During a visit with an eighty eight year old woman with arthritis, we started talking about piñon. She asked me when I last went picking. In autumn, you can find cars parked along highways as families take buckets and bags to gather the tiny seeds that fall from pine trees. It is a labor intensive process that defines the culture here. The cherished seeds are then roasted and snacked on like a sunflower seed. The fact that she even thought I went piñon picking was a high compliment but alas I told her, picking piñon was not something I have ever done. 

Our last visit was today. Before I left she said, "I have something for you." She handed me a little packet of piñon that her family had picked and she had roasted herself. It wasn't just a tiny packet of seeds she was handing me but an offering from her ancestry and her culture. The love I receive from the families who have lived here for generations steals my heart every time. 
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Even the cats seem to know what a treasure I have just received

Beyond Fear may never have been written had it not been for my obscure self-published book, A Structure for Spirit. Its first incarnation was known as, A Success Journal: Daily Practices to Manifest Your Intentions,  self-published in 2005 along with an audio of guided meditations.

To create a book out of thin air, with nothing more than the ideas in your head, takes quite a bit of fire. And that fire kept me going for a good year after the book was written, promoting it through family (oh what I have put them through in my life!), friends and clients. I ran out of steam as the energy invested seemed to show less and less payoff. I abandoned the book to a closet shelf where it began collecting dust for a number of years.
In 2010, one of the mentors on my travels to Peru asked me, “How do you intend to bring your wisdom to the world?” It felt like the most profound question anyone had ever asked me. I had never given it much thought but my book in the closet came to mind. After a series of synchronistic events it seemed time to pull the book about daily practices down from the shelf.

I have had a daily practice for a very long time so what need did I have for a book to help create a daily practice? In the words of my mentor, “You’re blowing past your own medicine.”
I finally became a student of my own book. My father had recently died. My beloved had left me leaving my heart shattered to pieces. A period of isolating loneliness engulfed me.
The book landed in perfect and divine timing. It transformed and so did I. Everything changed, including the name. (Well my name stayed the same.) A Structure for Spirit was born.
Balboa Press became the new self publishing agency. By this time Facebook was invented. I started a page. Nearly 9000 likes. The fire returned.

Keeping up with writing blogs and posting on Facebook was a full-time job, especially since I have never considered myself to be a writer. My entire life has been in healthcare and healing. My full-time job demands much of my time so for the second time I felt myself abandon the book as the dividends diminished.

I stand in awe of the voice that is rising from the Women’s March the world over, a voice that can no longer be silenced.  A collective voice is organizing and mobilizing to shift an old and outdated paradigm that is no longer serving the evolution of our times. This excerpt from the forthcoming, A Feminine Path to Enlightenment, speaks to finding the inner authority within each of us to guide our collective destiny to love.

There is an inner authority. It is not the voice of your mother. It is not the voice of your father. It is not the voice of your teacher or anyone who you believed at one time in your life held more power than you.

These authority figures have been given power over our soul. They have dominated the truth of who we are until we are too blind to see. We have been made deaf, dumb and blind by the authorities in our families, our cultures, our churches, our governments, for it keeps us from finding an inner authority.
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There is fear that if each individual listened to the voice of their inner authority there would be chaos and a loss of control. It is this fear that has kept us dominated and suppressed by authority voices that at one time may have been outside of us but now live within our mind; directing and controlling our heart and soul. Yet our soul longs to be free from domination.

In 2005 I traveled with my daughters to Thailand. Elephants are a big part of the tourist industry. You can ride them, feed them and in certain places, watch them paint. It is not the true nature of an elephant to paint a picture or be a performer. A trainer, an outer authority, imposes this idea on the elephant for their own gain, not to benefit the elephant.

To train an elephant it must first be held captive. The baby elephant will run. Of course it will, that is its nature. So it must be chained for the elephant is strong. For a time the elephant will try and run but as it pulls on the heavy chain it cannot go anywhere.

Eventually the elephant resigns. It gives up the struggle. At that point it no longer needs a heavy chain to hold it back. All it takes is a small rope; a small rope around the foot of the elephant keeps it in place. It has been broken. Something inside the elephant has died. It has forgotten how powerful it is because others have imposed their ideas on the elephant about what it should do and who it should be.

And we are like that.

Broken.

Held back.

In order to be held back and broken a part of us has to die. We die every time we listen to the outside voices of authority and accept them as our own. Our truth dies. Our gifts die. Our talents die. Our Soul voice dies.

When your voice is not heard, when your soul is not shared, we all suffer. It is not enough to heal our unresolved pain to prevent the harmful imprint on our planet and our loved ones. We must then find our voice, step into our gifts and share what we are meant to share in the world.

It is beauty.

It is love.

This is our destiny.