Fear. It is a powerful, debilitating and contagious emotion. Powerful, because it can consume us - our minds and our time. Debilitating, because it can cease our forward motion and progress. The very forward motion and progress, often, that can remedy our situation or meet our concerns head on and crush them into oblivion. Contagious because fear lies within all of us, albeit the littlest versions of us. It spreads easily because it only needs a little recognition or encouragement for it to blossom and grow out of control. Interesting to note that fear is also the root of our most negative and unattractive emotions: anger, resentment, hate, judgement. And we have all witnessed how fast those emotions can take us over, historically, collectively and individually. (listen for more)

I hope that anyone who has been the target of hate or bullying will hear this and know that they are not alone. That they will find solace in these words. And most importantly, that they will do the work that is before them for the evolution of their soul and the healing of their heart.

A psychic intuitive medium from Hollywood gave me something that had been stripped away from me. Something that I didn’t know I was longing for, but of course was at the core of my shattered instability: It was hope. She gave me hope.

With hope you can get through another day. With hope, you can resume your dreaming and plotting and planning. With hope, you don’t mind waking up again. All anyone needs in times of desperation is a little hope to hang onto.

I fell in love with a music man. And somewhere along the way, he forgot who he was. Life got in the way. So on our 20th wedding anniversary, I had the chance to remind him. A surprise only surpassed by our engagement + wedding + honeymoon, which I knew nothing about.

We were 32, my husband and I, when we decided to start our family. In doing the math, that gave me 72 chances to get pregnant before I turned 38. It was a seemingly endless amount of possibilities.

We wanted a girl most of all. We had already named her Isabella, and hoped with all our might that she would have his curly hair and my brown eyes.

Because I was certain it wouldn’t be long before I was pregnant, I turned my focus to how I would surprise Michael with the news. I decided to sing him Danny’s Song by Kenny Loggins. It held special meaning to us both. We would drive around in his jeep with the top down on some winding country road on a summer day with no particular place to be and no particular time to return; singing it out loud, unabashedly attempting some harmony around “even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you honey…” and I would have to stop singing for the tears that closed my throat. It was the perfect choice.

Trigger Warning: This story contains details about childhood sexual abuse.

We who have secrets keep them for many reasons. We keep them out of shame. We keep them out of fear. We keep them to protect those we love most in the world. What we don’t realize in our well-intentioned rationalization, is that after we have buried them in the attics of our souls and convinced ourselves to carry on, they take on a life of their own. Growing like barnacles on the underbelly of a ship until the ship is impeded in how it sails. And we don’t know why. I almost kept my secret.

It took me some time to realize that I was on the wrong path. That the work I was doing for a living was no longer fulfilling me; actually was no longer working on any level. Funny how the universe intervenes when you haven't been listening: Contracts are broken; new clients are nowhere to be found; the flow of money runs dry.

The challenge of letting go of the ego and operating from the heart space.

Dear (____________), I love you, but I've got to let you go. by Kerrie L. Cooper