I feel as fickle as a pickle.  This MLM journey began as a venture into a new way of business for me, a new opportunity, and something to share, something to build.  It’s now been over 2 years and I’ve gathered some wisdom and experience along with salaciously and greedily picking up more opportunities upon the path. At first I was loyal.  Ut-uh, no way I am sticking to what I am doing no matter what.  I made a commitment and that is that.  My original sponsor Patrick jumped ship quietly somewhere around 6 months after bringing me into the company.  I didn’t look back, I focused my efforts on the lineage of experienced leaders above him.  Mark Yarnell talks about this happening in his book: Your First Year in Network Marketing.

Sponsors sometimes leave.  My new sponsor became Amy.  Fiery and voracious Amy.  Awesome, I love Amy and embraced all that she offered me.  I kept down the road.

Remember back in the 1800′s, before cars?  before oil power?  When people traveled they had these horse drawn carriages with big clunky wood wheels and dirt roads filled with giant rocks that wheels would bump hard, really hard over these rocks?  Or it would rain for days and the poor horse would get stuck in the mud trying to pull 600 pounds forward?   Many many times this is what the road felt like.  Tough, wind in my face,  and blowing hard.

Why is it so hard to build this I would ask David?  ”Don’t make it so hard” came his reply.

The harder the winds, the harder I pushed.  Meanwhile, I would witness what in my own judgemental mind were what seemed to be less capable people building farther, faster and easier than I.  What am I missing?  What am I doing that is not serving me?

David, (Yoda) would chime in:  Who are you being when you invite someone to look at what you are doing?

Um…I am being myself.

At this point myself felt like a mess of scar tissue, fresh wounds and frustration.

There was a secret part of me that started to get mad at my little kids for “being in the way of building my business!”  I suppose this sentiment began around the time my son turned 3 and no longer tolerated me speaking on the phone.             Okay I clearly cannot build this thing on the phone, I need to take it to the streets and build it in person.

This sort of worked better.  but I needed to look deeper at this.  I took on a new perspective.  Perhaps my business building is getting in the way of me being a mom.  This was clearly how my husband saw it.

It was just around this time that Amy, after 8 years with Lifeforce decided to move in another direction.  Her announcement hit me hard.  Okay, next up the Lifeforce linage: David.  David was the original leader in the very beginning that I learned from.  So I was happy to start working with him again.  David had build his residual income and was now working via Mexico from his house on the beach.   The phone does not reach Mexico very well.

The winds of change were continuing to whip through the barren land.

I flew out to San Diego to a Life Force event.  A new marketing man, David Collister, was brought in to re-train everyone and help build LifeForce as a company.  It was after this weekend that I felt I needed to take a step back.  I realized I needed  to learn marketing, But David Collister and his old school MLM techniques weren’t doing it for me.  I needed something else.  I began to look over my shoulder at Amy Starr and what she was working with.  Internet marketing, and writing.  Hmmm.  I like it.  I jumped on board.

Internet marketing is not so easy.  Old school MLM seems to have this gentle pokey nature to it, whereas Internet marketing…well….I felt like I got into a row boat to start rowing as these big marketers and big time players would just whiz by in speed boats.  I could see what they were doing, and how big and fast they were growing and I wanted to take my little row boat and row faster.  I wanted to get there sooner.

Meanwhile, my neighbor, and original sponsor in LifeForce Patrick, was up to something.  Since leaving LifeForce he would troll the internet searching for something.  It is now winter.  Patrick and his wife Christie had set up a little nook in the basement that looked like a french restaurant.  ( I suppose their apartment upstairs no longer offered them enough space.) Here is where they would dine, nightly.  Behind them was a thin barrier wall with storage and mold.  The other side of the french restaurant:  The laundry room.  I would make my nightly trek down to do our filthy laundry and say hi to my neighbors as they dined on Italian fare in a french setting.  So Patrick would periodically pitch me his ideas, what he was finding, hey do you want to join me on this? He might ask.  I always politely declined.

Patrick and Christie are all about the dinner party.  They love to invite people over to their french restaurant downstairs, pour the wine, and pour the stories.  I, many times would find myself lingering to talk, fresh laundry hot on my hip.  This made our pink Victorian fun.  Community, ideas flowing, a peaceful place in general.  One day Patrick made a special trip to knock on my door.  Hey Ali, I want to show you something.  He was getting all excited about some internet thing he stumbled upon.

He would bring over spreadsheets, leave data in my mailbox.  I was being courted.  It was now spring, and Builders Bank was asking all of us to vacate our sweet pink home.  Fear shook through my veins as we looked for what is next.  Spring melted into summer, and Patrick’s little opportunity kept finding it’s way into my mail slot.  He took to having his breakfast outside on the front porch.  Tuna fish and carrot nubs.  Again I would walk by with laundry.  My little side business is doing well he would coo.  Great I would respond passing by with more laundry.

We were now in a deal on our new home.  My energy began to pour into the move.  Patrick seemed to sit back nonchalantly counting change on the porch.  I began to get these daily reports,  this is how much I’m making he would purr.  I began to half-listen.  Then I began to ask questions.  It looked easy.  Too easy perhaps.  I dipped in my toe.  This was  a complete distraction. I dabbled in this new venture rather gingerly as I could not do more until after we closed on our house.  I invited a few loved ones to look at what I was doing.  By the grace of god, everyone completely ignored me.  Two weeks later this venture I shall call FUCK, (I won’t mention it’s name, but it’s another 4-letter word) collapsed.  When it fell it took 2 million people with it.  When it fell, I fell.  What did I do?  What perilous ridge did I invite people I care about to dangle upon?   I had dodged a bullet.  I stood close to a fire, and witnessed the burning.  I felt flooded with gratitude that the timing of life smiled grace upon my wayward soul. I felt deep shame at my dabbling as an entreprenuer.  I felt deep love as my husband kindly offered me a hand when I needed one most.

Good morning darkness my old friend.  It’s good to speak with you again.

Christie Marie Sheldon talks about these days

when those dark little moods rise up to speak with you.

I love her advice when she says:

instead of shoving them back down with the triple brownie sunday for breakfast,

You invite this mood to turn itself up,

To speak a little louder.

To engage your senses more clearly.

What does it have to share with you today?

Is it some old hurt that has packed it’s bags and is on it’s way out, and just wanted to say good-bye?

This is process.

When we bravely sit with ourselves in these moments it helps to grab some delicious manual.

My current field guide on this dark journey inward is Brendan Bruchard’s Life’s Golden Ticket.

Recommended by my dear friend Chase Greye. (There is Magic in Every Day.)

I find it curious when this inner vomit starts pouring out.

The pattern starts to reveal itself.  I look at old memories, and thoughts very different from before.

They begin to make sense for the very first time.   All these thoughts and images boiled down to a theme, a pattern, a gathering of words.

Not enough.  I am not enough.

I am oozing like the sap of a tree,  like a thick black syrup.

I am not enough pours out of my cells.  It washes out into the sea of the universe.

as it empties out a sense of peace takes over.

This is the letting go.

The cleanse.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Are people made out of chicken?

My four year old asked me this over dinner as we chowed down grilled chicken on the bone. This question made me pause. The obvious answer was no, people and chicken are not the same things.

But I sat in silence of this for many minutes. I had to answer in truth to him. Well………. I replied, some people ARE made out of chicken.

Some of us hold back in our life. We live on the sidelines never really getting into the game. We live in fear and doubt and allow our feelings of fear and doubt to overpower what we really want to do or create in life.

This has been a theme in our house lately. I drop my son off at swim camp and he clings to me for dear life. “Get out there and experience life” I urge him. I nudge him out of the nest to fly. I cannot undo the fear for him, only he can grapple with this and find his joy in the unknown.

Are we all in perpetual swim lessons? Life is continually teaching us that we need to let go and that our ability to float is all in our head. We either sink or swim, that when we take action and dive in, we actually move forward. Or are we not even in the pool? Are we dipping in a frigid toe, watching the experts swim and only wish that we could too? We have to leave the safety of the ledge. We have to immerse.

I look at myself and ask, am I made out of chicken? In what ways do I sit in the shadow of my doubt and allow it to run randy with my life? These sneaky little patterns rise up that act like crash helmets. I watch myself in the knee pads, the wrist supports, the elbow protectors, all the while sitting in a rubber room. So what am I protecting myself from? From Life? Perhaps from what I truly want.

Do you need an example, a case study to get your teeth into?
Okay….when I get scared my pattern is to reach for sugar.

(Um…ladies, leave a little check mate below if you’ve done this.)

It’s an old bonding ritual I learned from my father. It’s how we connected as a family. So I suppose it feels comfortable and safe, like having a bedtime snack of milk and cookies with my dad.

Aw..that’s so cute you may coo. You could say it’s cute, or you could say it’s destructive.

It all depends on how you wish to look at it. It’s not the fear that makes me chicken.

It’s the unconscious playing out of the pattern.

The living inside the pattern and not choosing to be free from the loop.

There is a lot of chicken in the world. We hide inside TV, food, alcohol, blame, anger, gossip. etc. etc. pretty much anything that cuts off our feelings. Anesthetizes us.

What about those who break free and dance with life?

Well, we find ourselves in awe of them.

Either in awe or in anger of them.

Again perspective.

My pondering gets interrupted by a chicken leg that hits me in the cheek. My exuberant daughter is dancing about with her meal and making her way onto my lap. Not thirty seconds later she tips her open water cup onto my plate. Like an umpire calling the game, I shout: “Meal Over!” and scoup up what’s left just to be safe.

The Sky is Dark and Milky.

This is the perfect night,

The perfect moment,

for you to contact me

with your super-alien frequency.

There is no static now.

-(courtesy of my friend Louka Leppard.)

I feel surrounded by banks. Appeasing and negotiating with one to stay in our current home, and awaiting the underwriting of another to buy a home.  I feel like I’m stuck in one giant ice cream bank sandwich that is starting to melt.  I’m just trying to keep my life smooth these days.

My son is on the eve of turning 4.  He has discovered the world of Spiderman and the Avengers.  He jumps around the house fighting imaginary villians shooting webs out of his fingers and deftly leaping on the furniture.  There is no stopping this.

I remember being so young and agile, my siblings and I would play a little game (when my mom was not around of course).  The game was called “No walking on the floor.”  We would move about the house dangling on the edge of furniture avoiding the ocean of the carpet below. (There was 4 of us doing this!)  I remember being on top of  the refrigerator spying down below. I was tiny, strong, and very good at climbing.  This is now the world of Apollo,  jumping, leaping, and dodging “bad guys.”

My daughter currently lives in the world of frustration and turmoil, as there is not enough language to get what she wants, so the ensuing drama as she kicks and screams leaves me helpless.  Perhaps it’s me, but the second time around managing this developmental phase seems more challenging and more exhausting.

As I watch these little flowers grow, I engorge my mind with the study of systems and marketing.  Mmmm.  Delicious.  You might be sarcastically musing yeah THAT sounds interesting.  But gentle reader it is fascinating.  My mind throbs and expands as my worldview begins to shift.  There is so much happening on the inside that perhaps I am quieter now on the outside.

A strange silence pervades me as I meet up with other mom’s.  I feel like I’m an alien speaking a mother tongue that not many understand.  Every once in awhile I am about to share some idea that I am working on, then I think better of it, and gently place it back inside my head.  I sit back in my silence once again.  Sometimes I wonder if I am really boring to hang out with these days, like I’m caught up in this black hole, lost in the space-time continuum.

Truth be told, with all the massive changes that loom in my hemisphere,  I feel unsteady,  delicate, in need of a confidence injection. I reached out to an old dear friend.  This wise one has journeyed around the sun with me many many times.  And I trust her implicitly.  As I work through this delicate metamorphosis in my life, I knew I would be safe in her hands,  that she wouldn’t crush my spirit as I work to rebuild my life from the inside.  These types of friends in life are rare beings,  worth much more than gold.

So Thank You, Thank You dear friend, you know who you are.  This Crystal clear night is dedicated to you.

p.s.  I shared a flight out west with the lovely Mr. Jonny Debt.  Jonny wherever you are out there, whatever you are doing, thank you for the music, the company, and the inspiration.

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Do you love Jonny as much as I do? Please leave a comment below.

My little family and I took a road trip from Westchester NY to Washington DC to visit some family.  As we drove south we loaded up our car with snacks and lunch, only needing to stop for water.   As we headed back on Sunday afternoon we hit that quagmire.  In the sea of instant food places and filthy diners where do we eat?  I generally like to hunt and scour and see if we can find some mom and pop place, some hidden gem that only the locals know about.  But when time is limited, and kids are hungry you have to throw a dart and pick.  My husband suggested Wendy’s.  OK, It’s not McDonald’s I thought.  I wanted to balk at his idea but I am currently practicing allowing others to have opinions and ideas so I agreed.  It’s just as greasy as McDonald’s, I thought as we went up to the counter to order.  My husband suggested chicken fingers. ooooohhhh noooooo. I protested.  I instantly recalled the photo of the pink foam goo that was passed around the internet as the main ingredient to chicken fingers.  I laid my case on the table and we ended up buying 2 chicken sandwiches, chili fries, and a small frosty.  My husband got the value meal so his came with a giant soda and fries.  The kids squealed at the fries.  Boy, the chicken sandwiches looked so much better in the picture.  They were dry.  Since I am currently studying marketing in my life and business I looked around at the masterful marketing of Wendy’s.  All lies, I thought to myself as the words “fresh” and “real fruit” reared it’s ugly head.  My son is on the cusp of 4 and my daughter is 18 months.  We are one of those weird households that don’t have a TV, and we don’t eat fast food.  In fact we rarely go out to eat.  Most food is cooked by us, at home.  So when my kids saw my husband with his giant soda they both wanted to try it.  (yes they are soda virgins) I wasn’t ready for this.  Ah soda…the elixar of childhood obesity.  I asked my poor husband to hide his drink so the kids would drink their waters.  It worked.  They blissfully forgot about it and drank their water.  I started feeling unwell, and needed something more balanced to eat.  What are their salads like? I thought?  I went and purchased the berry and chicken salad with almonds. Also looked very good in the picture.  I found about 4 leaves of baby field greens, the rest was bitter iceberg lettuce that tasted like it was treated with an anti-browning spray, that I’ve heard about salad bars doing so that everything looks fresh as it sits out for 12 hours.  My daughter happily picked out the blueberries and chicken chunks and scarfed them down.  My mind traveled to Ken Cooks’ Environmental Working Group’s list of fruits and veggies to avoid due to heavy pesticide use.  I felt confidant that my daughter was eating her fair share of bug spray. Let’s get out of here I said to my husband.  I looked around at the many families happily eating their Wendy’s lunch on a Sunday afternoon.  Everyone in there seemed to have an extra layer of fat, and a greenish hue to their skin.  How do people do this?  I sat bewildered.  How is it that the vast majority of our population thinks this food is delicious?  That it’s okay to eat. Am I just a snob?  Don’t get me wrong, I grew up eating fast food.  Not as part of a daily diet, but certainly have helped to fund the industry.  But I think that fast food from the 80′s was slightly different from today. Maybe it’s just me, but the food seemed better back then.  More real.  Or maybe it’s because I didn’t have the knowledge I now carry.  I’m sure my “Wendy’s” review will piss a few off.  And I know that there are others who will agree with me.  I think of that David Byrne song: “Nothing But Flowers” where he talks about the world letting go of all this convenience lifestyle and just getting back to nature.  And perhaps my favorite line in the song: “If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower.”

I’d love to hear from you.  Please leave your comments below.

I was listening to my good friend Wayne Dyer recently

and he was talking about inspiration.

He was talking about the root of the word coming from “in-spirit.”

That when we are inspired we are connected to source we are “in-spirit.”

What does the dictionary tell us:

 1) To affect, guide, or arouse by divine influence.

2)  To be the cause or source of; bring about.

3)  To breathe life into.

Something that Wayne said caught my attention.

He says that when we are inspired all our thoughts break their bonds,

and dorment forces of UNLIMITED creativity come alive.

How many times have you had an inspired thought and you could envision

this unlimited idea of what is possible?  We feel fearless in that moment.

We really can reach way beyond our normal pathways of thought.

Then what happens?

Many times we get scared, contract and we begin to doubt.

Our thinking mind comes in to tell us that what we just imagined… saw is not possible.

and we come back down to safe familiar territory.

When we allow ourselves to stay up in this unlimited realm of possibility

this is the arena where things change.

this is the place where we conquer, win, create….

Many years ago I was struggling with an eating disorder.

I suffered from bulimia when I was in college, white knuckled my way out of it at the time

but never truly dealt with the underlying issues that were causing the disorder.

Years later the eating disorder came back in a slightly different way.

I was no longer bulimic, but It was compulsive.

I could not stop eating, I would over buy food, then eat more, so that I would waste it.

I always had this awful feeling of being full, and sluggish.

I recognized  that I needed to get treatment.

I went into therapy to begin to unearth my turmoil.

slowly chipping away at what was literally eating me away from the inside.

and I slowly began to get back into balance.

But I had one moment that truly changed everything for me.

I recall succinctly standing in my kitchen, of all places,

and having this very clear inspiration of thought.

This funny little question popped into my mind:

How else are you fed?

It was if the lights went on, and my thinking mind could travel forever.

I could see that I wanted to be nurtured,

that there was a part of me that needed to be nutrtured,

and that I was struggling with doing it only through food.

I could be fed in so many ways.  Art, poetry, music, film, connecting with nature.

Once I saw and understood this in my own mind, that I could be fed deeply by things that

actually inspired me, non-food items, art, love, joy, nature…the list went on.

Once I understood this my healing came on quickly.

it was if the prison doors opened and I was free.

and all stemming from a single question.

One simple question that in me inspired a very quick healing.

That was 15 years ago.  I can still feel a tiny residue of that eating disorder inside of me.

It will always be there I think.  It’s part of the fabric of who I am.

But now it’s like a quiet little voice that reminds me sometimes that I need to

re-callibrate and re-connect to myself.

My whole relationship with food and my body changed after this.

I have this comfortable freedom with food that I never had before,

and my body comes into balance.

I watch many times, women mostly that I can see are imprisoning themselves

in their relationship to food.  Severe calorie counting,

white knuckling the food table at parties.

I see this with compassion, because I know what that mental torment is.

But I now know what freedom is, and how to get there.

For me in my life, I always choose freedom.

What is next is financial freedom.  Breaking the bonds of how I live.

I am unearthing this powerful way of life, of thinking and I know I can’t turn back around

and travel down the same narrow alley-way as before.

That is why I am here.

I am not alone here.

This desire for freedom has inspired thousands upon thousands

all breathing life into an idea and turning it into something very real, very tangible.

and so dear reader…what about you?  are you ready to dive into the sea of possibility?

You can jump in here!

please leave your comments below.

It’s always good to write down what you want your home to Be.

My Home is:                                     

Full of love and sunshine.

Beauty out of every window.

Peaceful.

Playful.

Inspired.

Spacious.

Profitable.

A secret room under the stairs.

Where ever Nato, Apollo, and Sofia are.

This is my home.

Mr. Prickles from the Bank is slightly perturbed that we need more time to vacate.  Well how much time do you need?  He barked at me.  ”I don’t know.” I meekly respond.  At least a few more months.  I have to talk to my lawyer he says.  The seas of uncertainty are drowning me right now.  We have been looking for weeks now.  Something looks promising, I mentally move in and hang up my fun stuff to see how it works, get all attached then WHAM!  The Big NO occurs.  The most recent one happened in Sleepyholllow.  We found 2 great 2 familys, and called our realtor.  We are ready to check these out.  Hold on she says.  She shoots me back environmental reports.  It seems our perfect 2 family victorian is smack in the middle of environmental toxins from the Duracell battery plant.  I don’t think you want to live there.  She says. That’s why the price is so good.  Nobody wants it.  I am depleted and defeated.  Sofia has not been feeling well, and not sleeping well,  fussy as all get out.  Why is Sofia crying? Apollo asked concerned.  I don’t know I respond with utter exhaustion.  I don’t know.  Just then my mind flashes back to when I was in the first grade and I discovered that Kelly Heitmeyer was considered the prettiest girl in our class.  I’m five years old and beginning to discover and try to figure out my place as a woman in the world already.  So I go home to mom for some verification.  Mom? I Inquire. Am I pretty?  She looks at me with that same utter desperation of raising four kids and takes a deep breath and says:  ”I don’t know.”  I was defeated and depleated.  My own mother couldn’t tell me I was pretty.  Needless to say this put a huge dent in my self esteem bumper.   But now I finally understood my mother.  She wasn’t rejecting me in that moment.  She was utterly exhausted, spent and probably didn’t even hear my question.  Sitting in the seat of the unknown can be a very precarious precipice.  The thick fog swirls about your mind as you blindly have to keep stepping forward with utmost trust in your journey.  Then one day it lifts.  Like the parting of the red seas, all of a sudden you pick up the trail again everything makes sense and you are on your way!

“Abierta la puerta! Abierta la puerta!  (open the door! open the door!)  It was early 2006 and it was my first trip to Colombia.  I was downstairs desperately studying spanish out of my Spanish for Dummies book.  It wasn’t helping.  In this moment I was the dummy who couldn’t understand a lick of this language.  Beatrice was screaming from upstairs, as I sat dumbly trying to shove spanish into my cement head.  She emerged full on naked from the shower, dripping everywhere screaming “Abierta la puerta!”…”um” ….I looked at her shocked,  I had never seen anyone so soaped up before.  Beatrice was a lanky skinny thing in her late 40′s.  She’s one of those people who can walk around naked because fat doesn’t exist anywhere on her body.  She was, if I could describe it, dressed in soap.  Her eyes poked out from the foam and even her lips were covered in fluffy white.  Um,   I said again…”no comprende???”  Frustrated she had to go downstairs in all her naked soap glory and open the door for my mother-in-law and husband.  If you asked me if I heard the knocking at the door,  my answer would be No.  This was my first day in the strange land of Colombia. Beatrice was staying with my mother-in-law while she was trying to sell her home in the mountains.  We later went to check out her home for sale.  My heart sank for her as we walked about her unsellable house.  Evidence of termite damage was everywhere and rampant.  The home was old and miserable, lost in time and abandoned.  Housing stock in Colombia, especially in the countryside is very different than here in the states, but the feeling of a miserable house is the same.  I’ve walked into a few of those lately in our search.  I guess if you ask me what we are looking for, I would have to say, “We are looking for a housing miracle.”  Something extraordinary that doesn’t come along everyday.  Something so incredible it makes you say WOW.  (and of course all within our price range.)  Okay, here is my current riddle:  How do I practice the limitless abundance of the universe when I have to stick within the confines of a mortgage pre-approval?  I feel like I am standing at the door of life screaming “Abierta la puerta!”  and there is a part of me that can’t hear me.

Our grass outside is growing like crazy.  Especially since we are finally getting rain.  The bank shut off our lawn service.  Perhaps that is their way of thinking: “This’ll get those darn tenants outta the house, we  will make them mow their own lawn!”  LOL.  So now it becomes a game of mower chicken to see which tenant musters up the gumption to go out to the shed and pull out the rusted push-mower and get ‘er done.  Meanwhile Demo teams come out and walk around our property with giant measuring tapes.  Oh it’s enough to make a girl dizzy.  I think of all the beautiful trees and hydraneas that will get smashed when they bring down the houses.  And meanwhile we feverishly hunt for what is next.  As I comb through all the real estate listings my vision and mind go blurry with the many possibilities.  My world on the outside still looks the same.  Get down on my knees and scrub up after my daughters yogurt explosion.  Pick up Apollo from school.  Build a business in the cracks of life.  But on the inside I am delicate now.  Tender to the touch.  I get down on my knees and pray that we find what we are looking for before we run out of time.  My stomache twists into knots and my heart pounds louder these days.  I am finding it difficult to hear what others are saying, as the sound of my heart is the loudest thing in the room.  The only thing louder is Apollo.  It’s interesting when the giant hand of God comes in and plucks you out of something.  Like when I was fired from Mcdonald’s when I was 16.  I might never have left.  I might still be there today, perhaps as an assistant manager wearing a greasy polyester jumpsuit and hair protection visor, organizing the fresh high school recruits.  Or when my marriage died on me 10 years ago, ( I would not have walked away)  but my marriage took off, one day it said “see ya later, this is no more”.  The burning and the searing of the end gave birth to a new life.  Tender new shoots of love, a new marriage and 2 amazing little souls that entered the earth.  As heavy as gravity feels right now,  I muster up the courage to look up, find my shoes and keep walking.  What is possible in my life right now?  More than I can imagine.  Okay game show of life, I choose what is behind door number 3 for 500.  Giant possibilites beyond the most incredble creations of my imagination.  Grab the mower, Let’s get ‘er done!