Permission to Feel

With the plethora of books out in the world, I am truly humbled that mine landed on your heart at this very moment. As precious as time is, I am equally honored that you have created the space and energy to allow my work to share a spot in your (inner) world. Over the past few decades, I have been on a path to discover and evolve into my highest self, while expressing my truth through every experience of my life. I may not have always realized it, yet when I reflect back, I can now see more clearly the breadcrumbs and patterns of my own evolution. What has more recently catapulted me even deeper into the dive of awakening to my true self, and that has broken me down while breaking me open, has been particularly my journey of motherhood. Becoming a mother at the age of 39, I chose to quit my then advertising and sales career to be home full-time with my daughter. I had such a fantasy of what motherhood was going to look like - thinking I had laid out all the stones to receive it in the exact way I had envisioned – only to come and find that it would be the very thing that would have to break me down to actually wake me up. I’ve become deeper in my truth and my self-love and self-acceptance through my journey into motherhood than any other place to-date. Much of this has been experienced through the cathartic healing of writing poetry, which is a kind of love language of my own soul that I never knew existed prior to being a mom. Poetry has become kind of a medium—a language that I feel The Universe speaks through me. It gives me reflection and resonance of my own experiences so I can actually observe it from a higher perspective, outside of the physical self. While you will find an array of my poems reflecting the breakdown and breakthroughs of my motherhood journey, they also encompass interactions with my coaching clients, daily encounters in the world, random insights and curiosity, personal interpretations of wisdom teachings, keepsake memories of my journey, and an overall balancing of life as a whole between my humanness and my spirit. You will journey with me through my experiences of parent and child, pain and purpose, surrender and acceptance. From awakening and transformation to love and fear, my writing flows through all channels of life. See, I never really “thought” of myself as a writer because for me writing isn’t something I can “think” to do. It is something I feel and experience. What actually started off as blogging several years ago has since turned into poetry and inspirational memes, which you will find scattered throughout my book. I didn’t take any formal classes and it was never a lifelong dream of mine. It just happened and emerged organically through me following the birth of my daughter, as I realized quickly the mental fantasy in which I was living and how my motherhood journey “should” look and how it “should” go. I’ve often been asked whether I have any fear in sharing so openly as I do. To tell you “no” would be untrue and I do realize the level of transparency I am exposing myself to when putting my writings out to the masses. Yet, after all washes aside and the essence arises, I know the deep sense of liberation that comes through self-expression. I am willing to take the risk, serve my purpose, and be a vessel and a voice of vulnerability. I don’t feel that anything that comes through us is ours to own but rather ours to share. A close companion and sanctuary, my writing is a space in which I meditate, witness, connect, and access my heart. It is where my metamorphosis happens and where I become more accepting of all of life’s ebbs and flows. It is where I give myself permission to feel, pause and reflect, to experience greater inner clarity, to allow my humanness to emerge with my spirit, and to express any suppressed energy that isn’t properly serving me. After writing, I begin to slowly nourish my emotional inner drought, revitalize my drained energy, and restore my sense of hope, faith, peace, trust, and acceptance that all is well and all is happening for me not to me. This book is arranged so that you can find the precise poem you require in the moment you need it. There is no order to how you experience its flavors. I trust the way in which each poem is met by you will resonate exactly with where you are on your respective path. I trust whatever the reason you were drawn to my book that it fills your soul as it has my own. My encouragement to you as you ingest the storytelling of my poetry is to discover your own unique vessel to connect to your truth, bring life to it, and be your own guiding light. May my words be not only a reflection and resonance of the fibers within you wherever you are on your journey, but become a sacred ground to mutually grow, evolve, transform, and accept the path of your journey as it was designed to be. It is all about being accepted for who we are, received in all our imperfections, experiencing permission to be in our truth, and feeling safe and not judged during our moments of unconsciousness. Basically, we just need to be told that all is well, and that we are not alone on this journey we call life. What matters most is that you are here investing the willingness to expand and grow, that you have shown up amid the battles and blessings, and we are sharing in this sacred space together. With Love, Sandra