Bring it on 2019 - I'm ready for ya!

Good-bye 2018 … I’m sorry; Please forgive me; Thank you; I love you … Yup, we’re going there. The infamous Ho’oponopono Prayer.

It was a rough one for most. I mean, we were all skipping into 2018 with grand ideas, wearing rose-colored glasses, big dreams, and fateful, wrecking ball astrology.  

Just a few astrological highlights … Venus and Mars retrograde almost at the same time; Venus opposite Uranus entering Taurus; Saturn in Capricorn; 8 planets in retrograde; more eclipses than normal; North and South Node move into Cancer and Capricorn while they were squaring Venus and Uranus. And the list goes on and on. 

How did that effect you … I know how it affected me.

I started out 2018 in Costa Rica – in blind love. Zip lining Mt. Arenal with someone I adored from my core. I conquered a fear yes, but ignored an illusion that slapped me in the face with familiar heartbreak. I set aside my values for potential.  I was hopeful that he would see how great life was with me.  I didn’t listen to the cues.

Wrong answer.  Heart broken before January 5th, 2018.

I took 20 lovely souls to Bali … but not without having my left ovary taken out first.  Just seven days prior to my retreat to Ubud, I had emergency surgery. Never had I experienced so much physical pain.  I thought I might die, for real.  All the training I have in breath-work and mindfulness could not help me relieve the pain of ovary torsion; a random flipping of the ovary on it’s tube. Cutting off circulation to my all important lady parts.  So on my 24-hour flight to Bali, both teenagers in tow, I begged the EVA Air attendants to let me put my feet up the wall of their small space in the back of the plane.  I wasn’t allowed to do yoga or swim the entire time I was leading my retreat … wasn’t allowed.  Oh, and while I was in Bali, my youngest ended up in the hospital with a severe nut allergy reaction and my oldest got Bali Belly.  

This was March 2018.  It had to get better.

 New Moon July 2018, I packed up my beautiful house that was way overpriced in Marin County, loaded up the U-Haul, and in one day, drove to Encinitas on a whim and a prayer.  It was a step in the direction of my heart.  It was the slow lane - kind of.   I fell into the arms of old friends like Lance Jordan, Gina Saville, Mike Meyer, Jenny Beresford, and new friends Katie Brauer, Nicole Vincent, Ryan Stanley and Malin Hörnkvist. I just needed to breathe. 

My heart hurt in 2018. Just 5 days after leaving SF for Encinitas, my best friend’s son passed away in his sleep.  When I heard the news, my breath got clogged in my throat. I literally fell to my knees in the middle of my daughters’ volleyball practice. In fact, this last year, three of my dearest friends lost their children.  

Lost… their… children.  How could my issues ever hold a candle to that?  
GET THE FUCK UP DANA and stop your STUPID COMPLAINING …

 Just days later I left for Telluride to teach at a festival. I left my girls with a yoga teacher I had just met a few days earlier.  I had to trust – thankfully I did. What a gem she is.  Thank you Kristen. 

In August 2018, I turned 50. My birthday was not spent like I thought it would be. My family of origin came to celebrate, but instead of feeling supported, I felt ambushed and tossed into old patterns that were nothing like I have experienced over the last oh, 15 years.  The gem there?  That all my friends, my soul family, and my girls stood guard at the gate of my heart so I could re-member my value and how far I had really come in this life.

In the midst of all these stories, I have paused, cried, laughed, and then said, “Onward and upward we go….”  Because that is what we do in this human experience.  We may not see the nugget at first.  We may feel like shit for awhile.  We may want to move on and ignore all the turmoil, but if we do that, we miss the gift.  

Each one of those instances offered me so many gifts.

Clarity, heart expansion, trust, patience, faith, gratitude, release of grief, forgiveness, compassion, courage, strength, acceptance, love … deep, deep love.  So I’m so grateful … so, so very grateful.

Encinitas is a vortex that clears the debris of the mind and the heart.  The ocean is magical and has been a missing piece in my life for years. Since I left here in 2002, I have yearned to be close enough to smell Her and feel Her calming cadence. So grateful for patience, faith, and trust.

Here’s the truth:  We ask for our learning – especially the hardest lessons.  The ones that flatten us.  The ones that wring us out like a wet washcloth.  The ones that leave us empty.  We beg for evolution, but when it comes our way, we fall into victimization and say, Why? Why is it this way? 

Because, you asked for it. All of it.  Can you subscribe to that … that YOU ask for all the learning and the Universe provides?  Yes, I asked for 2018 … every bit of learning, I asked for it all.  Maybe not consciously. Maybe not that year.  Maybe years ago. Maybe light years ago. Karmically, I asked for all the learning so I could end up here.  Home.  

That’s what faith does. It reminds us that we choose our life to learn, to grow, and to love in a way that is unfathomable.  My friends who lost their children … all I can do is bow to them.  Deeply, and often, and in the privacy of my own prayer.  They are in deep faith, deep trust, and deep love for this life.  Most of us will never know the strength it takes for them to get up.  Yes, bow deeply.

Faith pushed me to move to Encinitas.  No promise of anything … just faith.  I had been considering moving to San Diego for a few years prior to 2018.  It’s where my heart first re-membered where it belonged, way back in 1991.  Where I ran to when I knew I no longer belonged in the Midwest.  Where I married my daughters’ father.  Where my eldest was born.  Where I loved and lived life without inhibitions. Where I did my homework at the ocean and graduated college.  Once I made the decision to come home, I privately healed, and continued to work my body to its’ bone until it was time.  In July 2018, I relocated my business, my children, and myself to Encinitas on the New Moon Eclipse.  I mean, why not right?  

Faith.  Faith. Faith. Patience.  Divine guidance and connection.

I didn’t start over – I wasn’t running – I wasn’t leaving … I up-leveled my value by slowing down.  By valuing my breath and my time, I shifted my perspective and my life … consciously. I made changes that soothed my soul. Just knowing that I can walk down to the ocean and watch the sunset every day, creates space in my day.  The days seem to last longer even though I’m doing the same amount of work.  

That was my year …

 2018 was a year. For everyone … for real …no shit.  A year of transitions, of lessons, of aligning with your heart, of dropping what wasn’t working in the first place.  It was about illusion, and truth and let me tell you, if you were living in any type of illusion whatsoever, well, the Universe most likely supported the lifting of your veil whether you liked it or not.  

Now, onward and upward….with gratitude.

2019 is about coming home. About being in your heart and nowhere else.  Yeah, already been tested on how far my vulnerability meter will go … I’d like to expand that space in 2019. I’d like to fall in love for real and I think I’ll start with myself.  

Many planets are in dignified position … Saturn in Capricorn; Jupiter in Sagittarius; Venus in Libra…. Things are leveling out and aligning.  Can you work with that energy?  Can you pause … can you trust?  Can you believe in the bigger picture that your heart has been yearning for? This is the year.  But you have to come clean.  You have to drop that shit…. Oh and with love.  

2019 is governed by Capricorn.  Slow and steady; checking in with your footing while you climb higher and higher up that mountain.  We have eclipses coming up; we’ll experience retrogrades and all the things that astrology brings – you can bet on it.  But before I drop into the planetary aspects of 2019 – I’d like to encourage you to drop into your heart. Where it is on the spectrum of love; of vulnerability, acceptance, peace and forgiveness.  Go there … all the astrology will point you in the directions yes – but the heart. Well it knows everything.  Heal that first… 

 I know it’s hard, but so is crossing the street on some days (in San Francisco that is.  Encinitas seems a bit easier, maybe it’s just me but people do let me in all the time. And I mean, all the time.).   

This is the year of opening, of becoming, of loving
and of dreaming big and standing in your worth!

 All those seeds you’ve been scattering around – the ones that are conscious choices --- they are coming to bloom in 2019.  Oh and the ones you are unconsciously planting hold status too … choose wisely. Already I’ve been tested multiple times … it hasn’t been easy but it feels oh so good to say:  

”This, this is what I’m worth. And I am no longer settling.
I am no longer supporting you at the expense of me.”

See yourself as others see you.  
Be that which you know you deserve and settle for nothing less than Divine expression.  
Do not work to prove or become. 
Just work to be that which you already are. 
Do not be distracted. Stay focused … 
Learn how to use your love muscle
Learn how to use that sword and shield properly 

To all of you I’ve loved and those who have left – I love you more than words can say.  I’m sorry I missed the signs and fell into illusion a few times, again.  I’m a spiritual being still trying to navigate this Earth suit. Please forgive me for not letting go of my past and my debilitating stories completely. I’m practicing and practicing and practicing.  Thank you for all the lessons and nuggets of evolution you provided.  I may have resisted and fought you on them. I may have hollered, kicked and screamed but I really am grateful.  I love you for how much you really DO have my back even when it didn’t seem like it.  I trust you, I really do.

Onward and upward we go …. Bring it on 2019. I’m ready for ya’.