About my body

Fat-ass. Thunder-thighs.

She said, 'Are you sure you want to eat that? A moment on the lips a lifetime on the hips.'

We thought it was a curse.

It turned out to be a blessing.

In the 80s when I was a teen, big butts and thick thighs were not in, not in white mainstream culture, in magazines, on runways or in movies. I tried to conform, using laxatives to shit out what I ate before it stuck to me. I tried puking up my meals before they digested. I tried not eating, but that was close to impossible, so then I'd binge. I found exercise and poured myself into my daily or twice daily Jane Fonda workouts. I spent so much emotional time worried about my flabby thighs, my round belly, who would want me? Was I desirable? Was being desirable the most important thing?

When I was desired, I didn't know what to do with it. How could you desire me when I'm so imperfect? So fat? Is there something wrong with you that you want me when so much is wrong with me? Total mind and heart fuckery.

I tried loving myself, practicing in the mirror embracing what I was, celebrating my shape, and I put on a good show on the surface. For a while. I wanted it to be true. But the programmed shame was deeper, now pushed into the basement where it still ran my life.

At 24 I met a very interesting man twice my age, a world traveler, a Greek born in Egypt and raised in LA. He taught me about consciousness, Gurdjieff, and Sufism. He fed the mystic in me. And he fed my insecurities. Right before I left him in Egypt after many years together, he stood me in front of a full-length mirror, naked, and using both his hands on one of my thighs he pulled my flesh and fat back and said, 'If you were beautiful, you would look like this.' A thin thigh, no jiggle, a gap between my legs. I looked, humiliated, and I let him because inside I agreed. Despite all the self-love I had tried to access, despite the beautiful Nubian who was trying to seduce me, including how he was going to fatten me up because I was already too thin, despite the beautiful curvy Italians who graced the movie screens as the tides of popular media culture was shifting, I still felt ashamed.

I left him and I was single and happy and I did lose some of my jiggle. And I was proud to finally feel sexy because my stomach was flat. I felt worthy and powerful because I could feel my hip bones. I enjoyed being able to fit into more clothes and to show off my skin. But there was also an uneasiness because my self-worth was being based on this superficial, changeable, material concept and I knew it could change, I would change, and then what? Back to self-loathing. Of course, it changed, I changed. I put on 25 pounds during Corona, a good 35 pounds over my 'ideal' 'target' weight. Slowly heavier, curvier, my ribs no longer showing through my chest, my breasts fuller than ever, except when I'd been nursing, and a belly, this belly, I can pinch, hip bones no longer protruding. The belly I was ashamed of at eight and nine and 10 years old. This belly that makes me feel young and vulnerable.

Only now I am wiser and kinder and stronger. I have loved enough people in their imperfectly perfect bodies, to know that beauty and sexiness and desirability truly come from the inside. And I know not to reject or push away the parts of me that are ashamed. Instead, I hold them close tenderly. I see you, I feel you, I accept you, my shame, my fear and my doubt. And this inner work of radical self-acceptance is then echoed in my outer work of showing up in my beauty, in my fullness, and attracting those who reflect back to me all that I am. I'm not everyone's cup of high octane Amrita! But nor do I want or need to be. How boring if we were all the same, if there was one standard of beauty.

And I have learned that for every body part that I have been ashamed of for being too big, there is a sister who judges herself for being too small. My fat ass, someone bought ass implants; the weight I try to lose another sister is struggling to gain. So I instead embrace the beauty that I am today. Because she too is changing, aging, evolving. I only have this moment to celebrate being 48. Only a couple more months before another solar return. Before the clock clicks again and I look at my flesh to see I am different.

But who am I from the inside? What is my consciousness? How strong is my love? What kind of frame do I choose to look through at myself and all the amazing people in my life? Because I do get to choose and so do you my friends, my sisters and brothers. We get to choose and I invite us to choose love over and over. Thank you

From the opening of The Woods dispensary in West Hollywood in May 2022

Changing Venture Funding

I’m a coach and an entrepreneur; I’ve been a solopreneur coach, built a consulting business and most recently, I am co-founder, with Laura Costa, of Minerva Minded, of a cannabis tech Social Purpose Corporation. We’re bringing our new invention to market this year, thanks to the backing and visionary guidance of Jo Marini of Mother Superior. Mother Superior is a different kind of business accelerator, focused on building regenerative businesses which remain in the control of the founders and serve people, profit and planet. Take a look at our coverage in Forbes.

An Alternative to Predatory Capitalism: Power To The People

Predatory capitalism, with its extractive philosophy and practices, is unsustainable and far from regenerative. I believe in the power of the people to create a solidarity economy and to work together in a powerful model of mutual aid. I explore the possibilities of raising funds without selling out in this article published in Skunk Magazine

5 Reasons To Hire A Coach

What Coaching Offers That Therapy Doesn't

I have seen my share of therapists. First when I was in 7th grade, gifted to me by my parents as a reliable adult while their relationship disintegrated. Then to my last a few years ago who helped me heal after leaving my emotionally abusive ex-husband. Therapists are generally skilled at addressing trauma by exploring the what and why of our pasts. Coaches, by contrast, are skilled in teaching us how to identify what we want in our future and support us in bringing that vision to life.

There is a spectrum spanning from therapeutic coaches to coachy therapists. I'm painting with broad strokes because I know a number of people who have been seeing their therapists for years and years. I believe they're missing an amazing opportunity.

They simply don't know that coaching is a powerful option for getting un-stuck. It unravels how we keep getting in our own way. It implements action that moves us courageously forward in creating a life we are thrilled to be living.

5 Reasons To Hire A Coach

1. Imitate the successful

Athletes have coaches. Executives have coaches. Actors and successful entrepreneurs have coaches. Rare is the individual who "makes it" without someone who is or acts like their coach. Top performers know that they excel with the guidance of a coach. That supportive and skilled individual who helps them clarify their goals and navigate the sometimes dangerous territory of their own minds. Dangerous in that we humans have limited perspective on our own flawed thinking. Coaches help us question our ingrained assumptions and limiting beliefs to replace them with empowering practices that advance us in realizing our goals.

2. Happiness Experts

Coaching draws heavily from the past 25+ years of Positive Psychology, the happy sibling of traditional Psychology. Traditional psychiatrists and psychologists have been trained to focus on what's wrong with us, as embodied in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Coaches, however, are steeped in the study of happiness and draw from it's ever expanding body of neuroscientific research. We can now see how practices of mindfulness, gratitude and other positive emotions create and change neural pathways in our brains and boost our happiness. To paraphrase Ellen Langer, social psychologist and professor at Harvard University, therapists get us from unhappy to neutral and coaches take us the rest of the way to happy.

3. You Have The Answers You Seek

I received my coaching certification at the Coaches Training Institute where we firmly embody the perspective that clients are naturally creative, resourceful and whole. Coaches know you don't need fixing and that we do not have "your" answers. Instead, a coach believes in you and helps you turn down your internal noise and clear your brain clutter so you can discover the magnificent answers and solutions that are within you. This creates sustainable and profound change because it comes from the inside rather than being imposed from the outside.

4. Equality

Most therapeutic approaches hold the therapist as an expert and hierarchically "above" or apart from the patient. Coaches approach their professional relationships as co-creators. The client and the coach are each responsible for creating the desired outcomes. The coach brings expertise to enable clients to make choices that serve them and also stands eye to eye with them as peers. I find there is a profound and needed empowerment in moving away from hierarchical relationships. Power is given away by "looking up" or "looking down" on other humans. Each of us as human adults are called to meet each other on equal footing to heal the deep wounds that plague our lives, our societies and the planet.

5. Champion and Cheerleader

Lastly, coaches are in your corner while you are in the ring of life, like a boxer. Your coach is fiercely passionate about your wellbeing, pulls you back on your feet when you get knocked down and celebrates your victories when they come. Your coach is that person who believes in you and your limitless potential, even when you doubt yourself. Your coach champions and reflects back to you your highest vision of yourself. I believe that authentic cheerleading is something every one of us benefits from and each of us deserves.

If you're still grappling with understanding, exploring the trauma and wounding in your past, keep your therapist. If you're ready to boost your happiness and resilience and create the life of your dreams, hire a coach.

I'm not a perfectionist...or so I thought

I'm not a perfectionist, those people who are so thorough and thoughtful in whatever they complete... at least that was what I thought until my friend pointed out that all my delay, my postponing, my resistance, is based in my story that I'm not ready and what I am creating is not ready.... the 'not ready' is my perfectionist showing up. Caught ya!

Like most everyone my ego wants to 'look good' and my pride wants to 'look great.' Instead no one looks at all because my creative expressions are all stuck inside - it's a creative backup that, just like a physical back up, leaves me slightly nauseated.

And could lead to a messy creative explosion, the antithesis of perfection. After a creative explosion I 'have' an excuse that perpetuates the cycle of perfectionistic constipation - 'see, THAT didn't work', back to holding it all in.

Only not any more - I received the golden permission slip (because I gave it to myself) to create imperfectly, to let go and let flow.

What permission slip are you in need of giving yourself today? What will bring you closer to the future self and world you wish to inhabit? Please share!