Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season filled with love and gratitude. I am eternally grateful for the wonderful time I spent with family and decided that friends are now those who I see regularly not only but those who deliberately make time to stay connected and supportive.

For a big change that happened in 2021 was the choice I made to become a mother. As a result some people no longer dreamed the same dream as me and thereby moved away but more importantly I chose to ask for what I needed more frequently and began to see who showed up. As a result more and more time was spent with my immediate family and we grew as a unit. I am forever grateful to them and my heart has expanded to include more time for them too. And more and more time was spent with other families with children who could understand the phase I am in. I realize just how true it is that life stages truly determine friendships too. I am grateful for friends who are there for seasons, reasons, and lifetimes but most importantly to grow with others through times of change as well as times of stability. 

Here's to a wonderful 2022 filled with family, friends, and lots and lots of love!

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As 2021 ends and I focus on what I cherished the most I would say welcoming my daughter not only but the family coming together more and more as a result. A deep division was healed within who I am as well as I now come together and prioritize the most important aspects of who I am - being a partner to those I work with and belong to as well as being a mother. For the deep interpersonal partnerships around me now organize more deeply around those who I trust with my partnership goals as well as those whom I can depend on to support my growing family.  And I now admire the mothers out there who have been so caring and deliberate in nurturing their homes, families, and partnerships. I am now one of those women and for that I am eternally grateful!

As I now transition from full time mom to working mom I realize that having a child in my life makes my working life and home life now both fulfilling. While I was so content work wise before there is space now to enjoy my child as well and see her begin to thrive as she settles into daycare, spends time with her grandparents/family as  well as now making family friends where we both enjoy spending time with the others.

Now I realize what I had been teaching for so long. Align with your purpose, your values, your dreams and things flow much more, decisions are easier to make, as well as now I see all of the roles I want to play and have the capacity to play as well. Now that I am content in both my work and personal life I feel like the dreams I have had for so long can come true too. As I see the new gaps now I can lean in and begin to take action there and really take things to another level.

Where do you you still have to grow and how can you take action on it?

By aligning with my deepest dreams, desires, and now fulfilling through becoming a mother I feel SO much lighter, more enlivened, but mainly free from the deep yearning for something that I had not achieved yet. I am so much more deeply fulfilled at the soul level and thereby opening up emotionally to joy, care, love, and now deep determination to succeed for my daughter's sake. Succeed to me means having deep fulfilling relationships, being kind to others, showing empathy and care, and now opening up my heart and soul to give to my daughter all of my love.

In the work world this means focusing so much more on commercial work as well as Mindfulness and Resilience courses that provide deep nourishment to those who participate and learn the lessons that they receive in the courses. By aligning to much to my deepest dreams opportunities to do more of the work I love have naturally flowed to me. A colleague reached out to me to co-teach a Search Inside Yourself class which we started in August, an old friend hired me to teach an Adaptive Resilience course to her team, and a colleague referred me to a new organization teaching virtual leadership classes to private sector teams. It is all the work I love and adore and wanted to move more into and I feel like the spiritually things come when you truly take the leap and take courageous action towards your deepest dreams.

What dreams do you still need to make movement towards?

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After a long and arduous wait I finally became a mother on July 2, 2021. I adopted a little two year old girl from India after a three year process. I am so in love and holding my baby daily makes me more so in each moment. While I dared to fly and go for my dreams it was a hard wait and a painful process.  I was so close to getting my child in April, but Covid in India delayed my trip for 3 months. But in the end the soulfulness gained during that time was worth it because I had to dig deep but mainly let go and truly have faith that I was where I needed to be. 

It all worked out in the end. My daughter is the biggest blessing I could have ever imagined. It has drawn me closer to my parents, brother, and niece/nephews, but mainly it has given me a purpose so much bigger than just myself (e.g. - more than just the fulfilling work that I do). I have always wanted to be a mother and to make it finally come true at a later stage in life is physically tiring, but emotionally I was so much more prepared to be a mother than I could have ever have been before. Thank goodness for following through on my heart's desires. It has been so emotionally fulfilling to finally have a soul to nurture day and night and truly fall in love so fully. I am filled up and there is so much more to be experienced together.

These first seven weeks have been a tiring time in my body, but my soul is so alive with joy!

With tides shifting life is beginning to see some movement again. As a result the pause I was going through is lifting and I am beginning to see the end of the tunnel. While those pauses are so hard and painful even, they do help you to grow and strengthen yourself as you focus on the present moment. Because you can't prepare for the future you must then dig deep and be resourceful in the here and now. It is in those moments that you feel your pain, allow for the results to fade away and just put your faith back into something bigger that things are happening as they should. 

You grow in these moments and you also see who comes through for you, who supports you, and who is truly there for you. You also see who are there for the good times alone. And while both are needed the ones who come through in the pinch are really the true support system. They are the ones you know will come through for you in thick and thin and those are the ones you also go to the mat for.

Finally in these moments the tools of mindfulness, staying healthy (body, mind, spirit) and leaning on your support system are so critical. It is in these times that the patterns of limiting who you are and not being authentic also leave because you are so in the present that your authentic voice begins to come out through and through. Lean into those moments which are tough for they show you what you are made of and who is there for you. Trust in the process and know that what goes down must go up.

My faith has always been important to me over the last 15 years, but never more so than when I am in a tough spot. In those times I lean more into my faith, my spiritual practices, and listening to positive messages from my faith. But the work really is still internally being able to live those words and not being out of alignment with my purpose and values.

During this time of pause I have opened up to living up to those values again - regularly practicing my spiritual practices, facing my inner capacity work wise and socially and now opening up in my personal life too to growth. But the main thing I have been able to open up to during this time is living in integrity to the wisdom within me (when I meditate or listen intently) and acting on it right away. In the past I would ignore messages and/or stop the messages coming out through staying busy or avoiding them through numbing out in some way like watching Netflix or overeating. But now that I am staying active less and needing to be aware of and trust the inner guidance I am doing so regularly and thereby elevating my inner wisdom by acting on them. As a result I am truly merging within and becoming the woman I always knew I could be.

What do you need to listen to and act on in your own world? What do you use to ignore messages from within and numb out?

When life throws you curve balls you realize what you are made up of. As a friend reminded me they can be in the boat with me (as I have had so much support through this curve ball) but I still have to row the boat. As a result I had to dig deep. I had to merge with a stronger deeper part of myself. I had to overcome my own feelings of sadness and grief over a path not emerging yet, and focus on what the opportunities and possibilities were instead.

As a result I have been growing again. I have developed a deeper sense of purpose and worthiness in my own capacity to overcome challenges. I have grown in my resilience to adapt to things not working out the way that I wanted them to, but mainly to change. I teach change management classes a lot, but didn't truly ever feel safe during change. But now I realize the Universe has my back. There is a reason for everything. And when I learn and grow and focus on the positive even better things happen for the curve ball happened for a reason.

My devotion to the Universe is deeper as a result of digging deeper, but most importantly I know who has my back now rather than just play friends. And finally I am stronger in my purpose as well as in what matters for me as I don't have time to waste anymore.

​What are you stronger in due to tough times in your life?

With so many comings and goings in life sometimes it has been hard for me to settle into a consistent dream, vision, values for my life due to some limitations I had put on myself. Through this time of pause and needing to wait for the tides to shift, I have had to go inwards and truly feel the feelings of angst, pain, fear, and loneliness for the dream I had in mind has not yet emerged. 

But as I dig through the feelings I see that the whole time my purpose was right there in front of me - give and receive, give more than I get, and let the world guide me through into loving human beings and allowing myself to truly thrive with other people around me. It is due to commitment, to planting, to merging with others and community that we thrive. It is through love and connection that we grow to our fullest version. And it is because of dropping the focus on the wrong things (the material things of the world) that the true focus on relationship health and success emerged. Covid solidified that as the truth is I have been more content in many ways dropping all of the external things and focusing on the healthy doting relationships than I had in the past for so many reasons. Mainly because I grew in my confidence in those relationships as well as in my capacity to nurture them and receive from them as well.

What is your purpose? How has it solidified this year?

When the universe throws you a curve ball, you must adjust. But man is it hard. I was on a course expecting a certain outcome, but the tides shifted and I couldn't proceed in the way I planned. As a result I paused, took some time out to get the support I needed emotionally as well as spiritually, but now I am seeing the clearly just how important the pause is. 

As  result of the pause I am now happier, more content, as well as now calmer inside due to the meditation and spiritual lessons I was reading, but mainly due to the expanse of friends and family who have come to my side. For someone who took a long time to cultivate a support system so vast and so wonderfully accommodating, I feel fortunate to know that the right people have now come by my side and that I am not on my own in the hard times, but powerfully held up. That was a large undertaking and I realize just how powerful it is to nurture and grow relationships, how much effort and time it takes to put into growing a resourceful network, but mainly how important it is to stand by each other in the good and bad times.

So many people had my back but more importantly I was content in the adjustment due to the wisdom I was now able to listen to as I calmed down and duly trusted that the pause was for the good. I was meant to open up and coalesce with these friends and family and healthily connect heart to heart and now the beginnings of soul to soul with a wise circle of family and friends.  For in due time all of who I am could settle into a deeper connection with them as well as changing the course of my future for when the change does occur I will be able to connect and care in a much deeper way. 

Everything happens for the good even when you might not be able to see it in the moment!
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