Juicy Joy – A Personal Development Book of Authenticity and Self-Love

Wow. Just back today, but still all amped-up energetically from my amazing retreat in South Carolina! We used Tej Steiner’s heart circle technique for creating an amplified field to ensure that all the participants had life-altering experiences . . . and they did! Please check out Tej (in Ashland, Oregon) if you don’t know about this fantastic modality, and buy his Heart Circles book if you want to try it in your own group work. It is a very affective model for bringing people into their hearts so that authentic healing can take place. Christian was amazing, as I knew he would be. He is undeniably destined for a meteoric rise to top-notch fame in this industry, along with his partner, Kami. A spectacular week!

I missed my kids so much, and now have only tomorrow with them before I leave again . . . this time to drive up to Tampa for the Hay House ICDI Conference. Almost nothing could pull me away from them so fast, but I love this conference more than breathing, and this year it will be juicier than ever because it will be my first time attending as a Hay House author (with ensuing perks!)

I have some big plans for Juicy Joy – 7 Simple Steps to Your Glorious, Gutsy Self, that I will tell you about in the next few weeks. Thank you again to all of you who have been sending congrats and good wishes. You ARE my Juicy Joy.

A common metaphysical assertion goes like this: Whatever shows up in your outer world is simply a reflection of whatever you’re holding in your inner world. And there’s a corollary to it it that says that when you’re really ready to break through to a new level of consciousness, all the lingering bits inside you that are NOT aligned with that new level will start popping up in your outer world to be dealt with – a housecleaning of sorts. It’s like the Universe arranges a round of rapid-fire challenges for you, just to give you the opportunity to deal with them authentically and fully at last, so that their hold on you can be released.

I truly feel cherished and loved by the Universe, so I know that these painful events and difficult choices are always a gift; an opportunity for me to push through to a deeper place of self-acceptance and self-love. I’m in one of these phases right now and I’m committed to viewing it as a teacher. I must have been a ready student, for this teacher to appear.

And I’m hoping that this metaphysical phenomenon works the same way for everyone because some people I love are wounded and I want Rumi’s “light” to enter them. We can’t do that for other people – not really. They have to be ready themselves, and they have to want the light.

I’m so grateful that I had the foresight to plan some student-time for myself next month. I’ll spend a week early in November with Christian Pankhurst – an amazing coach and mentor that I recommend wholeheartedly.

Then, November 12-14, I’ll be at Hay House’s I Can Do It Conference in Tampa. This phenomenal weekend of inspiring teachers always leaves me expanded, excited, Juicy Joyful, and deeply, deeply grateful to be a part of my beloved personal-development industry.

Sign up for the I Can Do It Conference at this link (And look for me there to say “hello!”)
Check out Christian’s trainings here.

Ever notice how some travelers on the spiritual path try to make the garden of their emotions resemble the meticulous lawns at Disney World, with smiling topiaries shaped to uncanny perfection and not a weed in sight?

Maintaining your emotional garden to this degree is exhausting work. Let it grow free! Let it become an African plain, or a Colorado mountainside, or an Amazon jungle! Revel in the rich diversity of it, the surprises, the rawness! It’s not the thoughts of sadness that attract negativity — it’s our resistance to feeling the sadness.

One of the steps to Juicy Joy is learning to love our sadness, to find exquisite beauty in it, and be deeply thankful for the expansion and growth it can bring us.

Sadness – without resistance – is Juicy Joyful!

I found this sage advice on the toilet paper dispenser in a public restroom last night: “When this side is empty, slide door to the left.” Profound words to live by – some juicy wisdom.

How many of us have the courage to admit it – even just to ourselves – when this side is empty? How many of us are loving and trusting ourselves enough to boldly slide that door to the left to give ourselves what we really need in the moment? I love it when Universe talks to me like this.

We can find juicy wisdom everywhere if we’re looking for it.

Tonight was my daughter’s 3rd grade Curriculum Night and I didn’t go. I’ve never missed a Curriculum Night – not for her or for my now-7th grade son. I know it’s not a big deal, and I don’t mean to make you feel bad if you’ve ever missed Curriculum Night. I’m sure you had your reasons. But it felt like a big deal for me. I’m Room Mom. I’ve always been the Room Mom type, the party-planner, the bulletin-board decorator. I drive a mini-van.

I missed Curriculum Night because a month ago I agreed to give a workshop at a new venue on this particular date. I drove an hour to get there, through rain so wild and thick my wipers couldn’t keep up, in a dress that was utterly drenched just from getting in the car. Possibly as a consequence of the stormy weather – and possibly irrelevant to it – there were three people in my workshop audience tonight.

Here’s the crazy part. I loved every second of that workshop. I adore teaching the principles in my new book and I would drive even farther, in harder rain, to do it.

Prior to this year, almost all of my speaking engagements took place in auditoriums filled with hundreds of people, and my fee, for almost a decade now, has been $1,000 per day. A well-meaning author-friend asked me last week why I’d started doing local workshops that pertain only to the one book I haven’t even published yet – many of them for free and often with no more than a dozen people in attendance. He asked this politely, but also clearly from the position that I’d completely lost my mind.

The answer is simple. I love it. Up until recently, all of my writing – and most of my energy – has focused on children and parenting. My 34 published books were all either children’s books or parenting books, all designed to celebrate, and help families intensify, the bond of unconditional parental love. And when I first started speaking about those books, twelve years ago, I did THOSE presentations for free, for anyone who wanted to hear them, because I loved talking about it so much.

But this book is for a different audience. This one is about YOU and about ME, and about the parts of our inner journeys that have little to do with whether or not we’re parents. It’s about the core essence of every one of us; about identifying who we deeply are and what we deeply want, on a soul level.

And right now, for today at least, I believe with all my heart that committing to this kind of meaningful self-examination is the greatest gift any of us can give ourselves AND our children. Making it to Curriculum Night is good. Giving kids a parent who is passionately true to her authentic longings, and by example, encouraging them to always be true to theirs . . . is better.