Hi there,
Wow, it feels like it’s been an incredibly long time since I sat down and wrote a journal-style blog post to you all and that’s partly what I’m here to talk about. I’ve been feeling all out of sorts lately, confused, disconnected and not myself, I’m sure some of you can relate with the current astrological conditions a lot of us (I’ve seen it in clients and friends) are going through a period of really pulling back the veils and uncovering our truth under the piles of illusions we have co-created with the world and our environment around us. The past couple months have been bumpy, emotional and cloudy at their worst and full of revelations and self-discovery at their best.
For me, a lot of it started while finishing up the first draft of my book. I had decided to focus more on creating YouTube content while writing the book, testing recipes and transcribing meditations so that I wasn’t too overwhelmed with the amount of writing. Sounded like a good idea, right?
Well I do think at the time it was but what happened post-book writing was that I fell into a place of not feeling like I could replenish my cup. If I was an orange, it felt as if the book had squeezed every last drop of juice out of me. I just wanted to sleep for DAYS upon DAYS. I needed a green juice IV and a tropical vacation.
Needless to say, I let myself sleep in a few days and drank enough juice to also be cleansing while consuming whole foods and I only half got the pep back in my step. Before I could think about it I was off traveling — which I absolutely adore but also takes it’s toll on me.
I was in New York to lead a meditation at a wellness event, back to L.A. for a couple days to pack and do laundry, off to Miami to see a boy who ended up promptly stomping on my heart right before Valentine’s Day and then back to L.A. for less than 24 hours to process my emotions before hoping on a plane to Barcelona to give a talk at a conference. I snapped on my game face for Barcelona and my birthday while I was there and then promptly collapsed into my bed in tears once my feet were back on California ground. Finished the remaining parts of the book, spent my time healing my heart and accepting the beautiful lessons I had learned in my brief love affair and then headed back to my second home, L.A.X., this time for another work trip to Shanghai. After a week in Shanghai, I flew back to L.A. for a brief 48 hours before grabbing my bags yet again and heading to Palm Beach, FL for the Garden of Life blogger retreat for a few days before flying straight to NYC from there to shoot photos for my book.
ARE YOU EXHAUSTED READING THAT? Because I’m pretty sure living it nearly killed me.
I remember being in Palm Beach and laying in my big, fluffy hotel room bed, playing some mantras in the background and just feeling S.P.E.N.T. — literally like each of my individual cells were exhausted. By this point, I began to imagine that if life was like a video game where you walked around with a green “battery” above your head to signify your life force, that mine was in the red danger zone. I desperately needed a recharge. I yearned to just go home and lay on my bed, walk to my beach and reset with the ocean.
Naturally, I called my mom.
Leave it to mom, after hearing me plead my situation, to give me a major dose of my own medicine. “You know, I watch all your videos and read the things you post. I feel like you would tell you to listen to your body and honor what you need to take care of yourself. Might want to do that. I know you don’t want to cancel on people in NYC but just come, do your shoot, change your flight and get back home as soon as possible so you can just rest.”
She was right. I needed to honor the advice I would give to other people. Listen to your body, take care of yourself, fill up your cup so that it can once again overflow for others.
So I got myself back to Santa Monica and realized that a few more things wanted to fall apart before the universe was going to let me start picking up the pieces, haha. I was in quite the emotional funk. I was moody, sad, and feeling a bit lost at sea. I turned to the tools that work best for me, I meditated more, found new meditations and mantras that particularly warmed my soul, took bike rides along the beach, sat by the ocean for sunrise and sunset, went to every restorative yoga class offered at a nearby studio and allowed myself to slow down.
Those tools didn’t necessarily change my emotional “weather” but they helped me sustain during it. Imagine a chilling cold front (my exhaustion and sadness) and those tools become the warm blanket, the fire and a piping hot cup of tea. They allowed me traverse the terrain while making it more bearable without numbing myself out from what I had to experience to grow.
SO where do the revelations come in?
Alright, alright, before this little novella turns into a full blown memoir, I’ll skip to the juicy part! But before we get there let me just say that I did attempt to get back to business as usual relatively quickly and was confronted with an intolerable amount of distraction. It was kind of like back in High School when you had a crush on a cute boy who you thought might like you so you spent every class doodling on your notebooks his initials and daydreaming about what your kids might look like — c’mon we all did it. Except my deep distractor wasn’t a man (a thank god for that haha), it was THE OCEAN.
It was as if I was YEARNING for the ocean from the moment I woke up.
I couldn’t get a lick done with out feeling the call to go to the beach yanking at my ankles. Of course, after a few days, I finally got the memo and just freaking went down to the ocean. I mean sometimes our distractions are actually trying to communicate with us, that tugging at our core, it’s trying to show us what to do even if we are stubbornly trying to push past it, it will persist until we finally head the call.
There I am, knee deep in the waves, salt water splashing all over my face and chest when it hits me like a ton of bricks. “Stop trying to wear a shoe that doesn’t FIT you.” or rather “Stop living your life (and business) the way everyone says you SHOULD do it, and go back to your original game plan. Go back to what FEELS good.”
Ouch.
That ocean wisdom was right.
But how could I have let myself drift off course like this?
It didn’t matter. I needed to forgive myself and reroute. Ask myself what I truly wanted to do, how I truly wanted to run my business, create content and be of service to the world. And so I did. I got re-acquainted with my soul desires and released any judgement around them. It didn’t matter what anyone else in the wellness, spiritual, whatever you want to call it, space was doing. They were them and I was me. I’ve always been a little off-beat, kind of quirky, totally magical and the sort of lady who was dancing to music that most of the other people in the room couldn’t hear. I am just me, honestly and imperfectly, I couldn’t be fit into some cookie cutter model for doing things. I had tossed all of my natural, creative ways of operating because I had thought that other people knew better than me. I had forgotten to run certain opinions through my own guidance system and instead felt like just because certain people were older or appeared ‘more advanced’ that I should play by their rules. Well when I looked back on the times in my life where I was most in the flow, when things were at peak highs, I was going on my gut. It’s not that I haven’t had (and still have) incredible mentors to bounce things off of but when things are going swimmingly, it’s because I’m the one ultimately steering the car from my intuition.
So I threw it away. Gave all of it to the ocean, my tears, my aches, the exhaustion and I laid totally surrendered on my blanket, sand beneath me, sun above me – both recharging me from the inside out and realigning me with my own inner compass and reminding me of my truth.
Now you guys know I like to be more of a “shower” rather than a “teller” — so while I’m way more excited to have you guys experience the after effects of these massive shifts through the content I’ll be putting forth onwards, I’ll give you just a little bit of a teaser for the sake of this article.
When asking myself what really makes MY soul sing, how do I really love to serve and share, I unapologetically jotted down a few of these things:
– I love connecting with people in person. I want regular moon meditation workshops BOTH live and online. I want to take on more clients again after weaning away the past few months because of traveling. Talking to you guys and guiding you through your own path reminds me why I do all of this in the first place.
– I miss writing these journal style posts to you guys and letting you in on what’s going on in my life. I like that I share beyond my comfort zone, being vulnerable makes me feel alive even when it’s scary. I felt disconnected from all of you while only doing ‘self-help’ style vlogs on youtube.
– I want to share my favorite recipes and meditations. I want to bring back the full “lifestyle-ness” to this whole site and mix up the content more. Share with you travel insights and self-care rituals. Have fun with it, stop worrying about what will be popular or not and just put forth what LIGHTS me up.
– I love being on camera, I feel most LIT up when filming a recipe video or tip segment. I want to attract more of those opportunities beyond my own YouTube channel. And I don’t want to feel guilty for that being my truth.
Overall, I remembered that I wanted to put forth the energy to CREATE what lights me up and not allow myself to feel limited or pushed into what comes across my plate or what other people might assume is “the way to do it”. This isn’t a one size fits all life, there is no ONE general blueprint to follow, there is only the GPS system that was installed in each and every one of us so that we could follow our unique path for our life. I hope this article serves as a reminder to you to ignore all the back seat drivers (and influences) in your life and to stick to the navigation system of your soul. I promise you, there is not a hurricane it can not guide you towards safety in.
Thank you for reading, for supporting and I look forward to embarking on this new chapter with you. Please share this article with anyone in your life that you feel could use it and comment below to let me know your thoughts or questions.
So much love,
Cass
P.S. Today is the last day to sign up for SJMC and/or my Light-filled business program, so if you are interested, head over here. It is my pleasure to offer both of these tremendous resources because they both fully support you creating a business from your soul, following your unique roadmap and giving you the confidence and the tools to share your authentic message with the world. Details here.