Two weeks before my boyfriend and I were scheduled to leave for a wedding in Paris I got dumped. He said something was off and he just couldn’t quite put his finger on it. I had given more than I even had to give in the relationship and felt so rejected. What was wrong with me? Why was I so hard to love? I’d for the first time touched the bottom of my shame. 

A few days later over drinks, my dear friends proposed the idea of coming to Paris with me! I ended up going to the wedding solo and then enjoyed the rest of the trip with a group of friends in the south of France. It was one of the most memorable trips of my life probably because it taught me how worthy I am of being loved. While European summers have a wonderful way of inspiring you to re-think about your pace and purpose in life, I also experienced a lot of anxiety on the trip around the break-up. I remember having a panic attack one day that was so bad I spent half of the day curled up on a pool chair doing what I could to survive. 

I came home single and inspired to focus on my business which needed to grow in order to support my team and I financially. I was struggling. And you know how the universe drops exactly what you need into your lap at exactly the right time? My friend Eryn, who is a pioneer in the coolest things happening in the health and wellness space, sent along a Goop podcast with Lacy Phillips of To Be Magnetic. Eryn and I were dedicated Abraham Hicks Law of Attraction fans, we even saw Ester on her SF speaking tour, but over time without seeing results, started to question if we were actually just spiritually bypassing our feelings. We were on to something…

It was August 2019 when I was blown away by Lacy’s fresh perspective on manifestation. Her findings are that we don’t manifest from our thoughts, like new age rhetoric teaches, but from our subconscious belief system that was imprinted in us from ages 0-21 in the ways we learned how to be safe and loved. Her work helps us tap into our subconscious through, what she calls deep imaginings, which are 15-30 minute deep hypnotic mediations often alongside supportive journal prompts. Once we get to the root of our past beliefs and experiences and how they are blocking us and still playing out today, we can then reprogram them through taking aligned action towards a new belief. I flocked to her work with the promise of coming back home to my whole worthy authentic self. It felt so empowering to have the tools at my finger tips to become my own pattern and energy reader. Little did I know what a journey it was going to be and how much meaning to was going to add to my life. The process is simple but the work is deep and nuanced. You have to be willing to be honest, committed and compassionate with yourself because it brings up heavy things. 

In the fall, Eryn and I went to see Lacy on her speaking tour in San Francisco. I was just becoming familiar with the work and feeling more empowered than I ever had. I was calling in funding and a new location for Sweet & Spark in Los Angeles. Both of which came through after a series of tests, which happens before great change to make sure you’re staying in your worth! I turned down a bitesized loan for $10K and several locations that didn’t feel like a gut yes even though time was ticking to increase our sales. We ended up finding a location across the street from Reformation Vintage in West Hollywood and getting approval on a $100K loan! We were also working on sharing more personal content and launching our own jewelry and graphic sweatshirt line. I was feeling empowered in my business again.

Shortly thereafter, the pandemic hit and we ran into a slew of operational issues from robberies, riots, staffing, to a deleted instagram account, all on top of declining sales. During this challenging time I poured my time into understanding the To Be Magnetic work through doing the Love, Money, Rock Bottom, Rut & Uplevel workshops in the TBM pathway. It helped bring awareness to why things were happening in my reality even though I struggled to make any significant changes. Deep down I felt helpless and trapped which only made me want to work harder. I knew what was happening and I couldn’t do anything about it. It’s then that I came across Joe Dispenza’s work and was able to start to understand the power of emotion which is the driver behind any actions we do or don’t take. I read Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing The Uncommon and started to realize that I wasn’t actually feeling and processing my emotions and that was what was keeping me stuck in the TBM work. I started to do a 1 hour, guided Joe Dispenza meditations after a long bike ride every weekend which helped me learn how to actually be in my body and feel my feelings without wanting to run away. Learning how to feel was scary. 

I spent the next year feeling the anxiety and grief I had never let myself feel. My business was crumbling before my eyes and I wanted to know why. I decided to give it one last push so that I could fully understand what truly wasn’t working in the business model. Thankfully we had gotten an SBA Disaster Relief Loan which gave us the space to work through things; again an instance of the Universe delivering what we needed. We hired a full time marketing assistant and digital ad agency to help us scale which helped us learn about our value proposition and see the hard cold reality that our current business model wasn’t scalable. At that point we had a lot invested financially. We playing out the marketing metrics we’d newly learned about over time in business scenarios and it was clear that the entire business needed an overhaul. We spent hours upon hours brainstorming what we could do to change and we tried a few things like layering in affiliate content and selling on Depop. But ultimately when time and money are ticking, it’s really challenging to feel inspired to find authentic re-alignment. The energy we mustered up to put into the business that last year gave us the gift of clarity, that there was a big choice to be made and we could not ignore it any longer. 

We sat on it and slowly took the decisions we know we needed to take. We closed the Los Angeles store and then made the decision to close the rest of the company and our San Francisco store by the end of the year. Integrating the TBM work was the absolute hardest part. Lacy says there are layers to meeting our magnetic self. First we have to process our trauma and then pull off the ego self layer. I realized in hindsight that this chapter was about helping me see and understand my own subconscious patterning (i.e trauma) and the effects of it. The emotions pulsing through my body were so strong that were so moments I felt like I was literally dying. I remember Emilee, my business partner, coming over the day we made the final decision to close and I could barely breathe. She suggested we go for walk around the block and I felt like I might fall over, I was so anxious. Was I going to be able to afford to live in San Francisco anymore? We came back to my apartment and she turned on a rebellious pop song called Brutal by Olivia Rodrigo to dance and help process the big emotions. Human connection is such a gift to help us regulate and Emilee has the biggest heart. I now have so much compassion for this part of myself knowing that it’s a normal part of the process of creation to see with our own two eyes what we’re not so that in the next chapter we can choose who we want to be. And I knew that I wanted to create from love not fear anymore.

I took a break from doing TBM work for a year while I was processing the rest of the grief from the business closing and getting back on my feet with my new businesses and some health issues I was going through. As I shed so many layers of my personal trauma, I’ve gotten reacquainted with my ego self. The one who want so badly wants to be seen and heard. I like to think of this part of me as my inner teen, who is so courageous but is still a little immature. As I’m getting to know this part of myself better, I’ve definitely said some hateful things to people I love which brought up a lot of guilt. I started doing regular DI’s again this year to help me move through my guilt, fear and anger so that I can freely access my heart again and share authentically from that place. 

As I peel my own layers off, I’m just starting to meet my magnetic self four years after starting this work. There’s no way of avoiding the hard parts and bypassing action. You will fuck up, you will be an asshole, you will be scared, you will feel like you’re dying and you will learn to love yourself through it all. I’ve found so much compassion for myself knowing that expansion requires us to work through developmental milestones that we may have skipped over as a child or young adult. 

Many of my clients do the TBM work simultaneously alongside their businesses and I love supporting people on this journey because I know how hard it can be especially for people like me who struggle to feel their emotions. I’ve found that understanding my own experiences better helps me feel safe and loved by a power greater than myself. 

Here’s the podcast I recommend to anyone interested in learning more about To Be Magnetic Work. And if you become a pathway member you get access to all of the workshops I mentioned above alongside their library of daily imaginings. My recent favorite DI’s are the Inner Child, Soothe and Unblocking. I like to pop on my eye mask and head phones before bed and relax into the guided meditations via their new app. I usually have a big emotional release, like balling my eyes out and come up to  journal a bit before rolling over and sleeping like a baby. I usually wake up feeling inspired about what I need to start doing to shift my lens on things. 

And my last TBM tip, their podcast and Instagram are so good! Before committing to becoming a pathway member, I spent a lot of time listening to the recent episodes and watching Lacy’s early videos on Instagram and YouTube to really get an understanding of the work. To this day I never miss their Friday new podcast episode drop! Over the years, the work continues to get even more supportive and I’ve also enjoyed being part of their community chat group too. I will forever be grateful for the work, as it has changed my life by teaching me how to regulate as well as, brought me so much fulfillment along the way! What I really ended up receiving from my ex-boyfriend was the gift of finding my self-worth and my heart is so full because of that. 

Cheers to how good authenticity feels! I’m sure it’s going to be a journey from here learning how to trust these higher vibration feelings.