A Warm and Cozy Welcome
A Warm and Cozy Welcome
First post! Getting caught up, letting it burn, surrendering to the call and straight up going for it.
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How I made it here
If it’s your first time here on this page, welcome to the party - ( that makes two of us :) )
Truth to be told, I heard about Substack a couple years ago and it’s taken me until now to hop on board. I guess you can say I lurk before I leap. To give context about how I made it here, I’d have to take you all the way back to the early pandemic days.
Leading up to 2020, I was at what felt like a close-to heightened state of my path as a meditation teacher and mind/body facilitator. I was running two businesses at the time; one I co-founded, planning events, teaching online programs, in-person workshops, hosting and producing my own podcast, and guest speaking. In 2020, I was booked to speak at 7 different events throughout the states. This felt like a milestone. It meant I could facilitate more in-person experiences outside the four walls of my home. It meant more people were noticing the work I was teaching enough to invite me to serve their communities.
My calendar was full with teaching through sessions with students, private clients, business trips, networking events, conferences, and the list could go on. I thought I was living my dream doing what I enjoyed but as someone who thrives on solitude, I didn’t realize how noisy my world became. Life was calling me forward to embrace a completely new way of being — one where I was asked to let go of all the old versions I used to be. But my ego didn’t want to listen, I just kept going.
… Then the pandemic happened and suddenly everything got quiet.
Real quiet.
So quiet I could hear the pins of every wise whisper I’ve ever unconsciously ignore drop to the ground.
And that drop was loud.
Everything that I had been avoiding became blatantly clear and now unavoidable.
Events and flights were either canceled or have gone virtual. My once full calendar became a blank canvas and the catch is, I thought I would be so disappointed. By way of, “here I am, I finally got what I wanted and now it’s all being taken away from me.”
But instead, I felt a deep sense of body-softening, belly-breathing, silence-soothing, palpable
peace. peace. peace. take over me.
It felt like the kind of exhale you take when you didn’t realize you were holding your breath for so long. The kind of exhale that makes you feel like you forgot where home was for a moment and you found it again.
How could it be when everything I was doing were things that I loved?
It’s safe to say just because you love something doesn’t mean you’re meant to do it forever, the way you do it forever. The painstaking reality is that every relationship whether work, an identity, a role, a friendship, a partnership, a romantic love, a hobby — every relationship has an expiration date.
Somewhere along the lines within those 2 years before the pandemic, my walk with God became wobbly and I was tested.
I got too busy, too caught up, too abbreviated, too distracted and too focused on the wrong things.
It’s true — hindsight is 20/20 and in this case, quite literally. I wouldn’t have known then what I know now.
I’m not sharing any of this to discredit those years. They were landmark years of my life and I learned a lot. I share this with humility to show that you can have dreams, love what you do and what you give, feel completely in integrity to your work and still lose parts of yourself along the way. You’ll feel like you contradict yourself more times than you can count. Until those two contradicting paths come to that fork in the road moment and you have to choose which one you’re going to walk.
Will it be the one that’s already been walked on so many times that it’s neatly paved and you never have to question where you’re going? The one that everyone else is walking? The one that appears the easiest?
Or will it be the path less traveled? The path that you will have to pave alone.
The path less traveled is not the most attractive at first glance. You got bushes lined up past your knees and ooooh do they itch and ooooh do those thorns hurt. You can barely see where on God’s green earth you’re going. It’s rocky, bumpy, and some parts feel like you’re walking in a never-ending glob of mud. May take you longer to get to your destination, doesn’t come with a manual, is not glamorous but wow, will you learn. Wow, will you have no choice but to listen to your own Inner Wisdom and call on the Divine because you have no one else to look to. And wow, will God pour into you. Wow, will you finally lose the heavy backpack you’ve been carrying full of the old identities you thought you needed to cling to just because it was so familiar and wow just wow, will you feel so. much. lighter along the way.
It does end and you will find yourself.
But first —
You have to lose yourself to find yourself, over and over again in the span of one lifetime. You have to shed the pieces of who you think you are, throw it into the fire and let it burn until you become who you were meant to be.
So I took the path less traveled.
It’s a spiral of a journey that’s far from being a straight line.
Since then, there has been a lot of big changes in my inner and outer world.
I have spent the past few years honoring that call to live the more quaint, quiet and slow days that my mind/body was craving. I became a wife and a mom — both roles I devote my whole heart to and look forward to writing more about. I spent way less time on social media (more on this in later posts), less time on my computer and more time being completely present to what was unfolding right in front of me — think getting on my hands and knees grouting porcelain floors while remodeling our 1970’s home.
Grounding and grounded.
As I became quieter on the inside, God’s voice became louder.
All I wanted to do was deeply listen and write.
For once in a while, not teach, not preach, not speak— just listen and write.
I have been writing since I was 10 years old. I have found poems and short journal entries in the lined pages on the back of those old small binder address books where I kept all my contacts from the 5th and 6th grade. I have journals stacked in a box tucked away in my garage ranging from 10-30 years old. Writing has always been my safe haven. A way of pouring my heart out and by all means, connecting with the Most High. Writing has been ever present in my life through every traumatic event, every heartbreak and happy times. Even though my writing wasn’t being published to the world, I felt heard by the Divine with each word I wrote. When I write, I don’t feel the need to be perfect, or to have it all figured out, or to come to an outcome. I write to come as I am, in my imperfect human form, in my Spirit and I write for the simple creative, healing, transformative act of self-expression.
To create for the sake of creating — not to reach an outcome — is truly a gift.
Writing has brought me belly laughs, ugly cries and out-of-this-world epiphanies.
And that’s why I’m here now— declaring that I am a writer a little more intentionally by engaging in this platform that was designed for me and many others to do just that — ruthlessly, passionately, write, write and write.
Write away from social media and mindless energy-draining scrolls.
Write away from limited captions and distracted reading.
Write away from algorithms, follows and views.
Write in a place where others show up to read and to mentally digest your words more slowly as if it were a 5 star gourmet meal for the mind and soul.
These days my deepest driving desires and values are centered around peace and all that brings peace.
Living more honestly, more spaciously, more slowly, more creatively and more compassionately.
I love that I can use this digital environment to a create a space that’s more open, deliberate and more than anything, that makes me feel like I can still be present.
If it were up to me, I’m sure I could keep filling up the pages in my journals and let them collect dust in my garage but I feel in some ways, that would be selfish. I would die with too much still inside of me. God is taking me in a different direction and I am learning to keep surrendering to His will. One day, all I will have left behind are the words I wrote and the way I lived when I wrote them.
I would hope that those words would leave some some kind of an impression on others. That it made them feel seen when they felt invisible. That it made them feel heard when they felt silenced. That it made them feel —when they were numb.
So here I am hoppin’ on the Substack train to honor the part of who I am as a writer. Surrendering to the call God has on my heart. Not knowing where any of this is going to take me. Just knowing that this is what i’m meant to show up for and to keep showing up for it no matter what.
I view this newsletter like a living breathing digital experiment where I get to share anything dancing around in my mind and heart. Overall, I write about making peace and well-being a way of life. In detail, I write about relationship with God, personal reflections gained from my meditation practice over the years, marriage, motherhood, mind body medicine of today’s era, relationships, home design/lifestyle occasionally a poem or two and how to slow down in a world that feels like a revolving merry go round of busy-ness. I’ll share personal stories, my favorite recipes, reads and music.
My Hope For Us
I hope each time you come into this space that it feels insightful, supportive, nourishing, inspiring, and that it moves you to create, to express yourself, to transform, to be courageous, to take chances, to see yourself more clearly, to slow down, to make mistakes, to forgive yourself, and to see all the miracles and possibilities available to you in any given moment.
I hope it brings your mind, body and soul content that is nurturing to consume, that makes you feel good, at peace and that awakens something inside of you. I hope it is a steady reminder to honor the calm pauses through your most chaotic days and belly laughs through your most sad ones.
I’m thoroughly excited to start this new adventure with you, to start taking myself more seriously as a writer and to share more abundantly with those who value and support the work.
Thank you for allowing me to be a small part of your journey.
I appreciate you.
Together, let’s remember the sweetness in our days — one sip of milk and honey at a time.
Warmly,
Sandy
“There’s a place that we can be inside of ourselves, inside of the universe, in which and from which we can appreciate the delight in life. Where we can still have equanimity, and quality of presence, and the quietness of peace.” -Ram Dass
Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds.”