My Wish for the New Year

Today's prompt at Jamie Ridler's Studio is "What Is Your Wish For the New Year?"

About a hundred things all come zooming into my mind at once. There is so much that I want to manifest for next year. So many things that I want to learn, to teach, to share. I almost get overwhelmed thinking about it.

One of the things you do in Goddess Leonie's 'Creating my Goddess Year' Workbook is pick a word for the year. I have struggled for weeks over trying to figure out what that word should be.

'Surrender' has been floating around in my head and I decided, after two weeks, to surrender to surrender. I need to let go, I need to give up all of those pesky things that I no longer need. This past year I have grown by leaps and bounds. I have given forgiveness, I have let go, I have made miracles happen in my life. I am so proud of who I have become.

I still have work to do.

Another word, that popped up just today, was 'boundaries', and I realized that is probably the most important thing I need to learn. I'm a bit of an empath, which means that if you are sad and hurting, I feel it and want so badly to fix it. Other people's emotions are always effecting my mood and I have realized that I need to pull away from that. I need to let other people feel what they feel, and fix themselves, instead of trying to do it for them.

My wish for the new year is to 'Surrender' to love, to happiness, to forgiveness, to sorrow, and pain, and realize that I don't have to fight it. I don't have to over-analyze everything that happens. I can just be. I also wish to develop healthy boundaries for myself and to respect the boundaries of others.

What do you wish for the New Year?

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Magic Manifesting: Winter Solstice

Hello sweethearts! You might have noticed that I've been a little quiet around the blogosphere. That would be because I am hibernating! I have my nice little Dominee-Cave and wonderful things are happening during this time of hibernation. I have some great things planned for the New Year, plus I have been working on the Winter Blessings ebook which will be released any day now and I am so excited to share it with you.

I wanted to check in with you about my Word of the Month which was clarity. A lot of things have been transforming in my life over the past few months, situations, relationships, ideas, and I have wanted... and needed... clarity to really see into the hearts of those things. This month I have done deep thinking, I have created boundaries, I have looked closely at the things that I might otherwise not. I have made amends with the past and I am ready to embrace the future.

I know what I want.

So many gifts and blessings have been finding their way to me this month, so many lessons are being taught to me. I find myself being able to laugh joyfully and feel freely and it feels good. I've also been told to slow down. I've re-cooperated from a cold, I've pulled a muscle, and I've had circumstances that have made me miss huge chunks of sleep, and all of these not-so-pleasant things have given me clarity in the best way. A reminder to slow down, to wade at times instead of constantly submerging myself in all of my daily tasks and obligations.

Dominee needs to slow down and it's okay. More magic will happen if I take my time instead of rushing around trying to accomplish everything under the sun all at once.

This is a great lesson to learn.

Sooooo, the Solstice is almost here and I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you some information about the Winter Solstice from a Pagan perspective.

The Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year, it happens when the earth is tilted on its axis, farthest away from the sun, which means the official date of the Solstice changes each year. It usually falls around the 21st or 22nd and this year it is December 22nd. It is also the official start to Winter.

On this night we celebrate the rebirth of the sun. The Goddess gives birth to the Sun, the promise of the light returns. You can wake up before dawn and celebrate as the sun rises. Or the night before you can light candles to guide the sun back into the world.

It's always darkest before the dawn.

So very true.


Have a Magical Yule and check out my Winter Blessings ebook for all sorts of ideas on how to make Winter an awesome time for you.

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Self Care: Love Letters

Today, on Self Care Sunday I'm giving you all a little assignment.

I want you to write a love letter.

Guess who's the lucky recipient?

Yeah, that'd be you.

Self love, baby. I'm all about it and you should be to. There are no rules about this letter, other than it should be positive and loving. No negatives.

I want you to hear how proud you are of yourself.

(It makes sense if you think about it.)

I want you to tell yourself how totally kick ass you are.

How you are the best you that ever was. And you know that thing that your good at? Yeah, you know the one, I want you to talk about it. Acknowledge your skills and your talents.

Write about your greatness.

Keep the letter and whenever you feel down, read it and remember that moment of pouring out your love for yourself.

Did you write your letter? How'd it go?

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Love Your Body: Anxiety Busting Blog Tour

Guess what? Guess what?! Today I have my first ever guest blogger and I am so very excited! Gina Rafkind  at VedaSun has been an inspiration on my journey. As someone who has suffered from anxiety I have found a lot of wisdom in her blog and in her products.I hope you enjoy!

Welcome to the Anxiety Busting Blog Tour!

This is a guest post by Gina Rafkind and the fifth stop on her Anxiety Busting Blog Tour. Gina's mission is to share awareness tips and tools in order to help other creative women who suffer with anxiety to wake up to their life so they can confidently unleash and share their gifts with the world. Gina says it's time to stop holding back and hiding out and time to create more freedom, love and connection! Enjoy!

Count Every Blessing

~ and that includes your body

Have you ever felt like your body is your enemy?

You wake up in the morning and the first thing you think is

"Ugh, my stomach is so bloated and big."

Or other thoughts may flow through your mind such as:

I'm so fat!

Why did I get this sickness?

I'm so weak.

Why can't I look like her?

My hair's so flat.

Why is my body doing this to me?

Have you ever thought that if you didn't have a body, you wouldn't be here right now.....living on this earth and breathing in the air? Our body gives us a chance to experience life. And that includes ALL of life...the ups and the downs.

It also houses our inner self and that is the reason we get to experience this life. It also has an outer covering, called skin, that protects us from harmful substances entering our body. It has hair to keep our head warm (and if you don't have hair, there's a head to put a hat onto). It contains feet so we can travel upon the earth. It has hands that allow us to feel and experience different textures and arms to allow us to hug another person and even our self. We have eyes to see those we love and the magnificent colors of the earth. We have ears to hear birds chirp and ocean waves crashing. We have a nose to smell flowers, apple pies and fresh cut grass. We have a mouth to taste succulent fruit, that apple pie and of course, dark chocolate :).

So why is it that we sometimes look at our body with disgust and loathing?

One reason is that we have expectations of our body to look a certain way, and if it doesn't look that way, then that causes us to suffer. Our suffering may show itself as anxiety, sadness, anger or resentfulness. If our body does not perceive to be, in our eyes, beautiful, slender, strong and healthy, then we end up treating it as the enemy and end up not taking care of it.

And I want you to know that this is not all your fault. A lot of these expectations come from the conditioned mind. As we were growing up, we were influenced by our parents, teachers, siblings and other community members. We were told that our body is something that we need to control and that giving our body what we need is selfish. We were told to eat three meals a day, go to college, get a 9-5 job, get married, have children, go to sleep at a certain time etc.

How many of you have ever been told that if you don't eat all the food on your plate, you'll spend the rest of the night in your room and you will not be allowed to eat anything else for the rest of the night? What if your body was telling you that you're full, and that the food you're being forced to eat really isn't the best for your body type? We didn't listen because we couldn't.....we were told to ignore the body.....and that someone else knows what's best for us.

Once again, the wisdom of the body is shut down.

This whole process causes a lot of conflict within our mind.

Although we get a message from our body which comes through as a feeling, we end up not acting on that inner wisdom because we were taught it's not the norm to do it that way. This causes us to distrust our body at a very early age.

So what do we do now? How do we start to form a better relationship with our body? How do we begin to trust the wisdom of our body?

The key to beginning to trust your body again is to Love Your Self….all of you…and that includes your body.

Here are a few tips on how to start the journey back to Loving Your Self and Your Body:

~ Write down everything that you were told you 'should' do when you were growing up...what you were told to eat, how to exercise, how to feel, etc.

~ Write down what you were told you should 'look like'.

~ Write down all the expectations you have of how you should look and 'be'.

~ Sit quiet with yourself for 5 minutes each day. Close your eyes and bring your attention fully into your body and notice what feelings and emotions surface. Allow them to be there without judging them.

The writing process allows you to bring into your awareness all the 'shoulds' that you were told. It allows you to look at them and consider whether or not you still want to believe them. It allows you not to be as identified with them because you have brought them into your awareness.

The sitting quiet process allows you to begin to tap back into the wisdom of your body and your intuition. By being with your Self each day, you will begin, in time, to discover what it is that you truly want. You will notice, in time, that you will intuitively begin to choose those things that are good for you…you will know what to eat, you will know what form of movement works for you, and much more.

You will know these things because you are finally paying attention to your body - the house of your Spirit. And you will Love your Body just as it is, realizing it has been a friend that has truly been there for you all along...doing whatever it needs to do until you once again remember its presence.

As you continue this process, healing takes place.....your anxiety will lessen as your suffering decreases.

Healing happens by working through anxiety, not by fighting against of trying to cure it.

So count all your blessings and love your Self…all of YOU…every little teeny tiny part…and know how special you truly are.

If you'd like to learn more on how to heal anxiety, I am holding a free hour-long, content rich teleclass in which you will learn:

~ One of the MAIN, KEY factors that causes anxiety and how to break free from it. This key factor I will be talking about is a main player that most people with anxiety experience and bringing awareness to it will release the grip of anxiety and bring more freedom and spaciousness to your life.

~ During this call I will also give you a preview of my new anxiety busting program that starts on January 23, 2012 (the day of the first new moon of 2012….a wonderful time for new beginnings :).

~ Toward the end of the call, I will also share a special code that will give you a very special price for a limited time for this program.

I hope you'll join me!

Go here to learn more about this new program and to register for this free call:

http://vedasun.com/pages/anxietybustingretreat/

inhale ~ enjoy ~ exhale,

Gina

Gina Rafkind, CPC

Holistic Anxiety Coach

Gina is a Certified Professional Coach, Certified Reflexologist, Reiki Level 3 Practitioner & Licensed Cosmetologist.

She founded VedaSun to help women bust through anxiety so they can wake up to their life and achieve their dreams. Gina does this by sharing the knowledge and wisdom she has discovered throughout her evolving journey of healing anxiety. Her passion is to share these discoveries with you so you, too, can open the channel of awareness and by 'waking up', live a happier and healthier life.

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I'm Rex from Toy Story!!! Rawr!!

Hello my Lovebugs, how are you today? I'm hanging out at home, nursing a bit of a cold that has me coughing like mad. It's absolutely no fun. I hate being sick, but I've noticed the last few days I've retreated, taken time to care for myself, and practiced tons of self care. If anything, being sick is a reminder to slow down and listen to my body.

It's also the perfect time to lounge about in my jammies and be silly. Last month I was browsing blogs and Gaelach over at Musings of Magick mentioned a cute little book called Disneystrology (a play on astrology) and it looked so fun that I had to buy it. This book has a page for each day of the year featuring a different Disney character. You look up which day you were born to see what attributes from a character you're supposed to have. It's pretty cool!

As I'm sure you can tell from the title, I am Rex from Toy Story which I think is pretty much the best thing ever. Here's what it says about me:

You are concerned about your place in society. Even though you are cared for and capable, you can let your fears and self doubt get the best of you. With the help of supportive friends, you accomplish things you never thought possible. When you aren't trying so hard, you can be heroic. In the end you realize that believing in yourself is all you have to do.

My keywords are: Genuine, Sensitive, Obliging

It made me giggle because it's pretty accurate and I'm a complete spaz just like him. I keep thinking of the scene in Toy Story 3 where he gets SO excited because he's going to have kids to play with. Yeah, I get that excited too! Hahaha. If you pop over to my facebook page and post the month and day you were born on my status, I'd be more than happy to tell you what character you are! You'll have to buy the book to learn your attributes though. :p

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Self Care: Mirror, Mirror

Hello my sweet, sweet, darlings. Today it's cold here in Oklahoma (we might even get SNOW tomorrow) but I'm staying warm with my soft, fuzzy, green blanket and blue, green, purple, and turquoise fuzzy socks. I love soft, fuzzy, things! It's another Self Care Sunday and I want to share with you a very powerful practice of self love. I first learned about it in Louise L. Hay's You Can Heal Your Life. (You can read my book review here)

One of my favorite exercises in this book is The Mirror. You take a mirror, look into it, looking at your reflection and you say "I love and accept you exactly as you are."

Can you do this for me?

When you're done reading this, go stand in a front of a mirror. If you don't have a big mirror a little one will work, even a compact mirror will do. Look into the mirror, look yourself in the eye. Can you do this? If you feel uncomfortable at first it's okay, it will get easier. Now say those three little words, you know the ones, "I love you".

How does that feel?

Good? Awkward? Silly? It's okay, it's a good start, and if you've done it before then keep doing it! It's a great practice. It's a great self-love routine.

I would do this before I went to bed as a little daily ritual. After awhile, I wasn't just saying that I loved myself. I was telling myself how beautiful I was, praising myself for that awesome thing I accomplished that day, how wonderfully silly I was, how wonderful, how beautiful, how rock-your-socks-off amazing.

It is now a daily dialogue of all the things that I love about myself. It's my cheerleading time. My Dominee-is-awesome time. I think we all need that. We all need that rush of positivity, especially on our sad days.

So get that mirror, look at the reflection there, and realize how beautiful, sexy, and sacred you are.

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Boundaries, you need to have them!

Hi there! Today I wanted to leave you a little love note, a very important message that I need for you to know.

It is okay to have boundaries. 

It is okay to tell people "no". It is okay to stand up for yourself and speak out when someone is not treating you the way you deserve to be treated.

Sometimes in life we come across people who push our boundaries, or make us wish that we had boundaries to begin with. You know the ones, the ones that we allow to put us down because we don't want to be confrontational or cause problems. The ones that say or do things that rub us the wrong way and make us feel uncomfortable. Who take from us without giving back and make us feel used. We all know someone like that. You might let it go, you might make excuses, even justify it and blame yourself, but there's something that you ought to know:

No one has the right to make you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.

No one has the right to put you down.

No one has the right to make you doubt yourself or believe that you are not filled to the brim with greatness and potential ready to spill over.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  Eleanor Roosevelt 


So don't give your consent. Don't brush it off and allow it to be okay, because you are worth more than that.

I know it and you should too.

If you don't have boundaries make them. Put your foot down, put your fences up, and let people know that you do have boundaries, that your sense of self and your self esteem are off-limits. It's worth it. It is worth it to be surrounded by people who support you or at least keep their negativity to themselves.

You know who you are.

You know what gifts are hiding within you so surround yourself with those who will nurture that and not try to take it away from you.

You deserve the best, my dear. Each and every day.

Love,

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Embracing Clarity and Truth

Happy December my sweeties! It's a new month and you know what that means? Time for a new beginning! Time for us to set some intentions and be mindful about what we want to manifest this month. What do you want to accomplish this month? It can be something as simple as not letting the stress of the holidays cause your head to explode. Feel free to pop over to the FB Page and join the discussion on what your Word-of-the-Month is. My word for this month is:

Clarity.


I was inspired by this morning's Oracle Reading, where I pulled Sylvanius from Brian Froud's The Faeries Oracle Deck. I thought I would share his message with you.

Sylvanius: Truth. Cutting through deception. Clarity.
Sylvanius is the Lord of the woodlands, his crown of antlers signifying his authority. In his hands he holds the Mask of Truth. He hands us the mask, allowing us to look inside of ourselves so that we can discover our truth.

It may seem odd that there is a Mask of Truth, usually masks are used to hide the truth, not reveal it. Sylvanius tells us that first we put the mask on to hide and then you take it off to reveal the truth. That's faery logic for you.

This is the time to discover new truths about yourself.  They are essential for you to know in order to create relationships based on mutual respect, affection, and trust. These things only work if we see the truth within ourselves and within others. The Faeries act as giant mirror so that we can see who we really are. Most people tend to dread this because


we assume that we are worse than we think we are. But this isn't always true, maybe you are greater and better than you ever imagined.


So this month I am taking a good look at myself and everything around me and allowing myself to see what is true. What's your word for the month my sweetheart?

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