Guess what? Today is Lincoln's Birthday!

Yup, you heard me right- today is my son Lincoln's birthday! Yesterday was my birthday and now today is Lincoln's birthday! We have been crazy busy celebrating around here, let me tell ya! Linc is all sorts of happy riding his new Razor scooter around the house and playing with his new soccer goal along with all the other stuff! Now I have to go and bake his birthday cake. I tried to talk him into having a raw cake but he wasn't having any of that... He did request banana ice cream instead of the regular stuff though! Yipee!

Wishing my little boy the happiest 5th birthday ever and as many smiles and laughs as he can stand! Oh, and lots of love and blessings to all of you out there too!

They say it's my birthday!

Today, I turn 32. Finally. For some reason, for the past year I have been telling everyone that asks me how old I am that I am 32. I don't know why. Maybe I was just subconsciously very excited to turn 32. It feels like this will be a very good year for me. I am actually starting to feel like a grown-up which is kind of nice but also sort of scary. As an Aries this is supposedly very normal as we are the eternal children of the zodiac. Anyhow, thanks to everyone for all of their birthday wishes, especially the darling Connie of the Naked Food Cafe who delighted me with a birthday post first thing this morning! It feels so great to be wished well by so many lovely human beings. Awww.

I have a bunch of big plans for this year (what's new?) and feel like I worked through a bunch of emotional stuff last year and am finally ready to start this year off fresh, composed, and determined. Maturity does have it's benefits.

And now for an update on my progress using the techniques demonstrated on the TLC television series "I can make you thin" with Paul McKenna. On last weeks episode, #2 of the series, we learned about dealing with emotional eating. I was looking forward to his advice on this topic since I have been noticing some good results using the techniques he presented on the first episode. I have been eating, on average, about one third of what I used to eat before I saw the show. I have also been slowly but surely becoming more in touch with my body's hunger and fullness signals which I now know I had absolutely no concept of previously. So on the emotional eating show we learned the Callahan Technique which is a tapping technique similar to EFT but simpler. I was kind of concerned about implementing the tapping technique because when I have done EFT in the past it has really brought up some intensely disturbing emotions that I have spent years repressing. Dealing with all of these repressed emotions is simply an exhausting and very uncomfortable experience. And frankly, I am scared to deal with it. But, even though I have been a little more emotionally up and down since I started using the Callahan tapping method, I would say that it is helping quite a bit. I have been able to avoid emotional/stress overeating quite a few times by doing a round or two of tapping. That is the upside. The difficult part is that by avoiding anesthetizing myself with food I still have to deal with my overwhelming emotions which, I am realizing, is just something I am going to have to learn how to do, hopefully happily. At least the tapping technique takes the edge off and I'm all for that. In general, the Callahan technique seems a little gentler to me than EFT. I do find both ways of tapping extremely effective and would definitely recommend them to anyone who in confronted by emotional or stress overeating. I am also noticing that when I take a minute to decide what I really want to eat I am often very surprised by my choices. I am increasingly choosing more and more raw foods voluntarily! Thank Goddess! For example, this past week I have been really digging celery sticks with a creamy raw dressing/dip that I made with sunflower seeds. I even made a list of all the things I could think of that I really, truly wanted to eat and they were all raw! In general, I am just thrilled about how natural this whole experience feels and I am truly grateful that the Universe blessed me with it.

Anyhow darlings, I'm going to leave you now with blessings of health, wealth, happiness and love. Thanks for caring and big love to you all!

I am so happy an grateful now that I am easily and joyfully manifesting into my life:
-a smooth and joyful immigration processing experience for Felix and I.
-financial freedom and abundance.
-health, happiness, and harmony.
-the most beautiful and vibrant expression of life that this body can muster!
-emotional comfort, poise, and calm.
-serenity and grace.
-self confidence, presence, and highest consciousness.
-irie, irie, vibes...
-the ability to be a big time philanthropist.
-total mind/body/spirit healing.

Tag- I'm it!

I got tagged today by the lovely Mattye Lee and now I get to reveal five things about me that you don't already know. I took me all day to think of these five things because I'm such a blabber-mouth that I think I told you all just about everything there is to tell without exposing any not-so-innocent bystanders... So here we go.

1. I used to be a pretty good bowler in spite of myself. You see, my stepmother's family are big into bowling. And since she knew I hated it, I was made to bowl every Saturday morning for what seemed like an eternity, but was actually like 7 years or so... I was on a team/league and everything. It was so not my thing. But after seven years of anything, one gets good at it even if it is against their will... But, finally, when I turned 15 I got my first job, which leads us to previously unknown fact #2...

2. When I was 15, my then best friend moved away to Virginia and I racked up a $700 phone bill the first month that she was gone. So, in order for me to pay for the mega-phone bill, my Mom hired me out as an indentured servant to her best friend, Yvonne, who owned a flower shop. That was my first job and I loved it from the first minute I was there. I learned so much from Yvonne, who I now consider my second mother, that I was able to work very successfully in the flower industry for over 10 years. I was working as a floral designer when I met Felix and it was the last job I had before taking on my current job as full time Mommy.

3. I have participated in what seems to have been a miraculous healing. In the winter of 2000, me and Barbara (the one I went to Jamaica with) were at a reggae concert at Lupo's in Providence, RI. I think it was Stevie Marley... We were dancing and having a great time when these people bumped into us because they were dragging an unconscious and convulsing young man towards the door. So Barbara-on-the-spot bends down and starts giving him Reiki (we are both Reiki Masters) and I put one hand on her back and one hand up in the air and add my Reiki stream to hers. It probably only took a couple of minutes or so but seemed like hours, and suddenly the kid sits up and looks around with the most beautiful look on his face, then stands up and walks out of the club. All the people who were around us were standing in a circle looking at us like we were aliens. We were embarrassed and went outside to make sure the kid was alright but he was gone. His friend said he was having a drug overdose. It was a very profound moment in my life.

4. My favorite food is honey. I try to give it up all the time because it isn't technically vegan, but I always go back to it. I also use it to wash my face with and to put on cuts to help them heal faster. That's also why I get called Queen B, because of all the honey eating. Lincoln told me the other day that I like honey as much as Winnie the Pooh... Unfortunately I also share Winnie's aversion to calisthenics...

5. Now, this last one is kind of embarrassing and, well, it is just weird. Whenever, I am talking to someone from another country, especially a non-English speaking country, I take on this weird semi-British accent completely non-voluntarily and start speaking very clearly and enunciating like crazy. I think it started when I used to talk to my Kashmiri friend, Hanief, on the phone all the time. I think I just do it in an effort to help whomever it is that I am trying to communicate with to understand me better. I'm not sure that it helps though... My friends laugh at me and make fun of me for it which I think is mean because I truly DO NOT do it on purpose. I had to work really hard on not doing it in Jamaica especially because I didn't want to embarrass Barbara in front of her family... I think I did o.k. though, because no one laughed at me while I was talking to them... But, they could have just been trying to be nice.

So there you have it, 5 things you didn't know and probably didn't even want to know about me but...

Oh, and by the way, how do you like my new tunes? I take requests, you know...

Big blessings to everyone out there and sweet dreams!

No Thank You Easter Bunny!

Ugghhh... Cadbury Mini Eggs... I ate about 5 last night while I was making Lincoln's Easter Basket. I ate them consciously and slowly and enjoyed them, so that was all good. No big deal. Then, this morning as Lincoln was biting the ears off of his chocolate bunny, I ate about 10 more. Same deal with eating them consciously, etc. No big deal again, so that was great. But then, about 10 minutes later, I felt really, really bad... My legs began to ache, my stomach hurt, and I felt all hot and generally yucky. I wondered, "Could all of this be from ten tiny little chocolate eggs?" Umm, the answer to that is yes, because I didn't consume anything else so that must have been it. You have to understand that back in the day I could eat a whole bag of the nasty little things and not feel a thing besides a bit of a sugar buzz. However, I am happy that I was able to enjoy the taste of the chocolate treat without wanting to eat any more than I did. That by itself is a big deal for me. I am also realizing that my body and mind are sometimes at odds when it comes to what I want to eat. In this instance, my mind wanted the mini eggs and my body wanted a raw chocolate and tahini mylkshake. Since I didn't have the stuff I needed to make the mylkshake, I opted for the chocolate eggs... Lesson learned. My body, in it's infinite intelligence, will be the one deciding what I eat from now on. I am just so glad that I can finally actually "hear" my body when it is communicating with me now... It's voice is soft and gentle and it will tolerate being ignored. (It is probably used to me ignoring it after all of these years.) My mind, on the other hand, is much louder, difficult to ignore, and definitely thinks that it knows best... I'm just so happy that my body and I are now able to dialogue! Hallelujah! I am so happy and grateful for my lovely Easter blessing!

Happy Easter to everyone out there! Blessings on your own personal resurrections and joy to you all on this blessed day!

New Experiment...

Last Sunday, at 9 pm. eastern time, TLC had a show on called "I can make you thin" so, naturally, I watched it. It was all about the techniques of this British dude named Paul McKenna who has helped all sorts of folks with their weight loss journeys. He has a 71% success rate so I figured that I would give his techniques an honest try. It is a five or six week program/show and all of the techniques build upon each other. Last Sunday's show was all about paying attention to what/when/how you eat. Paul has 4 golden rules that he asks us to follow-
1. eat when you are hungry
2. eat what you want, not what you think you should eat
3. eat consciously, slowly, and without distractions
4. when you are full, stop
Seems simple, right? Well, let me just tell ya, it is powerful. I now totally realize how dysfunctional my relationship with food is/was and how little food I actually need to eat to be full and satisfied. I have also realized that the foods I truly want to eat are nourishing and almost exclusively raw, which is a very good thing! However, because I am no longer actively participating in my all out food addiction, lots of previously buried painful feelings are coming to the surface and raising their incredibly unattractive little heads... It has been a tumultuous and often overwhelming experience but I am happy to report that I haven't overeaten even once this week and have been very happily high raw. I have also noticed that the longer I do this the healthier my food choices are becoming. I am looking forward to this weeks episode as it has to do with using EFT to deal with emotional overeating which I am a specialist at... (the emotional overeating not the EFT...) Also, Paul says to only weigh yourself one or twice per month, so I'm going to wait until the whole series of shows is over to see what my results are. In general, this approach to weight loss seems very freeing and most importantly very healing. I feel like I am actually getting to the bottom of my food related issues and for that I am very grateful.

Big love and support to you all and I hope you have a great day!

I'll leave you with my magic manifestation list of gratitude and love, love, love!

I am so happy and grateful now that I am so quickly and easily attracting into my life:
*a large and fantastically beautiful piece of tropical paradise in the Caribbean to care for, build our dream home on, and thrive upon
*a gorgeous new car
*the best relationship with Felix that I can possibly have which is filled with love, joy, comfort, and humor
*my most healthy and beautiful body/mind/spirit
*financial abundance complete with philanthropic ability
*at least 3 hours every day of quiet, peaceful, time alone...
*a healthy relationship with food and eating
*an increasing amount of presence in my life
*peace and satisfaction

I'm a 3rd world girl at heart...

So I am finally back. Jamaica is/was paradise. Our one week vacation turned into two weeks (we couldn't bear to leave) and even though I have been home for about 10 days, I still feel like I left a big part of me in Jamaica. I felt this way when I came home from India, too... You see, I don't do the touristy travelling thing. No all inclusive, plastic, environmental nightmare resorts for me! I was shocked to learn that many of those places do not even allow local Jamaicans to walk on their beaches, never mind actually enter the resort (unless of course they are there to work for slave wages...) We had a real Jamaican experience and I am forever grateful for it!

We (me, my sista/bff Barbara, and little Lincoln) stayed at the adorable and very real-life Jamaican Ansell's Thatchwalk Cottages on Negril Beach. We started and ended every day with a swim in the perfect aquamarine sea. In fact, Lincoln even learned how to swim all by himself while we were there! The healing vibes that come from that gorgeous water cannot be expressed in words...

However, the best thing about the whole trip wasn't the beauty, the sea, the food, the excitement of the whole thing, no, it was the incredible people. You see, Barbara is married to a Jamaican man, named Owen, who has three of the most darling brothers in the entire Universe. The three brothers (Norris, Howie, and Vanlie) basically took care of us the entire time we were there. They got us anything we needed, cooked for us, took us all over the place and made us laugh countless times. They were fantastic!



We also got to take a trip up into the mountains to Barbara's mother in law's house. It was an incredible and totally mind blowing experience to see how people can live so simply off the land and be so much happier than most affluent Americans... We had a wonderful time with all of the nieces and nephews, who were all so brave, smart, and hysterical! They picked fresh cacao pods for us and showed us how to eat the lovely fruit. Interestingly, they often throw away the cacao beans, which, by the way, were an astonishing purple color!



As far as food goes, Jamaica is very vegetarian/vegan friendly in the form of Ital cooking, the traditional food of the Rastafarian's, who we all know I hold an extra special fondness for... We ate at a great place called "Just Natural" and also at the more fancy "Hungry Lion". I wasn't focused on eating raw, even though it would have been fairly easy to do. I was having too great of a time to worry about it! Howie and Norris cooked real Jamaican food for us and it was great. One morning Norris showed up with a big bag of ackee, yams, and breadfruit, all fresh picked from his Mom's trees! We definitely would not have gotten that at an "all-inclusive"!



My experience in Jamaica was perfect. I didn't ever want to leave and I could see myself living there very easily. I felt fantastic and beautiful and free. I felt myself thriving and was blissfully happy. Lincoln felt the love too and it was great to see him experience the West Indian side of himself! Now that we are back in Florida and back to "reality", whatever that means, I am realizing that a major shift occurred in me during my time in Jamaica. My priorities have changed and it will be interesting to see how it manifests in my life...



Most importantly, I want to send my hugest dose of gratitude to my darling sista Barbara for making the whole adventure possible and for being such a loving and supportive blessing in my life! Thank you more than I can ever express! xxoo



Big ups to all of you peaceful warriors out there! Big love and Irie vibes to each and every Emperor and Empress! One Love!