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About bringingyouohm

I love life and everything in it. It's fun, and really, it's all about the love.

Radical Self Love

Inspiration, Spirit, Wisdom from Within, , ,

I figured it was time to explain the subtitle of my blog, Radical Self Love.

Now, it’s not quite as kinky as might sound, but it definitely deviates from social norms.

It’s about loving one’s self completely and utterly, even as society inundates you with messages that you need to change. To be more, to have more, to do this or that. Radical Self Love rejects all the messages from the world that say you are not good enough!

Radical Self Love means knowing that you are enough.

You are perfect in your imperfections and you don’t have to be anyone other than who you are.

It doesn’t mean you stop trying or striving to learn and grow as a person. It simply accepts that wherever you are in your evolution is where you should be.

For me, it means I have to stop being so damned hard on myself. I have always held myself to a very high standard. A standard so close to perfection, I inevitably fall short again and again. Every time I did, I would condemn myself to angry and hateful admonishment. I said the most awful things to myself.  I would never, ever speak like that to another person. But I saved all my compassion and understanding for everyone who wasn’t me. I called myself a fat, lazy stupid bitch more times than I care to remember just for being human.
The whole time I was being awful to myself, I was growing in my spiritual understanding. I came to recognize that the source energy underneath everything is love. I could feel the radiant love it all and loved everything right back. I had countless transcendental experiences where the love swept over me and the illusions of separation dissolved. With this oneness came unbiased, undefined, unending love. I felt the love sweeping into the darkness, the shadow sides of life and I began to understand them to be an integral part of the experience we are choosing to have.

I also came to know the essence of God within me; the same light and love- the source energy that resides within all of us. I started to remember who I really was. A spiritual, eternal being having a human experience, the universe, experiencing itself.

But I still sometimes treated myself like garbage.

The idea of loving myself as completely as I love everyone else didn’t occur to me until recently. I thought that in order to be a good person, to grow and evolve my soul, I had to be hard on myself. No one else would be, so it was up to me. The unconditional love I had only extended outward. The love I saved for myself was conditional.

Eventually, I started to connect the dots. If we’re all one, and all is love, then I must be as worthy of the loving compassionate kindness as every other being in the universe.

So, I decided to love myself as hard as I could. To strip away all conditions and love myself anyway.

It was a radical thought.

I also realized that to love myself fully, utterly and completely, I have to honor myself as well. I have to listen to my body as well as my heart and soul. I can’t ignore all the guidance I receive. I have to respect myself enough to believe that the messages I get from my body and my intuition are correct and wise. The project I’m working on this year, to listen to myself and my inner wisdom has made it much easy to honestly love myself. There is no dissonance to overcome, no loving ‘in spite’ of something… It’s all one love.

swami stream cc by 2.0
swami stream cc by 2.0

Radical Self Love is a radiant love.

It is compassionate, understanding, forgiving, peaceful, respectful,  joyful and divine.

It is steady, ongoing, inexhaustible, patient, present and kind.

It means listening to all aspects of the Self- body, mind and soul.

Being gentle with yourself.

Trusting yourself and the universe to fully support you.

Surrounding yourself with people who love and support you and removing yourself from negativity.

It means taking  care of yourself with proper feeding, watering, sunlight, exercise, fresh air and whatever else your body asks for.

Nurturing your abilities, and allowing your creativity to flow.

It means you are enough. You are perfect, even in your imperfections.

It means remembering and celebrating your divine nature.

It means you are free.

My Greatest Ideas… In Bed.

Inspiration

I’m an idea person, not a detail person.

I have spectacular, amazing and world-changing ideas all the time!

The only thing is that  almost all of them happen when I’m laying in bed, trying to sleep.

From theoatmeal.com
From theoatmeal.com

The rest come to me when  I’m doing the dishes or in the shower.

I’m sure this is the case for a lot of us. I’ve heard a lot of people mention they do their best thinking on the John.

When I’m doing dishes, in the shower or laying in bed in the dark, my mind is free to roam anywhere it likes. During the rest of my day, my mind usually focused on whatever task is at hand. Even if I take some time to out to quietly mediate, dialogue with my body, or commune with the universe,  I’m directing my attention at somewhere in particular.

My laser focus  (haha, not really, let’s just call it mindfulness)  when I’m paying attention to tasks at hand, coupled with my habit of distracting myself at most other times (typically with books, the internet, Netflicks, hooping, arts and crafts or talking on the phone to my sister) doesn’t leave a ton of time for my mind to just be creative and wander.

I suppose my subconscious is  busy processing everything throughout the day, but it’s only when my mind is relaxed and not focused on any one thing in particular that all those grand ideas surface. There have been a few times lately when I’ve needed to get up from my bed and furiously scribble these ideas in the dark (hopefully legibly enough to read them in the morning) so I could relax and put them out of  my mind. I’ve also had a few killer ideas lately that have been so exciting that I just couldn’t fall asleep for hours. Fortunately, I woke up the next day feeling as rested and refreshed as I would have if I was sleeping deeply the whole time.

I know some people might advise me to make time before bed to let my mind relax and wander so when it’s bed time I could just fall right asleep. It would probably be better sleep hygiene and it’s not a bad idea, but I am a creature of habit and I really love my hour or so at night cuddled into my blankets where I can do some free range thinking. I’ve actually  built a cushion for it into my sleep schedule: I usually reserve 9-10 hours for “sleep”, although I rarely sleep for all of it. I just spend a chunk of it dreaming, while I’m still awake.

I guess it’s also a good thing I don’t have a dishwasher. It would rob me of my other greatest opportunity to think freely, let my mind wander and play.

When do you have your greatest ideas? In bed, driving down the highway or on the John?

Dear Human

Spirit, , , ,
by windpacer04, found on Deviantart
by windpacer04

Dear Human: You’ve got it all wrong. You didn’t come here to master unconditional love. That is where you came from and where you’ll return. You came here to learn personal love. Universal love. Messy love. Sweaty love. Crazy love. Broken love. Whole love. Infused with divinity. Lived through the grace of stumbling. Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up. Often. You didn’t come here to be perfect. You already are. You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous. And then to rise again into remembering. But unconditional love? Stop telling that story. Love, in truth, doesn’t need ANY other adjectives. It doesn’t require modifiers. It doesn’t require the condition of perfection. It only asks that you show up. And do your best. That you stay present and feel fully. That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU. It’s enough. It’s Plenty.”

Courtney A. Walsh

I read this on facebook quite a few weeks ago. It was shared by one of my favorite pages ‘Be A Part Of The Shift 2012’. Of course, it was exactly what I needed to read at that moment. This was before I had committed to really listening to my body. I had been quite hard on myself for the few days leading up to reading it and the words moved me to tears.

It is a message I’ve heard over and over recently. I am enough. I am an imperfect being, but perfect in my imperfections. Just coming here, to what I call Earth school is a brave move, but I back here because I wanted to be here and I wanted to learn. I want the lessons that come from being in this messy world, with our imperfect bodies and our challenging lives. All we need to do is be here, and do our best to love as hard as we can, imperfectly.

This week’s challenge: NO JUNK FOOD

Challenges, Food

I’ve been doing pretty well in the 3 weeks since I officially began ‘The Project’, even with the biological clock drama (you can read more about that craziness here: http://wp.me/p32wA4-1C) . I’ve been eating fairly well, getting enough sleep, talking to my body every day and trying to do something creative daily as well. It’s been easy enough thus far, so I thought I should challenge myself.

This week, the goal is to eat really well and by that I mean NO JUNK FOOD! At all. Not even dark chocolate.

I’m not a junk food junkie, I don’t even like most candy or sweets, but I definitely love chocolate, ice cream and lately I’ve been indulging in quite a few gluten-free cookies. I wasn’t a cookie person at all back in the day, but I guess not eating them for years and then finding seriously delicious gluten-free ones unleashed the cookie monster in me.

I’ll tell you which ones, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. They are spectacular:

http://www.wendelstruefoods.com/products/almond-butter-cookies-gluten-free/

almond butter cookie 10 pack.jpg

Also, they’re chocolate chip cookies are pretty darn good, but when it comes to chocolate chip, I love Udi’s:

http://udisglutenfree.com/products/chocolate-chip-cookies/

Oh, man,

I’m making this harder on myself. Now I want cookies. I was doing so well today too.

Anyway. NO COOKIES for Kacie. I just need a little break. It’s not you cookies, it’s me. I just need a little time to get my head together, you know? We’re not breaking up, I just need a little space. (You do look so lovely tonight though, I must say).

I am planning on gorging myself on whole, clean foods to fill the cookie shaped hole in my soul. I’m going to stay as far away from refined sugar as I can get, and really limit processed foods.

When I’m snacky, I’ll just have to survive with my Sea Snax.

They are strangely addictive, and a fantastic chip replacement. I used to be a potato chip fiend, and I find I can’t enjoy them in moderation, I just have to stay away. One handful leads to a whole bag in a day or two so I can’t buy them and keep them at home. These Sea snacks taste exactly like the Nori on sushi, yet have a very satisfying salty crispness to them.

So, good luck to me! This will definitely be one of the harder things I’ve put myself up to. The no-drinking thing is going surprisingly well. I think having food poisoning and puking up the last glass of wine I had made it oh so much easier to go without.

I’m off to have some Sea Snax while I watch Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflick and doodle. A wild Monday, for sure!

I’ll leave you with a dance…. This is how I spent part of this afternoon, just rocking out in my living room, with a hoop.

 

Constant Inspiration

Inspiration, ,

I love feeling inspired!  I’m sure we all do.

It feels good! It’s all  warm and tingly and exciting, and makes you feel like you can do  anything and everything (all at once)!
It kind of sounds like a mind altering chemical when I put it that way, but I suppose it is altering your brain chemistry to make you feel that way.

I find that warm, tingly exciting serotonin and dopamine enhancing inspiration everywhere; nature, music, books, my friends, my husband and most often from the internet, especially from facebook!

That’s right, facebook.

I know social media has been argued to be the downfall of modern society, but I love it! I love the chance to interact with people I may not see all the time, heck- even with people I’ve never met before. Every time I log on to facebook, my stream is full of inspiring images, quotes and status updates like the picture below. Reading these messages makes me  feel uplifted and renewed.

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It certainly wasn’t always like this. I remember when my news feed was full of people bitching and complaining about something or another, with some positive posts and groups intertwined with people I can only categorize as whiners. Then, a couple of years ago I posted a status update about a long work day I had (13.75 hours, no break, actively serving the whole time). A friend tried to turn it into a pissing contest by talking about all the long ass shifts they often pulled. They were actively trying to diminish and dismiss my experience.  I asked them to stop trying to make it a competition and I acknowledged that both were challenging in different ways. I was trying to respectfully shut down an argument, but the reply I received was basically “Too Bad, because  life wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows and I couldn’t direct all conversations to a more positive, supportive tone because life doesn’t work that way.”

I thought, “Challenge accepted!” and unfriended this person immediately.

My wall. My rules.

I want my time on facebook to be stress free, fun, inspiring, uplifting and educational.

I don’t mind being challenged, I don’t mind debating. I crave intellectually stimulating conversation that stays respectful. There’s no need to be argumentative and rude, demeaning or dismissive of another person’s experience. I want all my interactions to be positive, compassionate and mindful.

I also don’t want to be confronted with constant negativity. I’ve only unfriended that one person, but there are plenty of people I have hidden because of constant negativity. All  your status updates don’t have to be positive. We all need support from our friends when we are down, or when shit happens, but if you only ever have bad things to say, I don’t want to hear it. I’m sorry, I send you my love, and wish nothing but the best for you, but don’t need you dragging me down. Oprah, a pinnacle of positivity once said:

Surround yourself with people who are going to lift you higher.

I think that’s fantastic advice.

I spend a lot of time on facebook, and I want my experience to lift me up, to fill me with love, hope and excitement about what’s going on in the world because that’s the energy I want to share with the world! I want to lift others up.  Seeing constant inspiration gives me the energy to be inspiring and put that light and love back out into the world.

There are two ways of spreading light. One is to be the candle and one is to be the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Warton

images

This is an image of a single candle surrounded by mirrors! Amazing. I think personally, I want to be a disco ball candle; burning brightly myself, but also reflecting back the light of others in every direction.

Everything is always OK in the End.

Hoop Dance, Wisdom from Within, ,

Back in November while I was doing the dishes. I had been absorbed in the moment, perfectly present and at peace it was like a moving meditation. The silence of my mind allowed a beautiful epiphany to shine through.

Now is the time to relax and let go of all your worries. They no longer serve you.  Everything is OK. Everything has always been OK. Everything will always be OK.

I’ve always known intellectually that everything always works out.  I often say “If it’s not OK, it’s not the end!” But as much as I believe that with philosophically and spiritually, I still wind up worrying.  Usually about money, which is stupid, because it’s never been a problem for me in my life. I save $$ every month, and still have more than enough for a comfy life. There really has never been a reason to worry, but it sneaks up on me sometimes when I’m feeling particularly tired or vulnerable. I also realized I worry far more whenever I have caffeine. The slight raising of my blood pressure seems to create this feedback look where I feel like I’m stressed, so I must be stressed and I find things to stress about. This is one of the reasons I’m sticking to green tea and chocolate as my biggest sources of caffeine these days.

With that message though, I felt as though my body finally caught up to my mind, and my cells finally accepted that there really wasn’t any point to worrying or stressing. I felt blissfully calm and peaceful for the next month or so. The buzz of that epiphany has worn off slightly, so I wanted to write about it to remind myself. Worrying about vague undefined potential future issues wastes energy, and does nothing constructive. If there is a problem, then I need to let myself feel the emotions surrounding it, and work towards fixing it, but just worrying for worry’s sake is unproductive. Actually it’s counter productive.

Don’t worry, everything little thing is gonna be alright!

At the end of this video there is a  little proof of my own optimism… This is called Kacie Hooping in March Snow (Facewash). From March 2011 (back in the day).

Tick Tock….

Challenges, Wisdom from Within, ,

A few days ago, I was suddenly sideswiped by a giant ticking biological clock. It knocked me right on my ass,  sat squarely on my chest, crushing me… I could barely breathe! It  looked me straight in the eye and said “Tick Tock, motherfucker. Tick fucking tock.”

cco

It wasn’t the first time I had heard that phrase. Suddenly this feeling felt incredibly familiar and I flashed back to January 2011, when my body was sending me the same urgent message: HAVE A BABY! GET KNOCKED UP! DO IT, DO IT NOW!!!!!! Of course, it wasn’t a good time. My husband and I were getting married that summer, and we had a few things we wanted to do before starting a family, but mostly neither of us felt ready at all. Fortunately there was a timely article on Offbeat Families, one of my favorite blogs called “Babycrack: When wanting a baby gets weird”. http://offbeatfamilies.com/2011/01/babycrack  that helped me deal with the emotions then.

I still find in extremely comforting to read about the experiences other people are having with the same situation, so I went back to read all the comments on the article and noticed the menacing sentence uttered by my bio-clock was posted by another women trying to ignore her bio-clock too. I also noticed my own comments on the article.

Well, I was having a baby crack free day until I read this post. Now my eyes are welling up cause the desire to have a baby is sometimes like a physical ache.

I didn’t understand the whole biological clock thing at all until about two years ago. I was on the fence about having kids, until one day I was laying in bed with my fiance and I heard my DNA speaking to me. “Have his baby!” cried my genes.

Sometimes my rational mind can shut them up for a bit, but it’s getting harder. My rational mind knows that we have a plan and the plan is to start trying next spring… First we want to get married, go have a rocking time on our honeymoon, move to a bigger place so it’s not all stressful moving while I’m preggers… But it’s hard. Especially when my mom reminds me you can’t plan everything (I was an accident, as was my sister).

Just gotta keep popping my anti-baby pills. I now get my fiance to remind me via text half an hour after I’m supposed to take them, just in case I miss my phone alarm. I’m so paranoid I’ll miss a pill after somehow missing one last week.

Just keep breathing… One more year…

Note: This is from January 14, 2011. It was exactly 2 years, less 2 days ago from when this crazy feeling reared it’s head again.

Our plans had changed, and our window for when we wanted to start trying keeps being pushed back by the both of us… I started dancing so much more, and wanted to really put some time in taking classes, performing and teaching before taking time off to have a child. Also, the feeling of MUST PROCREATE NOW! had faded away so it was easy to just imagine having a child as something we would do later. Neither one of us wants to disrupt our very comfortable and happy lives with a little one at the moment.

Except, apparently, I do.

Or at least, my body does.

I’m still not fully ready. I have tons of travel plans over the next year. My husband is switching fields and going back to school. We’d like to save up more money. We both want more time with each other. The list goes on…

But, my body was literally screaming at me. I felt consumed by confusing and conflicting emotions. I’ve made a commitment  with this project to listen to my body, so I was afraid for a few days to actually have a dialogue with it. I was terrified my body would just lay it out for me. Because of the intensity of the feelings I was having, I expected my body so say This is it, the time is now. Let’s do this!

When I felt ready, I initiated a conversation with my body, and it turns out that the most important thing it wanted was to be heard. It wasn’t unilaterally deciding that this was happening now. It wasn’t going to circumvent my birth control and just make it happen (I really thought this might happen). Biologically, now is the time, but having a baby isn’t a purely biological process. It’s also a mental and spiritual process, for me and my husband. We still need a bit of time, but my body wanted to make me aware that this is fast becoming a priority so I’d better start getting used to the idea of sooner rather than later.

Because of my vow to listen to my body’s messages, I was able to take this startlingly violent message for what it was. An invitation to listen to my body’s biological clock and innate rhythms. Well, more of an insistence than an invitation, but that’s just because it’s an old message I had been ignoring for quite some time. It’s reminding me of what I am evolutionarily programmed to do. Simple acknowledgement was enough for the moment, but it’s also an opportunity to really put the effort in to prepare myself for something I’ll be doing soon enough.

lawrence Jesterson- CC by SA 2.0
lawrence Jesterson- CC by SA 2.0

The Joyful Movement Movement

Hoop Dance, Sacred Dance, Spirit

In this Ted x talk, Theresa Rose exemplified what this blog and my life are all about. In 14 minutes she distills the very essence of how life changing and enriching joyful movement can be. She also hoops through the whole thing, as she explains how the hoop revolution is part of the joyful movement movement where a growing number of us are finding peace and happiness through playful movement. Not hard core exercise, but allowing our bodies to move freely and have fun in any way that brings us joy.

The happiest moments in my life have always been when I am joyfully moving. Skiing, tobogganing, running around and being silly, rolling down a hill, dancing under the stars at a festival, or just dancing where ever I am with my hoop. This joyful movement brings so many physical, mental and spiritual benefits it’s mind blowing. Since introducing more moments like this in my life by sustaining a hoop practice, my entire life has gotten better in innumerable ways, just like Theresa’s. I have more energy because I am physically active. I have more patience because I have that physical release and I have more joy because joy begets joy. I move joyfully every day, and that joy resonates so deep within my soul that it changes me. It makes me better, and inspires me to make the world a better place. My mission in life is to share this joyful movement with others through dancing, teaching, performing and writing.

Theresa calls joyful movement a cosmic alarm clock, waking us up to our own divinity. When we find flow in our movement, we are fully inhabiting the present moment with our bodies, minds and spirits in complete unison. She also says “In this spiraling, sacred container, we realize we are enough.” This realization is how we  awakening to our divinity, to our connection to everything. When we feel we are enough- that we are good enough, that we have enough, that this moment is enough- we find peace and joy. When I dance, I am enough… I am complete, and I live in joy.

Cocooned

Wisdom from Within
Alice Popkorn-CC by2.0
Alice Popkorn-CC by2.0

I feel cocooned today.

Actually, I’ve kind of felt like I’ve been in a cocoon since the start of this year.

I don’t want to go out.

I’ve spent days inside my house, relishing every moment of peace.

It was a busy December, and I made it through without my usual dramatic break down or bah humbug moments. I was completely aware of the crazy cosmic energy that was being sent our way, and I could feel it in my soul and in my bones. The insane work schedule was easier to take this year, AND I would up with more money. All in all, I did very well keeping it together.

Now I feel like staying in, having quiet  days and even quieter nights. I’ve been productive though. I’ve been  working on some creative projects, putting together some dance workshops, working on choreography, listening to and collecting music, organizing and cleaning the house, starting this blog and watching a ton of Netflicks.

I’m happy to be at home, hibernating.

There are so many things I could be out doing, even tonight. Dance events, friends spinning at clubs, flow sessions… None of them have the same appeal as my cozy cocoon. Actually, as I contemplated making my way out into the cold to do something tonight, my body said Please stay in! Please?

That settled it, of course. I need to stay in right now. I feel like it’s important to be still, and to be by myself… I feel like there is a crystallization happening within me. There have been a lot of energetic shifts over the last few months. Great leaps forward! Humanity is resonating at higher frequencies, and it’s beautiful. It’s also been a little draining. It’s going to take a little while for my body to catch up and feel harmonized with all that is. I’m going to enjoy the time off and dream of this spring and summer when things will take off again.

For now, I’m just gonna enjoy looking out my window, and looking inward to see what’s coming up next!

Being a Stinker (And Other Lessons in Listening)

Food, Wisdom from Within

So…. I used to have a pretty awkward problem.

I was stinky.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Seriously, I was incredibly flatulent. In a very gross way. It was often hilarious, but also highly inconvenient and all kinds of awful.

It really came to a head when I became a vegetarian about 10 years ago. It was so bad, I started taking digestive enzymes to help with it. I had started eating quite a bit more fiber and beans. Took my body awhile to get used to it, but it never really went away. Ask any of my ex’s or my old roommates, it was pretty excessive.

I didn’t think that it was indicative of some kind of issue though. I thought I was just a stinky gal and that was that. It wasn’t until my sister told me she was having issues with wheat/gluten that it even crossed my radar. I started paying attention to when I was stinky (which was most of the time,  making it hard to nail down), but eventually I noticed a correlation between eating things like pizza and pasta or drinking beer with being stinky later. I started trying to eat less bread and such for a while, but that was hard, especially as a vegetarian. I didn’t really change my diet at all. At least, not right away.

A year or two later  I noticed I was getting hives on the inside of my forearms. I thought it might be my laundry detergent, or bed bugs again (I had bed bugs once and had “hives” all over my body and spent a week trying to figure out what I was allergic to before waking up to one crawling on my face. Horrifying). Eventually, I started noticing  they would appear about 12 hours after I ate wheat. It took me awhile to notice/admit it to myself. It took even longer before I really made an effort to take it out of my diet.

I would eat gluten-free for a while and then I would cheat. It would go OK, so I would cheat a little more, and then more. All of a sudden, it would hit me and not only would I get stinky as all hell, and hivey (if that is a word) but other, less pleasant gastrointestinal symptoms popped up. I also became incredibly emotional. It was weird. I would get sad and mad and be basically kind of crazy for no apparent reason. I suspect my emotional instability has to do with the fact that it was making me sick in many ways and I just didn”t feel good. I get kind of crazy like this when I am coming down with the flu as well. I am not a good patient. I’m actually a huge baby when I’m sick. Good thing it’s not very often.

Anyway, I went through this cycle of eating gluten-free, then falling off the wagon over and over again, many, many times. It was during this time I started eating meat again (I always said I would be vegetarian as long as I remained happy and healthy without meat, but it seemed overwhelming to be both meat and gluten-free).  Every time I fell off the wagon and landed on a gooey delicious pizza, I felt worse  and worse.  It’s really only this last year that I’ve been very careful with it, but I still occasionally ate free chocolate cake at work whenever it came available. I was just aware of the sacrifice I would be making (it always seemed worth it at the time).

I had food poisoning on Dec 21,2012. I performed at a super rad Christmas party, stayed for dinner and had to leave around 9 and barely made it home in time. I was 4 1/2 pounds lighter in the morning. I had eaten a questionable piece of fish (I had noted it as a likely food poisoning culprit when I swallowed the rancid bite).  The next few days I ate very sparingly, and was super careful of what I put into my body. I questioned how everything was going to make me feel before I ate it. Any time I tried something that I wasn’t really sure about, sure enough, it hurt my stomach. I started realizing that my body had the answers, and every time I tried to overrule with my brain, it ended badly, with pain.

I felt so good when I listened to what my body really wanted to eat that I decided to just keep going with it. I wanted to explore more deeply and uncover whatever other pieces of wisdom I might find within this bag of flesh. I also started spontaneously loving my body more. Feeling good begets feeling good I guess.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I hadn’t had a drink in a few weeks. Whenever anyone offered me one I declined, remembering the awful sour taste of the wine I had drunk on the 21st as it came back up. I started to relish in my new-found clarity, and realized that the relaxing effect of even a glass of wine made me far less in touch with my body as well as far less productive. I realized my body never really wanted the alcohol. Sure, I love the taste of wine. I have my first Sommelier certification and truly enjoy all the wine babble, but as good as a glass made me feel, it didn’t make me feel good for long. I get sleepy and apathetic after the glass wears off, and if I keep drinking that’s a whole ‘nother set of issues that come up right there.

So, when I realized I wanted to pursue this radical self love project where I listen to whatever my body says, I realized it means staying stone cold sober. For the first time in my life, the idea was thrilling. I’m excited to see how much more productive I will be. In case anyone was interested,  I also no longer stink it up on a regular basis (but being human, I still have the odd moment.)

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