Merry Christmas... with a broken hallelujah.
2018 has been quite the year.
I finally realized how good of a decision it is to divorce my husband.
I saw how much I gave my power away in the hopes that I could wrangle reality to fit my will, rather than surrendering to what was for my greatest good.
I've been asked to reckon with my financial fear stories.
I drove cross-country with my daughter from Austin, Texas to Los Angeles, California, to move to Taipei, Taiwan, where my mother and father furrowed their brows and asked, "Why? Why would you want to move there? You won't like it." The place from where they came. The place they no longer want to move back to.
I reconnected to my best friend from junior high in the Philippines, where through her clear sight and no-bullshit-words, she told me firmly and boldly that I needed to see the truth of what I'd been through the last five years and to create a new future for myself and my daughter.
I built a successful re-launch of my career when I arrived in ATX by way of our camper van adventure, so that I could find myself again through the haze of deep postpartum depression and being the stay-at-home parent for my daughter for the first 18 months of her life. I earned more money than I had in years. And, I let it go to take care of my emotional health and wellbeing.
I fell in love with my mother in a way I had never been able to do when we were growing up. She sat there, in the bedroom of the apartment and listened in the rainy darkness as I told her about the dissolution of my marriage.
My mother, who wanted to break the curse of two marriages that her mother and her mother's mother went through, so she stayed with my father when I repeatedly told her to divorce him from junior high onward. Even with all of this, she looked at me and said, "Divorce him."
"Do you remember when you were in college and we went to breakfast that day in Santa Monica?" she asked me.
I did. I wanted to take her out for an oceanfront meal, so I could finally wrestle into her mind and heart that if she wanted to stay with my father, then she needed to find her own joy aside from whatever he was doing.
"I have always remembered that day, because you told me I needed to find my own happiness. That no matter what your father did or how hurt I could be by him, that I needed to figure out what I wanted aside from him and go for that."
I nodded, curled up in my blankets.
"Now, it's my turn to tell you that same thing. Go find your own happiness. Go find it regardless of what he says or does to you. From this point on, he becomes nothing. You have God on your side. You go find your power."
I had no idea how good it would feel to have my mother on my side. To have her see me as more than I could see myself right now. To have her faith and belief in my ability to write, my ability to build a business, my ability to support myself and my daughter.
We all need that. We all need forces in our lives who can see us greater and further than we're able to see when we're in the depths of healing, redefining, brokenness, and rebuilding.
For this holiday season, I wish for you to see your own holiness within. And to remember it for 2019 and beyond.
"It's a cold and broken Hallelujah..."
I wrote about this song in my Facebook group a couple of days ago. This song that always brings me to tears. That gives me chills. That I've played on repeat for myself and my daughter.
Because this holiday season, I heard a different message.
I heard that I don't ned to be perfect.
I heard that in my brokenness, I will still be loved.
I heard that I don't need to be the avenger or the judge or the shameful one. Instead, I could surrender into a force greater than me that would love me anyway.
No matter what.
Leonard Cohen, the original writer of this song, is also the one who said that, "There is a crack in everything / That is how the light gets in."
Let the light in.
Feel the surrender.
Let yourself be loved.
Here's what I'd love for you this holiday season. I recently did an interview with Purpose Pioneers, and co-founder Thomas Waterman and I shared how when you are bold, front-facing, people often assume that you hear all the time about how your work is making a difference.
Yet, it's not true. We're often in our own worlds, we assume everyone knows what we're thinking.
Please give the gift of love — tell someone in your life how much you mean to them. What small or big thing did they do to shift your day or your everything? It could inspire the difference in someone continuing forward with the courageousness to do purposeful work that could truly impact us all.
And, if you haven't yet, I'd love to hear how my writing makes a difference in your world. Simply hit 'reply' to this email.
In the upcoming year, I want to revolutionize my business for myself and my daughter and in order to do that, I need your help in gaining clarity on what I do uniquely in your life that you'd like more of...
Merry Christmas!
P.S. Please forward this email along to anyone in your life who need to hear this right now. We all need one another.
