not me” I told myself.

Then, I tried to give Kaia all the examples of the nice things the nanny does for her and helps her with.

Finally, I started asking her why.

Her response, “I don’t know, mommy, I just don’t feel like I like her.”  And that’s when it hit me that I was being presented with the perfect opportunity to honor my daughter’s feelings and not pass on the numbness that so many of us experience as part of our daily, unexamined existence.

If I continued to dismiss Kaia’s feelings or try to get her to change them out of my own desire for convenience, I would be passing down the inheritance of numbness.  Instead, I made the conscious decision to break the cycle.

So, even though it’s a massive inconvenience, we are in the market for a new nanny. If you happen to be looking for a great nanny in the South Bay area, I’ve got someone for you.  She’s super sweet, reliable, and trustworthy.  She’s great, my kid just doesn’t like her and because I want to teach her to trust her feelings, I’m going to honor that.

I haven’t been writing because I’ve been in a dark space and I haven’t wanted to share that because there’s so much amazing stuff happening in my life that I’m in gratitude for and I want to keep my attention on that.

And yet, the darkness is there too.  I’ve been keeping it hidden.

I told myself I was keeping it hidden because I didn’t want to focus on it, didn’t want to make it real, didn’t want to grow it.

But, by keeping it hidden I inadvertently lead you to believe that your life has to be perfect for you to step into the greatness of who you really are.

When, in truth, it’s just the opposite.  You can only step into your greatness if you don’t wait for the darkness to dispel.  You’ve heard the saying tha the light is most visible as it shines through the darkness.

It applies to your light too.

No matter what’s going on in your life, you CAN be thinking big.  There’s nothing to hold you back now except your own BS (belief systems).

It’s never the right time.  Just like it’s never the right time to have a baby.  It’s never the right time to think bigger about who you are.

In fact, there’s no better time than now.  Because what I can tell you is if you wait until all the challenges are gone, you’ll be at the end of your life before you realize you’re out of time.

Ok, so I know you are dying to know about this darkness.

What darkness am I experiencing in my life?

Closing down my law firm has brought me face to face with the darkness of people who feel abandoned by me.  People who feel left behind.

I promised a lifetime relationship and now I’m no longer going to be their lawyer.

And while I have trained Personal Family Lawyers throughout the Southern California area who will step in and provide the ongoing service I promised, there are people who are not happy with that.

Rather than expressing their disappointment and sadness as that, they’ve turned their pain into anger and threats.

Susan, my Client Services Director, who has borne the brunt of these attacks, is a saint.  She’s trying to shield me while at the same time conveying the messages.  And with each new report, I have a choice.

I can react in kind with my own indignance (made that word up!) or I can recognize another opportunity to be more of who I am, feel compassion for the person who is unhappy and remember the Truth.

I have done everything I possibly can to ease this transition.  The truth is, I’m no longer the best lawyer for my clients.

It’s hard to acknowledge that, but it’s true.

They deserve to have a lawyer who is in her office, focused on their needs, at least 4 days per week, not traveling around the country constantly, teaching and doing tv appearances.  They deserve a lawyer who has an office they can go to, who will be available to talk with them when needed.  They deserve a lawyer who has a team to answer quick questions and will be able to sit with them and go over their planning decisions on a regular basis and keep things up to date.

My clients deserve a Personal Family Lawyer and there is just no way I can be that lawyer and fulfill my life’s purpose at the same time.

I tried everything I could to bring a lawyer into my office who would be able to keep things going for my clients, but my standards are high and ultimately I could not find someone in Redondo Beach who was ready to step up in a big way build upon what I had created.

So now, my clients need to choose a lawyer in San Pedro or Santa Monica or Sherman Oaks to find the same kind of service and ongoing relationship.

And that’s painful.  I hear ya.  I loved the office in Redondo Beach, also.  I loved working with you, also.  I’ll miss you, also.

What’s so suprising to me is that a few of my clients are expressing their pain with threats and anger.

I haven’t written about it because I was trying to pretend that darkness didn’t exist.  But, it does.  And, I have to acknowledge that and bring compassion to it and not hide it away.

By hiding it away, I don’t allow you to see that you too can shine your light through the darkness.  It leads you to believe that everything has to be perfect for you to go big.  And, that’s the exact opposite of the truth.

Fortunately, I have seen rays of light through this darkness that have given me huge hope.

Here’s an example:

I was working with a woman named Helen on a book project.  I promised to write a book as part of a series of books she is creating.  She’s been asking me for the first two chapters for two months now and I just have not had time to get to it.

Between closing down the firm, working on the TV show treatment, training lawyers, raising kids, being a girlfriend, appearing on TV and trying to spend a little time every now and then taking care of myself, I just couldn’t get to it.

So, finally, I wrote to Helen and I told her I was just not going to be able to participate and I was so sorry.

I held my breath waiting for her reaction.  Given the feedback I’ve been getting from a few of my clients as I’ve honestly told them I just can’t do it all, I expected anger on her part.  I expected to get an email saying “Alexis, you promised you’d do this.  Now, I’m going to hold you to it.  And, if you don’t do it, I’m calling my lawyer.”

I braced myself for that response, in fact.

To my great joy, that’s not what I heard at all.  Just the opposite.

Helen responded “Alexis, congratulations!  We are so excited for everything that is happening in your life!”  She went on to let me know that she wanted to support me in what I have going on in my life and if we could find  a way to work together, great.

We’ve got a call scheduled for Feb. 25 to talk about how we can work together anyway.

This is the type of woman I want to do business with, I will make time for and cannot wait to build amazing things with.

What’s so exciting is that I am finding more and more people like that in my life.    And so I recognize that the mean people are slowly but surely disappearing and this experience has given me the opportunity to uplevel the people I do business with and share my life with.

Yes, its scary.  But, I’m being afraid and doing it anyway.

By the way, if you are ready to step into something bigger and just need a little hand-holding, encouragement, motivation and guidance to make it through the rought spots, I’m launching a monthly program that will help you do just that.  The first month’s free.  Check it out here.