Just in case you all are looking for a place to send your donations this month:

http://www.mysisterfriendshouse.blogspot.com/

Please pass on to anyone you know who might be interested in supporting them. I typically donate to another domestic violence shelter: http://prettybirdwomanhouse.blogspot.com/ but they have put the word out that the shelter above is about to be shut down, so I am sending my donation to them. Pretty Bird Woman House was in the same situation about a year ago and was saved by private donations and they are now trying to do the same for this other shelter.

Thank you :)

THE BEGINNING

I went to the doctor today and I am finally ready to take responsibility for not making my health my top priority. I am 194 pounds with a BMI of 33. I have pre-hypertension and possibly pre-diabetes. I have tried to ignore my not so optimal health, but I have realized that it will not just fix itself. I am going to a pre-diabetes class in August and I am trying to learn to eat using the glycemic index. Of course, the other part is sticking to an exercise regimen.

I know this will take a lot more than just losing weight because I have done this before. I lost almost 100 pounds previously and was featured in a popular magazine for my accomplishment. However, I was so unhappy and so lost. I did not know what to do with the attention that I received and was taken advantage of by a lot of people. I was naive because I believed that losing weight would make everything okay; it did not.

I feel like the ugliness I see on the outside is a manifestation of the ugliness I feel on the inside. I am going to have to learn to accept myself for who I am now because I know that I will not love myself any better when I lose the weight. I managed to get to a size 4 the last time that I lost weight and I still felt that I was fat. It is a mindset that weight cannot transform.
So, here I begin my journey towards health and well-being. I am afraid because I am facing all the damage that I have done to my body by ignoring it for the last three years. It is embarrassing at the doctor's to see where I am now. I am embarrassed and try to hide in my home as much as possible. I have lost contact with all of my old friends because I am ashamed for them to see me with how overweight I am now. I am not sure if it is a bad thing that I have not seen them though, they were not the greatest friends to have. We, as a group, were overly obsessed with our thinness and our looks. I realized that I was a shallow, empty shell of a human being at that time. It has been disheartening to see the old friends that I have run into reject me completely because of my weight. I am often saddened by the realization that my relationships with people were purely superficial.

I have much work to do, but I am ready. I feel like a fraud standing behind layers of bubble wrap, hoping to keep myself from falling into little pieces. It is time that I began to unravel the layers and face the world head on. When the layers have all been removed, I know that I will still be in one piece and will be stronger because of the journey I have chosen to embark on with the conscious awareness that losing weight will not change my world, but accepting myself will.

This is a link to the Pretty Bird Woman House in South Dakota :

http://www.prettybirdwomanhouse.blogspot.com/

Please go to their site and consider donating to them. They are a fabulous organization who needs our help. They are currently raising money to paint their new home. I hope you will choose to be a part of their future success - I have!

Thank you!

Books to Feed Your Soul

Here are some books to feed your soul!

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (This is the biggest AHA! book I have ever read)

link to Oprah class starting March 3rd: http://www.oprah.com/obc_classic/webcast/begin/anewearth_begin_main.jsp

Write It Down, Make It Happen (Best Book EVER!)
Henriette Anne Klauser

Ask and It Is Given
Esther and Jerry Hicks (anything from them is absolutely phenomenal and helps tremendously!)

The Art of Possibility
Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
(This incorporates professional and personal life development, it is a very good book)

Practical Intuition
Laura Day
(This is a book that really helps you connect back with your intuition. I am only a few chapters into it, but I really like it)

I hope you will enjoy these books as much as I have. I take what I need from them and leave the rest. They all seem to interconnect and that helps to reinforce some of the ideas in the "logical" part of our minds. They give tools to use when you are just at a loss for what to do.

I recommend some DVD's as well that have really opened my eyes:
The Secret DVD
What the Bleep Do We Know/Down the Rabbit Hole
You Can Heal Your Life DVD - Louise Hay (All her books are really phenomenal as well)

If you ever listen to podcasts or to anything online there is Hay House Radio with all kinds of unbelievable uplifting programming and it is all free. You can either download them as podcasts or listen to them on your computer. The link is www.hayhouseradio.com.

I think you will find a lot of guidance there as well!

A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle

Chapter One

I have been consumed by this book since I began to read it. I find it quite interesting that I have had this book for several months now and have never picked it up to read it. It was an e-mail from Oprah.com that led me to pull the book off the shelf and begin to read. I find that I am fitting in little times to read whenever I can in my ridiculously busy schedule because there is something about the words in this book that speak directly to my soul. My mind is bypassed and my soul is invigorated everytime I read this book. I feel as if the truth is being spoken to me for the first time in my life. I am amazed - I am taken aback. There are so many things so far that have spoken directly to me.

I have known since my earliest memory that there was something else out there for me. That what I was seeing, what I was experiencing, was not all that there was in this world. I have known that I would serve a special purpose; something so much more than what I was living. I have picked up pieces of this puzzle throughout my life - a little piece here, a little piece there. I have felt lost wandering around aimlessly searching for the missing pieces to the mystery of my life. There have been tragedies, pain, and unspeakable acts and yet I continued to collect those pieces as I moved through life. Did I know I was doing this at the time? NO! Reading this book is pulling them all together. I was compelled to purchase this book several months ago for no particular reason - now I know why. I was not ready to read it then, but the universe knew that I would not have purchased this book or participated in reading it right now without having already owned it. It was the ease of having it on my shelf - the instance access into a new world - something I have been preparing for intensely for the past year without ever knowing it.

How does it come together? "What a liberation to realize that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am. Who am I then? The one that sees that. The awareness that is prior to the thought, the space in which the thought - or the emotion or sense perception - happens." (p. 22)

I have struggled with that voice my entire life - that incessant negative chatter that has feared me into so many dark places. I have fought hard to change it and yet it always prevails. I have taken medication to get it to shut up. I have drank enormous amounts of alcohol to get it to stop. I have buried myself in food to hide from it. It never goes away. What a liberating idea that I am not that voice! My reflection to others is not what this voice says and yet I could not seem to seperate who they could see from the voice inside my head. They would say I was wonderful - it would say I was horrible. I was convinced I was a fraud and if anyone found out what was really going on in my head they would realize what I fraud I really was. They would hate me, disown me - I would be all alone for ever. So, I have retreated away from everyone, never having any close relationships in the past 3 1/2 years. I have tried to hide that incessant chatter from everyone else and yet I continued to receive positive feedback on who I am. I was already split in two without understanding. What I thought was a fraud is who I am, what convinced me that I was a fraud was my ego.

Have I become so liberated that I am completely free? NO. But I feel like getting on the roof and shouting to everyone that there is more - there is more. This book feeds my soul in a way nothing else has. I cannot explain the energy my body feels when I read it, the stillness of my mind as I ingest the words. I am nearly through chapter 2 and I already feel a new sense of self coming forth, a new sense of peace. I feel like I found a beautiful sparkling gem amongst the garbage and decay. I feel a sense of hope for the first time in my entire life. I have collected another puzzle piece from this book for my journey and it is that center piece, the one on which you build all the other pieces. I think I have highlighted nearly every passage - these words have given much needed nourishment to my shrinking, starved soul. Thank you to Eckhart Tolle for speaking truth - for sharing truth and thank you to Oprah for recognizing truth and putting it in a place where it cannot be ignored.

JUMP

I had a vision today. It is strange to use that word, but I must call it what it is. Fear was a ledge. Picture yourself standing on the edge of the grand canyon in the dead of night. In front of you is a black abyss swirling around with no end. Behind you is comfort, familiarity, safety. What do you choose? You know that there is something missing from your life. You know that there is something more out there. You only have two choices - return to where you have come from or jump into the black abyss with an end that you cannot see. What do you do? In my vision I decided it was time to change, it was time to release my fear and jump into the abyss. As I fell I felt fearful - did I make the right decision...will everything fall apart...will I die...will there be consequences??? Just at the moment when fear was about to consume my body I hit a trampoline. You know...one of those huge trampolines. I began to laugh with extreme joy as I bounced up and down on this trampoline with no control of my body. I began to laugh with the realization that there was really nothing to fear, the entire time I was falling I was completely safe. I was never in any danger. When I landed I reached a new level of joy, a new level of possibility that was incomprehensible prior to my jump into the abyss. What would you do if faced with only two choice? Would you stand on the ledge looking down without ever making a decision? Will you sit down and contemplate the never ending unknown in front of you trying to figure out what is there, trying to plan for every possible outcome? Will you return back to familiarity and comfort rather than taking a chance? There are no guarantees - not with comfort and not with the unknown. One thing for sure is that you cannot evolve without moving forward. You cannot change, you cannot excel, you cannot escape the feeling that there is something more without jumping. Fear is only a ledge - that is all. It has an ending - a predictable ending. It is something that you can see. Jumping into the black abyss is unpredictable, it is mind bending, it is the feeling of being weightless - jumping from a plane without a parachute - it is worth the temporary feeling of fear to separate from your humaness and become the soul of limitless energy that you truly are. What will you decide to be - the newborn swaddled in a blanket or the three year old bouncing with endless joy on the trampoline of life?