We can still love and decide we don’t always have to stay as close as we once were. I don’t know why it has to be all or nothing. But it does too often than not..Why? Because somewhere in our life we started wanting to control how others showed up as. If they caused us friction then we decided they didn’t belong in our life.

I've been reflecting on family lately. Not just my own, but the way we, as human beings, have slowly allowed the connections that once brought us together to fracture.

Over the last ten years, I have witnessed this within my own family I grew up with. Holidays that once brought us together became fewer and fewer.

 And isn't that something?

 A woman teaching Truth Voice Reclamation while swallowing pieces of her own truth.

 There's my bullshit. And I'm calling it out.

 Because I don't believe we can keep talking about love while refusing to look at the ways we withhold it.

 I don't believe we can demand authenticity from others while punishing them for being different.

I have trusted God my entire existence.

But now I find myself asking a different question.

How do I trust me?

How do I trust the soul that has carried me this far?

Do you know what it feels like to trust your soul?

Not your fear.

Not your conditioning.

Not the voices that tell you to run.

But the deeper knowing beneath all of it.

So here l am.

Choosing living over dying.

Choosing the belief that my life will be bigger than the stories I inherited.

Choosing to believe that perhaps my beliefs were never meant to have limits.

We came into this world not just to breathe, eat, and procreate. We came in with a purpose and this purpose is transformation. Our Soul signed up to reveal some pretty amazing gifts hidden within each of us. Oh sure, some gifts will be obvious but there are those really special gifts your soul chose to transform and this is where your your core of who you are waits. In order to uncover those gifts, we must first face our shadows.

We become a mother finding that one truth of our existence. 

There is no greater love than the ones that find their way into our arms, the ones that depend on you and the ones who gift you with the opportunity to grow alongside them. To grow in ways you would never have thought possible. We announce we are going to be a better mom than our own mother quite often. At least I did and I am certain my own children have as well. 

What is a spiritual smackdown you ask?

It is a breaking open with everything you hold inside and your heart just bleeds with all the faith you have been carrying around your entire life. It is a time of deep surrender when you know part of you is questioning God and the other part is saying I am trying my best to trust. You have no clue if you will make it through but you have no choice but to lean in on your higher power. In my case it is always the Creator. This is the darkness we all fear and the light we all yearn for during these times. 

The container that held all of my life including family and friends began to shrink exponentially. I focused on the only thing that mattered—healing what needed to be healed so it didn’t become my children’s burden. I knew that if I didn’t do the work then they would have to.

Assumption is a shadow in disguise — it wears the mask of certainty but is built on fear. It’s a silent wedge that disconnects hearts before words even have a chance to reach them.

And that realization — it brings tears. Not just for the child I was, but for the mother I became. The woman who gave her children the world while quietly wondering what it would have felt like to receive it. I have been grieving the Mother, not just the child.

I wasn’t thanking the Creator for taking her—I was thanking him for the chance I had been given to heal with her before she left, before she was even diagnosed.

I had no choice as I found myself standing on the precipice of what could be — my last defining moment, my last chance. I wanted to show up for it, there was no other choice. I wanted it so badly because I just didn’t know if I would be able to breathe for another four years.

There are places in this world that don’t just feel new or exciting — they feel familiar, eerily familiar. Like a whisper from the past, a dream you’re remembering in pieces. 

So I began the search within myself and after the endless layers peeled back, lifetimes remembered, traumas healed, and wounds excavated — my deepest soul lesson finally revealed itself.

Unexpected emotions surfaced — Old wounds and stories of rejection, of not belonging. My inner child who already felt betrayed by her breath was being activated, but in a way I did not expect. These feelings were felt deeply.

We all are spiritual teachers and students. We all are meant to discover who we are and what is our soul’s purpose. If we remain open to the awareness of what is being shown to us, then we will discover our truth.

Yes the tears flowed as I looked up to see my Mother’s mural and at that exact moment I knew both of my parents were standing beside me in my shoppe.

When I first had the vision of what I wanted to create here in Brighton Lu was a big part of it. She had the calming capabilities and the love that she gave with such a spunky tenderness.