Part 3: From Heartbreak to Healing

I channeled my heartbreak into healing through the arts and self-expression. I started writing every day. I returned to my lifelong love of dance. I learned how to sing and write my own songs and joined a band with my future husband. 

Before settling into my hometown of Portland, I lived on the beaches of California, in the heart of Hollywood, and in the mountains of Colorado. I’ve performed on stages and joined national music tours as “the festi fairy.” I read tarot for the cast and crew of Portlandia at their final season wrap party. My beloved and I get paid to travel to events, festivals, and cruises across the country and beyond. I have to pinch myself sometimes.

My biggest revelation has been the discovery that I not only have a self to express, but I’m worthy of self-expression. I’m worthy of love and life. I can finally see my own reflection after lifetimes of mirroring others. 

It was my own light I loved in others and my own shadows that hurt me. I was deeply wounded by men whose wounds were mirrors for mine. The end of each relationship was an initiation into a deeper sense of self — an opportunity to expand my capacity to love and an invitation to feel more alive in my relationship with life. I died to be reborn, over and over and over.

This was a series of expansions and contractions in the process of birthing myself.

I remember who I am. I am the girl in love with the world, the girl who rescued worms at recess when it rained and buried the first bee who ever stung me. My mom is the girl in the braids who couldn’t cry because her tears were not welcome.

My mom survived her childhood by not feeling her feelings. But she had me like her Cherokee grandmother: a natural childbirth with no anesthesia. She chose to feel it all, if only for a moment. I was destined to feel it all too.

I survived, not in spite of my sensitivity, but because of it. Because sensitivity is not a weakness. It is my greatest strength. The courage to feel deeply is the bravest act of all.

So, sing because you have a voice. Dance because you have a body. Love because you are alive.

Feel. Feel it all. To live is the adventure of a lifetime.

Birthing this business has been a labor of love and a dream I’ve held in my heart for years.

This is my happy ending (and it’s just the beginning).