Over the last few years, I developed the tradition of staying up way too late the night of New Year’s Eve (technically, being up way too early on New Year’s Day) writing, reflecting on my last year, and setting intentions and goals for the year ahead. I’m not someone who believes in waiting around for a new year to set a resolution, but I do think that the New Year is the perfect time for an annual personal check-in on all fronts.
This year, however, was different. Right now I’m writing from the airplane on my way home from Maui, where we spent New Year’s Eve. Instead of bringing in the new year with a cozy night in, a face mask, watching the movie New Year’s Eve, and my usual late-night journaling-turned-blog-post, this year my friend Michelle and I listened to the fireworks from our back patio, chatted about what we wanted to leave in the last decade and what we wanted to bring into this new one, had a tarot card session, and recorded a podcast after the clock struck midnight (Hawaiian time). Thank god for the extra chocolate in the fridge, because I probably would have fallen asleep about 15 minutes into the podcast without it.
I am very grateful I was in Hawaii this New Year’s Eve, because it was a big one. I’ve been talking a lot about the energetic shifts heading into the new year, and new decade, for a few weeks now, and I felt that energy even more strongly in Maui. Hawaii is an energetic portal for so many reasons, but especially because you are so connected to the earth. I have been physically feeling the energetic end of 2019 for quite some time now, and it was amazing to truly feel the shift on New Year’s Eve. I have been so excited for 2020 because I know it will be the start of an amazing decade, one that will be full of beautifully tumultuous shifts, unparalleled growth, and open space for the universe to send things my way.
Looking back on 2019 felt underwhelming at first. I usually feel like I have a list of things to rattle off as accomplishments by the end of the year, but for me 2019 felt like slowing down in front of a stop sign before picking up speed again. I’ve felt drained for quite a few years now, and this year my body wasn’t going to let me keep fighting it. I was forced to slow down, shift my focus, and physically surrender.
Professionally, this year was a lot of behind-the-scenes work on my end, getting things in motion for everything I want to release this year. Some of that includes projects I planned on launching in 2019, but didn’t have the energy to. In some ways, there is never a right time for anything, but there can certainly be a wrong time. Intuitively, 2019 felt like the wrong time to hustle too hard, and definitely the wrong time to release anything if I didn’t feel in alignment. It was about building and prepping so that I could really go for it in 2020. I’ve been working on relaunching my website for almost a year now. It got dragged out partly because of me, and partly because of factors out of my hands, but I reached a point where I just wanted to work on all the changes slowly rather than rush it, not sleep, have too many things go wrong at once, and feel overwhelmed. I realized I had no reason to be in a hurry, which is a huge mindset shift from how I typically am – forcing myself to get things done even when I know it doesn’t feel right.
This year I mainly focused on building the membership on my site as well as upcoming courses and books I plan to release in the next year, and I know it will be worth it to wait to release everything. It was bittersweet to end the final round of my group coaching program for women, but the content is still always available as an online DIY course, and it was necessary for me to be able to grow the membership in the way I want to. I’ve gotten such great feedback since opening up the membership, and I plan on continuing to expand that as much as I can in order to help the most people possible at a low price point.
Besides pumping out a ton of weekly content and working on the backend side of my business to prep for 2020 launches, I also hosted an unforgettable retreat here in San Diego with the help of my amazing assistant Kelly Scott and then-intern, now official assistant, Erin Dunne. Like the last retreat I threw, this one hit my soul in so many ways. It was a transformational weekend for everyone who came, and I don’t think anyone left without shedding a lot of tears (in a good way). Here is a video recap if you’d like to see a bit of what we did at the retreat!
What else did I accomplish this year?! I created a smoothie to be on the menu for a limited time at one of my favorite local restaurants, Powerhaus Pizza, and creating a menu item at one of my most-frequented eateries has been a dream of mine for quite some time. I also promoted to Director at Beautycounter, which allowed me to attend my first ever LEAD conference, an inspirational conference for directors and above. Each year I focus more and more on my Beautycounter business, and becoming a Director was a huge milestone in approaching my ultimate goals with my business. It also means I step more and more into business mentoring, and this year I discovered that is something I absolutely love to do.
Reiki also became a huge part of my business this year, especially after settling into an office in San Diego. Interestingly enough, by the end of the year I had even more distance clients than I did in-person clients, and I’m curious to see if that shifts again in 2020. As Reiki has become a more and more important part of my life, it has also become an increasingly important part of my business and content. It’s had such a strong impact on my tumultuous healing journey, and I love talking about all things spirituality and helping people tap into their intuition. This type of healing dives deeper than traditional nutritional therapy, and I love to help others reach ultimate healing by combining different modalities.
In 2019, I dove deep into all things spirituality and intuition. I’ve done a lot of very fulfilling and transformative work with different healers and intuitives, and I’ve studied with multiple spiritual mentors who have taught me how to strengthen my energy work and mediumship abilities. Having regular mentorship sessions has done amazing things for me.
Along those lines, I also became very interested in the Enneagram, Human Design, and Astrology this year. All have taught me invaluable things about myself, my history, my soul’s purpose, how I “work,” and how to make the most of my time here. I highly recommend getting an Astrology reading and learning more about your Human Design and Enneagram type if you haven’t already. Check out this episode and this episode of my podcast for more on Astrology. You can figure out your Human Design type here. You can take the Enneagram Test here. If you’re curious, I’m a Type 8 on the Enneagram (previously thought I was a 3), a Generator (non-specific manifestor, strong sacral response, “raw” digestive type, etc.), and an Aries with a Gemini moon sign and Taurus ascendant. I started working with a Human Design expert towards the end of 2019 to really begin to learn how to live according to my type, and there is so much to learn. I’m excited to see where that work takes me in 2020!
2019 for me was about settling into San Diego professionally and socially, and focusing a lot more on my personal life and self-development. I’m extremely happy I took the time to focus on those areas of my life. I moved from Los Angeles to San Diego in November of 2018 before immediately traveling for the holidays, so 2019 was really my first year in a new city. I got an office in San Diego to see Reiki and nutrition clients, started rebuilding my professional and social networks, and really just focused on getting comfortable in a new place.
San Diego is a different pace of life than Los Angeles, and definitely a different population. It’s slower, but it’s much more community-based, which I love. I was able to host quite a few meet-ups and events this year and really connect with people in real life versus just over the Internet, which is so rewarding. Rebuilding a network can seem overwhelming at first when you’ve spent so long building one in a previous city, but I’ve met such amazing fellow businesspeople and entrepreneurs in San Diego that I’m extremely appreciative of having to go through the process. There are times when I really miss L.A. and my network there, but I’ve built a great one here as well. The other business owners I have met in SD are so incredibly supportive, and I’ve made amazing friends in the process who all want to help each other reach their goals. It was also really great to finally meet so many people in person who I’ve “known” for a long time, whether that be previous podcast guests, distance clients, or colleagues from Instagram. That’s the beauty of having an online business – you have “people” in every major city, and sometimes supporting someone else’s project gives you a great excuse to travel!
On a personal level, I dedicated a lot of time to my social life, which is something I wanted to catch up on when moving to San Diego. It can be difficult balancing your social life while being an entrepreneur and working crazy, weird, long hours, but I really wanted to make an effort to find more balance this year. I think I did. I hung out more often with friends, had a lot of visitors from out of state, gave myself more “me” time when I needed it, and went on a lot of dates. The dating scene was bleak in L.A., so it was nice to go to new places and meet new people in SD. Yesterday Michelle asked me what the biggest surprise was for me in 2019, and it was definitely my dating life. I’m very picky, and was pleasantly surprised in the end.
Beyond that, I felt like I had a much healthier balance with travel this year compared to the year before, when I would spend maybe a week a month in my apartment and be gone the rest of the time, bouncing from place to place. This year, I took plenty of quick trips up to L.A., a few to the bay, and some to different places for work like Portland, Austin, Denver, and Tuscon…and of course Maui for pleasure this past week!
Speaking of personal development, my favorite “trip” of the year was my 5-day technology detox. It was the best thing I did for myself this year. In April, I booked an Airbnb right by the beach, about an hour and a half from where I live, and I took 5 days off from all technology. No phone, no computer, no TV. I slept, meditated, walked by the beach, journaled, and repeated. I came out of that week feeling so incredibly connected intuitively, so relaxed and rejuvenated, and so reinspired. I’m a big fan of regular social media detoxes, but getting rid of all technology was on an entirely different level. I would like to do that at least once a year from now on.
Lastly, let’s discuss the health category. The most important thing that happened to me this year was that I finally got my period back after 4 years of amenorrhea. I AM SO HAPPY. Check out this podcast episode if you want to learn more about how I got my period back. The quick version, though, is that overcoming amenorrhea required a lot of mindset shifts, slowing down, gaining weight, eating a lot of food, working on underlying health issues, and focusing on energy healing. Getting my period back seemed to turn my body back on in a way. I feel like I finally hit puberty this year, at 24, oddly enough. I grew two inches taller after getting my period back, which might seem bizarre, but it makes sense when you think about how amenorrhea affects bone density.
I also worked with my friend Rachel Barber to rewire my brain, which was an invaluable experience. Rachel specializes in helping people heal from chronic illness through the power of the mind, and I highly recommend her Total Healing program if you have any type of chronic symptoms. Retraining my brain changed my life in the best way, and I know almost everyone in my life noticed a huge shift in my personality and how I viewed the world. I came out of that program a much more positive, confident, spiritual person, and the program helped me get rid of any lingering underlying anxiety (which I struggled with for most of my life) and taught me how to manifest in a very powerful way.
The difficult part of this year, healthwise, was dealing with mold illness, which really hit me at the end of the year. I found out I had mold toxicity the year before while living in L.A., and part of why I moved out of that apartment was to get out of the mold. I felt much better after moving into a new apartment in San Diego, but as the year progressed I noticed worsening symptoms – inflammation, brain fog, memory loss, body aches, and fatigue were at their worst. It came on slowly at first, but at some point it felt like too much to handle. My digestive issues suddenly became worse than ever before, and I really couldn’t go on feeling like my body was not functioning. I put myself on a protocol to get rid of Hydrogen Sulfide SIBO, and then I started working with a few incredible doctors to start a Lyme / mold detox protocol that involved supplementation, ozone therapy, daily sauna, colonics / enemas, castor oil packs, dry brushing, etc., and adjusted my lifestyle to be able to fit it all in. It was emotionally and physically draining. After a few months of intense die-off, my gut protocol seemed to work, and I felt like I was slowly but surely getting better.
I tested my apartment and found out that, unfortunately, it had mold levels too high for me to live in, so I found a new apartment as soon as I could. When you have mold illness and have to move apartments, that also means getting rid of almost everything in your old place – furniture, clothes, books, letters, personal care products, and so on. The moving process was honestly exhausting, especially at a time where I felt so weak, but I immediately felt so much better upon getting into a new place. It is remarkable how much environmental factors can affect our health.
It was also an important lesson for me in minimalism. I definitely did not become a minimalist (maybe someday…), but I’ve always had an issue holding onto things, so the experience forced me to let go of a lot.
Lastly, I tried quite a few different health trends in 2019. Experimenting on myself is my favorite thing to do, and I want to highlight some of my most memorable experiments. First, I tried drinking celery juice every day for a week. It tasted good, but I didn’t notice any differences, and it was way too expensive and too much work for me to keep up with. I also tried the potato diet this year, which meant I ate only potatoes for two weeks. Yup, only potatoes. No salt, pepper, oil, or anything else. I actually really enjoyed the simplicity of it. I learned that I am definitely intolerant to white potatoes, though, and sadly I developed a slight intolerance to sweet potatoes after the experiment. That being said, it was a lot of fun to try, and it led me to some interesting research about low-fat diets. Later on in the year, I spent a few months on a higher-carb, lower fat-diet, which was radically different than how I’ve been eating over the last 5 years (I typically lean low-carb / keto). That was another great learning lesson for me in how my body responds to different macronutrient ratios, and I figured out that a big hit of carbohydrates was the solution for the “chronic hunger” I had been told for years was due to bacterial overgrowths. It’s not always so complicated, you know?
While eating high-carb made me feel great in some ways, it brought back a lot of my gut issues. When I started doing my detox protocol, my doctors recommended I get back into a ketogenic state to heal and reduce my inflammation. Not only that, but because of my Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, I seemed to be reacting to every food, and my body was on overload. My doctor recommended doing a strict carnivore reset for 30 days. Before hopping in, I did my first 72-hour water fast. By the third day, some of my inflammation had finally gone down. From there I went into a strict carnivore diet, which was the second time I’ve experimented with the carnivore diet. Last time I ate carnivore for 2 weeks, but this time I ate carnivore for almost 2 months. It took my body a few weeks to adapt, but after adapting I could tell a meat-only diet was allowing my body to heal in a way it hadn’t been able to before. I also learned a lot more about the carnivore diet itself, and it allowed me to figure out what foods really were causing me inflammation.
Beyond that, I also tried out infrared sauna, colon hydrotherapy, and ozone therapy this year for the first time, and all have played very important roles in my detox protocol. Infrared sauna became a part of my daily routine, and colonics and ozone therapy became weekly events during the most important phases of my detox. I am alllll about detoxification nowadays.
I started the year in a new apartment, and I ended the year in a different new apartment. Mold illness hit me again with a vengeance, but it taught me to lean into my spirituality and myself in a way I didn’t know how to before. The last year held space for a lot of personal growth and self-reflection, and I feel like it was the perfect setup to launch me into 2020 with the right mental space, plenty of motivation, and many plans for an amazing year ahead.
What was the most memorable thing for you in 2019?!
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