This is a new start. But more than that, it’s a new start on a new day, with a new way, rooted in love. Guided by flow instead of hustle.  Today I’m walking the Easy Path again, but as a person myself transformed.

If you’re new here, looking around my blog posts, you’ll see huge gaps, including the last 7 months.  I had a soft launch of my project in April, with the publication of my essay “Take the Easy Path” published in Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Be You. For the launch, I built a small team, overhauled my website, and developed my brand including a new title “Transformational Leader.”  In two months.  During a pandemic.

In hindsight, that was crazy. But in my career, I’ve often accomplished the crazy and a few times, the impossible.  This time was different because this time the product was *me* and I had to contend with layers of opening myself up to the public eye in ways that I had not done before, in addition to all of the business startup process.  When my social media expert bestowed upon me the title of “Transformational Leader,” part of me said, “OMG that’s perfect!” and part of me all like, WTF?  ME?

I doubled down, pulled out my old friends Hustle & Grind, and I ground myself into a pile of goo.  You’ve probably seen the memes going around about how a caterpillar spins the cocoon, then dissolves into a pile of goo before transforming into a butterfly.  I’ve been loving them because I wrote this poem long before I knew this fact.  It applies here, I think:

Question to a Butterfly

Did it hurt, little one?

In your dark cocoon, 

where an earthbound creature 

transformed herself into

beauty with wings?

Because I am trapped inside 

my own shadowy cocoon 

with only myself 

and transformation.

I am in pain, 

shedding my skin, 

new things growing, 

my insides coming out.

It is safe beneath the silken threads 

but unfamiliar,

and I am scared.

I want to know, little butterfly, 

because I want 

to hope.

For if you felt pain in your cocoon,

then my pain 

will become to me   

a symbol

of my future flight.

It did hurt, and the last 9 months have been me transforming by melting into a pile of goo, then taking a hard look at my life and shedding those things no longer useful for me.  

And, you know, taking my own advice. Getting back on the Easy Path. Stopping the shaming again. Remembering to Celebrate Every Little Step.  Remembering that I AM My Body, and that she and I are in this together.  Giving her what she needs to repair, and now thrive. Remembering, at the end of the day, the elegant simplicity of the Easy Path and how magnificently it works.

Oddly, on the one hand, it’s not about me at all.  It’s about getting this message that it is possible to create lasting change with self love out into the world where it can help so many people trapped in diet culture. How you can get healthy by being on the Easy Path instead of grinding harder and harder, applying more and more pressure and watching your diets fail again and again.  Sharing the message that there is hope.

At the same time, it IS about me.  As my business coach reminded me, without TC, none of this is possible. 😃 I’m building my business differently now. Sustainably, focusing on not just the business, but on the process of how I get things done.  Allowing things to happen on their own time. And it’s working.

So while starting this new venture, which will soon include workshops and books and podcasts (and who knows what other exciting things will pop up), I’m back on the Easy Path, working the #GroundingGuidelines and feeling so excited to be able to finally start sharing this with all of you.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.  Come join me on this journey.