In honor of Women's History Month, I have to out myself.  As an educated mba from one of the best educations in the country, I have been ignorant to the truth of our history as women. Sure, I know the facts... but that is not the same as knowing, or feeling, the reality. What I learned in history class didn't come close to telling me the truth of what women have endured just in the last century, let alone the last three hundred, or two thousand years. I got the same scrubbed down version of history that you did -- unless you were a feminine studies major -- straight from the lips of a patriarchal society.  Oh, women couldn't vote, so there was this suffrage movement and now they can. Oh, there was this thing called Roe vs Wade that made abortion legal. Oh, women were burned at the stake during this thing called the Inquisition. And yes, there was this other thing called the Feminist Movement that created equal rights. None of those were more than a few pages in any of my history books, how about yours?

And my female relatives growing up didn't make me any wiser about the reality either. They came from the school of "that's just how things were," not the "you need to know these historical realities as a woman because we never want to forget where we come from, and what has been given by the women before us." They didn't make it part of their job as women to pass down the stories of women from generation to generation... and that is a big loss. One that I know after this weekend, I will not repeat.

This weekend -- at the age of 39 -- I finally got WISE! Sitting with 500 women in a hotel ballroom in Los Angeles at the Sister Giant conference, I tapped into and felt in my cells our lineage as women and I felt my heart ache, my eyes well up with tears, and my courage lift as I watched three movies that put me in awe at the bravery and hardships of what generations of women before me have faced. 

I say 'tapped into' because as I sat there in that room, it wasn't just the 500 women that were there, it was also the 500 generations of women that have lived before invisibly sitting in the seats. While I couldn't see them with my eyes, I felt them with every fiber of my being. I say 'felt in my cells' because I experienced the facts that used to sit in my head about women's rights, witch burnings, transform themselves from ideas to human realities. When you see a woman being forced fed with the use of a tube up her nose and a metal device being shoved in her mouth to part her lips and make her eat, suddenly the facts become about a person, they become very human, and your heart receives a message it's not likely to forget -- nor should it.

I let myself be affected this weekend by these films -- something that I am not sure we always do. Our hearts are so closed off in our society, going about our busy busy lives. But to be affected is truly an act of love, both for the self, and for others.

If you are a woman, see these films, and if you know young women watch these with her, tell her this same history.  We are visual beings... and I Imagine the world would be much different if we sat and watched movies like this together vs. chatted mindlessly about the problems of the Housewives of Orange County.


Iron Jawed Angels
You can vote, you know that. But did you know that women were arrested, beaten, forced fed with tubes up their noses and tortured with the use of iron jaws to open their mouths and force them to eat when they called a hunger strike? Hilary Swank and Angelica Houston rock in this movie that made me cry, cringe and shout with joy.
 








The Burning Times

It's estimated between 1million and 9 million people were burned, tortured and killed during the Inquisition -- 85% of them women -- in an effort to stamp out the goddess and pagan traditions and replace them with the controlling patriarchal structures. You can watch this 20 minute movie on You Tube.







Pray the Devil Back to Hell
 
 

You might have heard the prophecy that it will be women that change the world. You've most likely heard that the fierceness of a mother protecting her child is like no other. These women of Liberia prove them both. They stopped a war torn country from fighting because they said "ENOUGH! No more war. We want peace." If women with 'no money' can stop a country from killing each other, what the heck are we capable of?"










I am on board for educating myself as much as I can. If you have other movies or books or DVDs that you think every woman should see, please post it on our Madly in love with ME facebook page. Understanding our history as women is part of accepting and loving who we are. I know I gained great perspective from these films... it's a lot easier for me to love myself and be compassionate when I consider I've never had a feeding tube forcibly stuck up my nose while being detained in a jail against bogus charges.

Trading 40-Days of Sacrifice for 40-Days of Self-Love!

I had a revelation today on Lent that has nothing to do with religion, but has everything to do with using the power of the universe, or as I am referring to it this year... SOURCE. Remembering that this is the year I use the energy of the season vs. trying to be my own generator system, I saw a great synchronicity between three things - Madly in Love with ME Day, Lent and self love.

First Lent -- Growing up Catholic, I was taught that Lent -- the 40 days of time before Easter -- was all about giving up something you loved for 40-days, a personal symbol of sacrifice. Now I am not sure if I translated that correctly or not, but when I look back at the things I usually gave up - sugar, alcohol, smoking, lying -- what I see now is that what I always gave up was something that wasn't good for me anyway. And although at the time (because I had these not so good habits) it really did feel like some kind of sacrifice. But, what is SO apparent now is that what I was giving up wasn't a sacrifice, I was releasing a bad habit, and that was really good for my soul! The truth was that these  substances or behaviors I lived with the other 320+ days of the year, kept me separate from the universe, source, god, whatever you want to call it, and without them I was better off.

Second Madly in Love with ME Day -- What I didn't know growing up - but that I know and use now in my self-love teachings - is that the number 40 is SUPER powerful and it has nothing to do with religious background. The yogis, metaphysicians and brain scientists all agree that if you can do anything for 40 days, you can change patterns, break habits and free yourself. On February 13th - the international day of self-love - I asked every woman in the room with me at the Claremont Resort and Spa to take the challenge of doing a 40-day self-love practice called "Taking Care of ME" which is a practice that makes it easier for us women to take care of ME as well as make a difference and take care of what and who we love -- without exhausting ourselves or feeling guilty.

The practice is this:  Every morning before you get out of bed, ask yourself the question... "What do I need to do to take care of ME today?" And whatever it says... you have to do it! No matter what. Especially if feels like 'no way I don't have time. It's the only way to break the crazy patterns in your head.

I myself finished this Taking Care of ME 40-day self-love practice on February 13th (I'd never ask you to do anything I hadn't tried first) and it has changed my life!!  Doing this practice broke some pretty deeply ingrained patterns in me. Of course I knew I wanted to take care of myself - we all know that. But my brain couldn't seem to find the 'time.' The problem I learned was not 'time' ... the problem was deep conditioning in me that stemmed from a basic lack of trust that if I wasn't 'DOING' it, it wasn't happening. After 40 days of challenging myself to do life differently, my brain now understands that when I take care of me, stop doing, create space and relax, I get more done because the universe chimes in and helps (along with lots of other people!).

Self-Love, Lent & 40 Days -- So now back to this energy that is SO available for each of us right now - no matter what your beliefs or background are.,I say, lets use Lent as a 40-day period that can be about letting go of patterns that are not self-loving. Let's make it about letting more love into our lives vs. all that hard work, toil and sacrifice business. Many spiritual leaders say that LOVE is the most powerful thing in the universe... not misery or suffering. That LOVE has the potential to change the world, and therefore each one of our lives.

So when you look forward at the next 40-days, what pattern do you want to let go of ... or what energy do you want to invite in to your life... that will bring MORE SELF LOVE to you?

How about the Take Care of ME self-love practice??
or
I'm doing a 40-day practice of RECEIVING, where I am repatterning myself to be a better receiver, by using the lens of "Am I receiving?" for every request, offer or situation I find myself in.
or
A 40-day practice of the Comparison Diet, where you give up comparing yourself to everyone else, including yourself. No judgments or comparisons, just self-love.

Whichever practice you choose, I invite you do so from the energy of self love vs. sacrifice. The energy in which you do anything has the biggest impact on the outcome... just think about it... how much happier and successful are you when you do something out of love vs. when you have to give something up?

Give yourself the gift of the self-love, starting today... and we'll all check in with each other along the way, celebrating in 40-days with the rebirth of a greater SELF than when we started.

The unsustainable lifestyle of the modern day woman

 

Feed the kids.  Get a raise.  Loose the weight.  Clean the house.  Wear the lingerie.  Whew!  It is tiring being a woman these days.  We have more opportunities, self-confidence and independence than any generation of women before, yet something isn't working. 

Why is it so exhausting?   And why do we always feel like we can never catch up?

 

Being the recovering achievement junkie that I am, as well as a woman on a quest to really understand all the ways women love and don't love themselves this is the answer I have come up with...

While we all know that the earth needs to be sustainable in order to survive, we've failed to realized that WE need to be sustainable in order to thrive. We -- our bodies, our minds, our spirits - are NOT SUSTAINABLE based on how we live today, yet we think we should just be able to downward dog,  multi-task or prioritize our way out of this... and it's not working!

Think about how many times you've said to your girlfriend, "I'm so overwhelmed" or "I'd love to but I don't have time." Or even worse, remember the times you didn't reach out and instead went to that dark place of feeling super alone, like the entire world was on your shoulders.

 

Women today face pressures like no other generation. We have more opportunities but not more happiness. A recent study by Time Magazine showed women today are no happier than women were in the 1970s, before the women's movement and equal rights.

 

Does that mean that equality was bad?  No, the feminist movement was hugely important to raising the standards of life for women around the world, and like anything it had unintended consequences which we now have to deal with so that we can figure out what is right for today's woman."

 

The unintended consequences:

 

·       Too many roles. Mom. Money Maker. And Major Caretaker. 40% of women are the major breadwinners in their families, and 55% report that they still take care of most of the responsibilities at home. So you can understand why...

·       Women Are Running Themselves Into Exhaustion. It's estimated that 80% of women are so overworked and stressed that they suffer from adrenal gland fatigue, whether they know it or not. Women slough off or mistreat the symptoms like weight gain, fatigue, insomnia, depression, cravings and mood swings, and then, because they aren't listening to their bodies warning signals, they end up with serious health concerns like auto-immune and thyroid disease.

 

 

What Can Women Do About It?

It's been said that women will change the world, and I firmly believe that, however, we won't  change anything if we don't take care of ourselves first! And we need to support each other to do so. So this year, I am daring every woman to make 2010 the year she takes care of herself as well as everything else in her life... without exhausting herself in the process!

THE DARE : a 40-day Self Love Practice

To kick off this dare, on February 13^th, the international day of self-love (a.k.a. Madly in Love with ME Day), I'm asking you to commit to a 40-day self-love practice called Taking Care of ME. Every morning for 40-days before you get out of bed, ask yourself, "What do I need to do to take care of me today?" And then listen. Whatever it says, you have to do it. Take a nap. Start work at noon. Whatever.

Why? I know that you want to take care of yourself, but your brain tells you that you don't have time. And time is so not the issue! You literally need to reprogram your brain to have new beliefs that support you taking care of you. Beliefs that you can rest, relax and take care of you... and everything will still be taken care of. Brain scientists, yogis and metaphysicans agree if you can do anything for 40 days you can change your habits. 

Do you dare???

MY DARE: What I learned from doing this dare.

I've been doing this self love practice for the past 36 days, and honestly,  there have been days it has really kicked my butt! Especially the day it said, 'Do Not start work til noon' and I said, "Are you crazy?" I have a presentation, a zillion things to do and then some. But I made the pact with myself so I had to do it, and I did, and what happened? My entire presentation downloaded into me while I was sitting in the sun at 11am, my intern showed up and did a bunch of stuff, and all the pieces fell into place.

I have been learning to trust. I have been rewiring very deep beliefs that if I don't do it, no one will. If I don't do it, my life will fall apart. And I've come face to face again with my achievement junkie who runs me harder than anyone else ever could.

Check out this clip from ABC-TV where I talk about my 40-day Taking Care of ME Dare. I wouldn't ask you to do anything I hadn't done myself!

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=view_from_the_bay/everything_else&id=7255902

It's day 15 of my 40 day self-love practice of Taking Care of ME first, and I have to laugh. I often call myself a recovering achievement junkie because I am still recovering. Case in point  is that not only I am on this 40 day practice, but I added another 28-day practice to it, LOL! I rationalize this by saying that I'm not doing the practices to achieve anything, but to actually make myself happier.... so that means that it's not junkie behavior right??

So to get to the point and the AHA that I am just dying to share with you! So my second practice has been to embody the quality of IMPECCABILITY. Which to me takes the quality of meeting your commitments, doing what you said you would do, basically having integrity at a whole new level. There is just something about the word impeccable that doesn't leave any room for wiggle. If you say it will be there by noon, by noon it is. If you say within 24 hours, within 24 hours. No wiggle.

And while that may sound restricting and like it adds way more pressure than one would want to put on themselves, especially during a 40-day take care of myself practice, I have to tell you it's actually been liberating and really eye opening. So much so that...

I think I've found yet another key to why we as women often end up last on the list and find it so hard to take care of ME.

1.  We like to say YES! And we don't like to say no. You get an invitation to dinner. A girlfriend invites you to a drink. Your mother asks you to go shopping. Your boss asks you to take on a new project. A colleague asks for an hour of your time for brainstorming. Most of the time you say YES, right? Unless you are totally stressed out, and then you decline, but only after you've completely explained how overbooked you are. We are givers and that is a great thing, however, most of us give more than we have to give. We give and give until we have nothing left. We say YES when if we were really taking care of ME, the answer would be, "Thank you but no."  Whether we are afraid we won't be liked, we don't want to let the person down, or we feel like we 'should' be able to do it all... our inability to say no costs us a lot on the taking care of ME scale.
   
2. We overpromise and then push ourselves to deliver. I had a male boss once, Joe, a white-haired man 20 years my senior. And Joe had three rules, which he shared with our team via a power point presentation when he became our leader (seriously). I'll save you the entire presentation, but I will share this one rule with you that he lived by ... "Always underpromise and overdeliver." Viola'... because they you will always give them more than they want with less effort from you. And he did it, all the time. Me? When someone asks me when I will get back to them, or when I am giving someone the timeframe in which I can complete something, I fail Joes' advice more often than not. The overpromises fly out of my mouth while my body and intuition are saying, "NO! Make that date later in the week... make that turnaround time 2 days later," my ego mind overrides them and like the achiever it is, picks a date that will make me work harder than anyone but me expects me to.
   

We have the power to take care of ourselves, we're just not using it!
The interesting thing about these two AHA's is that I've known all of it for many years. But I never ever connected them to my ability, or non ability to put taking care of me first, to make taking care of me easier.

But by doing these two practices together, I really got that I have the power to make taking care of me easier or harder by what I commit to. And much of the pressure I put on myself, is just that, pressure I put on myself. When I am making promises to do a favor or complete a task... or am agreeing to a deadline... or making plans with a friend... they don't have crazy expectations of me in most cases, they just want to know what I can feasibly do. And whatever I tell them, they will react to and assume to be true. If they need something more they will ask.
It's not my job to figure out what they need and the overcompensate and overstretch myself to provide it. It is my job to take care of me, and taking care of me means showing up as the person that I want to be in this world and making sure that she is taken care of.

Impeccable and Taking Care of ME, the How to...
I am committed to both, and I invite you to try both too, so that you can feel good about yourself, and feel good inside of yourself. 

1. Like being impeccable. Live by the energy of impeccability and let yourself feel how great it is to be able to do exactly what you say you will do. How good it makes you feel to give to others what they need when they need it... but this time, you are going to do it because you've made a promise to yourself to be impeccable, your actions come from a place of integrity and honoring of yourself. They don't come from the place in you that wants to please someone else, or are afraid of making them mad or having them not like you, or because you think you should be able to accomplish the task. 
2. Check in with yourself before you say YES. If you've made a promise of impeccability you want to set yourself up to be successful and that means taking the time to decide what you really want to commit to -- without fear that what you are asking for is too much. You ask for what you need and let people come back to you. This is about checking in with your intuition before you say Yes to anything. Trying to schedule a meeting or respond to an invitation to a party? Stop. Check in with your intuition. When you force it what is the answer? When you act from the truth which feels easier and more spacious, what is the answer? This is a skill you're going to have to develop over time. The goal is to find the spacious feeling inside your body and act from there. It's funny, but true, that your body always knows, you just need to learn to listen to it. 
3. Make your sustainability a priority.  When committing to something really check in to see how this would affect your energy levels. What do YOU need right now and what will you need then? I declined a dinner invitation to a friends birthday party not because I didnt want to see her but because I needed to recharge me that night, and although I wanted to appear like I could do it all, I needed this time for me. So instead, I went to her house for 3 hours in the afternoon for a more intimate gathering, more relaxed and still got to give her love. I made my sustainability a priority, and guess what, she's still my friend!

Make this the year you take care of YOU!
so that you can reach your dreams, make a difference, be there for those you love and not exhaust yourself in the process.

There are thousands of women taking this challenge this year, and you can join us!

Come to http://www.madlyinlovewithme.com

It's day 11 of my self-love journey of taking care of me first, and my answer of how to do that today is that I need to write this blog, today for me and for every woman and girl out there in the world who doesn't know or have self love or understand why it truly matters.

Last night I was in a room full of 50 women talking about self love, what self love is, what self love isnt, and why self love really is the answer to getting the relationships and love we want in our lives. And it was great! The women who came up to me after the interview told me of their own journeys to love themselves and what an impact it had on them. They told me of the work they were doing in the world to support other women... coaching women through divorces... supporting women in abusive relationships... filming a documentary on the desire for forever love. Work they could only do after they themselves had learned to love more of themselves. Leaving me even clearer that self love is so NOT selfish... that actually loving ourselves allows us to help, inspire and support other women and girls around the world to find safety, peace, and love.

Now I compare that blissful experience to the one I had this morning at my dining room table in which I was really saddened by these very different responses from women I received in the last two days:

• I had reservations in calling you because of all the self love stuff that is on your website. I think self love is pretty hippy dippy.
  
• Is Madly in Love with ME Day about masturbation? 
• Self love isn't for me. 

These answers befuddle me. And they make me sad. What about self love is hippy dippy? Why do we  think  masturbation when we hear the words self love? And masturbation in this case  isn't said in the kind of way that masturbation is good, but in that it is dirty. How can self love not be for you? Would you ever tell your daughter not to love herself? Don't we want our girls to respect and honor themselves so deeply that they take care of themselves... that they only have relationships that respect them... that they love their bodies for exactly what they are...  that they love themselves for who they are... AND don't we want that for ourselves, and for every other woman in our lives, and in the world?

I think we do... I think we do want these things for ourselves and our girls. Do you want these things for yourself? for your daughters, nieces, godchildren, and for the world?

Up until recently, self love has been a word reserved for therapy rooms or spiritual circles, not a topic for conversation at the dinner table or among mothers and daughters, or even girlfriends. Most of us don't know what it means, nor do we know how to find it. And if I am honest, if you had told me 8 years ago when I was still neck deep in trying to find my happiness through my career titles, the size of my house, and getting my fiance to love  and see me, I would have thought the same kinds of things. Self love would have felt totally irrelevant at best and it would have sounded like a dirty word at the worst.

As I sat at my dining room table today, being with the sadness I felt about the fact that women today still have these responses to self love, as  if it is a luxury or nice to have, vs a critical component to true happiness, I remembered, "Oh yes Christine, your life mission, to reclaim the definition of self love for every woman and girl. And today in 2010, that journey has just begun. It's your job to share what you've learned over the last 8 years, and keep learning... going from a woman who thought she loved herself to one who understands that self esteem is not self love... and that without self love, happiness, success, a great relationship, and a career that you love and that loves you back, is not attainable.

If you are not sure whether or not self love is for you... here are 4 reasons why it's critical.
If you have self love... 

1.  You won't have abusive relationships or toxic friendships. Women and girls who love themselves would never stay in a verbally, emotionally or physically abusive relationship. 1 in 3 girls will be in an abusive relationship by the time she is 20, 80% will go back. Women who love themselves know they don't need the love of another to survive, so if they find themselves in these situations, they leave. Women who love themselves don't stay friends with people who drain their energy or that are not supportive. When a woman really loves herself she doesn't attract 'negative' people into her life any longer.
2. You won't beat yourself up for everything you're not. Women who love themselves never compare themselves to other women. They don't judge themselves harshly. And they don't focus on what they should have done but didn't do. They are able to accept the person that she is right now and love that person, not for what she gets done it a day, or for what she accomplishes but just because of who she is.
   
3. You'll be able to take care of yourself, as well as everyone else, without exhausting yourself to do it. Women who love themselves believe and trust that if they take care of their bodies, their health and their needs first, that they will be able to do everything that needs to get done in a day to take care of their jobs, families, communities and responsibilities. And they don't feel guilty for doing it. Women who love themselves do not take on the burden of everyone elses life or problems, and they don't try to control everything around them. They are not martyrs or victims to their busy lives. They refuse to be busy. And they refuse to let themselves become exhausted. They are able to create a harmony in their life that make their life run for them, not them run through their lives.
   
4. You'll take care of your body because you realize that it's what allows you to do what you love, not because you need tight buttocks. Women who love themselves understand that their bodies are like temples on loan, structures that need to be adored and taken care of, vs. shifted and shaped for appearances sake. She exercises, eats well and cares about her health not because she needs to lose 10 lbs, have flat abs or keep up with the looks of younger women. She does these things because she loves her body so much she wants to take care of it... the weight loss and the youth are the outcomes, not the drivers. Self Love is the source. It's a big mental shift that women who love themselves understand, and women who drive or abuse themselves and their bodies without compassion don't.

Those are only 4 of many many more reasons why self love isn't a luxury, a dirty word or something that's 'not for you.' If you truly want to help women and girls around the world, love yourself first. If you want to raise daughters who make great choices, love yourself first. If you want to be happy in this lifetime before you die, love yourself. If you want to experience great love, love yourself first. And if you need help doing it, join me and other women who know the power of self love at www.madlyinlovewithme.com

You don't have to do it alone.

It's self love practice day #10 -- and the pratice i chose for these 40 days is the self love practice of taking care of me first. On this day I awoke to find myself feeling the burden of the day...  before the alarm even went off in the very comfortable bed I slept in, down-comforted bed in a hotel room in LA. I had of course set my alarm on my iphone 30 minutes prior to my wake up call at 7:30am, and I had also of course scheduled a phone meeting at 8am, a breakfast at 9am, and a video taping a noon - with somewhere in there doing my hair and makeup.

See, I said I was a recovering achievement junkie! So when I woke up this morning, and man did I want to hit snooze for two more hours, I made it to the shower, washing my hair with peppermint shampoo and thinking to myself my daily question for the next 40 days, "What do i need to do to take care of myself?"

Well for the last 9 days the answers have been things like take a walk, do yoga, start work at noon, but on this day, full of things to do, those answers were not an option. So what was the answer??  After toweling off and I walked around my hotel room like a white-toweled-headed yogini, pondering this reality, "Christine, your day is packed, there isn't any space to take a nap, go for a long walk, so you better figure out a way to take care of yourself while being in the doing."

So after said phone call (which was lovely), and 5 minutes before meeting said publicist, I sat down for 3 minutes with my crystals (of which I always travel with and which sometimes make for interesting security check point adventures) and I closed my eyes, tuned into source and asked the question again, "What do I need to do to take care of myself?"

Here is the answer i got, 'Yep. Lots to do. Do it from your heart. Do it from your essence." Then the voice went onto say, "If you do this, you won't spend your fuel, we will fuel you." Okay, so that was sounding good! I get fueled by the universe vs me doing the gassing up. Ok, so it gets better.... and then it said 'Christine, when you get home at 9pm, rent Julia and Julie and love watching it. Noah is gone for the weekend, it's just you, the dog and the Julias."

So that is what I did... I did everything from my heart today... had a great phone call, did my makeup and hair, had lunch with publicist, and the best of all, showed up for my friend Carol Allen top notch vedic astrologer http://www.loveisinthestars.com and 50 women taping this rad DVD and CD series about attracting the love you want. I LOVE spending time with women and these women rocked!! We wrapped at 6pm, I was on a flight at 8pm, watched the Js and now here with you.

I am full of energy, and its 1:08 am -- (which btw is the most magical number in the universe, google 'the significance of 108' for more info).... because all day I was full of heart and therefore magic happened. I could write you a list of all the great things that happened today because I chose to come at them from WHY they were important to me vs. having to complete a task. And in that, I found space to take care of ME --- success on day #10 of the self love journey.

So on those days of yours when they are jammed packed, how can you still find the space to take care of yourself?  One way is to start by coming from your heart and letting yourself be fueled by source vs. using your energy to do it all.

When I used to think of the word liberation, it brought to my mind images of the feminist movement, women wearing and burning bras... or images of other populations of our society who at have been suppressed and oppressed and have risen to fight for and claim their freedom, their liberation. It always seemed like a word that should be applied to a group of people, not a word I would use to describe myself. And when you look at the definition you could assume that to be true...



But LIBERATION is really a word every woman should be able to say and claim, because from a self-love perspective is means to be FREE to express YOU... a major Madly in Love with ME milestone of self-love. Whether you know it or not, you have your own version of 'bondage' that keeps you from liberation -- not in the kinky sex kind ladies but in what I call the 'robes of repression' kind...  robes that we've picked up along the way, robes that tell us to be good girls, stay composed, act like a lady, keep our feelings bottled up, play smaller, not boast, and the list goes on and on. Those robes are heavy and they keep your soul and spirit from being free to express yourself with wild abandon... without the need of a substance to help!

My Liberation AHA!
The sad fact is that most people are trapped inside themselves, dying to get out... NOT liberated. I really got this lesson when I went to my first retreat in California. 25 people over 4 days at an ocean front beach retreat center. There was journaling, talking, going deeper, all that great head and soul searching stuff I was totally cool with. But then at night, there came the dancing. Free form dancing with soulful music, pieces of fabric and total permission to just let loose and not a drop of alcohol in site! Oh how I wished for a glass or two of Pinot just to oil the uptightness my bones had been trained to hold.

The dancing was the kind of exercise where one person at a time gets up and joins the circle when they feel the groove, one by one until the whole room is dancing. Of course you don't have to participate, and that night I didnt. Not because I didnt want to, but because I couldnt move. My butt was stuck to my chair, no matter how badly inside I wanted to dance. I remember it so vividly, even though it was six years ago. I sat there watching this beautiful 6-foot tall blond English woman named Joanne -- who reminds me much of my friend Elayne, also from England, a dancer and a performer at my upcoming Madly in Love with ME event. I sat there watching her move, twist and express her body with total freedom, as if she was one with the music. She was so, so, so LIBERATED! And I sat there memorized by her, wanting to get out of my chair, wanting to express myself that way too, but I couldn't move. It felt as if I was stuck inside myself crying to get out, but so darn repressed and stiff, scared to let myself move that way in a public arena that wasn't a dance club. So I remained an observer.

When I got back to my room,  I made a promise to myself  that by the end of the weekend I was going to shed my robes of repression if it killed me! If given the chance again, I would at least get up and dance. And by this same time next year I would be FREE enough to dance like the stunning golden dancer of a woman I had observed.

Here is a picture of what I looked like at the end of that weekend...



And Here is a picture of what I looked like last year at the Madly in Love with ME Self-Luv-apoolza while Elayne, aka as Kalila was performing her Shakti Dancing....





Clearly, I have been liberated!! That night I noticed that while I was now free of all robes of repression, free to move my body and my shakti in all kinds of directions, there were many more women who stood there watching the liberated bunch dance. And it made me sad. It made me sad that in that moment they were unable to let themselves go, to liberate their spirit to move with this powerful music that was calling all of our souls to move. I know that some of women really didnt want to dance, but I also know that there were women in that room who were laden down just as I had been with the robes of repression that stopped them from being free. In that moment,  I decided then that at every Madly in Love with ME event from that day forward, I would do my best to create experiences that gave women permission to throw their robes of repression to the curb and freely and fully express themselves, without the need of our friend Vino.

We will be getting our Shaktis moving on February 13th at the Claremont Resort in Berkeley, CA -- I hope you can join us!  http://www.madlyinlovewithme.com/event

And there is no need to wait until then. You know how much I love to take a dare and give them out. SO this week I dare us all to liberate ourselves through the power of dance and moving our bodies to the soul and groove of the energy that flows through us. What does that mean???

DARE:  Get your groove on.... do the liberation dance. You, your body and music that moves your soul. 1x a day let yourself go and dance freely to the music. Can even be one song. Just let yourself go, no repression, only liberation. I'll be listening to my self-love song sister, India Arie. Look at that face... her spirit and soul are liberated. Now it's our turn!

SELF LOVE

Few of us would deny that self-love is a bad idea, right? And I would wager that none of us would tell our daughters, nieces, godchildren or any other woman or girl for that matter, 'Hey you, don't love yourself, that's selfish.' And if asked by another human being, 'Do you love yourself?' most of us would want to say yes, some of us would, and yet my experience tells me that the majority of women - unless we've been actively engaged in falling in love with ourselves - don't really have a clue what being in love with ME means. Heck, it's been 8 years since the night I found myself lying in my friends apartment on a blow up mattress just having moved out of the house my ex-person and I built 'together' while she happily sat in her comfy bed making wedding plans. That was the night that I made the life changing vow to fall in love with myself... and here I am some 2,920 days later, and I am still learning about what it really means to truly, without question love me.

It has become my life mission to understand, embrace and embody self-love, share what I learn along the way, and pave a path for all women and girls to fall madly in love with themselves for the rest of their lives. So while I haven't got it all figured out - I am after all on this 40-day self-love practice right along with all of you - I have come across some of the realities and milestones that indicate that you are in fact, loving you.

I like to think of them as the Madly in Love with ME Factors. When they are present in your life, girl you can shout from the rooftops, I LOVE ME! Or at least dance in your living room in your own private party, knowing that you do have self-love. And while I firmly believe that self-love is a daily practice and something that we will get to do every day for the rest of our lives -- as in it's a great gift to fall in love with yourself -- I know that love breeds love.  So if you have any one of these factors present in your life, Celebrate! your love of you... and when you do, more Madly in Love with ME factors will show up in your life.

Last February when I was getting ready for a radio interview to talk about my book, Choosing ME before WE, I decided for kicks to look up the definition of self-love, figuring that since my book was all about self-love, it would be good to know what the 'official' definition was. When I got to www.dictionary.com (the dictionary for those of us on the go), I about fell out of my chair!!!  Here is what I read, and what www.dictionary.com still defines self love as today: