The Empowered Lifestyle

It’s Scorpio so I have been inundated with emails from wounded and sometimes gaping bleeding souls who have lost loved ones inside on the last week or so. A computer expert turned friend who lost his beloved and way too young mom to ovarian cancer. My friend also named Ellen who has been at the drive thru window of the local branch of Wachovia making all my banking and my day brighter and better by her very presents (misspell intended.) And then there are the scores of emails from clients or readers or listeners who know that I have an ear and a shoulder and possibly even some advice for them when they are in need and in pain.

Today will be no different.

I get it. I get it because I’ve lived death of dear ones, I get it because it’s Scorpio as well, traditionally a time of year when death and dying and all things associated pervade the collective unconscious. And then permeate the conscious one. With full size Snickers if you’re lucky.

Look, the people we love and hold so dear sometimes seem like our only true security in this life as it is often those same people who make life worth living and loving as well as help our own to make sense in a sometimes senseless world. And when they leave, a part of our own selves goes with them; the security, the love, the sense of it all.

There’s grief.

And then there’s bereavement. Gut wrenching, tear stained, nausea inducing, wake in the morning forgetting until remembering, awful, terrible bereavement. I could say that this too shall pass or that time heals all wounds, and, well, even though that’s completely true it rings so hollow and so phony baloney when you’ve just folded the first load of laundry for the fourth time and you don’t even remember doing it.

Essential oils can help smooth the rough edges and soften the blow that bereavement brings. They can become a critical companion that can help you over this crappy time as they offer their own brand of support and comfort; the kind that comes from within.

If you are grieving any sort of loss, chances are high that you spend some of the day sniffling. Why not try to inhale a blend of some oils that can take the edge off and potentially even bring in a sense of personal peace?

Blend 15 drops of mandarin true essential oil with 8 drops of geranium and 5 drops of benzoin and five drops of vetiver. You can blend this whole mix with a carrier oil such as olive oil or grapeseed and use as a massage oil or just add a few drops to a bath and soak your stress away. For twenty minutes anyway. The easiest way to keep these creature’s comforts right by your side is to put a few drops of the blend on a cotton ball and carry it close. Whenever you feel the need, just sniff and whiff the fragrance to try and make scents of it all.

I promise this will help. And I send sympathy, love and light!

Don’t forget that today begins the four HUGELY ‘Em-POWER-ing’ Days of this month. These are times to really go big or go home. If you have ANYTHING that you want to achieve or accomplish in your life, NOW is the time to roll those goals and intentions out and TAKE ACTION!

If you are confused what sort of step to take to support your efforts than go for a Feng Shui “cure-all” and address the front door to your home (entryway Shui!) Clean the door itself, sweep all around it and make sure all lightbulbs (inside and out) are in working order as the doorbell itself should be. Now, take some bread, breadcrumbs or birdseed and sprinkle them all up your walkway, all the way to the front door itself. Remember, birds bring good news according to this philosophy and the next four days promise that same sweet song if you believe what the planets have to say.

Okay, so, I could weigh in today about The Bachelorette finally finding a guy as of that season finale on Monday night, or, I could maybe venture my opinion on A-Rod and Madonna or even Christy and Peter (although, I will say, for 54 years old she looks so friggin’ fabulous that I now HAVE to believe that men are from Mars if he had to take time with some internet porn before he could get up with her…I mean, really……), but, I won’t go to any of those places today.

Today what I will tell you is a personal and, hopefully, inspirational or maybe even motivational little anecdote. The quick and the dirty of it goes like this: As most of you know I had some surgery on my right leg last November. Since then I have received probably upwards of a gajillion, quadrillion bills from anyone who even glanced sideways at me while I was moaning and whining and cajoling trying to get me some more of those handy little pain meds. In any case, for months and months now I have been paying off some of those medical bills entirely while waiting for my health insurance to do the same with the ones that are, honestly, financially frightening to me. After this long a period of time I became pretty sure that any invoices I was receiving now were after insurance had weighed in though and equally sure that the remainders were most likely all my responsibility.

But some of those same bills made no sense. They were sent from hospitals that I hadn’t even laid eyes or fractured kneecap on (yes, TWO different hospitals, neither one was I EVER a patient at) and then there are the questions regarding the dates those two hospitals (yes, the same ones I never even limped one foot in) that say that I received services that don’t AT ALL jibe with when the knife actually sliced through the severed quadracep.

So, I did what I felt I had to do with all this costly confusion….nothing. That’s right, I have been just letting these bills come in each month, pile up and form a fraternity of sorts in a BIG basket in my kitchen. Until the other day when I opened yet another stupid statement that made no cents but apparently cost a LOT of dollars. This invoice was different however since it threatened to send the balance due to collections. Time to take action.

I had a trying morning today and decided I might as well get the six or seven phone calls that I have been avoiding making for MONTHS all out of the way in one fell swoop before the noon whistle. As I braced myself to make those calls (not ALL associated with overdue hospital bills but perceived to be potentially as painful), I sat down and with phone in hand, took a deep, DEEP breath.

Just then I remembered reading (and I’m not kidding, it was like a bolt out of the blue that hit me square in the head and heart at the exact same time) some of the best advice that ever came out of the New School of Thought. Several stories and anecdotes flashed into my ‘ready to take on the world’ mind each one softening my stance just a little. One of the most prolific writers of that thought in the early 1920s is still one of my favorites in the whole world, Florence Scovil Shinn. Shinn taught that the roaring lion that we are always so afraid to approach (in this particular case my seemingly pesky and pernicious phone calls) wasn’t really such a terrible terror after all. She showed how, in case after case after case, if any one of us would even attempt to face down our fears, then more times than not they would not be one smidge as bad as we conjectured! That’s right, simply by looking that lion in the eye, he would turn tail and walk away leaving any one of us free to roam, well, free. I truly believe this and so I was so comforted myself just remembering that same simple teaching. I even did a little visualization, right there and then while on eternal hold with the out patient billing department. I saw a lion in front of me with fangs bared and mouth wide open ready to eat me all up. Yum, yum. And then I walked up to that lion and I huffed and I puffed and I blew his big old furry ass about a billion miles away. I literally envisioned him flying fur into outer space. And then the accounts department rep picked up the phone and, wait for it, agreed with me in so much that all the statements I was recieving were incongruent and confusing. She put a freeze on my account(SSSSS) while she researches what it is that I really owe, which, by the way, looks to be A LOT LESS than what I am currently being billed for.

I am woman hear me ROAR.

ALL the rest of the calls went exactly the same way. For some, the person I needed to speak with was unavailable so I was able to leave a polite and uninterrupted message. For others, especially Mr. Donato in Long Island, the discourse I previously imagined to be completely contrarian actually ended up being easy, effortless and almost edging towards delightful.

So, you see, even I have those moments and those days when I’m afraid to bring in the mail, or pick up the phone or, God Forbid, run into someone I just don’t want to see. But, when I took a moment to remember that we are in charge of creating our own existence and that if we but only take the time to visualize our perfect outcome and then go ahead and face the fear, well, we too will one day find out for ourselves; what FDR promised so long ago in his initial inaugural, that in every aspect of our lives “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Take it from me, it’s sooooo true. But that doesn’t mean I’m in any hurry to call my tax accountant. Well, not today anyway. Nope, for today I think I will roll out an old Shinn affirmation (“What God has done for others He NOW does for me and more!”) and repeat it all day long while waiting for another opportunity to turn my ordinary life into an extraordinary experience.

I grew up in New Jersey where tomatoes and corn and peaches so sweet and ripe could constitute an entire summer’s day evening meal. Fresh tomatoes picked straight off the vine, all fat and juicy and sliced with the sharpest knife in the kitchen. Sprinkled with some sea salt, fresh ground pepper and just the slightest smattering of just grated parmesan cheese lay across the plate from ripped pieces of warmed and crusty French bread that one of us kids had only a few moments ago ridden their bike to pick up from Kay’s Bakery. Sweet and sugary corn on the cob slathered with real butter that made it so slippery and hard to hold was well worth all the effort of shucking the hair and the husks over that same day’s completed crossword puzzle in the daily newspaper. This corn was not wrapped in cellophane and bought at the local market but rather was picked from the farmer’s fields that could be found just a few miles away from my parent’s Normandy Beach summer home. And then, once the bread and the tomatoes and the corn was consumed came the denoument, the dessert of the biggest, juiciest, ripest peaches covered with sprinkled sugar and cream that came in a bottle delivered directly to the back door before the Sun even rose early that same morning.

Of course, then, I never understood how holy that simple meal was. In fact, I never appreciated the absolute grace of such slow splendor until I became a parent myself and that is the point of this post. Just yesterday, amid the hustle and the bustle of a big bang of a holiday I stopped to reflect and wonder at times past. And as I wondered I asked myself if my own son would ever have the myriad memories of a simple, sweeter time that, for me at least, defines childhood. Between decorating his bike for the local parade and running home to switch gears and get ready to go play in the July heat at the just down the block from us Bay Beach, I wondered if he would ever sample such slow and long delights as a freshly picked peach or if he would ever someday sit and smile after hours of attempts at catching fireflies in Flintstone jelly jars or if he would ever remember laying long outside under the night summer stars talking about what wonders his life will likely hold. A fragmented quilt connecting my early years to his, I think about the patches we piece together and whether I am giving him the same summer memories to wrap around him that will keep him warm and make him smile as he grows into a man.

Only time will tell. Only the good ole summertime. Will tell.

Okay, so here’s the weirdest thing…or…is it? I was writing an email this morning to my PR people at Channel V and sort of sharing how I am going back to Feng Shui the New York Life building here in Virginia. I was telling them how this is such a great opportunity to bring validity to what I do, you know? I mean a lot of people still think Feng Shui is such bullshit and, then, sometimes you get a guy who has a vision and some savvy who KNOWS that even if it doesn’t work, then, no harm, no foul. But, if it does…..

See initially, months and months ago, I was hired by their head of operations here to come and assess the space they are occupying. This guy had come from running their corporate Washington DC offices to sort of whip this local office into shape. In his ideal world, one of his goals was to increase staff, increase income and take more space in the high rise they operate out of now.

We consulted for more than a few hours the first time around and he enacted every instruction I shared. Five months later, with soaring unemployment rates and sky high jobless claims nationwide, they are taking over a few more floors to meet the demands of their growing and PRODUCTIVE staff. I will be going back again today to take a look at the new floors and make recommendations for colors and fabrics and furniture and, yes, where to put the plants and the fountains and the signage at the door.

If he wasn’t before, he’s a big believer now.

But back to the top. So, I was writing to the PR gurus and asking if they thought I should try to get some testimonials from this corporation when a big black bird just flew straight past my window and took a sharp right turn, for no apparent reason, and flew into my front door. It sounded like Shrek had come for breakfast. I was almost afraid to get up and look for fear the bird would be dead at the door. That’s how hard this Hitchcock extra hit it. I did go to the door and the bird had flown away. Now according to the philosophies that I espouse, and the tips I am constantly sharing, birds are said to bring good news and opportunities when they fly around your space. We use symbols and statues of all different kinds of birds to bring all kinds of different luck but, whenever birds come to the front door, well that my friend means BIG fortune and BIG luck.

So then I decided to go whole hog because of the bird. I turned on my outside front light with the red bulb in it. Because turning that light on for at least three hours a day brings employment opportunities. And I went over and turned on the fountain that I have in my ‘Wealth’ area and even adjusted the little dragon statue I have in the water as that is said to bring flowing funds and lots of liquidity. I ended at the back door and turned the back light on there as well. It’s a red bulb too and will heat up my recognition or ‘Fame’ factor. And all this because opportunity knocked and then straightened up to fly right.

Twenty seconds after I finished following my gut and hooking up my Shui, my friends at Channel V sent me an email that said exactly this:

“Quick, think fast. If you could write a nationally syndicated newspaper column, what would it be about? Two sentences.”

I’ll definitely let you know how THAT turns out, right after I go out and scatter some birdseed up my front walkway!