Normally, I like to have my blog mostly written before the day I post it. 

Today, I started with nothing. 

Normally, I identify as a life coach.

Today, I was a singer.

I made a mistake with my time zone conversion and wasn’t there for one of my precious clients.

This is a sin I used to find unforgivable. The temptation to beat myself up is still there. I take these commitments extremely seriously.

But the Universe had other plans. I agreed to sing with my neighbor at a morning gig, thinking I’d be back in time, but I had one less hour than I thought.

In the extra hour that came from my mistake, magic came out of us. 

When I got here a few weeks ago, I planned to REALLY FOCUS on coaching. This is where I’ve focused my career efforts for the last 6 years. It’s a well-worn road.

But the Universe had other plans. While I was moving in, my next-door neighbor poked his head out and introduced himself. He’s a guitarist who gigs all over town almost every day. And actually, we’d jammed together once before. (I had also made the mistake of announcing to the Universe I was finally going to learn guitar. Okay, message received.)

Music was my first passion. Since before I could talk, I loved to sing, but I had deep, internalized shame about performing. So I buried it and was too afraid to do it in public.

Until 2019, when I was 29.

As an art therapist and a creative life coach, I’d been helping other people overcome their fears and take creative risks for years. 

I couldn’t look myself in the face and keep running from my own insides.

So I worked up the courage to perform at my first open mic. I was terrified. I was sick to my stomach for weeks and would nervously practice to nail every word. 

Because making a mistake on stage felt…unforgivable. 

I got up there and made a big, obvious mistake. I forgot the chorus to a song I’d sung hundreds of times. Exactly what I was afraid of.

But I survived. 

Today, five years later, because of that brave girl who faced her BIG fear, I get up on stage and make mistakes three times a week. And I’ve taken the very scary step of announcing to the Universe that now, I want to get paid for it. 

If you are brave enough to know what you want, and you’re brave enough to say it, magic happens. You just have to let go of what you think it’s supposed to look like and be willing to receive it. 

I am a recovering independence addict and know-it-all. 

I want to have all the answers, do everything on my own and never have to ask for help.

I grew up as an only child, and my parents were pretty controlling. 

So I either struggled until I figured things out myself, or someone swooped in with their agenda and took over.

There was no differentiation between being helped and being controlled. I couldn’t ask for help, and keep my selfhood.

So if I couldn’t get help and maintain my dignity and agency…I’ll keep my dignity and agency, thank you. 

And I thought I had to know everything. Love and approval from the adults in my life depended on me proving my intellect. I still feel the scars of this every day. 

So here I was, thinking I have to do it all on my own, know everything, and not let on that I can’t and I don’t, because it was too threatening. 

I was fighting upstream and burning out, carrying this heavy burden alone. 

We have an individualistic culture that reinforces this conditioning and keeps us lonely and depressed. In 2022, after a powerfully healing group retreat, my blinders came off. I could suddenly see how lonely my life was. I lived alone and I worked alone. And I live in a country that rewards those things as status symbols.

Feeling interconnected is THE NUMBER ONE THING that’s healed my depression and anxiety.

If deep down, you don’t want to receive (it’s too disempowering or scary or you feel undeserving) it blocks the flow of energy. I’m guessing you know how good it feels to give. What if you couldn’t because no one ever received?

It makes me cry to think about how much goodness and love I was blocking.

This was also the way I approached helping others. 

I was still carrying the conditioning that it was too shameful to be helped or to learn. That it somehow invalidated my ability to be a helper. I wasn’t strong or smart enough if I needed support. 

But, I also believed in the help I was giving, it felt incredible to be trusted to offer it and I was seeing the results.

This was the deep, invisible paradox of how I was living. And why I kept burning out. And why I was exhausted. And why I was unhappy.

And if I think my job as a coach is to give so hard I deplete myself, run my clients’ lives or give them all the answers, what am I really doing? Disempowering them. Trying to prove something to myself. Replicating the harm that was done to me.

It’s my job to show them their dignity. Empower them to ask for help. Uncover the wisdom their own bodies hold.

Life is so much more beautiful and easier and funner when we surrender, put down whatever baggage we think we have to hold, and receive the mysteries of life that we are a part of.

Thank you for choosing to receive this.

The more open we are to receive, the more we receive.

It’s pretty simple. So leave some room and ask for help. You deserve it.

I think this is my third post now about receiving. I keep learning how important it is.

This time last week, a very special rabbit named Cosmo died. He was 9 years old. He’d been sick multiple times, and this time, he didn’t come out the other side. 

At 6 months old, he was a feisty and fearful little escape artist. He was found abandoned in a New York City apartment building cowering in the corner (his favorite place to cower).

I took one look at this terrified little creature, hiding at the back of the cage in the shelter, having clumsily bolted behind his box of hay, and said, yes, that one.

He was with me for 8 and a half years. All this time, I thought I was taking care of him.

2 weeks ago, he started sneezing.

I was leaving for Mexico in a couple days and the boarder was going to bring him to the vet that same day. But he was getting worse leading up to my departure.

The night before he died, I watched him eat and struggle and sneeze. I sobbed, and occasionally laughed at how weird and gross his mouth sounds were.

I hoped it wasn’t the end, but I knew I needed to be with him and express what I needed to in case it was.

I sat on the floor next to him and thanked him for the time we had spent together. 

I thanked him for his presence in my life. I thanked him for moving across the country with me. I thanked him for getting me all the way to Oaxaca and back. I hadn’t planned to take him on that trip, but he needed intense care to remove an abscess. I had to do warm compresses twice a day and squeeze puss out of a tube coming out of his cheek. Then after several weeks, remove the tube myself. It was disgusting.

But those moments, where I got to care for him so intimately, were some of the most meaningful. They were an initiation into a deeper mothering than I had ever experienced.

I noticed myself wanting confirmation that I had done a good enough job. Feeling guilt and self-doubt over the times I wasn’t there or didn’t know what was best. Recognizing that, I emailed my own mother, letting her know she had done her job well, that I was a complete person, thriving and standing on my own two feet. I forgave her, I apologized, and I offered permission for her to release any fear or doubt she may have been holding.

I turned back to Cosmo, having released what I’d been carrying in both directions, as the mother, and the child. I looked in his eyes, my heart open and free, and just listened. 

The air between our eyes warped, like how the air warbles over a flame. Two distinct pulses. I recognize this as energy moving between us. He shifted into a different posture. 

I knew intuitively that he had received what I expressed, and he was now giving something to me. 

Because his nose was stuffy, I could hear each exhale. The rhythm was consistent and specific. He was using his breathing to soothe me. 

From his sweet little furry body, he was beaming his breath and attention, creating a frequency of love, assurance and nurturing. FOR ME. 

I was stunned.

Trying not to assume I knew better than the wisdom of nature, I laid down, closed my eyes and accepted it.

His breathing maintained its rhythm, steady and uninterrupted, as if to say, yes, it is still okay for you to receive. I am here.

I let his energy flow into my body. It felt like magic. It felt like mothering. It felt like love. 

I felt my body progressively relax. Starting with my heart, softening and washing over me in waves. Relaxing my own breathing and my chest, then my throat, my neck, my mouth, my jaw, and releasing tension I’d been holding for as long as I can remember. 

I felt cold air in parts of my nose that had never been open. I cried, humbled by the power of this deep, instinctual wisdom. And his generosity in offering it to me. 

When I got caught thinking “How did I not realize this the whole time” or “I don’t deserve this,” it disrupted the connection. And he simply kept giving, so I let it go, in honor of what was unfolding beyond my understanding.

Putting down my doubts, my stories and my fears unlocked a deeper connection to this being and the insane magic of this weird, wild world. 

Cosmo, I love you. Thank you. I will continue to receive. And I will share your magic rabbit medicine.