Are you Diamond worthy?

Change & Transitions, Intuition, Manifesting, Passion & PurposeLeave a comment

Diamond worthy.

Loves, you are ready. It is silly to keep trying to get “more ready.”

Ready for what?

To grow. To launch.

To LAUNCH.

How does your heart respond to those words? Launch means moving with full sails toward your dreams. Launch means all the past failures are over, and won’t ever be repeated. It means you’ve come back out of your shell, and are ready for the sunshine and cool breezes again.

But wait, you say you need to fix all the struggle and lack, and cash-flow and inner healing FIRST. You say you aren’t ready. That there’s more to do to be ready. You can’t Go Big yet. You have to prove to yourself you’re worthy of it.

You say you can’t give to yourself until are successful.

The 5 best things I did this year (and it ain’t over yet)

Change & Transitions, Health & Wellness, M.E. School2 Comments

The 5 best things I did this year (and it ain’t over yet)

1. Relearned the lesson that hard work does not always equal more success. Hard work ≠ Success. Word. Do you need to hear that again, or can I have learned it again for all of us?

2. Took a vacation. Vacations are not luxuries. They aren’t for when you’ve earned them due to hard work (see above.) They are necessary breaks for your brain and heart that let new ideas filter in through the cracks. No vacations = no new ideas, no new nudges. No new nudges = your forward momentum stops and you start spinning instead.

Transformation can be messy

Change & Transitions, M.E. SchoolLeave a comment

Transformation can be messy. We want it neat and tidy. We want it cool and linear so we can see the result clearly right there in the distance.

But it’s not neat, or linear. It’s often shaky and wild. Things crumble. Things slip from your grasp. This week I found a perfect way of describing it: “I’m trying to hold up the avalanche.”

But you just can’t.

You flail, you beat your fists, you try oh-so-hard to control and force and beat things into that way you want them.

But, transformation is messy. Sometimes the mountain has to come down.

IDGAF

Change & Transitions, Entrepreneurs, Passion & Purpose, Self-Love & Self-Trust9 Comments

I know I’m pretty much useless when, instead of getting work done, I’m folding clothes.

It’s 11 a.m. and my workday should be in full swing. But I work from home, and so instead I’m folding laundry and checking my emails every five minutes looking for something exciting. Nothing exciting comes in.

I spot the stack of old financial papers that need shredding. I’ve let them languish by the shredder for months. Yes, months. I know something is really awry because now pulverizing that stack through the shredder is looking really good and I spend the next hour doing it.

Hello, Rebellion. How are you today?

“I don’t want to! You can’t make me. I don’t care if I should. No.”

My name is No . . . my sign is No.

A Types, overachievers, controllers, and those of us who generally Get Shit Done know this feeling and it scares the heck out of us. It’s called IDGAF. (You can work that acronym out.)

IDGAF is your inner rebel, telling you she needs a break. Give her one. What’s so hard about that?

Oh, I know what’s hard: you’re going to lose control of your life for five or ten minutes, or maybe even half a day. Or if you really slack, maybe even . . . a week. And if you’re really, really screwed – a month. And of course the ultimate freak: forever.  You’ll be in IDGAF forever.

Because what if you never find your way out of IDGAF? What if you stop earning your income? What if your marriage that you’ve been propping up suddenly bores you? What if you stop to relax for one bald second and discover that you’re running on fumes and those fumes felt so real that you lived off them for ages?

Toilet woman

Change & Transitions, Love & Partnerships, Self-Love & Self-Trust5 Comments

In the stall next to me, a woman is on her cell phone.

She’s booking an appointment. I can’t tell with whom. Is it nails? Her therapist? Her oncologist? Her voice echoes over the empty bathroom stalls.

I snap the paper toilet seat cover down and sit. This is really uncomfortable. I’m going to make pee noises. The woman in the stall next to me is chatting away.

I hesitate, then I get mad. She’s the one breaking the rules, I think, not me. I am going to pee as loud as I want.

When I get up to flush, I’m frozen again. I’m thinking how awkward it must be for the person on the other end of her phone to hear all the noises of a public bathroom. I’m actually thinking about the feelings of the person the woman beside me is not thinking about at all. This is ridiculous.

I flush. It’s really loud.

As I’m washing my hands I realize that I have just seen what happens when you break a social norm. It’s not embarrassing the woman next to me to talk to a stranger while using the bathroom. But it’s embarrassing me. Because I go around thinking that everyone feels like me: I would never call someone from inside a public toilet stall. Ever. I think that everyone else thinks like me, too.

Until someone snaps that idea in half.

Guilty and gentle

Change & Transitions, Spirituality35 Comments

What I should be doing and what I am doing right now are totally different. Right now I’m sitting in an airport hotel in Los Angeles, alone in a huge suite, surfing Amazon for ceramic travel mugs, when I know what I should be doing is hobnobbing downstairs with some of the bigwigs I came here to learn from and hobnob with.

In fact, I’m going to walk outside my room right now, hang off the balcony and snap a pic, and show you just what I’m missing in fancy-hotel-bigwig land.

There, I did it. I’m sticking it at the top of this post.

And now I’m sitting down again and getting into the core of this lack thinking I’m in.

I’ve only realized what a state I’ve gotten myself in because it’s dawned on me that I’m still sitting on the couch in my high platform shoes and conference outfit (you know the look) and it’s been an hour since I came back to my suite. Apparently, some part of me thinks I’m still going back out to Hobnob and Make Great Deals and Connections. And this part of me is also screaming how I suck because I’m such a bad networker that I’d rather be in my room alone searching for travel mugs.

Isn’t this a familiar feeling? “What I should do” vs. “What I am doing.” And the well of guilt and insecurity that lies in between. The well of lack thinking that tells me ”¦ ”Oh Summer, if you’d just put on your big girl pants you wouldn’t miss this opportunity.”

I know we all have this going on inside us. The “what I should do” and “what I am doing” dialog, and how much we suck because we aren’t doing what we should do. We have a big long list of what we should be doing.

And this is when I hear myself in my own ears: “Be gentle with yourself, Summer.”

Be gentle with yourself.

Will I live five more years or fifty?

Cancer, Change & Transitions, Health & Wellness9 Comments

You know that feeling when you haven’t talked to someone in a long time, and each time you try . . . you think about how awful you’ve been that you haven’t talked to them in so long?

And so your fingers stick on the keyboard, and the phone remains untouched in your purse or pocket. You just don’t know what to say. How do you begin?

That’s how I feel now.

I left you all somewhere in the middle of December, after my last chemo, bald and floppy and utterly wiped out. And then ”¦ silence. Nine months of it. Holy cow. Where have I been? Where did my life go? Where has yours gone?

Here a brief catching up: I’m in remission from Stage 2 breast cancer. I had six months of chemo, two months of daily radiation, three months of lymphedema therapy, and three surgeries in just about one year. Add on heapings of the alternative therapies and healings (herbs, qi gong, acupuncture, Reiki, rebounding, juicing, shamanic journeying, and emotional cleansing) and you can see how busy I’ve been.

Being sick and getting well can really take up your life.

Right now, it’s a gorgeous Sunday morning. My orange and pink roses are firing off blooms in front of my window, my family are all still asleep, and I feel like I’m just waking up.

I mean, really waking up.

Waking back into life.

I’ve leaned a hella lot about cancer this year. And I’ve learned even more about the way we think, feel, and anticipate (or brace for) life. My own personal life goals jumped tracks and landed in all new territory.

“Go with the Flow” has a much richer, deeper meaning.

The concept of manifesting is much more nuanced and interesting.

One thing I learned is that cancer, or any illness that can come back, plays with your head. Is it gone or isn’t it? Am I safe or am I still in danger? Will my body cooperate, or is it going to kill me?

I jokingly refer to this dynamic, and the uncertainty that’s always bubbling below the surface, as the 5-year and 50-year plan. (My husband hates it when I talk about this, because it’s ”¦ you know ”¦ talking about death.)

As elusive as a unicorn

Change & Transitions, SpiritualityLeave a comment

Lately I’ve been thinking that our search for balance is right up there with finding a unicorn prancing in our back yard.

We all yak about being in balance as the Holy Grail of personal growth, but most of us never get close to having it. Why is that?

As in: “I’d love for my life to be in balance. Because OMG I’m so stressed out!”

But somehow, finding that balance is as elusive as ever. No Holy Grail. No 4-leaf clover. No unicorns.

This year, I found balance. It was unexpected. And more surprising was what I didn’t have to lose to get it.

Here’s how the conversation about balance goes:

YOU: “I am SO overwhelmed. I just need more balance in my life!!’

ME: “Why don’t you just get your life in balance right now?”

“What, now? I can’t do it now. I have two papers due, my daughter’s school called because they found her with a vape pen if-you-can-believe-that, and if I don’t get some cash flow I’m going, I’m going to max out the credit card I need to pay for some medical bills!”

“OK, so it sounds like you can’t stop for balance or really bad things will happen, right?”

“Yeah that’s about it.”

“So when will you get some balance going?”

“As soon as I get through all this.”

“And when is that?”

“I don’t know.”

The problem is that balance becomes an ideal – something you can’t have until you’ve done all the hard work getting there.

No more pretty

Cancer, Change & Transitions, Health & Wellness133 Comments

I’m standing in a juice bar stocking up on fresh juice for my 3-day cleanse. Not only am I wearing my baggy house clothes, but I’m bald. And I’m a woman. And I look pretty bad.

There are three other people in the tiny shop, all waiting on their juice orders. I suddenly realize that they are in the position I’ve been in so many times before: The “Oh gosh, that poor person. Look at them. They must have cancer. Or some horrible disease. No wait, don’t stare.”

I grin at them. They look awkwardly away.

I’m surprised at myself. For one thing, I’ve realized for the first time in my life that not worrying about being pretty is awesomely liberating. I realize I don’t give a rat’s ass how I look.

It’s a funny feeling having no way to hide. I could wear a wig, but I just don’t care enough. It’s hot, I’m tired, and chemo is kicking my butt.

Everything is fully exposed: forehead wrinkles, saggy neck, heck even the shape of my skull.

Here I’ve spent 30 years with my long blonde flowing hair and pretty makeup, fully invested in how I show myself to the world. Now I look 10 years older, bald, pale, and parched.

My ability to control how I look to others has largely been taken away from me. I can’t shape how people see me to the degree I used to.

The next day, I get a text from my mom about some new bald photos of me that have made it onto Facebook. She assures me I don’t look that bad in person and that I must really be getting a big test having to do with stripping away all my ego.

I whimper in response, “So you think I really look that bad?”

I hesitate. I could untag myself in Facebook. Or I could suck it up and get over myself. And that’s exactly what I decide to do. I leave the awful photos up.

By the way, this email is not about vanity, or feeling good about yourself. It’s about control and identity: Who we are and what we expect life to give us as a result of how we control how others see us. Identity is our deeper layer. Think vanity on the outside, and identity on the inside.

Vanity is fueled by lack-thinking.

Self-worth is fueled by feeling good about yourself.

And identity is fueled by many things, including your comfort with yourself at the deepest level, your ability to shift and flow with your changing identity, and by letting go of your need to control others’ perceptions of you.

I discover that I’m tired of trying to control everyone’s perceptions of me and my identity. I don’t need to look any certain way to do my work, so why did I ever think I had to?

I’ve never been a one-size-fits-all girl

Change & Transitions, Health & Wellness27 Comments

A big tropical thunderstorm is rolling its way through the sky right now. The thunder was so loud, it woke the whole house at 6:30 this morning.

It feels like Hawaii here. Moist, wet, with the birds singing and big dark clouds pouring warm rain off and on onto my covered patio.

 It gets me in a thoughtful mood.

 Out of the hundreds of blog responses I’ve received in the last month, wishing me well, one has been clinging inside my head.

The sender, Karen, wrote:

 “I cannot wrap my mind around the ‘Why Summer??’ I have always known you to be a positive, happy, content woman. I thought cancer engulfed people who were worried and unhappy on the inside. This takes it to a whole different level for me.”

 Yeah, for me too, Karen. I admit to having harbored a bit of the same bias.

 People in personal growth often get caught up in the self-blame act. We look at everything and try to rationalize it.

“Cancer means lack of self-love.”

“Cancer is your wake-up call, because you were going down the wrong path.”

“Cancer means you’ve been stewing in negativity and a toxic environment.”

“Cancer means you weren’t paying enough attention to your body.”

Gosh, that sucks. Look at all I’m doing wrong!

Or wait a minute. Because, this is not at all how I’m experiencing this cancer.