I blocked off the entire morning (and I do mean the *entire* morning) to carve out my intention for 2021 and redo my ‘7 Pillars’ exercise.

The 7 Pillar exercise is a powerful manifestation tool. To complete it, all you need is a pencil and paper and a generous dollop of time. The 7 Pillars represent 7 different areas of your life: Your Career, Romantic Relationships, Family Relationships, Physical Well-Being, Emotional Well-Being, Spiritual Well-being, Community Contribution/Social Relationships.

Each category gets broken down into three separate segments:

•What I have

•What I want

•What I can contribute

And you just fill out each section with your intentions.

When I looked over my 2018, 7 Pillars, I noticed that most of “What I Want” were things and experiences that I now have actually obtained. If there was anything left on the list, it didn’t really resonate with me anymore. It all truly all worked out in the best way. I learned. I grew. I expanded. And I now I move on.

TIPS:

- Stay away from shorthand or abbreviations. You want this to be complete as possible

- Write it all out on pen and paper. Your penmanship carries a vibration unique to your own and will help call your intentions toward you.

- Write in complete sentences and as if you already have what you’re calling in. So, for example, if you’re calling in a raise under ‘Career, what I want,’ you’d want to write something like, “I am making xx dollars more than what I make now.”

- Keep in mind this isn’t about calling in wishes. It’s to help you call in what you can back up with your physical, emotional, and mental body through dedication, work, and practice. You’re asking the Universe to show up for you, but in turn, you are asked to show up for your cause too.

- This exercise is best suited for long-haul. Think long term goals when you’re dreaming.

I’ve completed this exercise twice over the past four years (once every two years), and it has never let me down.

Ask me questions if you got em!

EXAMPLE:

• Career

  a. What I have:

  • I have a career that I feel safe and secure in.

  b. What I want:

  • I have found a position that honors my drive for serving the greater good.

  c. What I can contribute:

  • I can contribute my passion and enthusiasm for creating consumer connections.

When I was eleven-years-old, my family moved to a small, southern Alberta town about a two-hour drive north from Calgary. My mother was remarrying her third husband, a man we had only met a handful of times. Her first husband, my father, had abandoned us on the commune once the exodus began. My mother, devastated by his departure, abandoned us too in retaliation. She met her second husband during her travels, but that marriage was cut short by a game of Russian roulette. My mother swore she would never remarry again, but the vow gave way to the promise of stability during a time in our life when we were the most unstable. Despite the circumstances, he was a jovial person. While anyone would have been better than the bruisers and coke pushers she was notorious for finding, he was kind to her and to us. That was enough for me.

The new space of stability provided just enough solid ground for my mother to begin falling apart. A steady income meant an uninterrupted access to beer. Soon she climbed her way to the top of the ranks of the misfit society’s queen of the party. Even back then, I could feel her crash coming.

Our home was not a safe one for me. I had no way to protect myself against her drunken rages or the hands of the people she brought in. The only way I knew to adjust to the changes was to change myself. And so, I chose to grow up. I changed my water for coffee, candy for cigarettes, sodas for alcohol. By eleven years-old, I was partying alongside the best of them, never once being asked or guided to explore how I felt on inside. I was too young to consider the consequences of my actions and too heartbroken to learn from them. It was a traumatic cycle that kept me spinning in its reels for years.

When I wasn’t drinking alcohol, I was drinking coffee. It’s rich brown waters nourished a pathway to real connections not frayed by a heavy buzz. Rivers of coffee carved out conversations in the bedrock of my immovable pain with adults in my community who took the time to treat me as a friend, not like a child. It was over coffee that deals were made to secure my lodging and food in trade for my being a nanny or housekeeper. It was coffee that became the true sacred waters of my life.

Today I place fresh coffee on my altar to celebrate all the help in my life that a simple cup of coffee helped to bring. 

I celebrate the sharing of a cup. 

I celebrate its rich, bitter beans— a perfect analogy to my own life. 

I celebrate all the connections made, especially those lost and forgotten to time, for I know they were the softest moments my life had to offer me. 

My prayer for today: “May I always remember how a simple act of connectedness can change a life, and may I have the courage to be that person for another when I’m called.”

After working with hundreds of people over the past two years, I’ve come to conclude that Hawk is the most cited figurehead one claims on their spiritual journey. I am no different here. Hawk was the first animal I started paying attention to during my own awakening back in 2013. Its well-timed appearance is something I still revere to this day.

During one of the darkest times of my life, Hawk became a beacon of Hope. My awakening experience was anything but gentle, a signifier perhaps for how badly lost I was from my true path and purpose. Watching him soar through the skies gifted me a moment of respite from my worries and the excruciating pain I felt in my body. Finding one of his feathers felt like an omen of more positive days to come. I collected many during that time, many of which have been given away to share its magic with others feeling adrift too.

Now, Hawk medicine serves as an omen for me to pay attention to what’s happening in my life and to seek a broader perspective; look up, look down, look left and right, forward and back, before I take action or solidify a decision. The times I have paid attention to heed this helping warning, I have found important information hiding in plain sight, information I was too blinded by emotion to see at the moment.

By placing a Hawk feather on my altar today, I am paying tribute to the deep magic of our journey together, but also, I am acknowledging that I have earned Poise along my way. And I have all those wonder-filled moments of respecting the power of a pause to thank for it.

My prayer for today: “May I be open enough to see help in the most unlikely sources. And may be gracious and humble enough to accept it.”

And so it is.

Happy Saturday everyone.

I normally don’t make resolutions because I always break them midway through. Then I feel ashamed for lacking the tenacity and grit to finish the resolution strong. It’s really a negative process for me.

I did download though around a month ago that I could make a special altar in my home and each day add something new to celebrate me in all my humanness. This is a really big deal to me because my brain is anything but kind to me. Yes, despite all the work, despite all the memes telling me to be different, despite all the training I’ve gone through to “be better”, still it resists. My brain is my brain. It’s chemically imbalanced and remains strong against all my measures to soften it. Yet I do have hope that one day it will change so I can find rest in myself too. And that is a big part of why I choose to listen to the quiet whispers urging me to create something special now.

For the next thirty days, I will create a mandala, piece by piece. Each day I will add something new until at the end of the month, it will be a beautiful celebration of my life as I see it.

I’ve decided to add a new prayer to each day in this practice. I’ve also decided to share this work with all of you. If this is something that resonates with you, please join me by posting yours in the comments. We can be accountability buddies. Lord knows I’ll need one.

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So on this first day, I add a very special altar cloth. This altar cloth bears an animal helper very dear to my heart and the cloth itself was a gift by a close friend.

The candleholder was a precious item of my childhood, thoughtfully given to me by one of the families who took me in during my homelessness.

Both items celebrate the gift of kindness shown to me in my life. Kindness that most definitely saved my life from a very early age. And that for sure is a cause to celebrate.

My prayer for today: “May I rejoice in the sweetness of the human heart life has already offered me. And may I remain open to all that kindness that is ready to be mine still.”