Snow in October?!?

I can't believe it's not even November yet and I had to shovel 5 inches of snow! It's OCTOBER! It doesn't snow in New Jersey in October!!! But I digress.. I think I know what the baby girl that my-self gave me on the beach meant. Oh, I’m sorry, for those of you just coming in please refer to the story about the baby here.

My friend, who was one of the Matrons-of-Honor in my wedding party, had her baby on Monday, and it was a beautiful baby girl!

That was shocking as I predicted a baby boy. I have been 7 for 7 with baby predictions and that is why this was a shock to me, so now I’m 7 for 8! Still not bad for a day’s work! I’m so happy for her and her hubby; they now have a beautiful family!

On to other great news!

Taking into consideration all of the other “possibilities” of what the baby could have meant; other “things” have been born this week as well!

First, MUMS Fit Club has been born! I am a Coach with Team Beachbody and we had what is called a Super Saturday last weekend. The purpose of these events it to link Coaches together and announce company and coach news… BIG NEWS! The events are fun, and inspiring, and informative. I was fortunate to get connected to another coach that lives 15 minutes from me that I never knew existed. Together we will be holding MUMS Fit Club at Tiger Schulmann’s on Route 17 in Paramus on Thursdays at 10am starting on November 10^th 2011. It’s FREE. FREE?!? Yep, FREE! It is a service we are offering to the community. Why? Because we can.. That’s the beauty of doing what we do! BTW MUMS stands for Making Us Moms Sexy; i know I'm not a Mom just yet, but the club is targeted towards Stay at home moms or moms that might be out of work temporarily because of the economy.

Second, I have created 2 FREE challenge groups of 5 people each, and I am just 1 person shy of filling the 2^nd group! I did that in 1 week. I will be doing this for the beginning of every month until there is no more interest. So get a jump-start on your New Year’s Resolutions and let me help you with FREE fitness coaching! WHY? Because I can.. that’s the beauty of doing what I do!

Third, I met with the community center and submitted my application for that Fit Club. The scheduler loved the idea, and loved that it was free, but the board has to approve it; it goes up for vote on the 9^th! Why this is a big deal is because I didn’t have any anxiety or panic, nor did I stumble over my tongue! I got dressed in casual business attire, did this whacked breathing technique that George (see baby story) told me about. I nearly passed out in the car from this technique, but I’ll just keep working on perfecting it! Maybe next time I’ll do it prior to getting in the car. Doing this is the biggest deal because I think I’m finally getting my brain out of this mode, and I feel REALLY great! I can’t remember the last time I felt this good to be quite honest.

I’ve also been stretching and foam rolling every day; my body is now feeling a bit better. I’m still tight in my neck and upper back, but it’s getting better so much so that I’ve gotten 2 good workouts in in two days. I’ve been feeling full of energy so I pulled out a trusted favorite, TurboJam. Friday I did Cardio Party and Ab Jam.. Whoa! I forgot how effective Ab Jam was! I definitely felt that today, but that didn’t stop me.. no no.. I’m a glutton for punishment.. I went with Punch, Kick, and Jam tonight! It hurts to sneeze, but it feels oh so good.. I miss that feeling… the feeling of the muscles broken down and repairing. THAT is a soreness I don’t mind at all! It's better than being stressed and feeling depressed!

In a way I'm glad it snowed, yeah I know.. how could I be glad that it's snowing in October? It gave me time to get a good workout in, I shoveled - which gave me a great workout, and I was able to reflect on the greatness of this past week and type it up and share with you! Thanks for listening!

Spousal Abuse - What an Abusive Realtionship Looks Like

9:22 PM Wednesday, October 12, 2011. I'm having a total recall moment about the abuse I endured on one particular night with my former spouse.

I'm blogging about today's experience with George and thinking about how our energy attracts energy, and it quickly brought me back to the night prior to my tonsillectomy back in 2003. I was married to the former and I wanted to have a really big steak dinner the night before my tonsillectomy because I knew I wasn't going to be eating very good food, if at all, for a couple of weeks. He had to go to an Elks meeting that night and said he would leave as soon as it was over and we would then go have dinner.

An hour and a half after I knew the meeting would have ended I called his cell phone and he did not answer. I waited 15 minutes and called again - he did not answer. I waited another 15 minutes then I got in my car and went over to the Elks Lodge where he was, not surprisingly, at the bar drinking. I became very irate, very angry, and very upset because (1) he was drinking (the catalyst to all of the problems), and (2) because we were supposed to go somewhere and he completely blew me off and disregarded me because he had hit the bottle. I then got in my car and proceeded to the restaurant without him.

It was raining that night, and on my way to the restaurant I hit a pothole the size of a crater because I couldn’t see it on the rain slicked roadway because it was filled with water. On top of it all I had to call for police escort because I was in a very bad neighborhood. The gentlemen at the gas station, which I broke down in front of, didn't speak a lick of English and couldn't even help me jack the car up. Shortly after the cop arrived another car hit that same pothole while I was trying to tend to my tire. Thankfully, the police officer was there and had witnessed it and was able to make a full and valid report of the damage to the roadway and our vehicles. I had AAA come and tow the car back to my house because I had a flat spare.. I can laugh now.

It was then that my husband pulled up.. now for anyone that knew him, it's no surprise that he dislikes cops it's an even bigger dislike because he knows that I want to be one, so naturally (in his drunken mind) I'm sleeping with the cop. But what was even worse was that he was there and drunk and I didn't say a word to the police officer. In fact, I kept him away from the police officer so he wouldn’t get in trouble. I did that for HIS daughter. As a truck driver had he gotten a DUI/DWI he would have had his license suspended which would take away his income and ultimately HIS daughter would have been the victim. Never did I defend him for HIM, I defended him for my safety and his daughter’s livelihood. As a child to a single mother growing up, I know how important every dollar is no matter how minimal the amount.

Make a long story short I never got the steak that night, but I did get a good tongue lashing over the next six hours about how I was sleeping with the cop, until he passed out. That was the second to the last fight that we had prior to me leaving for good.

The point at which I'm trying to make is that I was in such a negative-energy-state that night. I was angry, upset, I had anxiety, but mostly anger. All of that combined really, really created a wave of negativity around me to which brought me to the pothole.

I always believe everything happens for a reason. There's a reason why that happened that night. What that reason is I still don't know. Could the restaurant have caught on fire? Could I have been in an accident while I was on the highway? Could I have been mugged in the parking lot at the restaurant because it wasn’t in a nice area? There was a reason why I wasn't allowed to go to that restaurant that night. Was it divine intervention? Was it the negative energy I created for myself by reacting to the situation that way?

Whatever the reason is, it could very well explain why prior to my wisdom teeth surgery about a month ago, I was stressed out and anxious for absolutely no reason. I think it was my brain reliving the trauma of the night prior to my tonsillectomy. The one big difference is that I'm no longer married to that asshole and I have a wonderful husband who is very supportive and very caring and very concerned for my well-being, not his own selfish needs or wants.

It's amazing what we remember and what the mind recalls, when it recalls it, why it recalls it, and why sometimes these thoughts never pop into our minds. I almost feel sometimes like my brain is on overload and it's just trying to purge out the junk it doesn't need any more. Lately, as of the last couple of months, it's been doing a lot of purging. Digging up a lot of memories that are negative that I've experienced but that are linked to things that I’m experiencing now in the present. That's what I like to call a total recall. Could it be because I’m no longer on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds? Were those meds suppressing all of these memories? Or was my system so traumatically stressed out that it just shut all the visual memories down, and left the physical aspect (anxiety, depression, panic attacks) to run rampant until my visual mind was able to lasso it all together?

God only truly knows,  but because I sustained such heavy damage on my vehicle prior to going in for surgery, my car sat in front of my house with a flat tire. The entire time I was held captive in my own home recovering with an abusive alcoholic. Shortly after Easter, this would be about a couple of weeks after my surgery, my husband decided to get drunk when he came home from work, that in and of itself is high anxiety because you know what's coming… you're too weak to do anything about it and you have no way to get away from it, but like I said everything happens for a reason.

He decided to pick a fight that night… verbally berated the shit out of me… making me feel lower than I felt being only 70 pounds (because I could not eat) having zero energy (because I had no nutrition-if only Shakeology would have been invented back then), I couldn't talk (because of the surgery), so I crawled my way to the bathroom with my cell phone and I called my father. He ended up grabbing the phone from me and started telling my father that I was delusional because I was on medication, which was not true. When I heard that I grabbed his cell phone and I called my brother, and I locked myself in my bedroom where I could sit on the floor and pack a bag, while I waited for my brother to arrive. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, the cops were on their way.

The cops showed up before my brother could get there, and when they arrived they took my husband out of the house. They then broke into my room saw the condition I was in, put me on each of their arms and escorted me to my living room and then to my brother’s car. That was the night I left and I never went back. Well, until the next day with my brother to put the repaired spare tire on my car and drive it home.

It's funny how you can link the past to the present. I think about that a lot. How I felt.  Where my emotions were.  Where my strength came from, and the police officers that left with me. If you think about the police officers, how they were like my knights in shining armor at the time. Had it not been for them, my brother would probably be in jail right now because he probably would've killed my now ex-husband.

That whole year that I was married to him is just one big blank blur of anger and anxiety and depression. I wasn't happy. I find pictures of myself sometimes when I'm cleaning things out and I was not happy. There was never a smile on my face. It's amazing what we see when we look at our pictures.  It’s even more amazing when we can actually attach that to a recall.

For anyone that's in a bad relationship… Just get out! Don't worry about what if…? Save yourself! Wouldn't it be nice if…? Answer that question for yourself and believe me your survival instinct will kick in and you will know where to go and what to do, and God will put the right person(s) in your path. Don't live another day with that anxiety and anger and that abuse, it's just not good! It has destroyed the better part of my adult life! I have been suffering since I was 25 years old because of him and now I’m 37 and I'm just starting to get over it all now.

When my current AWESOME hubby and I had our pre-marriage meetings with our Church, Reverend Smith said this monster would rear its ugly head again in our marriage. I laughed and told him no way.. Well, he was right. In fact, it never truly wasn’t there because he had done so much damage I didn’t know how to be me. Kyle lets me be me, he holds my hand when I need it, he laughs with me, he’s always encouraging me, and supporting me, and trying to make me happy. He deals with my anxiety in traffic, he takes all the necessary steps he knows how to make sure my well-being is protected. THAT is how a REAL husband should treat you, not like my former. That is what a healthy relationship is, not what I was married to the first time.

The Power of Positive

Today was a very strange day. This whole event actually started on Monday. I had a law of attraction coaching call with a fellow beach body coach named George and he took me through a series of exercises (kind-of-like meditation with a visual component and there was a breathing component also involved). It was a very powerful and positive experience that I would like to share with you.

Monday's exercise consisted of me grounding myself - letting go of any feeling that I might be having, and just become neutral and go to a calm place. Now the place could have been anywhere, it could be the beach or mountains or anywhere where I would feel calm. My visual-self brought me to the beach during sunrise and I was then instructed to see a person walking along the beach towards me. Initially this person was just a white figure… all white, no face, just a ghost white figure which then quickly turned into my husband then very quickly turned into me, which was the purpose of the exercise. It was supposed to be me coming towards me on the beach.

I couldn't help but feel curious of my-self being there in front of me. I was then instructed to visualize my-self giving me a gift, which I did. I gave my-self a hug and I said thank you, but before I could open the gift my-self walked away in the same direction that she came from. I felt sad, very, very sad, and then I started to cry.

At the end of that exercise George had asked me how I felt and I told him I was crying, you could hear it in my voice and he asked me what was in the box and I told him I never had a chance to open the box because my–self walked away before I had a chance to. It was very upsetting because I was overcome with such emotion that I couldn't explain, just based on a very simple exercise. George then asked me if I wanted to bring my–self back to open the box and I was so upset by what happened that I didn't want my-self to come back because I really didn't quite understand why I had a gift to begin with. What was in the box? Why did she walk away? I didn't understand.

I did ask him if because I placed myself on the very same beach when I was in my early 20’s (life was stressing and I needed a release so I went down the shore and waited on the beach for the sun to come up... I was crying the entire time), if that emotion wasn’t an extension of my time there... He of course couldn’t say with certainty that that was in deed the case, but it did inject the possibility of why I was so emotional.

We set up a time to have our second coaching call for today, which is Wednesday. Our call started like a normal conversation would start… “How have you been feeling the past couple of days? What's been going on? How is your business? What are you excited about? You know… things business people and friends talk to each other about. Then we got into our exercise again and we did the same thing we did on Monday: I had to ground myself and breathe and go back to the beach. But let me preface this by saying since Monday I've had the visual in my mind’s eye of the beach and my–self has been in my peripheral right side the entire time. When George brought me back to the beach today I whistled to my–self to come over. She walked swiftly along the beach and then she started to skip and I started to laugh because that's how I would do it. I would! I would act like… like a child! and skip! Then my–self jumped in front of me like I would do in real life, I was still laughing. We were laughing together and she handed me the box. I forgot to mention that the box that she gave me on Monday was a white box (whatever that relevance has I don't know), but it was white. Today she again gave me another white box and today I had to open the box while she was with me and I did. When I opened the box a bright white light shined out. It wasn't like a beam of light. It was a bright white light, and it shined everywhere! It wasn't cold. It wasn't hot. It was comforting and it confused me because I didn't understand the relevance of the white light. So I looked up at my-self with a confused look on my face and asked her “what is it?” and she looked down at me, smiling excitedly, pointing to the box with both fingers… “Look in the box! Look in the box! Don't you see it?” I looked down into the box again and I just saw a bright white light and I looked at her again and I said I don't see it and she kept saying “just looked! Just look!” and as hard as I tried I just couldn't see anything but the white light.

George then instructed me to be one with my-self and I absorbed my–self into me and I became one person alone on the beach and I was content. I heard the birds, I heard the ocean, I felt the breeze, I felt the sea spray, I felt the warm sun, but I also had full clarity. I no longer had my–self in my peripheral right vision. She was with me now.

This may sound very odd and strange and weird to certain people, but to go through this exercise really, really centered me. I am already in a place of energy that is good for once in a very long time. So it was very easy for me to center and ground myself and have the visual experience because of it. About a month ago I never would've had this type of outcome.

While George and I were just conversing about the experience, something happened and it happened as fast as a flash of lightning, my–self popped out of me and handed me a baby and then popped right back in. I immediately stopped the conversation I was having with George and I told him what had just happened. I told him about the emotional feeling that came with that gift of the baby was happy and my physical feeling was warm so he asked that I sit on that feeling for a little while and then we discussed it.

George told me that white light signifies purification. That could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. When I think about purification for myself, I think of getting rid of bad thoughts, bad energy, and negativity in general. However, when you enter the component of the baby and you add purification, I think of how I have been resisting being a mother since I was a child because I saw what my mother went through being a single mom to two kids and I always told myself I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be the person that has the two kids and no husband and I lived that life. I'm 37 years old and I do not have a child. I never wanted a child, actually I did at one point - in my early 20s I got the baby bug because my girlfriend had a baby and then I wanted a baby but then I quickly realized that that was just an emotion it wasn't at all what I wanted. I never wanted children. That’s why I married a guy who was older than me that had a kid, so I didn't have to worry about being a mother… I’m obviously not married to that guy anymore - Thankfully. But my current husband now wants a child, and I've been preparing myself physically for the child; getting my teeth taken care of, so I wouldn’t have to worry about that while pregnant, making sure that I’m on the prenatal vitamins, eating as best as I can despite the depression, starting to work out again, which you can see, is now becoming a reality. But it was when George asked me if I was trying for a baby did it hit me. Yes, I am trying, kind of… but because I was trying to fix everything that was wrong with me physically we weren’t really giving it the good college try. We are just doing it, no pun intended, and if it happens it happens. But the even weirder thing is that this morning when I was talking to my husband about it, the getting pregnant part… I told him that I would start the ovulation kit this month... so it was really a shock when George had asked about trying for baby, but because I have my period today I know that I'm not pregnant. But now I'm open to it. It's like my-self purified that negative thought process of having a family by giving me that white light... feeling the white light..  sitting on the white light... allowing myself to be content there and then drop it off the grandparent would! lol! The baby is a girl, and I've been telling my husband since he met me that when we have a kid it’s going to be a girl. I just know it is.

Only the future will tell what this gift is. Is it my baby? Is it someone else's baby? Or is it symbolic of something else? Possibly something in its infancy stage? Like maybe the fit club that I want to start in town? Or is it my business? Or is it my marriage? Or is it a friendship that's just starting? It can be symbolic of anything, really. It doesn't necessarily have to be the gift that my-self gave me.

It was a very good exercise today, and if I had the money I would certainly like to keep up with it because it is very, very, very helpful when dealing with anxiety (especially), but definitely negativity. I was bred into a cynical, pessimistic family. Everybody was negative all the time, never really let you reach for the stars because they were either looking out for you Too much, or everybody had a negative spin on something. It's very hard as a persistent soul, such as myself, to walk away (naturally) from a pessimistic attitude. Some things I am optimistic on some things I’m more pessimistic on, but my actions are always more optimistic because I can get knocked down, sit there on the ground for a little while, get back up and keep on charging.

That trait became very clear to me the day I ran the Spartan race. As sick as I was to my stomach prior to lining up at the starting line… When I got on that hill, I'm sorry… mountain, and I had to go through these obstacles and climb boulders and drag boulders and climb through things and climb over things and be 50 feet up in the air and crawl through mud and barbed wire and ice and fire did I realize if I can do this… I can do anything… I always had that ability my entire life, but because I had such a pessimistic family I never really did much with anything because somebody had something negative to say about it, which always gave me an excuse not to do something. Or if I failed at something instead of getting back up and going, I would take it as a defeat, and not continue on.

My husband is not a pessimist; my husband is very supportive of me, and my husband is very understanding of what I go through on a daily basis with the depression and anxiety and panic attacks, and the hormonal fluctuations and the insomnia, but he knows that I try. That's why he doesn't push me because he knows that once I'm ready, I'm going to take the ball and I am going to run with it. When I am feeling insecure about my depression, and my lack of income to the family like it used to be, he always says that we’re a team and sometimes some team members need to be carried for a little while until they are strong enough to go it on their own.. and he's right! We are a team and he's the strong one right now and I love that about him. The one thing I know that he loves about me is that I'm independent enough not to rely on someone for every single thing in my life. As a cop's wife I can't be because when duty calls, they're out the door and only the strong women can stay behind to deal with the family, the house, the job, and everything that comes along with that, and being alone. He knows I’m strong he's told me that that's one of the reasons why he married me.

Wouldn’t it be nice if… The baby is really our baby?

Wouldn’t it be nice if… We could break the pattern of pessimism and negativity?

Wouldn’t it be nice if… Our baby would grow up free of anxiety so that she/he can grow and prosper and be successful?