I wrote an end of the year wrap up post similar to the one I wrote last year, but it didn't feel honest, sincere or meaningful.  It actually felt a lot like recycling, so I didn't publish it.  

What is honest?  FEAR:  I’m scared $#!+less, every stinking day.

So when, thanks to blogging buddy, Blogger Idol 2013, THE Lois Alter Mark, whom I intend to meet IRL in 2014, I discovered the book, “Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave,”  

The stakes were so, so very high, that I became so, so very careful.  Afraid to fail, but just as afraid to succeed.  Certainly afraid to put myself out there to be judged, and yet I yearned for the accolades again.  I yearned not to be ignored and stigmatized as a single mom.  I didn't feel welcome in the church I'd grown up singing in.  In fact I was stricken from the membership rolls because I wasn't tithing.  Tithing?!  I had to return bottles and cans from my dad's office for the deposit to buy bread and milk and eggs to feed my child!  One heaping paper bagful was $4, give or take ten cents.

Life was hard.  Life was a state of constant fear.  And I began to believe that would be my reality forever.  Even after I married, it still proved our reality, because together we seemed to suck the joy out of everything.  Life was so hard as we worked to recover from our respective single parenting and divorce, we knew only hard and we kept living it.  I see it in our daughters still sometimes, which is what makes me ache to prove to them, to prove to my husband that life can be joy-filled.  Not easy necessarily, but that a time will come when we can relax and ENJOY all our hard work.  Maybe just a little?

That's been our story:  Hard.  Work.  Plodding.  It's what has defined us.  But it hasn't served us, and it sure as hell hasn't made us rich--the harder we work, the more we seem to struggle.  Whatever we've each "done wrong" which determined that we don't deserve joy and happiness is what we've allowed to define us.  That's been our story.  Single mother, divorced father, job losers, failed restaurateurs....  ENOUGH!  I think this is the year that we will choose how we define ourselves.  At least I intend to!

Patty has a chapter in her book about surfing the Great Lakes.  I don't think it's an accident that it was my hometown, St. Joseph, where she took such a plunge.  In winter!  She says, "Michigan folks must be made of heartier stuff than New Yorkers."  While I don't know about that, I do know we are hearty, indeed.  We take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.  We're right smack in the middle of one of the longest, coldest winters in decades.  If I could see that lake through the blizzard we’re currently weathering, I wouldn’t be able to imagine for a moment surfing it.  But as Erica said from Third Coast Surf Shop, where Patty & Patrick rented their surfboard, "I'm from here, I can surf in the summer."  

Patty asked me on Facebook whether I really live in St. Joseph.  I proudly display a picture by Mark Parren of our little red-roofed light house as one of my cover photos.  But Patty probably didn't recognize it because it was likely encased in a feet-, not inches-, thick sarcophagus of glacial ice at that time of year.  So, yeah.  I've been on a quest to overcome my fear of success as well as my fear of failure over the last two years, but I don't feel the need to surf Lake Michigan in winter to prove it.  I sure as hell, however, want to meet the woman who did and lived to write about it!

Patty quotes her surfing coach, Patrick, as saying, “Strength and courage has always been there, you're just uncovering it in different ways."

I think strength and courage can hide behind hard work.  Taking a licking and perseverance doesn't equate to happiness and fulfillment.  And in 2013 it barely equated to food on the table.  I make an effort to regularly be positive, or I keep my fingers to myself.  There’s enough negativity among social media outlets.  But that’s the truth.  As wonderful as it was in many ways for me personally, 2013 was our scariest year yet financially.

I have to admit #SomeNerve has made me feel a little feisty, a little defensive perhaps about my choices over the last two years.  Patty describes Barry's near-death experience on a plane.  This makes me think of our near death financially, which has spurred in me an "ef-it" attitude about what I choose to do to contribute to my family.  I simply can't abide the idea of waiting tables or tending bar or being someone's administrative assistant.  Been there, done all those things.  

Maybe some would say I've had a responsibility to do those things to bring in cash--that I should have done whatever it took to pay the bills, but my husband was already doing that.  We can't both be miserable and unfulfilled and disbelieving, what then would that do to our son?  And maybe I can have an influence on his actions and desire toward living a fulfilled life rather than just plodding through—he has taken up photography, and I think I might have inspired that just a little.  And I've felt a deep calling to do something very different from what I’ve done that didn’t fulfill me in the past.  

Fear of death is a big one for many people, but I have longevity in my genes with a grandpa who lived to be 100 years old.  Patty’s book has inspired me to want to work harder not to screw that up.  And if I have half my life left to look forward to, I want to make the most of it, and I want to help influence the happiness of others.  The saying, Life is Too Short...not to grab every moment.  Yet, while we're raising kids, we spend many of those years in a kind of standby mode.  We hover and we put all our energy into our children, and often very little into ourselves. 

When I look back on my life, much like someone having a near death experience might, I can see that all the pieces have come together in this moment.  I can pull together all my life experience to have an impact on others, and that's what I want to do with the second half of my life.  That's the beauty of growing older:  Perspective.  Hindsight.  That's what I hope to take advantage of, and what I’ve been diligently self-teaching over the last two years.  

I said to Patty the other night as we were Facebook chatting, that overcoming fear is the path I've been on for the last two years, and her book articulates it so beautifully. Wouldn't it be wonderful to help people to be brave well before they reach midlife? Why does it take so many of us so long? I haven't answered that question yet. But I keep trying. We allow so many other things to define us, I suppose, maybe this is when we finally begin to seek to define ourselves. But why the hell can't we be nurtured and encouraged to do that all our lives?  Why isn't happiness and fulfillment always reason enough to do or to choose something?

Maybe it's because I've already been a mom for 27 years by the end of this month, but I've stood by long enough.  Now I wish to put as much energy into raising myself and others up as I have and will continue to spend, raising my kids.  And just as my husband continues to plod and to work, I will continue to seek that summit.  Which of us will get there first?  I hope it's me, so I can show him the light.

Previously West Coast Posse was largely directed at women.  You’ll note that I’m kind of in the middle of an overhaul here, and I've seen so many men, my own husband included, defeated and in pain over the last several years of economic uncertainty and job loss, that I feel compelled to bring everyone with me along on this glorious ride of self-discovery & fulfillment.  And I believe deeply that my grandfather's influence, his way of embracing people and life and food and gathering and celebrating every moment, can be key in seeing that to fruition.  I hope you’ll see evidence of that as my “GANE Empowered Wellness: GANE Possible” section develops.  That will be my #SomeNerve Challenge, by the way:  finishing that book (don’t worry, Bluebirds is still developing its wings), living it, promoting it, speaking about it, fully embracing the philosophy of MORE, doing cooking demonstrations (some together!) and teaching others to embrace MORE in 2014.  And I don’t think it’s an accident that my husband loved feeding people when we owned our restaurant—loved feeding the guys in the firehouse—or that we’ve since learned to do it in ways that help us maintain wellness, despite the stress we’ve been under.

The world needs MORE of us to feel happy and fulfilled--and you matter!  Yes, I'm talking to you!  If my path, if our path to get there can influence yours in a positive way, even when it’s bumpy, even when it’s scary, even when a positive attitude is at its most difficult to reach, I hope you'll hold on tight and come along for the ride.  

This time next year, when I’m creeping up on 49, I know the hindsight will be worth it!


This is posted as part of a Blog Hop over at Midlife Boulevard.  Our topic was: There's Nothing Wrong with Aging.

And actually there is something missing, and has been for over ten years...an income stream.  Not that I would trade a moment of the last ten years of being *just* a stay at home mom to the delightful, imaginative, remarkable boy it took six long years to brew, but I've definitely missed working and contributing a paycheck to our household--financial independence, choices, etc.  It's also put a tremendous amount of pressure on my poor husband. It's miraculous, in fact, that despite two job losses in the last seven years, he's managed to keep us going all this time, though it hasn't been without great cost. 

What a bum I've been!

There goes that Momma-guilt machine again, dammit!

We moms seem to be damned if we do and damned if we don't.  The incessant demands of the every-day life of the Stay At Home Mom leave us weary; fulfilled to a degree, but in ways that are so far removed from professional, we're sometimes left feeling broken and like the huge holes in our resumes have closed any portal to job fulfillment that may have once been open.  This leaves many of us paralyzed with fear that prevents any attempt to enter the workforce ever again.  

I've been reminded recently of all that we've overcome and all the *work* I have done over the last sixteen years, and things have happened since my last post to compel me to share them, and to create a business out of it, resume gap and Wage Gap be-damned! 

Scary stuff!

I haven't been a businesswoman since we closed our restaurant in 2001, and obviously that didn't exactly leave me feeling like I was a successful one.  I haven't been much of anything besides a tired, Warrior Mom who managed to heal her own infertility naturally, and then rescued her infant son from a probable future of profound neurological deficit, and then spent the next years of his life fixing the damage he'd incurred and discovering how in the world to help him become the best version of himself he can possibly be. 

Nah, I haven't done a damn thing. 

I couldn't have done any of it without the undying support and faith from my husband.  Sometimes he was just holding on tight and going along for the ride, but I certainly wouldn't be here without him.  It was just Father's Day and his birthday was yesterday, so I feel compelled to celebrate him--though it isn't nearly enough.  He took our son to the movies this weekend to allow me to make progress on the launch of my new program, GANE Possible: RECLAIM Your Fertility.  This will hopefully allow me to pass along everything I've learned in the last sixteen years and truly make a difference in our lives, by making a profound difference in the lives of others, and perhaps even someday in the world.

I must also thank Alissa Sheftic of Sheftic Communications & Imagery.  She not only did a beautiful job editing the great picture my husband (he was just learning the ins and outs of the new professional camera he'd procured) took of me around midnight in our dimly lit kitchen, but she spent a good chuck of time and effort to help me align my efforts, and to better develop my branding.  I've still got a ways to go and look forward to more assistance from her, but this evolution couldn't have happened without her amazingly wise and capable advice.  Anyone with similar goals would benefit fantastically from employing the services of her new company.

And finally, through the amazing coaching and instruction of Nicola Bird of JigsawBox, I was able to finally recognize her amazing education portal tool as the answer it is to the question, HOW can I possibly accomplish what I hoped to accomplish in 2013, beyond simply publishing a book that you read (maybe) and set aside, and to do it now?  

It's all been part of the process of self-discovery, of learning who I am, who I hope to become, and how I hope to change the world, or at least my small piece of it, for the better.  I believe that's what 2013 is all about: not accepting the status quo, using your innate gifts to better your own life by bettering the lives of others, and empowering yourself to build the future you desire.  Whether or not you believe the Wage Gap is a misrepresentation, as most media buzz words are, it doesn't matter if you put yourself in the driver's seat.

One thing I've learned so far this year, without a doubt...absolutely anything is POSSIBLE...if you only believe it, reach out, take action, and just do it!

Some of Dana’s readers said SHE should be the next Judy Blume.  I agreed, and suggested she create an anthology in Judy Blume’s honor.  Because of that brief exchange, Dana and I are collaborating on this crazy, beautiful Judy Blume Project (#JudyBlumeProject), for which, I have a feeling, we will forevermore be grateful.

Judy Blume:  prolific and iconic author, surrogate mother, surrogate best friend and confidant to women and men in the most difficult of their growing up years, through many of life’s most tumultuous situations.  Who knows what the real Judy is like, but between her pages, she offers a soft breast to rest your troubled head upon, like the grandmother you miss so desperately.  She offers a kick in the pants like the best friend who always tells you the truth; honesty, always honesty, without restraint or judgment.  And most importantly, Judy always lets you know that you’re perfect and normal, and perfectly normal, just the way you are.  The same stuff your mom always told you, but you didn’t believe because she had to love you, she was your mom; and no one else ever would.

No one’s likely to tap you on the shoulder to tell you flat out that this is the magic you’ve been waiting for.  When it comes, you’d better believe in it; believe in yourself and believe in the possibility that it could happen to you, on a regular old Tuesday.  This could be your Tuesday…your moment.

If you’re lucky, you know when you come upon your destiny—you know when someone is meant to come into your life, and that something beautiful will happen as a result. I don’t know whether there will ever come a penny from this project upon which we’re embarking, but I do know that it will be life-changing in ways that transcend the concrete.  I can’t thank Heather enough for being her Extraordinary Ordinary self and providing a platform for something like this to happen.  And I can’t thank Dana enough for taking me along in this dust-kicking convertible that could totally be headed off a cliff.

What a ride it’s sure to be.  I’m leaning in.  With everything I have, I’m leaning in.


Follow along to see what happens on The Judy Bloom Project Facebook Page.


Guidelines to SUBMIT YOUR OWN PIECE can be found on the #JudyBlumeProject WEBPAGE!


...This could be YOUR Tuesday.

Please tell me in the comments what Judy Blume meant to you, and consider throwing in your proverbial hat.

I'd have to say that 2012 has been one of my best years, and I know without a doubt that it's due to something that changed within me. 

You've heard it before, and I'm going to say it again:  ATTITUDE.  Yes, it turns out, Attitude is Everything, and we ALL have the power to get there.  Now don’t stop reading because you think you’ve heard it before…give me a chance to explain:

When life gave me lemons (ie: living so far away from the place and the people I love), I Made Lemonade.  I Decided.  I Took Control.  I Took Action.  I Took Risks.  I DID SOMETHING.  I started to blog and I took creative writing classes, and I started my website, West Coast Posse, and I submitted an essay that was accepted and will be included in a BOOK this year!  Not only that, I'm writing my own book, and if I must, I will self-publish it this year.  I started this book YEARS ago.  It sat on my computer, it moved from computer to computer, but suddenly something switched inside of me, and I began actively pursuing ways to make it happen.  And.  It.  Will.  I will complete and publish, Bluebirds, the novel I know I was always meant to write, in 2013.

Now I'm a pretty determined chick, and I've done this before.  When I couldn't get pregnant, I Took Control.  I Took Action.  I DID SOMETHING.  When modern medicine failed me, I doggedly pursued and researched ways of improving my chances.  I questioned.  I changed.  I adapted.  I kept my goals of having a baby in my mind every waking moment, and I doggedly pursued my chosen path.  The path that spoke to me in whispers.  I was quiet, and I listened.  I didn't allow anything to shake me.  I kept at it, and kept at it, until I met success.  After six long years and one miscarriage, GlutenNaziMom was born, and so was GlutenNaziKid.  He'll turn ten years old in 2013. And in 2013, GlutenNaziMom, the website that I started four years ago, will actually become something.

I wanted to be a stay at home mom.  It felt like the right thing to do, and I have loved it.  Not every moment.  But overall, there’s nothing better I could have possibly done with the last 9.75 years than to see two daughters through adolescence and to see each of them, in her own way, get married (both in the last quarter of) this past year, and to see one spectacular little boy successfully navigate fourth grade. 

Being a SAHM has put a lot of pressure on my husband.  It’s cost us financially, but so did me working and being unhappy in one unfulfilling job after another.  I couldn’t see how to do both, but I’ve felt this niggling at the back of my mind that I was the key.  I was the key to my family’s financial freedom; to my own sense of purpose and fulfillment.  I’ve written my entire life, and it’s something I’ve gone back to again and again.  But I lacked the confidence to test the waters before.  They remain largely untested, but instead of ignoring the niggling, I’m listening.  I’m listening to that little voice inside of me, who’s been telling me for years that this was something I needed to do.  I’m not standing outside the fence, watching the merry-go-round of life happen to everyone else.  I’m not being a victim of circumstances that brought us back home and unemployed, I’m USING everything that’s happened before, everything that I know, every person I’ve met along the way, and I’m putting all the pieces together to make something happen in 2013. 

And I couldn’t have done it without each one of you.  Without every positive comment that gave me wings, and every negative comment that made me try harder, I could never have kept striving, kept believing, kept writing.  DOING SOMETHING, whether it elicits positive response or negative, is so very much better than living in a void, than doing absolutely nothing but waking up every morning and taking up space—than sucking the Light out of the Universe.

So I’m giving back.  You bet your sweet bippy, I’m USING what I know and who I know, but at the same time, I’m promoting others.  I’m sharing the love and the knowledge and the insight and the LIGHT and the belief that what I’ve learned in my forty-six years on this earth, and what you’ve learned in yours, can help others; can make life better and the future brighter for those who choose to Listen and to Take Action and to Start Something in their own little corner of the globe.  What’s Your Calling?

I now know that for each of us, We Are the Key.  Inside every one of us lies the power to stop complaining and stop sniveling and stop spreading doom and destruction and misery; to stop passing blame, but rather, to use everything we know to share and to inspire and to make THIS the year everything turns around.  Fiscal Cliff, be damned!  I’m not holding my breath and waiting for the government to fix my existence.  I’m going out there and making it happen for myself, for my family, and for anyone who wants to Decide—who wants to Choose—who wants to Take Action and come along.  If we each look inside and make it Our Responsibility and Our Purpose, and spread that Attitude and Intention to our neighbors and around our blocks and around our towns and around Our Nation and maybe even the WORLD—we Each Have the Power to Make 2013 The Best Year We’ve Ever Known!

I lack the sufficient number of fingers and toes to count how many times I’ve heard my dad say those words:  Change is Permanent.  Meaning, nothing ever stays the same, so you might as well stop fighting, stop trying to control and embrace it.  Neither embracing change nor giving up control, however, has EVER been easy for me. 

Take moving to California, for instance.  In September of 2010, we left my quaint little lakeside hometown and our home of 12 years in Michigan, still full of all our stuff, and spent two weeks camping our way across country to the destination of temporary housing and a new job for my husband, in San Diego, California.  We were towing a 30 foot travel trailer; me, husband, then seven-year-old son, dog, and a lizard experiencing Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride back in the trailer, his tank precariously and I’m sure mortifyingly bungeed to the dinette.  Every time we stopped to make camp, the Boy and I had to rearrange his tank and refill the water that had sloshed everywhere.  He was downright twitchy and clearly not a happy desert-dwelling leopard gecko. 


I knew the feeling.

There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation happening in our vehicle as the more than 2000 miles rolled beneath our rig.  I spent many hours on Facebook; trying desperately to maintain the connection to friends, family back home and the nearly grown daughters we were leaving behind.  Our middle daughter was already living and going to school in Florida and everyone and everything I loved was growing only farther and farther away, as we moved closer and closer to the unknown bustling vastness of San Diego and the west coast.  The thought of building a life so far removed from the one I’d known, grew only more daunting.

There’s a theory in psychology called tabula rasa, or blank slate.  Meaning that every child is born with a clean slate and that they grow and become the people they will become because of their experiences, the environment in which they grow, how they are nurtured and, perhaps most importantly, because of the people they meet along the way.  I think I was a bit of a blank slate for much of my life--floundering, questioning where my place might be in the Universe, and what my purpose could possibly be.  I didn’t so much make choices and decisions for myself, as I allowed them to be made by others, or procrastinated to the point where they were made for me.  In many cases, I failed to actively participate in choosing my path, and often blamed others when I didn’t like the outcome; my poor husband being the frequent place for my blame to land.

Even as I blamed others, I always felt a niggling, deep down, that I was the key; that I had the power to give my family the freedom to build our lives, thrive and contribute something truly special to wherever we chose to live, but I had no idea how to get there. 

At first, San Diego was no different.  After an initial period of mourning (OK, more like wallowing), and making exactly one truly wonderful friend, to whom I will be eternally grateful for recognizing how pathetic I was and reaching out to me anyway in the park, I ultimately decided that for however long we might be in California, I was going to grow and take advantage of opportunities that weren't as readily available in my small hometown.  I decided.

I began to follow local San Diego authors, novelist, Margaret Dilloway, and self-help guru, Debbie Ford, and I read a debut memoir by an author from my hometown, Patricia Gibson.  I liked her first book so much, How to be an American Housewife, that I e-mailed Margaret Dilloway.  She kindly replied and suggested I seek out classes at UCSD Extension, join a writers group, and attend a writers’ conference.  I took my first Creative Writing class in the fall of 2011, and magic began to happen.  I was blessed to study under Don and Nancy Kaye Matson, and under their patient tutelage and encouragement, I have experienced a dramatic life change and have positively bloomed.  Nancy Kaye has a website, Define Your Destiny, and I swear that I did just that, purely by osmosis and her proximity in class.

I remember when we first arrived, as we drove over the last big mountain in Arizona into California, I saw a rainbow.  I wondered if our pot of gold could possibly be waiting at the end of it.  I even posted a picture of it to Facebook, and asked that very question.  Well, financially?  Not yet.  But personally?  I’d have to say that California has taught me much about myself, and if my own pot of gold is the light inside and the confidence that I now recognize and seek to share with the world?  Then yes, California has contained that pot of gold I’d hoped for.

I turned 46 years old in July.  But it wasn’t until I spent my 45th year in California that I finally figured out that I want to be a writer when I grow up.  Not even that I want to be, but more that I always was, and I’d suppressed it all these years.  I’d always used the excuse that because I lack a college degree, no one would care what I thought or what I had to say; that my words couldn’t possibly be profound enough.  Being willing to stick my neck out and try it, and realizing otherwise, I suppose, means that over these many months in California, I did actually grow up. 

I did grow up and amid all the crowds and all the rush and the competition to spend more, lookmore'beautiful'earnmorehavemoredriveabettercar, I discovered something pretty amazing. 

I discovered that I have the power to bring people together and to be a light, even in this huge place.

I came to this vast land that is San Diego, and I didn't disappear.  I didn't crumble, though I was cracked for awhile.  When I decided finally to stop wallowing and take control of my San Diego experience, I discovered I was no longer invisible, and in fact I bloomed.  I became someone I could be proud of, besides just my kids' mom, which of course isn't 'just' at all.  But because society seems to tell us so at every opportunity, as stay at home moms with the dreaded holes in our resumes, it’s easy to forget that what we share, manage and grow in our families, translates into an ability to share, manage and grow other things as well.  Women aren't merely capable of building homes, communities, governments; we build people--little human beings, for goodness sakes.  That isn’t ‘just’—we’re not ‘just’ moms.

Remember the movie, City Slickers, with Billy Chrystal and Jack Palance?  Billy Chrystal plays Mitch, an angst-ridden suburban husband, and Palance won an academy award for his portrayal of a trail-hardened, Curly Washburn.  Curly turns out to be more than a simple cowboy, but a wise mystic who advises Mitch to focus on the “One Thing,” that is most important in his life to solve all his problems.  I didn’t really get it, and I always wondered what that “One Thing” was.

I’ve come to learn that the “One Thing,” for me, is in that sharing.  The secret is in supporting one another and in our innate humanity toward one another; in caring enough to discover the beauty and special something that lives in every one of us.  It’s in being willing to open up and share the pieces of ourselves that are special, even if we or our families and friends are the only ones who think so, or even if no one does…yet. 

With only a genuine smile and a look in the eye, I have found the power to disarm a cranky clerk and maybe change their bad day for the better.  And I now know that within each of us exists the power to make all our wishes come true; we need only to decide it, believe it, reach for it, and trust that the Universe will put us right where we need to be in order grow.

As much as I thank California and the wonderful people I’ve met here for helping make me the person I am today, and the person I will continue to grow to become, however, it is time for us to return home to Michigan and the responsibilities we left behind.  My husband will go back to consulting, which is what landed him the job opportunity in the first place, and I will continue to write.  And we will pool the many resources we both possess and make life work there.

We're going back, but we're not going backwards.  As the lizard survives to make another terrifying trip across the country, so do I, and the person I'm bringing home with me is better than the one who left.  She believes in herself.  She believes she has something to offer her community; that she can make a positive impact on herself, her daughters, her nieces; her Posse on both West Coasts and all points in between and beyond, and even to her husband, father, brothers & son.  She is more confident and more willing to share the lessons of life that no college could have taught her, and she is more open to the lessons others have to teach.  She is an author. 

I am an AUTHOR!  A dream that will be realized when the book in which I will have an essay published, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics, is released in the fall, before the elections.  I never would have stretched, never would have reached for such a lofty goal, had I not been so desperately lonely and sick of myself that I had no other choice than to begin writing the thoughts and the stories that had wrestled for years in my mind.  I even sleep more peacefully now, and I am excited to bring the best that I have to offer back to my hometown and to have a positive impact there. 

Even so, after almost two years, it turns out that saying good-bye to new friends is just as painful as saying good-bye to old ones.   I dearly wish I wasn't breaking a heart in order to heal my own; to return to my hometown, our families, old friends, to help raise our nephew and to be closer to our daughters and the support system we left behind, and to my beloved lake.  I am leaving California, but I thank her for all she has taught me, and for the wonderful friends here who have found a place in my own broken heart forever. 

Perhaps in order to find our true selves we need to step away for a time from that which defined who we were.  We must stretch our wings and venture off in order to find who we hope to become and to find the true potential we all possess and the selves we can be proud to share with the world.  I’m not sure what it is that makes it so hard for some of us to love ourselves and recognize our worth as young women, but I hope that I can share the self-esteem and the light I’ve found, and teach other women and young girls to be open to the Universe, to see it in themselves, and to recognize their own power and their own true potential.  To realize that change isn’t just permanent, it’s positive.  If only we can recognize it and accept it for what it is and for what it might be, and for what it might possibly define in us…our destiny.