I'm in the basement folding clothes at a job that is completely depleting my creativity and energy. I stand there staring out the window, taking in the cold and gloomy day that is being portrayed to me. For once, I had paused from my autopilot reality and stepped into that present moment. My body began to speak to me in ways I had never allowed myself to witness; I was shaky but not cold; my heart raced, but I wasn't anxious; a voice spoke within me calmly; it asked, "Is this how you want to lead?"

My life has not been the same since.

This simple question has led me down a path of self-discovery. It has opened new doors and has allowed me to witness how deeply I identified with my mind. My unconscious thoughts, patterns, and beliefs were the reason why I continued to play small and self-sabotage my success. It was why I felt stuck, alone, and completely unhappy with my life.

I began to awaken and take notes, and although I took the hard way to understand it all, it all started to come together and make sense.

Parenting felt hard because I was allowing my childhood circumstances to be at the forefront of my mothering experience. Staying connected in relationships was challenging because connection and confrontation were so foreign to me. I had this deep desire to homeschool my girls but found it overwhelming and sensed that I was utterly failing them.

Then, one night, as I lay in the grass of my backyard, astonished by the night sky, a shooting star glimmers in front of me, and at that exact moment, something clicked within me, and this is what I heard; "To have the life you long for, you must grow a deep love within yourself first, through this love and admiration for yourself, everything else will come together, life will begin to flow with ease."

I want to say that I began to live through these words right after I heard them, but I didn't; it wasn't until about a year later that I began to nurture these words and witness my life through a new lens.

As I did this, I realized that the deep connections, the conscious parenting, the awakened homeschooling, and the longing for a completely satisfied life was attainable, and that the only thing holding me back was me; I was the common denominator of why I was not where I desired to be, I was the one holding myself a prisoner of my reality, from this awareness, I surrendered, I took ownership of my blaming and shaming victimhood and life began to shift.

Parenting became a beautiful journey; homeschooling started flowing with ease which filled my heart with a deep appreciation. Relationships opened my eyes to the reflection I was offering others. I stopped playing characters and replaying old scenes; instead, I became the director of my movie production.