21 Jan

Nan’s Dream Became A Reality…Read and Be Raised Up…

Yes, just as the beautiful banner filled with red hearts boldly declares: Dreams Really Do Come True…it is True that they do. This isn’t just a song that someday over the rainbow they will. You can make your dreams come true now.

Over these past 6 weeks, I went on an “Odyssey of Trust.” I knew change was imminent and that I had to be part of it, or it would happen “to” me and not necessarily “for” me. Perhaps without taking my own stand, the changes would not have been particularly favourable. So when I got the strong inner guidance to move away, I made a conscious choice not to question it.

This did not mean I wasn’t trembling in my boots. This did not mean I had any idea of where I was going. This did not mean I had certainty or guarantees of anything. I just knew that I had to follow this directive. So I did. And do you know what? Only six weeks later, I moved from Victoria, my city of 22 years, and found a new place to call home in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Goodness! And not just “a new place.” I LOVE my new apartment. It is Truly a Dream Come True! I swear, I don’t know how I kept it all together – having so many details to navigate – but you know what, “I” alone, did not keep it all together.

The Universe supported me with heavenly angels and earth angels every step of the way! And THAT is what happens when we listen to the promptings of our soul. When we surrender to a deeper truth that comes from authentic listening and then trust, we will be led to the right people and circumstances and to the path of our dreams – the dreams that really do come true!

I promise you this is possible. Let’s hear from Nan Campbell about how she made her dream to write a book come true for her, even though she had voices of fear in her head – you know – the kind we all have attached to limiting beliefs such as “I’m not a writer, no-one would believe it, what would so and so say,” and more. These voices can be very seductive. I understand. Writing a book is a big deal. But you know what she did instead, she quieted the voices, decided to move out of her comfort zone and go for it!

As apprehensive as she was, she said YES to herSelf to join my Author Mentorship Program. Today, she is the published author of “I Almost Forgot I Was Happy… My Occasionally Raucous Journey from Melancholy to Peace of Mind.”

Since taking those first tentative steps in 2020, she has become a leader in her field – and it just happens that her field is extensive. She is a serial learner and has degrees, certificates, and qualifications in multiple healing modalities. She is a sought-after therapist – a one-stop-shop leader, with a waiting list of steady clients.
Visit her website here: www.thecompassprojecttherapy.com

From Inspiration to Memoir:
Nan’s Author Mentorship Story

“I joined Junie’s Author Mentorship Program (AMP) with a dream—to tell my story. Through weekly AMP meetings with my cohort, ongoing Sunday Sacred Writing Circles and, most importantly, my weekly one-on-one coaching and mentorship sessions with Junie, my confidence grew to where today, I stand proud as a published author! I can’t say enough about how I would anticipate with joy my time spent in those meetings with Junie. They became a mainstay in my life of inspiration.”

~ Nan Campbell

Nan, a Radical Enthusiast, Mindful Therapist, and practitioner with advanced training in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, Reiki, and Hakomi, brings her unique perspective to her work with people from all walks of life. Her memoir will soon be available as an audiobook, with a limited edition of print copies also in the works. Stay tuned for its release!

If you’ve ever wondered, “Can I write my story? Will I become a published author one day?” let Nan’s experience inspire you to take the leap and transform your life. Her story is proof that when you say yes to your dreams, the magic begins.

I have enthusiastic testimonials from thousands of writers over the 35 years I have been a writing coach. Their true stories gave me this motto:

“The sweet whisperings of your soul meet you on the page and something shifts.
You strengthen. You begin to stand taller and one day you notice that
your voice on the page has become your voice in the world.”

Whatever your dream is – no matter what, take the steps that will make you soar. Perhaps it’s not a book – it’s another form of creative expression.  Begin this Brand New Year – 2025 – soaring to the very top!  I’ll give you a big hug when you get there! 

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

~ Helen Keller


More Reasons for Listening to the Promptings of Your Soul

In December I had the privilege of speaking at the Make Books Better Summit. My talk, “Your Life Matters: How to Value Yourself as a Writer Standing Tall in Your Power as a Bestselling Author”, explored how to overcome self-doubt, connect with your authentic voice, and uncover the transformative power of storytelling. If you missed it, this is your invitation to be inspired and take the first step.


If you’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to start or complete your book,
this is it.

The Author Mentorship Bootcamp Retreat

January 26–30, 2025

Bethlehem Centre, Nanaimo, BC

🔗 Read all the details here!

Imagine five days immersed in:

  • Dedicated writing time to focus solely on your story.
  • Personalized guidance to overcome blocks and gain clarity.
  • A supportive community of like-minded writers cheering you on.

Whether you’re writing a memoir, sharing expertise on what you love, or crafting a legacy for your loved ones, this retreat will empower you to bring your story to life.

💻 Need a chat first? Let’s connect for a free Clarity Call to explore how this retreat can support your writing goals. Simply click here to book your call.

🔗 Learn more and register here today!


Writing Tip & Prompt

Tip: The most compelling stories are rooted in authenticity. Write as if you’re speaking to a dear friend. Let your words reflect your truth.

Prompt: What is one lesson from your life that others could learn from? Write it as a story you’d share over coffee with a friend.

Your wisdom could be exactly what someone needs to hear. 

This is just a small taste of what you can expect at the retreat. Imagine diving even deeper into your story, surrounded by inspiration and guidance every step of the way.

I would be honored to help you bring your story to life. Whether you’re just beginning or ready to refine your manuscript, this retreat is your time to shine.

🔗 Learn more and register here today!

I can’t wait to see you there!
Junie

📧 Have questions? Email me at jdswadron@gmail.com —I’d love to hear from you!

P.S. Did you know my play, Madness, Masks, and Miracles, is available to view for free until the end of the month? It’s a powerful exploration of mental health, healing, and the masks we wear. Don’t miss this opportunity to watch it for FREE!

Please share my website with your friends!
13 Jan

Is it a Dream? Or is it your Destiny? Join the Author Mentorship Bootcamp Retreat!

Click the image above to watch Junie’s Invitation to You!

Dearest friends,

Do you dream of writing a book but don’t know where to begin?

Maybe you’ve felt the persistent nudge of a vision calling you to share your story, but self-doubt shouts out questions like:

  • Who am I to write a book, and besides, who would read it?
  • What if I’m not a writer?
  • What could I possibly say that hasn’t been said dozens of times before?
  • What if I can’t spell?
  • What if I am criticized?
  • What if…(fill in your own)
  • And anyway I wouldn’t have a clue where to start!

You’re not alone. So many aspiring authors feel this way at first—but here’s the truth: if the dream keeps coming back, consider that it just might be more than a dream. It might just be your DESTINY CALLING!

This is your chance to turn that dream into reality! 

Join me, Junie Swadron, for a transformative 5-day bootcamp retreat:

✨ The Author Mentorship Bootcamp ✨
📍 Bethlehem Centre, Nanaimo, BC
📅 January 26–30, 2025

Click here to book your seat!

Together, we will shine the light on birthing your book and you will know that your dream is now a reality in the making.

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

~ Helen Keller


Here’s what you can expect from this one of a kind, author mentorship bootcamp*

*A supportive, beautiful environment to ignite your creativity, confidence, and clarity.

  • The gift of time and space, free from daily demands, to focus fully on crafting your story.
  • Heart-to-heart support to build confidence from the inside out.
  • Razor-sharp clarity about what your book is about and who it’s for (vitally important!).
  • Crafting your outline—turning your vision into structured chapters.
  • Dedicated writing time in a beautiful, natural setting to work on your book with clarity and confidence.
  • A supportive circle of aspiring authors to cheer you on.
  • I will be present to answer ALL your questions and concerns
  • As a therapist, I am here to hold sacred space for you to traverse and transcend painful triggers that may arise as you write deep into your stories.
  • I will teach you how to write from your non-negotiable unique authentic voice and stand proud there
  • *Bonus #1: a powerful mock book launch to envision your success.
  • *Bonus #2: An E-copy of my #1 Amazon Best seller “Your Life Matters” 8 Easy Steps to Writing Your Story
  • *Bonus:#3: An exciting opportunity to continue working on your book with your same cohort (whom you’ve come to know and love!)  after our bootcamp, via Zoom. 

Whether you are a novice or a seasoned writer, this retreat is for everyone who knows in their heart that they have a story to tell. 

Many of my students are writing books to help others who are going through similar challenges that they, themselves, have learned to overcome.

Some are entrepreneurs who wish to use their book for even more credibility for their services and to have on hand at their talks and workshop gatherings.

Others are writing their memoirs to have a beautiful legacy to pass down to their families.

Whatever your reasons are, your voice is unique, your story matters, and your life matters. YOU MATTER!

Supplies to Bring:

Just the basics—a journal, pens, and a laptop (optional). My book, Your Life Matters: 8 Simple Steps to Writing Your Story, is also available for purchase on Amazon as supplementary reading.

My motto is:

“Your soul meets you on the page, and something shifts. You strengthen. You begin to stand taller. Then one day, you notice that your voice on the page has become your voice in the world.”

If this resonates with you, I invite you to join me this January. Let’s make 2025 the year you finally write your book that has been your Destiny from the first time it appeared in your awareness.

If what you are reading resonates for you but you have questions, please book a complimentary 30-minute, Clarity Call on Zoom. I will help you get clear on whether what I am offering is for you at this time. There is absolutely no pressure.

Click here to book your complimentary call!

Click here to book your seat at the Author Mentorship Bootcamp Retreat!

To Your Bookwriting Success!,
Junie

#1 Best-Selling Author | Psychotherapist | Writing Coach

📧 Have questions? Email me at jdswadron@gmail.com —I’d love to hear from you!

PS: Want to learn more? Watch these testimonials and see how the Author Mentorship Bootcamp Retreat has changed the lives of the participants!

Watch a Testimonial from my Author’s Retreat on Bowen Island

Watch Corie Ellingson’s Testimonial from my Author’s Retreat

Watch Angelyn Toth’s Testimonial from my Author’s Retreat

Watch Dr. Linda Foster and Kim Locke’s testimonial from my Author Support Retreat

Please share my website with your friends!
01 Jan

Looking Back with Love. Looking forward with Joyous Expectancy. Happy New Year!

Dearest friends,

Today, on New Year’s Day, I want to wish you the most magnificent brand-new year!  And I want to thank you for continuing to support me on my healing and growing journey – and for all the loving comments you have sent me in response to the newsletters you receive. They give me so much joy! It matters to me what you think, how you feel – and what’s going on for you – so please let’s make this a living, breathing, ALIVE reciprocal practice…as you feel inspired to.

It’s hard to believe that we are turning the page from 2024 onto a blank new slate, ready to co-create with The Universe a year of our deepest wishes, desires, intentions, and prayers fulfilled. And no matter what the year brings, may we find the strength, courage and skill to go with the flow, to accept what is and ride the waves of gratitude, no matter what!

When I think back to only one year ago, January 2024, my body was riddled with cancer, I was in a challenging marriage, and so many of my friends were losing their battle with cancer. In the end, six friends passed away in 2024. The grief I was carrying was unbearable. I was scared, my heart and body were filled with pain and the future looked bleak at best.

Entering January 2025, I am cancer free, my marriage to David has ended, yet we have found a beautiful place of friendship that feels kind, respectful and sustainable. We are both proud of this accomplishment. We worked at it!

On December 21st – only 10 days ago, I entered an Odyssey of TRUST when I I left Victoria, my city of 22 years, put everything in a storage locker up island and set out to begin again. Destination unknown. Full Surrender. (That did not mean fear didn’t pay me lots of visits along the way.) I didn’t try to push it away. I allowed it to come along, faced it, and never let it take the wheel. Nope…Never. God is driving my bus and I get the luxury of looking around at the scenery! Not a bad way to travel really.

Yesterday, I signed an application for what I am hoping to be my new home in Nanaimo – ready to move in on February 1st, the day after my Author Mentorship Bootcamp finishes at the Bethlehem Centre.

It was my wish that before I left Nanaimo on Dec. 28th, I would find my next residence. I think I did! It was the last place I looked at before setting forth on the highway to my newest destination – where I will remain as a writer in residence for the month of January. Here, I will be focusing on completing my next book, “If You Only Knew, a Book of Healing Letters”. I am so inspired now that Marci Shimoff has agreed to endorse it! Wowzers!

So far, so good. So far, so great actually! When I don’t let fear run the show…what if they don’t accept my tenancy application. (You know, the part in the movie where the preacher says, “If anyone wants to come forward and state why John Doe and Mary Smith cannot join hands in holy matrimony, come forward and speak..” and the witch and warlock from two blocks past the corner store where the groom lived when he was three come forth…)

Right, here I am going into a whole made up story…Yup, it doesn’t take much for this writer’s imagination to take off and leave me stranded in an alternate reality with no road map or GPS to find my way again…So, I am pulling back the reel now! I shall enter my inspired vision to take hold while I fill my imagination with all the wonderful ways in which it will feel when I live there. Ahh, that’s better!

And should things work out as imagined, I will move in the day after my Author Mentorship Bootcamp Retreat ends – on the heals of doing what I love more than anything – which is mentoring folks to write the book that their soul is calling them to write.

I am filled with joyous expectancy and more than anything, I am filled with gratitude!

Again, please let me say THANK YOU to everyone who has been following my journey and supporting me throughout with your loving comments and energy. I feel you and appreciate you more than you know!

Please let me know the best ways I can support YOU! And if you have a dream to write a book and that dream keeps coming back – consider that it is not a dream – but your destiny.

WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO YOU NOW IS: No matter where you are as you say goodbye to 2024 and hello to 2025 – emotionally, spiritually, physically, in every way –  know EVERYTHING in our temporal world changes. Nothing stays the same.

Except for one thing! It’s our connection to Source – to Spirit, to Universal Intelligence, to God, to the still small voice inside us which, when we are still, quiet and silent, we can hear its messages to us. And when we listen, we are led, albeit into a Mystery that may not have any visible safety belts attached – still, trust and know you are safe.

Learn to Fall in Love with The Mystery. Don’t try to make logical sense out of anything. Cause nothing is! Everything we thought was safe, may not have been. What we thought were “the rules” have changed a gazillion times since Covid and keep changing. What’s left…be still, listen and Let The Universe Love and Guide You.

Summon up what you can be grateful for right now. The roof over your head. The people who love and support you. The pets who bring you joy.  The water that you get to drink by just turning on a tap, the fresh air outside your door, the tree you can see from your window that shelter the birds, the groceries that you just purchased…Don’t take anything for granted. Take time to count your blessings. There are more than we can count when we take the time. And be sure to include the events in your life that suck! Yup, be grateful for those too because they will teach you things. There are invaluable gifts wrapped up in our challenges. When we get to the other side of them, our learnings become our strengths that we get to pass on to others! Now how cool is that!

Now consider where you want to put your time, energy and attention this coming year. What turns you on? What makes your heart sing? Do it! That’s all! Just do what makes your heart sing.

Don’t spend one more minute on rehashing what didn’t work out. It’s an energy stealer and we don’t get a second chance to re-live any given minute, hour or day. So infuse your days with Love and Beauty! Joy and Curiosity, Projects that inspire you. People who inspire you! Take that little kid in you out to the garden, the seashore, the swings in the park to play. Make sand castles with other friends -and motes that connect you. Put down the drawbridge and acquire new friends. Your tribe of besties. Rest. Restore. Write. Sing. Dance. Take pictures. Be your authentically beautiful self and know you are loved beyond measure.

Know I love you, I’m here. I care. Talk to me. Tell me what your soul intentions are for 2025 and let me supercharge them with you!

God Bless You.

Junie

P.S. And if you feel in your heart that it IS your destiny to write your book, don’t put it off any longer. Let me hold your hand right to the publisher’s door. And get started right here with my Author Mentorship Bootcamp Retreat!

P.P.S There’s been an incredible response to my offer of FREE access to watch my play, Madness, Masks, and Miracles, so I’m extending access to the play for the entire month of January. Don’t miss it! Click here to watch it now!

Please share my website with your friends!
03 Dec

The Make Books Better Summit: I’m a Featured Speaker!

I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be speaking at the upcoming Make Books Better Summit!

The Make Books Better Summit is an exciting five-day event designed to help writers like you bring your book dreams to life or take your current projects to the next level.

What’s Happening?

From December 10–14, join a lineup of leading industry experts (including me!) for a deep dive into topics like:

  • Brand building
  • Content creation
  • Networking
  • Audience growth
  • and so much more—all tailored for writers, editors, and anyone who loves books and wants to make a lasting impact.

Why Attend?

Whether you’re dreaming of writing your first book, polishing your latest manuscript, or looking to connect with readers on a deeper level, this summit will equip you with practical tools, strategies, and inspiration to achieve your goals. There’s something here for everyone!

Save the Date: When I’ll Be Speaking

📅 Tuesday, December 10 | 9:00 AM Pacific Time
📢 Topic: Your Life Matters: How to Value Yourself as a Writer Standing Tall in Your Power as a Bestselling Author

During my session, I’ll share insights on how to:

  • Bust through writing blocks and negative self-talk.
  • Write with confidence, ease, and authenticity.
  • Transform the pain of the past into inspiring stories that empower others.
  • Embrace the truth that Your Life Matters—and so does your story.
  • Learn writing tools that teach you how YOU can stand out as a #1 Best Selling Author

If you’ve ever wondered whether your dream to write a book is worth pursuing, I’ll show you how to transform that dream into your destiny.

PS: In my presentation, I’ll also introduce key concepts from my upcoming Author Mentorship Bootcamp Retreat that I am offering this January 26 – 30 at the Bethlehem Centre, Nanaimo. You’ll get an exclusive sneak peek at how this transformative program can help you bring your book to life.

How to Join the Summit:

Grab your FREE spot at the summit here!

Let’s Make Books Better—together! I can’t wait to see you there.

All Blessings,

Junie

Please share my website with your friends!
02 Dec

My Solstice Pilgrimage: Trusting the Journey

Dearest friends,

Life has a way of surprising us when we least expect it.

Less than a week ago I experienced an unexpected meltdown in the middle of the night. It was BIG. I went to sleep that night disappointed about something, but I was ready to pivot, knowing everything always works out for the best. But the rumblings in my stomach had a different story to tell. They weren’t just rumblings – it was an active volcano ready to erupt…And erupt it did! I obviously had some things to release which I truly did not see coming.

I felt sorry for the tenant below me as I was stomping through the house like a madwoman. Then, in the middle of it, my eyes caught sight of these words on my bookshelf: Escalating Bliss – words my friend, Judith Rockert used just before she died. (You can hear her say them in my podcast here.)

I cried out to her in earnest. “Judith, please help me.”

Within seconds, peace and tranquility washed over me. I went back to bed and fell into a deep slumber. I must have been travelling with the angels because when I woke up, I was given a clear roadmap indicating a brand new life was about to unfold —a brand new direction to follow.

Since then, I have come to know that every step of the way has been Divinely guided and orchestrated. Apparently, the universe felt I needed a quantum leap! I am still shaking my head in disbelief as I pack up my belongings in full surrender.

After 22 beautiful years in Victoria, it’s time for me to say goodbye. 

This December 21st, on the Winter Solstice, I’ll be embarking on a Solo Solstice Pilgrimage, a symbolic step into the unknown. I am on my Magical Mystery Tour, which I have called TRUST. While I don’t yet know the exact destination, I am following the signposts north of the Malahat and perhaps as far as the Comox Valley. The only thing I know for sure is that I am celebrating Solstice in Nanaimo at the Bethlehem Centre for a Special Under the Stars Solstice Celebration. Come and join me there! 😊

This is the absolute perfect place to begin my pilgrimage! Thank you, Donya! Donya is the director at the Bethlehem Centre who invited me to stay at their beautiful retreat centre while I scout for my perfect new home on the island. I also have friends in the area who have offered me to stay with them as well.

As you can see, everything about this new chapter is being guided by Grace. I am getting nothing but Yesses for all the details I am attending to…and in the order that they need to come. It has been perfect ease and flow all the way! Thank You, God!

I’ve been packing up, asking each item if it wants to come with me. I am feeling into the energy of all my earthly treasures to see if they are going to continue to grace my new home or is it time to bless and release them for someone else to love?

I have started to post things on FaceBook Marketplace and have also decided to host an indoor contents sale. I’m letting go of a lot! And that isn’t just what I’m putting in boxes!

Mark Your Calendars:

When: Saturday, November 30th, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and
Sunday, December 1st, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

What: Treasures for your home or items that can be the perfect Holiday Gifts.

I hope to see you there…and give you a goodbye hug at the same time! Or come and be one of Santa’s Helpers…Volunteers needed. (Text me and let me know if you would like to give me a hand 😆)

And please, if you are a friend or relative reading this newsletter, please forgive me if I haven’t called and told you my news personally yet. It’s all happening so fast. Nothing would make me happier than to sit down with a cup of tea and share the news – but I’m too busy packing up. I know you understand!

So now you have it –  My Big News. My Miracle Meltdown Odyssey.

WOW! A year ago I was still riddled with cancer, David and I were still together.  This has been one crazy- harsh year!  Today, I am cancer-free and David and I, although no longer together as husband and wife, have become good friends. Imagine that! I am counting my blessings.

And I continue to count my blessings for YOU! And a special call out to you if you live in Victoria and have been part of my creative and healing circles for over two decades.

Many of you have become my dear friends – some have come and gone.  Please know that ALL OF YOU have brought so much richness to my life.

One day, on the other side of my pilgrimage, when I am settled somewhere brand new, I will be able to write what gifts this beautiful city brought to me. I can’t do it now. You can’t write about Paris while you’re still there. But I can surely say, “Thank YOU!”

By the way, this doesn’t mean goodbye, it just means goodbye for me to Victoria! Thankfully, my irreplaceable executive assistant, India, follows me everywhere I go via this thing called the Internet!

All Love and blessings,

Junie

P.S. I may have a special open house going away celebration. Stay posted for details! *you may need to bring your own chair! LOL

P.P.S. As you can see by the picture below, I am still working with my author mentorship clients. Tayama is getting ready to join the Author Mentorship Bootcamp at the Bethlehem Centre in Nanaimo. See all the details here, and stay posted for more information about the Author Mentorship Bootcamp soon!

P.P.P.S. I always like it when people respond to my newsletters. This time, if you are inspired, I’d especially love to hear from you!  I’m a Cancerian — we are natural sentimentalists!  And I love you all!

 

Please share my website with your friends!
09 Sep

IMPERMANENCE: Life, The Journey, Death, Re-Birth, & Miracles

Dear Friends,
“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be
permanent when they are not.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Please read this blog post when you have some extra time. I am delivering a very personal and important message to you today. You will need to have spaciousness for thoughts and reflections of your own as you read my words. How might they have personal meaning for you too?

SPOILER ALERT: Delightful links and writing prompts at the end. Wait for it! 😊

All blessings,

Junie

LIFE

I have learned a lot about impermanence this year. In truth, I have always known that things don’t last forever—that’s a no-brainer. Still, there have been countless times in my life when I know things must change but spend copious amounts of time and futile energy railing against the odds, wanting them to stay the same.

I have also learned, over time, and may I say the hard way, that miraculous gifts await us when we can let go with love and acceptance. It’s not easy to do, yet mighty worth it!

IMPERMANENCE

As stated above, what you are about to read is a very personal story. I am bringing it forth because I believe that it is also a universal one.  A story where we all experience the gambit of emotions from despair to elation. From fear to love. From being stuck to being free.

When we rail against change, straddling what’s going on now with an uncertain future, even though we may not be happy in our present life, it can often feel better than what we project the future could hold in store. This describes my latest journey under the guise of impermanence.

It is my hope that as you read my words, they will resonate with you—from times in your life when you were stronger than you thought—where you went from crawling to walking tall, transcending some of the worst situations your life brought forth. And if you are going through one of those times right now, know you will get through it again even if you have lost hope, courage, or know-how.

I wish to extend my hand and my heart to you in alignment, faith, courage, and love.  As my lyrics to the song, “It’s A Brand New Day” that I co-wrote with my husband, David Halliwell say:  “… We’re in this together, you are no longer alone, this is a brand new day!”

DEATH

These past seven months, since January 1st this year, I have gone through the most severe case of Murphy’s Law as one precious friend after another died of cancer for a total of six friends in all.  Last year I thought I’d be among them. I am not. Thankfully, I am still here.

It’s one thing to say six of my friends died of cancer in a seven-month span, and you, as my reader, can gulp at the thought of it…yet I would like to make it even more personal.

It’s not the number that is shocking. It’s about the meaning that each one of them added to my life – the fact that I could call on them whenever I wanted and that I could trust them to love me just the way I am. We don’t just lose a person; we lose everything they meant to us, what we came to rely on, take for granted even, and the unquantifiable richness that our lives held because they were in it. We lose it all.

There is one more death I haven’t mentioned yet, and it was the hardest one of all. It tipped the scales of my mental stability, taking me down a very deep rabbit hole that I couldn’t crawl out of for many months. It was the first day of this year, 2024, when my husband, David, left. It was supposed to be for a month. He never returned.

I remained in shock and despair day in and day out. As I mentioned above, we don’t just lose the person whom we’ve loved, when it’s a partner, we lose the life we had together. And in my case, our lives were abundant with creativity. We wrote books together, created songs together and so much more. David’s musician friends became my friends too, yet over these many months, the phone stopped ringing, the invitations stopped coming, and the curtain came down on my life as I knew it. No one reached out to talk to me. I think it’s awkward for people. They don’t know what to say. Still, their absence just made the hole in my heart feel even emptier. I miss them.

Over the decades, I have built up the reputation of being fiercely resilient. I have experienced trauma and tragedies beyond what some would consider the norm in one lifetime. I don’t think I’m unique in this way. We all know of people who move through horrendous hurdles that seem beyond repair.  For me, I believe I must be working out all my karma this one lifetime.

Yet even though I fall down hard, I do get up again. I sometimes crawl. I find ways to stand up again. Sometimes, I even soar. Not this time. The enormity of these most recent losses stole my life force and all my reserves. I feared I would never be able to rise up again.

I started to feel like a fraud since I’m supposed to be the “Re-Write Your Life” gal. Over my thirty-five-year career, I’ve helped countless people do just that. I teach them how to take the most painful circumstances of their lives, the ones that crush them to the ground, rendering them helpless, and teach them skills and tools that will unlock their own personal power and resilience.

I couldn’t find one ounce of personal power anywhere in my body, mind or heart  to move out of my unrelenting grief. A paradox that I don’t understand is that, somehow, my chosen work defies that reality.

THE JOURNEY

The broken-open person I am, when I get up in the morning, is not the same person I become when I sit in front of another, bearing witness to their pain, and am capable of being totally present for them, helping them to transform their fears and concerns and move forward. I am able to put my own pain in parentheses. Then I find myself collapsing into it again when my client leaves.

Perhaps it’s akin to a mother or father who, after a sleepless night of angst, fear, and uncertainty, can put a smile on their faces as they kiss their children good morning, fix them breakfast, and send them off to school with loving hugs. Once they are out the door, the pain moves in again and takes over.

For me, the return of the light has been very slow. It’s like the sleeping seed in the ground that shows no signs of life, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, a green sprout appears.

REBIRTH

And so, it was for me. Unable to see beyond the darkness, I began to reach out for help—a therapist, a good friend, and reached for the tools I’ve used in the past to help me lean into life again.

Slowly, drip by drip…a faucet of hope was turned on, and I could see the beauty in a sunrise once again. Then, by putting one step in front of the other, I gathered up the strength to plant a literal garden in my backyard.

I’m not a gardener and didn’t have a clue really what I was doing, but I did it anyway because I needed to see new signs of life in what used to be our happy home.

Last summer, I was so sick with cancer that I never left my bed other than to go for treatment. My friend Megan, bless her, came by and planted a garden for me.  Today, if you came by for a visit, I would proudly lead you through the kitchen and onto the back deck where you would see a splendid oasis of blues and reds, pinks and yellows, and purples and greens showing off their beauty.

These days I enjoy my morning coffee among the flowers, vegetables, and herbs that I planted.

I sing them my typical “Good Morning to You Song” – the same ones I greet my adorable budgies, Jazzy and Blu with when I take off their cover first thing in the morning. It takes no time at all and they sing back the chorus in perfect pitch.

THE HEALING POWER OF INTENTIONAL SILENCE, RITUAL, AND LETTING GO

I seem to be in the flow these days. I believe my true transformation began on my birthday in June. I intentionally set the day and night to be alone in silence. I spent the day in prayer, contemplation, and reverent ritual, letting go of my marriage to David. To accept that it is over and to find the courage and strength to surrender to this reality.

I removed the treasure box from the cupboard, overflowing with precious items David and I gathered over our almost six years together. I read letters and cards we gave to one another—for every occasion and for no occasion at all—just because. I also gathered all the beautiful cards—an outpouring of love from friends and family when we walked down the aisle less than two years ago. I slowly turned the pages, one by one, of our wedding album featuring the smiles on all of the faces of everyone there.  The love coming off these photos was palpable.

I cried, I sobbed, I wailed. I journaled and I released what felt like the remaining pain beyond the numbness that had built up inside. It felt like I was releasing every ounce of grief and abandonment I carried inside of me from early childhood to that day.

I repeated the Ho’opono’pono prayer over and over again. “I love you, please forgive me, thank you, I love you”. I lit candles, invoked the ancestors, angels, and guides, and then released all of the items that symbolized the promise of our heart pledges that were to last til death do us part. A holy moment of peace washed over me. With a full heart, I blessed David and released him.  I blessed us both and the ties that had us bound in pain, anger, confusion and grief.

MIRACLES ABOUND

I left the house and walked through the forest and along the ocean shores, feeling the summer night breeze on my face breathing in new life. I thanked God for LIFE. I thanked God for sparing MY life. I walked to my favourite place in Saxe Point, high up on the rocks overlooking the vast sea stretching itself far into the horizon. The swells rose and fell from our Canadian coastline to the Olympic Mountains that hug the shores of Washington State.  I watched and was almost overtaken by the surrounding beauty.

I called out to my six cherished friends, who had recently passed. I had communion with each one. I felt them with me as they wrapped their angel wings around me and I was assured they were happy, out of pain, and at peace. I walked home feeling blessed.

When I arrived at my door and walked up my front steps, there on the porch was a stunning bouquet of flowers, along with a beautiful card and brand new journal. A truly unexpected birthday surprise from David.

We spoke the next day and agreed to meet in person in Rumi’s field. You know the one – beyond right-doing and wrong-doing.  Our hearts were open wide as we slowly, quietly, and respectfully shared our individual truths.  I don’t think either of us realized the toll it took on us with my diagnosis of cancer. Unknownst to me, I had it while I walked down the aisle. For months I had been wrongly diagnosed and given the news five months later. Things changed dramatically after that.

There came a time when they didn’t think I would live. I can only imagine the fear it brought up in David when he lost his only child, his beloved daughter, Cat, some years earlier at the tender age of 26 from a car accident.

During our tender talk, we both agreed it was time to go our separate ways. We intend to maintain a good friendship and who knows, maybe even write more songs together!

If you are having what seems to be irreconcilable issues with a partner, friend, child, co-worker, or someone else,  I highly recommend you meet in Rumi’s field. Miracles happen there!

“Out beyond the ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field.
I will meet you there”.
 

~Rumi

Impermanence. Everything comes, and everything goes. Everything changes in this temporal world. Love, however, lives on forever. Love never dies.Another miracle that I believe came from letting go with love was a flowering plant that returned to life. An orchid that David gave me over two years ago eventually lost all of its blossoms and appeared dead. I kept it anyway. The day after my letting go ritual, new magenta buds started to grow on what had appeared to be lifeless stems.

Today it is in full bloom.

David texted me this morning to let me know that the one I gave him to take to his studio at about the same time, which had also “died,” is starting to grow brand-new buds!

I believe that my life was spared for a reason. I am to continue shining my light, living with renewed passion and purpose, and continuing to be that Re-Write Your Life gal. My gift back to God for sparing my life is my humble commitment to do just that.

I was beyond excited to have been invited to facilitate a Five-Day Re-Write Your Life Retreat from August 29th until September 2nd at the Bethlehem Centre in Nanaimo, British Columbia. It’s stunning there! I didn’t even have to go looking for it, the invitation came out of the blue for me. At the same time I was asked to facilitate a retreat in May as well.

Just two short months ago, even though my Write Where You Are retreat had been booked for some months, I couldn’t imagine how I’d summon up the energy for it. I believed I would need to cancel. Such is the power of unrelenting grief.  Yet in spite of it, I showed up.  And I didn’t just pull it off. I was on fire!  How could I not be? It is my dharma. Writing, teaching, and communicating to others how they can transform pain into joy has always been my true purpose and my lifeline!

I could hardly wait to welcome everyone who attended this new offering on August 29th! The retreat went wonderfully, and I can’t wait until my next retreat at the Bethlehem Centre – the Author Mentorship Retreat – which runs from January 26- 31, 2025!

Here is the song I love to sing these days (and at the top of my lungs, don’t you know!).

Jazzy and Blu are my backup singers who fly ahead of me to take the lead. We share the mic! Please join us.

Shawn Gallaway’s “I Choose Love”: https://youtu.be/YHpy_k_kMTU

Here’s the song David and I wrote set to a beautiful music video created by Lisa Hope. The musicians and singers in the backup chorus are our friends. I will always consider them my friends. Love never dies.

This is a Brand-New Day: https://youtu.be/CnLcjG4B4Tk

Something for you to Contemplate

Consider what shows up for you viscerally when you feel into the word “Impermanence”. How does it make you feel? Are you afraid of endings? Do you welcome new beginnings or do you resist them?

Writing Prompt #1: When I know that a person, place, or thing that is meaningful to me is shifting and appears to be dying, typically I…

Writing Prompt #2: Going forward, when change happens, even though I want to hold on, I…

As per my usual request, please find an unerupted space of time where you can write for 20 minutes in your journal. Have a glass of water beside you. When you are done writing, go outside and into nature and notice the beauty around you as you allow what you wrote to integrate. Stay open for miracles.

If you relate to my experience—the part of being threatened by change, afraid of the future, and stuck and uncertain where to go from here—please click on this link to see how you can turn that around with my Re-Write Your Life Home Study Program. ALLOW FOR MIRACLES TO AWAIT YOU!

If you have questions about the program, the upcoming Author Mentorship Retreat, or perhaps would like to participate but are not comfortable with groups and would prefer to work with me one-on-one, I invite you to book a complimentary 15-minute Zoom call here.

All love and blessings,

Junie

If you feel drawn to share your writing, feel free to do so in our warm and welcoming Writing Sanctuary on Facebook. You’ll find a fantastic community of fellow writers eager to cheer you on and celebrate your words.

If you resonate with what I have written in this blog post, please share it far and wide to build our community and to make our voices for peace and harmony for humankind even stronger.

With deep gratitude and blessings,

Junie

P.S. Just 13 months ago, while in the midst of my cancer journey – in the midst of having impermanence at my door, I recorded this video. Even then, I was re-writing my story, choosing acceptance and peace even if I lost the battle of having my life continue.  The strange thing is that I forgot I even recorded it – and just yesterday, while looking for something else entirely, it popped up! It seemed too serendipitous not to share! Click the image below to watch my video on YouTube.

Please share my website with your friends!
12 Oct

A RAW AND DEEPLY HONEST RESPONSE TO THE WAR IN ISRAEL

A RAW AND DEEPLY HONEST RESPONSE
TO THE WAR IN ISRAEL

Content Warning: This blog post delves into sensitive topics like mental health, suicide, eating disorders, sexual and religious violence, religious conflicts, and war. Please read with discretion and with self-care in mind.

Dear Friends,

This is what poured out of me on October 8th at 3:45 a.m., the morning after hearing that Israel was at War. It has a lot of personal information about me – my relationship with Israel, my relationship with all people, and my firm commitment to participate as a humanitarian in my mission for peace. It is my intention that what comes from my heart is delivered directly into your heart as well and that together we can unite to build a world of peace, love, and harmony, instead of divisiveness and polarization.

This is my invitation to join me and other peace-makers in the world to unite in the power of Love. In the power of Goodness, Compassion, and in the likeness of God. And let us remember that Love is not passive. Love is a verb. It means taking positive action in whatever ways your heart calls you to act. Perhaps it’s simply calling one person today to tell them that you love them or just being still while actively praying for peace for all peoples. All acts of love are worthy and their ripple effects can move mountains.

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there
.

~ Rumi

Saturday, October 7th, 2023

SHOCKING NEWS “ISRAEL IS AT WAR” 3:45 a.m.

When my friend sent me an email saying she was praying for everyone in Israel, I wondered what she was talking about. I Googled, I read, I watched, and I was horrified. I contacted my beloved niece, Rachel, to find out if her children who live there are safe. She said that they were in the north and yes, they were safe. I can’t help wondering, is anyone safe in that country? Is anyone safe anywhere?

The world has gone crazy. I don’t usually pay attention to the news – not in an active way. I am informed about it from some of my friends who have their eyes on the pulse and are actively involved. My sensitive nervous system keeps me traumatized after one newsreel. Yet today, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from clicking on the video of the Hamas terrorist attacks and now I can’t sleep. I can’t get the images out of my mind. Nor what I’ve been reading ever since.

Thank God I received Marianne Williamson’s and Maria Shriver’s Facebook posts – voices of sanity, acknowledging the despair, grief and horror I feel within my own soul. Their grief and horror is my grief and horror – it’s our collective grief for humanity. And it’s OK to weep beyond politics, beyond right and wrong, but instead for the hearts of every human being affected by the atrocities of war. As well as each and every human being who is walking around not knowing where to turn and asking, pleading to know what is going on with our planet, who can we trust, and where do we go from here. And how can those of us who have made it our life’s work to uphold the light, to be the eye in the storm, to find and spread peace in the chaos, do it? How do I do it when I am crumbling from the horror, shame, shock, and disgrace of it all?

I remember only too well the brutal surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur in 1973 and then, only a few weeks later, I was walking the streets of The Holy Land. For many years since then, I’ve questioned how far that country has moved from a holy land to where power and control are the gods some of the politicians worship. I was 24 years old when I agreed to volunteer on a kibbutz in whatever capacity they needed me. That was exactly 50 years ago!

I had been in Israel a few years prior to that. I travelled there because I wasn’t ready to come home from London where I had been living for six months. It was here that I experienced the demise of my friendship with my very best friend who I met in grade 2. When Suki and I had originally made our plans to travel Europe together, it was with great excitement and promise. We started dreaming about it when we were in our young teens. Our prime motivation was to get away from the dysfunction and turmoil in our homes. Well, that was my main motivation. The fact that I was, and still am, an adventurer at heart made it even more appealing.

We set out in mid-September of 1969 on a student ship to sail across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Southampton, England. That was to be our first stop on our adventure throughout Europe. That didn’t happen. One month before leaving, I was brutally raped by a stranger who I met in Yorkville, Toronto. Just prior to that I ended my engagement to Freddy. And then it got even worse. My very best friend and I had our first and only fight since we met as children and still hadn’t resolved it by the time we stepped upon the ship that was going to take us far away from home. The tension grew and we never got beyond it. We parted ways in London seven months later.

It was all too much for me but there was no way I was going back to Toronto alone, depressed, and so very frightened. I went to Israel instead, hoping that having another focus while working on a kibbutz and honouring my Jewish faith would help me with the grief, shame and pain I was consumed with every day.

Instead, it turned to heightened anxiety which turned into clinical depression which turned into catatonia, and then, in my deep despair I made a suicide attempt and the people at the kibbutz sent me home.

My parents walked right past me at the airport. They didn’t recognize me. I had gained 60 pounds. I left Toronto weighing 110. I was now 170 pounds only a year later. I turned to food for instant comfort and as the pounds on my body escalated so did my depression and self-hatred. The people on the kibbutz were wonderful to me. They could see how unhappy I was and tried their best to comfort me…until it was too late. I left the kerosene heater on in my room during a thunderstorm while my roommates were away, completely aware of the danger. When they found me unconscious, they put me on a plane home the next day.

I always knew I’d come back to Israel to return the kindness and to explore the land, and so when the Yom Kippur war broke out, I attended a meeting at the Zionist Centre in Toronto where they were adamantly asking for volunteers to go and work on the kibbutzim because all the men and women in the military were fighting the war – even those in reserves were deployed. I didn’t think twice. I signed up. It was the only time I ever saw my father cry. Now, four years after my first experience when I was hopelessly depressed and suicidal, now I was stable. I was at University and I felt like I had a promising future. I knew that the university would be there when I returned. Now I was going to go help where my heart was being called.

Fast forward to today. Israel is at war. I was with two friends tonight for Thanksgiving dinner. I was the informant about what happened this morning. Neither of them had heard the news. Mayim has many relatives who survived the holocaust living in Israel. I have friends and family living there too.

Recently I felt chastised by some people because I am not involved in politics the way they are. They are actively involved and I highly respect them. I am on the front lines in my own way. Trying to uphold the Light and offering my gifts of service and healing in my thirty year career as as psychologist and mental health advocate as well as in my personal life with whomever shows up in front of me. It doesn’t take much to know where to offer our compassionate hearts.

One thing that has had me at war within my own soul for many years now has been the way the Israeli government has been treating the Palestinians. I simply cannot get behind it. An eye for an eye instead of recognizing that both sides are made up of human beings just trying to live their life in peace and harmony.

When I was living there during the Yom Kippur War, there was a terrorist attack on a children’s school in Kiryat Shmona. Eighteen people were killed, both children and teachers.

After that, in the wake of the current war, the country put out a referendum about the death penalty for any captured terrorists. There was an overriding NO – even though a majority of the settlers of the State of Israel were survivors of the Holocaust, even though thousands of deaths happened during the current war, the majority of the country denounced Capital Punishment. It is a very different climate today.

I have family and friends who live in Israel and I have a strong visceral love affair with that country and my people. I want Israel to survive and thrive with all my heart and soul and that includes all citizens of Israel. That means that I also want the innocent people of Palestine to not just survive but thrive in peace and harmony. To be free to come and go and for the two nations to live side-by-side in peace. Historically they did.  No one wins in war. They never have and they never will. Never.

Decades ago as a young woman, had I been visiting an Arab country while I was clinically depressed and they were the ones who treated me with kindness and then later were reaching out for help, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would have gone there. Dare I say that out loud? Will I be chastised, even ostracized by my Jewish friends, my family, and all Zionists worldwide? Dare I speak up? Trust me, I am doing it but I am also afraid of losing the love and respect from people I deeply love and care about. Yet, in being in integrity with myself, I am called to speak out and face any consequences that come as a result of it.

The thing is, I have always been someone who embraces all people. I am inclusive – if you are kind, decent and a good person, I want to know you. I do not discriminate by colour, religion, creed or nationality. I spent a good part of the 60’s and 70’s taking part in peace marches and rallies. I do not belong to a synagogue or any other organized religion,  although I was a member of a non-denominational community for many years and it was like a home away from home. They had a leaderless service…where anyone in the community could be the speaker. I spoke there many times and appreciated the warmth, camaraderie, creativity, and companionship I felt. Then Covid happened and no one went anywhere. Soon, I moved out of that area and married a non-Jewish man just 13 months ago who is a steadfast believer in God. We had a banner, that we hung from the chuppah at our wedding that said, “Our Religion is Kindness.” Just for the record, I have also attended the Reform, Conservative and Orthadox synagoes where I live and the rabbis and the congregations are awesome, beautiful people. I stand in solidarity with Israel. I stand in solidarity for all humankind.

Tonight when I came home I was exhausted and fell asleep quickly. I woke up in the middle of the night only to find that David was not in bed beside me. I went into the living room where he was standing by the sofa and next to tears. He said “I can’t believe what’s happening in Israel.” I couldn’t answer. I had no words. We fell into each other’s arms. David was trying to hold back his tears. Me, I simply don’t cry. I wish I did. I wish I could.

In the last two weeks, David and I have been in deep grief because of the deaths of six people close to us who have died. It seemed like everyday someone else we knew died suddenly, either people who were not sick at all, or others who we knew were ill but didn’t think the end of their lives was imminent. Each death has been shocking and after a while I couldn’t rationalize it with the usual jargon, “We all are going to die – and we don’t really die. Our souls live on.” Even if I trust this to be true, it doesn’t mask the pain, grief, and sorrow that comes with the human experience when we lose people we love.

There were many times this past year when I wondered if I would live. The cancer had grown bigger, the pain excruciating, my bowels and digestive system were completely dysregulated and I had no energy to speak of. I got winded even trying to walk up one flight of stairs. I had trips 5 days a week to the cancer clinic for radiation, would come home and flop into bed. The treatments stopped only 2 months ago. I am losing my hair at a rapid rate and my energy levels are tentative at best. Yet, on a very positive note, the cancer is not detected anywhere in my body – what I am experiencing are side effects from the treatment that will eventually all dissapate. Although according to my oncologist – he said, “Junie, you are still not out of the woods. Even though the cancer was localized and the MRI report says ‘no cancer’, it is too soon to tell. There are lymph nodes of concern – even though they are smaller than they were. Don’t start celebrating yet.” He was also the one who told me I might want to consider MAID (Medical Aid in Dying) the very first time I ever met him. Luckily, I do not take his negative attitude as gospel and trust I am healing beautifully. I have also been blessed by the love and my husband, family and friends through this challening time and that goes a very long way!

Yet today, right now, I’m tired, I’m weary and even though I’m the Re-Write Your Life person (who just published my book, Re-Write Your Life II: Peace Awaits You, a week ago),  it may be a while before I re-write the story of the despair and anguish that is coursing through my body because of the unprecedented madness in Israel, Ukraine and Russia, and in the wider world. I know it’s good to feel it. I have no intention of stuffing it. I just wish I could cry.

Today is October 10th. And three days after I wrote the above missive. The last three days have been Thanksgiving here in Canada. David and I acknowledge every day, not just this weekend, how much we have to be thankful for. We never take the beauty of where we live and to be alive, for granted. Nor all the support and friendship and love we both experience from friends and family. We both do our best to bring love and kindness to the world in whatever ways we can and we both stand up for justice for all.

I used to be a court reporter at City Hall for seven years when I lived in Toronto. I was not cut out for that job. It is not my nature to be in an adversarial environment day in and day out. Especially without any say in the matter…simply being told to record verbatim what is being said. I stayed because it paid my tuition at higher learning institutions to become a psychotherapist. Still, I often left the courtroom and wept because of some of the injustices I witnessed within the justice system.

Years before that, in the 70’s I lived in Montreal and wrote for a Horoscope magazine. I knew nothing about horoscopes or the zodiac but I could write. So I wrote day-by-day forecasts for each of the 12 signs for each month. I made them up. But I didn’t feel out of integrity because I also took home a pile of letters almost every day from people who were writing into this horoscope magazine. The owners of the publication would open the envelopes and see if there was any money in them (often people would put in a cheque or a twenty dollar bill) and then discard the letters because there were too many to answer. I took it upon myself to take the letters home and write to these people. Some were writing the most awful things that were happening to them and were looking to a fake horoscope magazine to get answers. I was saying, “I don’t care if your moon isn’t in conjunction with Pluto, get out of that abusive relationship.” I was fired about a year later when I refused to implant negativity into the forecasts. I knew about self-fulling prophecy and I wasn’t going to contribute to something potentially harmful even with the boss’s threats to let me go. It was my way of contributing to the right action even if it cost me my job, and it did.

Also, during that time in Montreal, I was living with my French-Canadian boyfriend. It was at the height of the Quebec referendum and my boyfriend and his friends were separatists. I quickly learned that speaking English and being Jewish was not in my favour. I went through a terrible time because I didn’t speak French and was also being discriminated against because I was a Jew. His friends were very political and at the time the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) was the terrorist group who were trying to obliterate Israel. His friends were very knowledgeable about who was doing what to whom and they tried to have a debate with me every time we were together. They had me over a barrel. I didn’t keep track of the up-to-the-minute blow-by-blow disputes. I felt powerless to fight facts. Instead I relied on my heart. Even Michel’s mom gave us a wooden ashtray with a swastika carved on it from a pin or a nail. When I asked him if he thought she was aware of that, he replied that it was probably her who did it. I was experiencing anti-semitism in a big way.

I had already experienced anti-semitism as a child a number of times including seeing my brother come home with a bloody nose time and again from bullies calling him a dirty Jew. There was another incident when I was only a child of eight where I witnessed in horror from the back seat of my mom’s convertible, a French farmer running out of his field in Quebec and slug my mother on the back of her neck while she was getting into the car and scream in French, “Dirty Jew”. We had been parked on his property to go and get an ice cream cone at the variety store up the street. And now I was 27, living in Montreal, and experiencing that kind of prejudice all over again.

So, what did I do in the wake of living with a boyfriend who I truly loved but his friends and family were so against me? I did what my heart encouraged me to do. It wasn’t easy, but I did it anyway. I spoke with every one of Michel’s separatist friends in a way that connected us to our personal humanity. I listened to their stories – of how they felt discriminated against. I listened to how they felt their language and culture were being threatened. I shared that as a Jewish person, I understood very well what discrimination and persecution felt like and I told them I was so sorry about what they were experiencing. Apparently I was the first Jewish person they had ever known on a one-on-one basis. They had prejudice because of what they were taught. When it came down to who we were as people, we began to enjoy camaraderie and true friendship ensued.

It is only when we can remove all the outer masks that hide our true identities that we can come together as One people – all looking for the same things. Underneath our colour, religion, nationalities, occupations etc., each of us wants to be safe, have food in our bellies with food to feed the children, live harmoniously with our neighbours and feel what we do in the world and who we are is beautiful, just because of our birthright.

We are not living that way. We are living in a world filled with conflict, outrageous aggression, fear, racism, discrimination and confusion from the mixed messages delivered by the politicians and the media every day. We learn to distrust seemingly everyone who doesn’t live, think or worship like we do. We are split apart by other people’s values without examining our own. Yet I believe that each of us at our core wants to feel loved and extend love back yet vulnerability makes us feel unsafe…so we make choices that come from ego and not the higher truth of our heart. Our fear often paralyzes us as to what to believe or how to act, so we often do nothing or join forces with people whose messages resonate with our unhealed wounds so we wish to fight back.

So what do people who do not want to fight do? Who do not want war? Who realize that there is no justification for cruelty to another, ever?

I believe that we need to get beneath the noise of the external world to connect with our internal light. Within each and every one of us is a Light. It may feel minuscule under the chaos, almost imperceptible but it is still there, I assure you. Peace is an inside job and it is up to you and me to take the time, especially now, to be still. To meditate. To pray. To write. To be in nature. To gather with like-minded others to have discussions on how we can make a difference, even to just one other person who is suffering. And to fill our souls with what makes us feel good again. Dance, play with a child, sing at the top of our lungs, can fruit, paint on a canvas and forgive ourselves for whatever we are blaming ourselves for, and then extend forgiveness to others. We need to nourish our souls with that which will sustain us and bring us back to our centres so we can make inspired choices that come from our highest wisdom and be guided to our next steps.

We may not all be out here on the front lines…but we can all speak the truth from our hearts. And none of what I said above is to replace how we feel. It is essential that we feel our feelings all the way. Feel them in a way we can heal them. Don’t repress what you feel. Hug your cat, your partner, your friends. Cry when the tears well up. And say a prayer for humanity. We need each other. The time of the lone wolf is over. May Peace and Truth Prevail. Amen. Pay attention to the peacemakers of the world. Remember that whatever we focus on grows. And we can choose to be traumatized by the newsreels (and I’m not saying we shouldn’t be informed – just make informed choices of where we gather our information and how often in order to honour our own sensitivities) OR we can focus on peace, love, harmony, kindness, compassion, prayer, beauty and God.

HO’OPONO’PONO PRAYER

I Love You

Please forgive me

Thank you

I love you

This morning, I listened to a voice of sanity. It came just at a time I needed to hear it. It was a Global Mediation led by Jason Shurka that was recorded. There were over 100 countries represented. We are not alone. You can watch it here.

Re-Write Your Life II:

Peace Awaits You

How did I know that when I wrote this book that clearly discusses how Peace Awaits Us when we take a committed healing journey, that a war in Israel would break out one week later?

I wish to say thank you to EVERYONE who has supported me on my cancer journey and on my new book launch, making it an Amazon bestseller!

If you haven’t purchased it yet, you can find it here on Amazon. As well, in appreciation of all your love and support I have reduced my $299.00 Re-Write Your Life Home Study Program to $99.00, wanting to make PEACE and Healing accessible to as many people as possible. You can read all about my program here that has helped thousands of others over the past 2 decades overcome fear and pain from the past to live their lives with deep meaning, purpose and passion.

Writing Prompts

  • When I listen to or watch the news and cruelty that is delivered over the airwaves, I feel…
  • What I do to bring myself back to balance is….
  • One thing I can do today to offer peace to myself and another is…
  • When I envision the world living in peace, harmony, creativity, and goodness, this is what it looks like…
Write this last prompt in the first person, present tense as though it is happening now. You can do this together with other friends who wish to envision this with you and read your visions out loud to one another. As stated above, what we focus on expands. Focus on that which feeds your soul, not that that diminishes you. I love you.

If you feel drawn to share your writing, feel free to do so in our warm and welcoming Writing Sanctuary on Facebook. You’ll find a fantastic community of fellow writers eager to cheer you on and celebrate your words.

If you resonate with what I have written in this blog post, please share it far and wide to build our community and to make our voices for peace and harmony for humankind even stronger.

With deep gratitude and blessings,

Junie

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02 Jun

IF ONLY YOU KNEW…  A Book of Letters – Arny Wiskin

IF ONLY YOU KNEW…  A Book of Letters – Arny Wiskin

Dearest Arny, If you only knew…

I close my eyes and I am gazing out my window at the park. Earlier, when we first moved to 57 Neptune Drive and I was six, it was an open field with scattered patches of weeds and grasses. There were rabbit holes, ant hills and mice nests. At night when it was still you could hear the frogs and crickets. That was until the cranes showed up one day. They tore everything that was alive out of there to put down manicured lawns with swings and teeter totters. It was OK, but I had to get used to it. The field was my first taste of freedom and it’s where I remember you the most.

My bedroom window held the perfect vantage point for looking out to see who was there at any given moment. On days when I felt anxious and insecure, looking out at my friends in the park provided me with a sense of still being connected. Even though I wasn`t with them, there was something good about knowing they were there.

It was here, Arny, that I often observed you. I felt a kinship with you. We were both eleven years old.  Looking now through my young girl’s eyes, I see you there.  It’s raining outside and you are on the swing going back and forth and back and forth slowly, always slowly. The rain is washing over you yet you don’t seem to notice or care. You’ve been there an hour already and I wonder what you are thinking. How come you are not at home where it’s warm and dry? I want to go and get you and bring you inside but I don’t dare. We were both so shy and I didn’t know what to say.

My young heart ached for you. I felt your loneliness in my bones. It lingered there next to my own. Although we never spoke the words, I know somehow we felt safe with each other.  I would look over at you across the aisle from me sitting in your little brown desk, in Miss Stewart’s class, drawing pictures.

You drew airplanes and cars. Detailed, precise. Perfect replicas of the models. I could see how beautiful they were. Sometimes Miss Stewart would catch you unaware and shout at you just like she used to do with me when I was daydreaming. I can’t remember, did she stomp over to you, grab your beautiful pictures and crumble them up?  Did she rip your heart out as she did mine every time she made me stay after class to tell me how stupid I was? Yes, I can bet that your tender heart was torn apart with the desecration of your quiet renderings. I know mine was. Every time she hurt you, I wept.

At other times from my bedroom window I watched you run. You ran the full circumference of the park. You made it into a race track, running round and round, picking up speed each time. Sometimes I couldn’t even tell if it was you because you were indistinguishable from the trees across the way. But of course, as soon as you stopped, I knew it was you because you would take up residence once again on the swing – gently swaying back and forth – not violently like your running. Here you caught your breath after running faster than any imaginary monster in your mind could catch up to. It was just a slow and steady back and forth. Back and forth.

Were you able to make them disappear? Did they fly out into the wind as you picked up speed? Who were those monsters Arny? Who was it that haunted you? You were determined to beat them.

Beyond the park, you won every single track and field race. You became the fastest runner in all the city competitions. You put your mind to something and you knew how to make it happen. But you never bragged. In fact, you rarely ever spoke.

Do you remember the time when we were in grade 3 and I chose you to be Peter in the Peter Pan skit and you tried to say no but I must have badgered you until you reluctantly said, “Okay”. I was Wendy. We had our little scripts. Sometimes on my way to school having crossed the creek that led to the path onto Baycrest Avenue, I would spot you up ahead. I would run and catch up and with hopeful expectancy, ask,

“So, Arny, did you memorize your lines yet?”

 You wouldn’t answer. You just walked in the slow way you did, head down.

” Com’on Arny, did you?” Did you?” I knew you hadn’t but I wouldn’t let up.  Eventually if I didn’t stop pestering you, you would shake your head which seemed to hang down even lower now, and whisper,

“Sorry.”

Now, being totally insensitive, I would cry out, “But Arny, we’ve only got two days left. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to!”

I can’t remember if you did learn them or not. The memory that stands out for me most is that my mother took me to the hairdresser the night before the skit. My long beautiful hair was now a short pixie cut. I could have played your part.  I looked more like Robin Hood than you did!

 Another time I’m sure I tortured you was when we were 9 or 10 and I made you write something in my autograph book.

This is what you wrote,

 “Roses are red, violets are green. My face is funny, but yours is a scream.”

That was one of the few times you showed a sense of humour but apparently, I didn’t see it that way.

I couldn’t believe you wrote such a mean thing to me.  I was mortified. I wanted you to show me in writing how much you liked me so I made you write another one. You sighed but did it anyway.

This time you wrote, “Roses are red, violets are green, my face is funny, but yours is a nice lookin’ sort of face.”

Oh Arny, how it makes me smile to think of you. It also makes me sad to think I picked on you so much. Was that my way awkward way of showing you I liked you?

You were a gentle boy. And you became a gentle man.

Later, on my sixteenth birthday, I had the shock of my life. The doorbell rang. I opened it only to find a gorilla in front of me that started belting out happy birthday with the most amazing voice! Those were the years of singing telegrams. When the song was over, the person with the remarkable voice removed his gorilla head and it was none other than you! You, the boy who was so shy. How was this possible? And more than that, I never knew you could sing! Yet I did know that you pushed the edges. Maybe more than most people.  Life challenged you and you challenged it back and you won. You always seemed to win…at least on the outside. I often wondered what was going on, on the inside. Had you ever known happiness?

Many years later I was attending a wedding. When I went up to dance, I looked up at the stage and there you were at the microphone, so handsome in your tuxedo, engaging the guests with your warmth. You were not only the MC, you were the leader of the band.  Your band! The Arny Wiskin Band.  My heart swelled with happiness for you. As time went on, you became the most sought-after wedding and Bar Mitzvah band in Toronto.

Who would have ever guessed that the little boy who was too shy to learn lines for a skit, drew cars and airplanes to tune out the teachers, sat alone swinging back and forth for hours in the rain, would become a world class athlete and performer? But you did.

I remember running into you years later. We went for a coffee. You seemed quiet and shy again. We both were. I felt I hardly knew you and in another way, I felt as though I was inside your skin. Just like it felt when I would watch you from my bedroom window all those years ago. So familiar and yet so distant at the same time.

It was awkward being with you again as an adult – our youth long gone. I had no words to bridge the gap. I thought about other men I had known. The bad boys. The ones I seemed to attract back then. And worse, fell for only to have my heart broken over and over.

I realized then that I had loved you. But I was too young and too scared to know what to say or to know how to be with a man such as you. A man so pure of heart.

God Bless you Arny, wherever you are.

Addendum: My friend Kelly called me tonight and I shared your story with her.

She said, “Hey, why don’t you find Arny on FaceBook or Google and establish contact again.”

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that. I got so excited to learn where you were and be in contact again.  After a long search, in utter shock, I found your obituary.

“WISKIN, Arnie – Passed away peacefully on July 6, 2009 at home…

They mentioned family members so I knew it was you and I am so saddened by this news. Devastated, if you want to know the truth. How I wished I could have told you what was in my heart long ago. While you were still alive.

So, dearest Arny, this story is a small token of my love. My heart would runneth over with joy to know that wherever you are, you are still singing.

God Bless You,

Junie

 

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30 Mar

Its Hard To Tell You This News

Dearest friends,   (please read to the end)

As I look to the start of March, I find myself in a new, scary, and completely different place than I ever thought I would be. I have had to re-look at my life and business through a new lens and really ask myself what I would usually ask a client, What Matters Now?

Never before has that writing prompt been so important in my life, and I have found myself looking at my own work that I teach others in order to move beyond the dark times.

Over the past several months, I haven’t been feeling well, and approximately three weeks ago, I was given a diagnosis of cancer.
For a long time I have not been listening to The Universe when it has been telling me loud and clear to “Slow Down!” Well, I’m listening now.

The very next thing I want to tell you is that I know I will rise above this and restore my body to perfect health. I am now fully committed to changing my diet, lifestyle, and everything else it takes, including addressing any unhealed trauma with love and forgiveness of myself and others. I will Re-Write My Life and move beyond this stumbling block.
What I ask of you at this time, if you will, is to please envision me as I envision myself – healthy, fit and vibrant – living my life with deep inner peace, and joy. That David and I enjoy a beautiful, long life together. We just got married this past September.

As most of you know, I am a self-employed entrepreneur and as such do not have the benefits of paid medical leave. David also works for himself and we enjoy a simple life within the means we can afford.
My hope with respect to my current health situation is to work with an integrated health system – which employs the best of integrated Western medical practices as well as holistic therapies. Alternative therapies and practices are not covered by BC Medical.
With this in mind, I wish to propose a win-win opportunity for both of us.
As many of you know, I have been delivering programs for mental, emotional, and creative well-being for over 30 years. Did you also know that my Re-Write Your Life program, that follows my book by the same name, has transformed the lives of literally thousands of people? People who were ready to fully and completely put the painful stories of their past to rest and live fully and freely in today. In fact, it remained the #1 Best Selling Programme on the Daily Om platform for writing and healing for over 5 years.
I wish to offer you the same results. Read here for all the details.

By purchasing this program for yourself or a loved one, you will be receiving an evidence-based program which will address the pain of your past, which may be stopping you from living a truly happy and fulfilled life today. By applying the processes and tools taught in each lesson, you will become confident that no matter what life brings your way, you will be able to deal with it. In fact, I am re-reading and applying these techniques and principles to help myself through this challenging time.
Listen to these testimonials: Annie’s Story and Jan’s Story You can expect these kinds of powerful results for yourself in this program.

“Junie Swadron is both a guide and a muse. Her book is a bright lantern, illuminating the often dark and tricky terrain of the soul. Grounded in personal experience, her techniques catalyze the deep authenticity possible to us all.”
JULIA CAMERON, AUTHOR OF THE ARTIST’S WAY
A WIN-WIN OPPORTUNITY

At the same time, your purchase will allow me to purchase the necessary health aids I need to clear this cancer that is currently living in my body and draining my energy.

Last year, in 2022, I certified a number of licensed therapists and healers to become Re-Write Your Life Mastery Certification Coaches. So, if you choose, you can also work individually with a certified coach who will guide you every step of the way. You can find the link to their names and bios further down the page.

If purchasing the Re-Write Your Life healing program doesn’t speak to you at this time, please consider purchasing it for a loved one.

If this doesn’t resonate for you, I have also set up a healing fund and any amount you could contribute would be heartfully appreciated. Click here to access the GoFundMe Campaign. 
I invite you all to write with me. Take a long look at your life right now, and put pen to paper. Then consider adding your writing to my Writing Sanctuary on Facebook!

WRITING PROMPT:

With respect to <whatever is troubling you right now>, what matters now is.…

Let us all live long and HEALTHY lives, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

To our vibrant health and joy!

All blessings,
Junie

Link to the Re-Write Your Life Certified Mastery Coaches

By the way, My husband David Halliwell, is having an art show of his paintings at the Gallery Splash in Esquimalt!
503 Park Place until March 7, 2023 between 9:00 am and 4:30 pm. He will also be in residence for the last time this Saturday, March 4th!

As they say about him, David Halliwell’s artworks are the result of diligent research combined with superb draftsmanship and complete mastery of his medium. His paintings are romantic, nostalgic, strikingly powerful and hauntingly real. Hope to see you there!

David’s website: https://www.davidmichaelhalliwell.com
FB Event: https://fb.me/e/NebgQGJe

P.S.  I love getting your comments. If you’d like to write a response to this newsletter and tell me what you’ve written from the writing tip above or share how you are feeling these days or tell me your best news ever, I’d be delighted to hear from you. Write to me at yourlifematters@junieswadron.com. And if things aren’t going the way you would like them to, I’d be happy to talk with you. Book a complimentary Discovery Call and lets see if we can create a whole lot of happy days ahead!

 

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16 Jun

Medical Assistance in Dying: Love and Wisdom at the End of Life

Judith Rockert, with David and me behind herHave you ever had a friend that, without them in your life, your life simply would not be the same?

A friend whose unconditional love, wisdom, compassion, humour, kindness, along with the ability to be real at all times, is enough to make you weep with the kind of gratitude that goes far beyond words?

For me, that person is Judith Rockert. Judith and I have known each other for over 40 years!

Last month she called to tell me that the doctors told her she has a short time to live.

That was enough for me to fly the 3,000 miles from Victoria to Toronto to be with her.

What I didn’t know was that she has a death date. She has chosen M.A.I.D. (Medical Assistance in Dying).

On June 27, 2022, Judith will take her last breath. It’s hard to wrap my head, and especially my heart, around this.

Here is our interview, recorded on June 12, 2022:

This is my first experience with someone who has chosen assisted dying, and what is remarkable to me is that if you were to meet Judith, or even talk to her on the telephone, she is one of the most positive, upbeat, incredibly optimistic people you would ever meet.

She told me, “Junie, I’m not afraid of dying. I’m going onto my next adventure.

I’m afraid of living in a body that is rapidly breaking down, and — God forbid — it would be up to my family to have to take care of me.”

Junie and Judith

Judith and I speak often, and every time, she is the one who uplifts me! I ask her, “Judith, how are you today?”

Without a moment’s hesitation she replies, “I am in escalating bliss!”

Then she’ll go on to tell me about her day and who came to see her and the incredible gift she has been given to have such rich visits and conversations that are straight from the heart with the people she loves and who love her.

I know all about that. We have had so many of those precious exchanges. And whenever my mental health challenges reared their ugly head, Judith was my champion, my lifeline.

Judith knows a lot about that. Her beautiful son, Mitch, who suffered with schizophrenia, took his life many years ago. You can read Judith’s story about Mitch on my blog.

Even with that — even with the unthinkable grief that a parent endures in the face of losing their child, Judith chose LIFE.

She found ways to re-frame and re-write the story, focusing on the incredible gift of having Mitch in her life as long as she did — a man of great beauty, artistry, love, and kindness. Well, they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

One day, every one of us will be saying our final good-bye

LIFE IS PRECIOUS.
EVERY BREATH IS PRECIOUS.

Choose to live the best life you have, and let your love be your everlasting legacy.

 

These pictures are the tombstones of my mom and dad, Minnie and Jimmy Swadron, and my sister, Barbara Freedman. I was able to visit them at the cemetery during my trip to Toronto.

What I wouldn’t do to hug them today! Be sure to tell everyone you love that you love them while you can. And know that You Are Deeply Loved in Return.

We can choose how we are going to live our lives

Judith enthusiastically said “Yes” to this interview. She has the wisdom of the ages, and I know that this interview will inspire countless people with her legacy of love.

We can re-write the stories we are telling ourselves — even if it’s just before our last day on this earth.

None of us know how long we are going to live (unless we have chosen MAID, like Judith), so why don’t we just take the high road now and make our lives magnificent?

All blessings,
Junie

PS — If you did not see this interview with my beautiful fiancé David talking to my dear soul sister, Pat Sheveland, about the unexplainable gifts that came from beyond the veil after the death of his beloved daughter Cat, watch now and be inspired.

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09 May

How To Write A Book

Do you want to learn how to write a book?

I can show you how, and work alongside you as you do it! I have a few seats left in my fast-approaching author mentorship program; the course starts on Tuesday, May 11, 2021. There’s still time, but don’t delay!

About the Author Mentorship Program:
📚 Are you ready to write your book but don’t know where to begin?
📚 Are you a business leader or coach wanting to make a difference in the world?
📚 Are you ready to write your memoir?

This comprehensive 10-week program will give you everything you need to accomplish your dream of writing your book!
📚 Ten weekly 2-hour group Zoom calls
📚 One-on-one coaching
📚 Publishing opportunity
📚 Free publicity — the opportunity to have an exclusive VIP Interview on The Soul Connection Podcast
📚 Private discussion group to share your writing process

Does this interest you?

If so, click this link to learn more and apply! 

Your Life Matters! 8 Simple Steps to Writing Your Story

Do you want to write your book but don’t know where to begin?

Let me guess: You get excited about the thought of writing your life stories, but then, a voice inside your head stops you cold, saying things like, “Who would read it? What could I possibly teach others? Besides, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start.”

With Your Life Matters! Junie Swadron has written a book about human transformation, and she uses her reader’s pen and life story to accomplish this evolutionary task. As an author, psychotherapist, and writing coach, Junie Swadron has guided writers and authors to write their life stories for more than thirty years. Her books, Re-Write Your Life: A Transformational Guide to Writing and Healing the Stories of Our Lives and Write Where You Are, have helped thousands of writers move through fear and writer’s block.

Wendy Kenny was one of the students in the last mentorship program, she and many others are now published authors!

“At first I was not really sure about this workshop but in the end I am happy to have been a part of it. Thank you for opening your home and heart to us. You provided a safe environment and encouraged us—no judgments, but truths. You helped me to believe that I have a story and that it is worth writing down—especially because of the healing that it has brought me. In your sharing it shows how courageous and strong you have been on your journey and that overflowed during our time together. Blessings to you.” —Wendy Kenny

Click here to learn more about how in just 10 weeks you will have written your first book with my expertise!

Your life matters, and your life stories matter too!

Junie SwadronAre you an entrepreneur with a great product, service, and brand? You need to get it out there in the world with your book! There’s nothing like having a published book to give you credibility.

How do you want to write your life stories? You could approach your project chronologically, from birth to where you are today, with all the wisdom you have gleaned along the way. Or, you could organize around themes—travel experiences, career, marriage, and children, spirituality, illness, times you were stronger than you thought, transitions and crossroads, teachers and mentors—it can all be done.

The main thing is that Your Life Matters and that you find a way to honour your life so that you can see how every story you have ever lived has come wrapped in gifts and lessons, ready to be transformed and integrated. I can show you how to write your book from the most empowered, joyous place within you so that you’ll be proud to celebrate your legacy out loud—with family and friends or with a wider audience at your book launch!

In Your Life Matters! Author Mentorship Program, you will learn how to:

📚 Inspire others with the wisdom you’ve attained in your lifetime

📚 Achieve your life-long dream of writing your memoir or sharing your entrepreneurial knowledge

📚 Bust through your blocks and write with confidence and ease with eight easy steps

📚 Free yourself from your painful past at last by unleashing your authentic voice

📚 Allow the hard lessons life has given you to become your greatest gifts

We all have fears around writing our stories, but we need to acknowledge that our life is the most important one of all and that the stories we want to tell are worthy.

The intention is that once you learn all the reasons why you CAN write your book, you’ll be saying an absolute YES to joining a group of committed upcoming authors in my Your Life Matters! Author Mentorship Program and writing your book. Apply now, and I’ll see you very soon! Course starts Tuesday, May 11, 2021.

 

“Junie brings her enormous heart and ignited spirit to each lesson, as well as to each and every person. She is a creative wellspring, inspired and supportive, and that all comes through. Thank you Junie for sharing your gifts and experience with us!” —Patricia Campbell

 

“I deeply appreciate the way Junie encourages her students to be comfortable and fearless at the same time. I found that I could go further than I’d expected in my writing, and this course inspired me to continue to work at this craft. I hope to take more courses with Junie in the future!” —Melanie Cook

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10 Mar

Everyone Should Write a Book!

Your Life Matters, by Junie Swadron

I interviewed myself today! A friend asked me the first question, and I just kept going. This as a writing technique I recommend you all to try — interview yourself! It will help bring you to so the same point I will be making throughout this reading that everyone should write a book.

Junie, you talk a lot about helping people get their books written. Do you think everyone should write a book?

Well, personally, yes, I do think everyone should write a book! But of course, I’m biased! I’ve seen the benefits of the writing process since I was a teenager, when putting my thoughts, fears, successes, failures in my diary gave me an instant inside story to my mind.

I could see how my mind travelled — how fears were followed to their origins, the dots were connecting of how this event led to that seemingly unrelated one, and I would watch nightmares morph into my best poetry in my morning writings.

Later Julia Cameron, in her famous book, The Artist’s Way, coined the term “Morning Pages,” and millions of people across the planet found out first hand just how powerful a daily writing practice can be.

What kind of writing do you teach?

I teach stream of consciousness writing — the kind where you just “let the writing do the writing,” where you’re not judging and planning and critiquing what you want to say. This kind of writing allows you to access the unconscious mind, and you begin to truly know yourself.

When I write, I feel that there is a benevolent presence sitting beside me, guiding my hand across the page or keyboard. I can’t explain it, but the words just come tumbling out of my fingers from a source I can only call God, words I cannot seem to reach otherwise. They release the muse out of her secret kingdom to alchemize ideas into creative offerings that flow out in myriad ways. Sometimes it’s poetry, sometimes, prose, books, song lyrics, stage plays, short stories . . . Who wouldn’t want access to all that goodness?

But people aren’t always able to discover this on their own if they’ve had their writing or anything else criticized as kids — when they were putting their best efforts onto the page and a teacher red-penned everything:“You should have said it this way.” “You spelled that wrong.” “That idea is impossible, why would you say that?” and then their own mind tightened the grip from there.

That person probably never wants to write again, or they become mute. Or if they do ever summon the courage to write, they often judge it as being awful before it even hits the page, or they mutilate it with their harsh opinions afterwards.

How does the process work when you’re helping people write their books, or their stories?

I firmly believe that everyone should write a book. The 8-step process is where you learn to let go of all those critical voices and keep your hand moving across the page. Sure, there are techniques to employ later when crafting a piece, but the most profound writing comes when you step out of the way and allow what’s been meaning to come out to simply come out. To let your true authentic voice have its say before you cover it over with what you think would be socially acceptable to some random critic in your head to whom you are still giving away your power.

For 20 years, students who come to my Sunday writing circles – who have been afraid to write for eons — cannot believe what comes out of them from one twenty-minute writing prompt. With genuine bewilderment, they declare, “Where on earth did that come from?” “I didn’t even know I felt that way, I am amazed!” “I just got the biggest aha!” . . . and on and on it goes. They genuinely like or even love what they wrote — and I get the biggest joy of all, witnessing a new writer emerge.

So again, should everyone write a book?

If they want to know their mind, they should. If they want to understand their relationships and bring clarity to their life stories, they should. If they want to find out how creative they are, they should. And most important of all, if they harbour a dream to write a book, and the dream doesn’t go away, then of course they should, because it’s their soul’s calling.

Also, if they have people telling them for years that they should write a book, and it resonates true for them, then it behooves them to honour that truth instead of laughing it off, only to regret years later that they never did it. The worst is, dare I say, that they are on their deathbed, when it’s too late to mend any regrets.

I adore working with my book writing clients because even though they may have fears and resistance going on, they do it anyway — and before long, their fears are channelled into writings that go out in the world, and the next thing I know, they’re offering me an autographed copy of their published book!

It’s through this evidence that I’ve seen over and over again that I birthed my motto: “Your soul meets you on the page and something shifts. You strengthen, you begin to stand taller, and one day you notice that your voice on the page has become your voice in the world.”

Finally, there are countless rewards in writing a book! That’s why I wrote one called Your Life Matters – 8 Simple Steps to Writing Your Story. And that book, my dear, will tell you all the reasons why one should write their own.

🌟  🌟  🌟

PS — If you haven’t yet read Your Life Matters – 8 Simple Steps to Writing Your Story, you can easily get yourself a copy at your favourite online bookstore (links at the bottom of this page). And if reading the book makes you want to get coaching from me to give you a boost and get your book written now, well, your timing is great, because my coaching program, Your Life Matters Author Mentorship Program, is open for enrolment right now!

We start on April 6, 2021, and we run for 10 weeks. It’s online, with live coaching calls so that you can get my eyes on your book, and encouragement from a small group of people all working towards the same goals. Why not get your application in now and we can talk about it?

Apply now for the Your Life Matters Author Mentorship Program!

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18 Nov

Poetic Reflections on the Dynamics of Change

hands reaching through the vailThis is a talk I gave at the Church of Truth in Victoria, BC on November 17, 2019

To Introduce the Topic of the Dynamics of Change; I’d like to recite this Ojibway Prayer

Grandfather,
Look at our brokenness.
We know that in all creation
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We know that we are the ones
Who are divided
And we are the ones
Who must come back together
To walk in the Sacred way.
Grandfather,
Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion, and honour
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.

Today’s topic is poetic reflections on the dynamics of change

We’re looking at poems about memories and how writing is instrumental in integrating the dynamics of change.

So, what about memories? William Standford wrote this. It’s called:

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along the shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life —

what can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

Your Life Circumstances as Poetry

We can all read the poetry of Rumi or Hafiz, David Whyte and Mary Oliver, or in this case, William Stanford, and have our hearts lifted to the heavens by the simple weaving of their words.

But what if the harshest circumstances of your life were also considered poetry? Poetry in motion. Events, when funnelled through the Heart of Awareness become the alchemy of Grace leading you to transformation, leaving you triumphant — a Phoenix rising ever upwards from its own ashes, the dynamics of change. Poetry in motion.

Perhaps by now you have come to expect the trickster lurking around every corner. God’s secret design to mould us humans into a poetic mosaic featuring all possibilities. Divinity showing off its finest attire. Forcing us to traverse and transcend as we forge through parched deserts and darkened forests, swamps and jungles of heartbreak and grief, loss and fear until we awaken upon sparkling waters and coral colour beaches leading to abundant meadows of dancing wildflowers kissed by sunbeams drizzling through raindrops that transform into rainbows. God’s glorious archway of effervescent colours offering us The Sacred Promise. A Promise Of Hope. A Promise of Coming Home while walking right here upon our Earth.

Yes, Perfect Poetry in Motion.

I had never thought of us that way until I was invited to do this talk, but as I considered it, it makes perfect sense. After all, as God’s Children — and even more — inhabiting the spark of God within us — we are that! The absolute poetry of God. At our core, we are creative, expansive, exquisite beings of Light and when we tap into that aspect of us, the purest poetry is born, birthed in a million forms, just as we are billions of people and among billions of species on this planet, each a different expression of God’s creation, one part of the vast tapestry of the One Mind. The One Heart.

And those of us of the human kind, when we fall away from our connection to our Divinity, well, the Trickster moves in to get our attention. True? So that we can grow from and out of the inevitable painful set of circumstances that are delivered to us, reflecting on the dynamics of change, only to lead us back home to the Garden once again, to The One Heart of Creation — The One Heart of God.

As Rumi so stunningly penned, “Come even if you have broken your vow a thousand times, come, yet again, come, come. Come, come again, whoever you are, come.”

Yes, the invitation is to move beyond the sorrow and back to pillars of joy! Our true natural state. Come, come back again. Even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.

Rumi also wrote:

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”

One of the greatest sorrows that entered my door at the tender age of 20 is written up in a short passage from my first book, published 10 years ago, called, Re-Write Your Life — A Transformational Guide to Writing and Healing the Story of Our Lives.

Re-Write Your Life, Chapter 2, p. 9: “One day my mother sat me down . . . ”

I would like you now to listen to a poem that no one can recite better than the author himself — David Whyte. This is Sweet Darkness!

Now, I’d like to read you a poem I wrote which emerged from darkness, giving me a horizon further than I knew I could see. It was in the darkness that became the sweet confinement of my aloneness where I truly learned that anything or anyone that does not bring me alive was too dark for me. Through the dynamics of change, this poems emerged on the page:

Breathing Possibilities

You can talk about yesterday or talk about tomorrow
You can talk about the falling dollar, talk about your sorrow
You can talk about chemicals and how they’re poisoning the earth
You can talk about how bad it is and how it’s getting worse.

Or you can take this moment and softly close your eyes
Breathe a breath from deep within and do not compromise
Take another and then another and in the stillness feel
The wonder of this moment — can this too be real?

Stay within the silence and notice what you hear
Listen with your heart and watch your fears all disappear
For in this very moment a miracle is due
If you listen with your heart there will be a message just for you.

A child is being born right now; can you hear the sound of life?
In a little church just down the way, vows are being made as man and wife.
Somewhere on a hilltop a traveler has found her way.
And the dew upon the morning grass has welcomed a brand new day.

Stay within this moment for the miracle is here
There’s nothing that you need to do, nothing but be sincere
Life is bursting forth in every breath; And in the stillness find
A place to love, a place to join with every heart and mind.

Rejoice, for in this moment you can send blessings near and far
Rejoice, for in this moment you are a living star
And every time you feel afraid and wonder what to do
Come back to this one moment and know the miracle is you.

Transforming Grief to Joy, Scarcity to Abundance, and Fear to Love

The beauty of being human is that we are the only ones on the planet that can actually change our states of being through our intentions and our actions. Using the dynamics of change; we can transform grief to joy, scarcity to abundance, and fear to love. Other life forms can only respond to the circumstances in which they find themselves. Knowing that we have been given this gift by The Universe, this absolute privilege — our gift back is to change our state, to move from sadness to joy, and to intend to live a fully, loving, joy-filled, loved-filled magnificent life!

And now for another of the world’s greatest poets and musical geniuses, listen to this song by Leonard Cohen: Anthem.

My way through has always been writing. It brings me out of despair into a place of hope, into the place of all possibilities. It’s bizarre. I know that writing does that for me — yet even today, there are times that it’s not the first thing I go to in order to move through a challenge. Sometimes, it’s the fridge to toast another bagel. Or two!

I know I’m not alone. We all have our drug of choice. Me, I can’t help it. I’m Jewish. So it’s not my fault. When I was born, my mother, being a good Jewish mother, threw a dozen bagels into the blender and fed it to me as pablum. When I was teething she’d shove a whole bagel into my mouth — usually pumpernickel — until they came out with lox and cream cheese, my fave.

So, now you know why bagels are the number one comfort food for Jews across the planet! But me, I like to find ways to improve my bad habits, through the dynamics of change, so I went to a 12 step program for bagel addiction and — I thought I was at synagogue! There wasn’t one Christian or even a Muslim in the room! I have a strong suspicion that the person who set up this particular meeting place, also a bagel addict like me really doesn’t want to quit. And she doesn’t want us to either. All our meetings take place in the room above Mount Royal Bagels with the waft of sesame, pumpernickel, lox and cream cheese and everything bagels — moving through the floorboards and into each of our olfactory senses — throughout the entire meeting. So, you can hardly hold it against us when we relapse after every meeting. What can we do? Nu?

Putting Humour and Poetry Together with Music

Anyway, writing . . . poetry . . . poetry in motion. Song lyrics are definitely poetry in motion. And humour and poetry put together into song can be a spectacular way of movin’ and groovin’ out of the blues! We all know the truth of this. Put on a favourite dance tune and within seconds your body can’t sit still. Right?

So, going back to my earlier years, after many trips in and out of mental institutions, I met lots of people as screwed up as me — and didn’t feel quite as alone. We all had fears and phobias of one sort or another so I simply wrote a poem about it which is now going to be part of a musical I’m writing. My friend David just wrote the tune for it. It’s appropriately named, “The Phobia Song.” I’d like to leave you with this song.

Here is THE PHOBIA SONG, inspired by people everywhere — and all our conditions!

THE PHOBIA SONG
Lyrics by Junie Swadron
Music by David Halliwell

Fear of Dying and Afraid of Life
Fear of Flying and Afraid of Strife
Fear of Losing and Afraid to Win
Christ Almighty — Where do we Begin?

Are we crazy? — No We’re Not
We’re Simply Concerned By What We’ve Got
Fear of Anger — Afraid of Fat
Wars, Chores, and Doors — Imagine That

Claustrophobia, Agora Phobia
Phobias we can’t spell
Pathophobia — Xenophobia
We know em So Well
Hydrophobia — Zoo-o-Phobia
What’s Your Favourite? — Do Tell
Every Day is Crazy
And Life’s a Living Hell

Are We Crazy? — Well Maybe Yes
You Decide — It’s anyone’s Guess
Are We Crazy? — Well Maybe Not
Isn’t it Something Everyone’s Got?

Chorus

Fear of Cats — Afraid of Snakes
Fear of Laughter — For Goodness Sakes
Fear of Getting Old
Or Getting Too Tall

Fear of Waking — or Sleeping In
Fear of Pleasure — Afraid of Sin
Fear of Being Seen
In Your Own Skin

Outro
We’re Not Crazy — We’re Not Crazy
We’re Happy to Tell All Our Friends
We’re Not Crazy — We’re Not Crazy . . . exit stage left!

©️ Junie Swadron and David Halliwell, November 2019

My prayer for you: May you be perfect poetry in motion and co-create a magnificent, safe, loving, peaceful beautiful life of Joy, Peace, Grace, and Harmony!

All blessings,
Junie

Writing Prompt: Your Turn

Is there a story in your life that you could transform? Can you re-write it so that you can benefit from its lessons and feel free to move on? Try your hand at transforming grief to joy, scarcity to abundance, or fear to love. Write your story!

If you like, share your writing in  Junie’s Writing Sanctuary (if you’re not a member yet, just ask to join and I’ll get you in as soon as I can).

Your Life Matters book by Junie Swadron

Want to write your own memoir?

Start by downloading a free digital first chapter of my latest book, Your Life Matters! 8 Simple Steps to Writing Your Story.

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24 Oct

The Secret to Overcoming Resistance

resistance is a sign of love

Your Life Matters Author Mentorship Program
and How to Overcome Resistance with Junie Swadron 

Today I’ve got the answers to Frequently Asked Questions about my Your Life Matters Author Mentorship Program and the topic on how to overcome resistance stood out.

As creative people, we often feel an urge to create and then immediately resist it, whether we know it or not, with thoughts and behaviours that can be summed up as “resistance.” We must overcome resistance to reach our full creative potentials. Steven Pressfield wrote a whole book about resistance!

So, you might notice a trend in the FAQ below. Just know that LOVE wins out over resistance every time if you give it a chance, and that’s what I’m here to provide, along with concrete instructions on how to get your book/project done!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

     1. I don’t have a book in mind, but I do have a niggling urge to do some writing about my life. Is this course for me?

That’s a wonderful place to start! We all have stories inside us, we must overcome resistance and acknowledge that they matter. This course provides the structure, instruction, and encouragement to get your hands moving, and you will discover details on the page (or computer) as you write. Writing on the page is where you explore the work. Don’t be surprised if you discover stories you hadn’t thought of for years!

     2. I’ve been wanting to write my memoir for ages, but I keep putting it off. I think I’m scared. Can you help?

You need to tap into the stories inside you, but there’s an invisible force field called fear. You are not alone! As writers, we need to feel safe in order to create. As soon as you freeze up, that aperture through which your creativity flows closes up. With my unique and proven writing process, we will gently, step by step, get you through you to overcome resistance and into a state of flow. If you have something valuable to say, you need to say it — or it will cause all kinds of trouble — from an expensive chocolate habit to much worse! I will help you master resistance.

If you’re afraid you’re not good enough, or your writing isn’t good enough, yes, I hear you. As I said last week, you’re a human, living on this planet, and that’s good enough. Even if you don’t recognize it, you’ve got worthwhile stories to tell, and YOUR LIFE MATTERS!

     3. I would be mortified if my husband/parents/children/colleagues read this story. What can I do about that to overcome resistance of relational fear?

The first draft is for your eyes only. You are writing for yourself. There will be plenty of time after that for you to decide what to share.  Your confidentiality will be respected in the course, and in the end, you may decide that your writing is only for you. Or you may decide to share it with a few people or even publish it.

     4. Will this course be offered again?

Yes, I plan to run it again, but I’m not sure when. Also, because this is the first time that this program is being offered in its new online format, this is the lowest the price will ever be. If you are interested in this course, I suggest applying now!

     5. What if I miss a class?

The best part about having the course online is that the video components are being recorded, and will be available to be watched at your leisure. This means that there is no time barrier to prevent your participation in the course.

     6. Money is tight. Do you have a payment plan? 

Yes! There is a payment plan. We can talk about it on our call. By the way, money is never really the issue, nor is time. If it’s a dream that keeps coming back, it is your destiny. If it’s something that someone else told you should do, then it’s probably not.

The process of answering the questions in the application form, followed by a half-hour conversation with me, will help to reveal your own answers to your questions.

     7. Would you remind me of the details again?

Applications are open for Your Life Matters Author Mentorship Program, my online course.

In the course, you’ll get all 10 weeks of the program with specific instructions on how to write your stories/book, weekly 2-hour Zoom coaching calls with hot seat work and break-out rooms for witnessing of your writing, two private 60-minute 1-on-1 calls with me, membership in our private discussion group where you’ll be able to give and receive support with your cohort 24/7.

You’ll also receive:

A publishing package offer, free publicity, and an opportunity to attend the Author Mentorship Bootcamp Retreat!

Classes take place weekly on Zoom.

To see the detailed lesson plans for each week, please see the webpage.

Ready to overcome resistance? Your first step is to click one of the application buttons on this page.

We’ll get on a call where I can answer any other questions you might have.

What’s your story?
Are you ready to write it?
Apply now and tell me all about it!

All blessings,
Junie

“You offer a wonderful balance of kindness and sensitivity. Thank you for helping me silence my critic and to simply write. I am stronger because of you. You had the courage to show your fears and your struggles. You proved to us that we need not fear our challenges but embrace them. I honour the spirit within you that gently urges us on to places we do not go to alone—making us feel safe and special and loved.” — Debbi Jones

“This course has given me the opportunity to revisit experiences of joy and pain and to eventually and gradually realize the deep sacred gift of each person and of each experience in my life. And also to take responsibility for all of the reflections of myself these people and experiences have been. Thank you for providing such a healing, safe space to reveal what has been so difficult to express even in private before.” — Rosemary Anderson

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05 Sep

My Little Red Diary with the Lock and Key

My little red diary, by Junie SwadronThe Creation, Comfort and Healing Induced from Journalling

When I was thirteen years old, I was given a diary for my birthday. I treasured that little red book with its tiny lock and key. It brought me into a private world that no one else was allowed to enter.

Journalling set me on a path of writing and healing that I would never have known about back then. That writing became my panacea—the healing tool that I would use throughout my life that also become the bedrock of my career.

I learned at a young age how important our stories and journalling are, as they not only reflect the life journey we are on, but also the events and circumstances that have shaped us and the decisions we’ve made from the myriad choices available.

Why did we choose this path over that one? And what inspires us to move in the directions we do? It’s complex, and there are so many reasons.

It was my natural curiosity and ability to see and hear what isn’t always obvious to others that brought me to the work I do as both a psychotherapist and writing coach. My greatest joy is to inspire others to live the lives of their dreams.

When you’re afraid and living with anxiety or depression, just walking out the door can be a huge triumph. In my counselling practice, I teach practical tools that foster hope and confidence. As my clients transform the pain of their past, many wish to write about their success.

As a writing mentor, I guide people to find their voice on the page, which eventually becomes their voice in the world—both in their communication with others and through books they write and often publish.

It would be my honour to guide you into having the same kind of confidence while writing your life stories—to find the voice that may have been stolen from you since childhood. To not let nasty voices in your head stop you ever again from following your heart and living your dreams.

I love my work because I get to hear the enthusiasm and joy that comes from people who have worked with me:

“I can do this.”
“I AM a writer.”
“I love what I have written.”
“I can’t believe that just came out of my pen.”
“I feel so much better.”
“I have so much more clarity.”
“I have a direction.”
“My life does matter.”
“I’ve written my story. Yippee!”
Mostly I hear, “Thank you.”

You never know who is going to read your writing and say, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Your voice is just waiting to move from the page to the world, where the Universe takes care of the rest. Your job is to simply write. Mine is to guide you.

If you’d like to discuss 1:1 book coaching with me, book your 60-minute free consultation here.

I’ll soon be launching Your Life Matters, my new Author Mentorship Program for people who have worked with me in the past. Please let me know if you’re interested at yourlifematters@junieswadron.com. If you haven’t written with me yet, there’s no need to feel left out! Come to Sunday Sacred Writing Circle. It counts! And it’s amazing.

Here’s the link to register for Sunday Sacred Writing Circle.

You’re also invited to join Junie’s Writing Sanctuary on Facebook if you haven’t already, where we will be continuing the conversation.

All blessings,
Junie

Your Life Matters by Junie SwadronPS — The story about the little red diary is an excerpt from my book, Your Life Matters! 8 Simple Steps to Writing Your Story

Want more?

Download a free digital copy of Your Life Matters right here: www.junieswadron.com/memoir

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08 Jul

Carlie Kilduff—a woman on a mission

Carlie-Kilduff-600
Carlie Kilduff

It gives me tremendous joy to introduce you to Carlie Kilduff. Some of us have the privilege of meeting someone and immediately knowing that we’ve met a friend for life. That’s how it was for Carlie and me. Carlie is a spoken word artist, and my friends thought she would be a perfect fit for my fundraising event, Eyes On Talent. They couldn’t have been more spot on!

Carlie not only agreed to perform spoken word, but as an event organizer, she offered to help me bring the details of the evening together. It would take me too long to describe the heart and soul of this woman and her brilliance as an organizer (and former high school teacher). I simply know is how blessed I am to have met her and call her my friend. Here now is her story:

The Class

I had no idea what was in store when I first met them. They were a group of rowdy, unruly grade nine students with a reputation for sending teachers on stress leave. Some of their teachers were referring to them as “The Sweat Hounds” but I call them “The Class”.

I was not supposed to join the roster of teachers assigned to them in September 2011, but with a sudden change of fate I found myself welcoming them into my classroom a few days into the new school year. I was supposed to teach Social Studies, but since I had never taught this subject before, I begged to have it changed. I did not want to add the stress of a new subject to an extremely challenging class. I was granted the opportunity to teach English. I had never taught English either, but since I loved to read and write, I was much more keen to accept this mission.

It could not have come at a worse time in my life. Hard stories from some of my family members were spiralling out of control, I had just landed back to work after two years of leave from the birth of my first son, and I was trying to conceive my second child with some difficulty (no wonder why!). The way that I had always prided myself on perfectly planning and staying on top of every little detail was being chipped away day by day. Looking back, it was my “perfect storm” and many great and amazing things have followed.

The bell rang that morning and I braced myself as the class came bursting through my door. There was an energy about them, alerting me that I’d better pay attention. In my years of teaching, I had worked with some very tricky students and classes, but this was a whole new level. They trickled in, a slow parade of teenage hormones and the smell of Axe cologne.

One girl in particular seemed to be in charge so I watched her intently. She pulled a desk out of the lines that I had arranged and placed it beside her friend’s desk, right at the back corner, and threw her legs up on top of the desks with purpose, placing her head down in her arms with a look that said: “Go ahead and try me.” I was familiar with students trying to make hard-core first impressions before but every one of them had previously taken a step back when I approached them with kind firmness and gave them a cue of my expectations. Not this girl.

When I asked her to separate the desks and sit up properly, with full respect and gentle guidance, she said: “No!” The show was on and a few eyes and ears perked up as I had to quickly adjust my strategy, trying to offer her a doorway out of our confrontation, by suggesting that perhaps she was not understanding that I was serious and would have to send her to the office if she did not cooperate with me, making for an unnecessary first experience together. She very slowly and reluctantly did as I had asked, with every ounce of resistance and attitude she could possibly muster while still towing the line. I knew at once that this was going to be a gruelling hour.

The Call

It was a few weeks before I was able to teach a full lesson with the class. Managing their behaviour was a massive job, and keeping them emotionally and physically safe was a priority beyond curriculum. This also fell in the midst of terrible conditions due to teacher job action. Teachers and administrators were not communicating functionally, making everything much more difficult.

This was a class full of high needs. On paper there were far too many with various learning and behaviour challenges, but in reality, there were only three or four out of thirty who would be classified as “typical” and who seemed keen and ready to learn. Poor kids. All of them.

No matter where they sat, it was always at risk of fights breaking out and I would have line-ups of students saying that they must be moved because they could not sit near so-and-so or so-and-so. There was not enough space to hide the dysfunction and damage. When I dug into their family stories I was horrified to learn what had shaped them. Collectively, as a class being together for many years in the school, they had encouraged several teachers to leave them due to stress. Individually, they were a motley crew of horrendous pain stories.

It all made sense even if it was overwhelming. Since my life was a series of pieces falling apart at this time already, I was finding my own health and well-being to be on a slippery downhill slope. I had been diagnosed with Bi-Polar Disorder in my early twenties. I had been on medications for many years, weaned off, was back on, and was off again when working with the class. Since I was trying to conceive a baby, I did not want to get back on medications or I would have to postpone the conception, seeing as it would be developmentally damaging for a fetus.

I was riding a tight line. I was keeping careful watch on my own health and professionalism. The stress was beyond anything I had ever experienced. I had always kept up with a busy lifestyle very well, being highly organized and hardworking, but the seams were falling apart and there was nothing I could do about it.

As this was happening, a small voice seemed to assure me that it was alright. I found a calm place in the storm and began to hang out there. It wanted to tell me some very important things. Letting the outside loosen, I was able to dive into this new space and it was here that I began to investigate what these students needed from me and how I could possibly give it to them.

It was a call for self-love, for compassion and nurturing in ways I had never known in my own life. This was the missing piece. There was a form of love that they needed, and school had been far too busy and preoccupied to offer it to them. Life in general does not teach us about this kind of love. Excited to have put my finger on it, I found myself at a loss for how to bring them this love, since I was also without it.

My mission from that point became one of learning how to love myself in this way so that I could love them and teach them to love themselves.

Fast Forward

Things in the classroom radically changed and we made some serious transformations. It was surreal in many ways. Young lives were deeply touched but none more than mine. This was the defining moment of my life.

After some forward movement with the class, I had calmed down enough to conceive my second son, and with a tiny growing life in my womb, I was aware that my health was still at risk, so I had to make a tough decision to reduce my teaching load before taking maternity leave. Sadly, I had to say good-bye to the class. I had avoided it as long as I could because I did not want them to think that they had scared me away, I wanted them to know that everything we had been through together was real and true, and most of all, I loved them.

There were many tears as I wrapped up with the class. I continued teaching part-time until taking my leave to prepare for the birth of my son. My pregnancy had been hard and I needed some rest and self-care.

My beautiful son was born on June 20, 2012, making me a momma for the second time. Rather than experiencing post-partum depression like I did after my first birth, I hit the ground running. Something had touched me to the core. I was a new creation, and I had work to do.

Carlie Now

Many amazing stories have come from and through the class. It has been a mixed bag of emotions and stories. Since working with and learning to love them and myself, I have embarked on a journey of self-discovery and self-healing. I have transformed from the inside out. This is a process still underway . . . it never ends!

I have resigned from teaching and am now offering spoken word poetry shows at local coffee shops in Victoria. I share powerful and passionate messages of love, joy, peace, healing, shifting world, and self-value. My work is deep, moving, and electric. Many people have connected with it and lives are being changed.

I encourage you to find my videos on YouTube (go to YouTube and type in my name). Please take the time to watch. If you like what you see, will you please help me spread them far and wide through your social media networks and word of mouth? This is not a business, but rather it is a ministry of the heart. I am a truth seeker and speaker. Our world is starving for truth but many are reluctant, and so I need all the help I can get in connecting these messages, delivered so beautifully through my spoken word poems, with those who need to hear them. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Carlie to Come

I have sensed a change of direction, or a deepening of mission for a long time. My show series has come to an end for the summer. I plan to do some busking downtown for fun and when September rolls around, I will begin anew. I am not sure exactly what is to come, but I can feel it creating within me. I will continue to share my spoken word poetry, but I see myself doing more speaking and advocating. I will be calling myself a Spiritual Health Educator and Advocate. I feel called to take on some very gritty topics like “The Voice of Depression and Suicide”, “Reconciliation with Religion”, and “This Game’s Not Fun” (about bullying).

We are always becoming. We are grown from the moments that we experience. I am forever grateful for the class and all that has come from them and the messy lessons they have taught me. Now, everybody who is touched by my work has been blessed by the class!

Be sure to watch Carlie’s Spoken Word Performance, Beauty Redefined:

As always, please leave your comments below or join us at Junie’s Writing Sanctuary to contribute to the conversation.

All blessings,

Junie

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29 Apr

Mothers, Viewed Through the Eyes of their Children

woman

Mother’s Day is just around the corner

How do you feel when you think about your mom? Is it warm and tender or is it something else?

Every child craves a loving and nurturing relationship with the person who carried them in her womb and gave them life. Yet, as no two mothers are alike, we may fit somewhere in the spectrum from almost never to almost always having our needs to be loved and cherished met and satisfied.

If we were truly blessed, we grew up feeling treasured, respected, and adored. We knew we could come to our parents, and for the purposes of this article, our moms, for anything and she was always there for us. She listened, she dried our tears, offered encouragement, and was our champion along the path.

Yet many people had a mother who was unable to go beyond her own wounds to show affection and may have unwittingly projected her fear and anger onto her children instead. Children do not know that the way they are treated has nothing to do with them. They only know how painful it to be ignored or ridiculed or something else that causes hurt or shame.

Fast forward to adulthood

If you were one of those children who was left to your own devices to figure out how to feel safe in the world, it’s likely, if you have not healed your heartbreak, you could still be harbouring feelings of regret, hurt and confusion. You may feel angry and tired, depressed or empty. And you may be projecting those unhealed wounds onto your own children or in other relationships in your life. I hope not, but you will know if this rings true for you.

There is a strong correlation between the way we feel about ourselves and behave in the world and the way we were raised.

Choose change before the universe chooses it for you!

Sometimes, it’s not until life becomes unbearable that we either open ourselves up to change, or in many cases, life circumstances force us to. I know that was certainly true for me. After being in psychiatric hospitals time and again because of circumstances related to my bi-polar illness, I decided not to let that spoil my life. Specifically, I did not want the labels attached to my name to identify who I am. I knew I would have to re-write that story of mental illness if I were to go on and have a meaningful, productive life.

What it could cost not to change

It was my desperate need to stop the drama, my willingness to reach out, and my earnest wish to heal the pain from the past, no matter what that took, that brought me to the teachers that helped me transform my life in healthy ways. I instinctively knew what it would cost me if I didn’t do whatever it took to turn things around. It was simple, really. I saw myself remaining in unhealthy relationships, making poor choices, being in and out of psychiatric wards, having to start all over again, feeling hopeless and unworthy of love.

Thankfully, I listened to the voice of my inner spirit, even though it was only a whisper, and even though my ego was loud and enticing. I chose a path of inner peace. And when I stumble and fall, I know how to find my way back. I simply brush myself off and keep going, but with more insight in my toolkit.

Living a life you love

Today, and for many years, I have been living a life that I love. I also no longer regret the past. Those stories not only shaped me, but offered gifts of strength, insight and wisdom that I couldn’t have learned any other way. This allows me to confidently and compassionately share what I have learned with others.

I am not stating that it was a picnic climbing the ladder. It was bloody hard at times. I wanted to give up and did many times. The hardest story to find peace with was the one with my mother.

Back to mothers

My mother, Minnie, and me at my sister Barbara's wedding in 1991.
My mother, Minnie, and me at my sister Barbara’s wedding in 1991.

I know my mother loved me. She showed me time and time again with hugs and kisses, with loving talks and was my number one champion when my bi-polar illness took hold. Unfortunately, she also shared my illness but was undiagnosed. So I grew up in a home where we never knew if mom was going to be in one of her loving moods or raging ones.

In my path of healing, I forgave my mother long ago. In fact, I love her to pieces and tell her so often, even though she passed away seven years ago. I was able to remove the label and role of “mother” and see her as a woman on her own path, often a heartbreaking one, and she did not have the know-how to make it better. That still saddens me. It hurts me to the core. She was an amazing woman, but she just didn’t know it. Her insecurities, which she used as ammunition sometimes, simply didn’t allow her to go beyond the camouflage of comfort she hid behind.

I feel like telling again, right now. Mom, if you can hear me from Heaven, I love you to the moon and back and I pray that you are at peace.

Your turn

Folks, soon it will be Mother’s Day. Let your mom know how much you love her. If she wasn’t or isn’t the kind of mom you would have asked for, take the high road anyway. She deserves more love, not less. And so do you. Find it in your heart to forgive her for any transgressions and make this the happiest Mother’s day you have had up until now.

Writing Prompt

What words of love would you want to tell your mother today? And if you don’t feel loving toward her, write a pretend dialogue between you and your mom. Tell her everything you have always wanted to say. Imagine her listening to you in a way that she never has before, and that she answers you through the wisdom of her Higher Self, the part of her that loves you unconditionally.

Feature Stories

Today I am featuring two women whose stories are in my book, Re-Write Your Life. You will be touched as you read the stories of their inner journeys with their mothers in the most poignant, real, and beautiful ways.

quillThe Legacy,
by Judy McIllmoyl

When I heard of our topic for this writing, I knew I had to write of you. I don’t even know your name. My eyes have never been blessed by the sight of your face. I long to know you—a longing deeper perhaps than I have an understanding of. You are my link to the past. To the love that brought me into being. You have a legacy that I will never know. What made you dance with joy? What were you most passionate about? What did you fear most, in the depths of your despair? When you awakened in the morning what were your first thoughts? When you caught your reflection in a shop window, did you ever catch your breath and think of me?

Many years went by when I did not let my thoughts come to rest on you. That wasn’t allowed. Everything was as it should be. I was with parents who loved me. Enough said. But was it enough? While never given permission to mourn the loss of the living you, you were lost to me. Where were you when I was so alone and so afraid? Is my fear your legacy to me? Is it my gifts, my deep love for nature and all things delicate and tender and easily broken?

As time leaves its etchings on me, I look in my eyes and wonder who you are. I do long to know you…as one soul knows another; not by name or even a shared past, but by an honouring of each other’s presence here on earth. You gave me life. I was once a part of you and I still am; as you are still a part of me, even though I don’t even know your name.

quillMasks, by Sharon Pocock

I step out of the shower and do the things that women do. Towel dry, moisturize, put products in my hair that promise the Hollywood look and god knows it could do with a little help. Wash my face, then comes toner and more moisturizer. Do I really believe I need a separate cream or gel for under my eyes? I’ve no idea but the package was cute and the jar looks elegant on the washstand, promising its own patented fountain of youth. I dry my hair and then the real work begins.

Concealer, just a touch under the eyes and hey, if I need it there, it kind of suggests the eye cream is the snake oil I always suspected. A little foundation, not all over, just on the bits that need it. Hmm, maybe it should be all over. A little eyeliner, maybe olive, or grey, or burgundy, or black if I’m in a Dusty Springfield mood. A little blush, just a touch, a suggestion of heat and then the final touch – lipstick. When I was younger it was bold colours, making a statement in a too pale face, but now in my more somber, if not more sober years, I’m safe in natural, and taupe, and suede and all the other names the marketing men created to mean the same shade of dull. It’s taken me years to hone these skills. To know which colour to hide behind, what creates the desired mask of the moment. But it wasn’t always the case.

I think back to a small, shy girl, tongue-tied in the face of boys. More at home on horseback than at a teenage party. I didn’t know the code words. Couldn’t crack the body language and the secret handshakes that make the closed world of a popular teenager go round. I remember standing, self-conscious in a pair of sage green dungarees that I’d coveted for the longest time. I thought I was the bee’s knees. I thought I was the kick. I walked into the party and thought that I would die.

The room was wall to wall with tight jeans and tighter tops. With hair styled within an inch of its life and lipstick in every rainbow colour. I stood there in my token flash of blue eyeshadow, clutching at my coke and wondering if I could pluck up the nerve to speak to the boy I liked. Finally I took my courage in both hands and made the move and he smiled and talked about our homework and then he walked away, leaving me stranded in the middle of the floor. I know that people watched and people whispered and probably laughed, but I didn’t hear them as I stood frozen, locked in my own humiliation. But I didn’t blame him. He was a teenage boy and that’s how they were. I blamed you.

I blamed you for not teaching me the language, not teaching me the code I would need to open this new door. I blamed you for not talking about lipstick and blush, powder and eyeliner. I blamed you for letting me think that my prized dungarees were suitable armour for a teenage party. I blamed you for all these things – for not giving me the weapons I needed to survive in shark infested waters. I was your daughter and you were my mum and I loved you so much, but I blamed you for not helping me become a woman. For not helping me understand.

I made so many mistakes in those black years; fell over my feet in so many ways. I look back and shiver and think of the deep pools I almost drowned in – putting myself in positions where the worst might have happened because I didn’t understand the subtext.

That was then and I grieve for the skinny girl, so unsure in her own skin, desperate to understand and be understood. Desperate for entrée into this adult world of sophistication and sexual knowledge. But this is now and I finally see the girl for what she was. And I see you in the same blinding light.

I was fifteen when he went away and you were drowning, clutching at straws to keep you afloat and I was your anchor in that long turbulent year. Your love had turned his back and found new pastures and my brother didn’t want to know. What nineteen-year-old boy wants to admit that the father he worshipped had feet of clay? So he withdrew into the strange dark world that teenage boys inhabit and left us two to cope.

We floated in our homemade life raft, keeping each other warm. I cooked and cleaned and I shopped and played housekeeper and counsellor and nursemaid. And by default you became the child in that time and I became the adult. I put away childish things and entered the adult world. The year passed and after more false starts than I can count, he came back, cap in hand and you finally smiled again. But I continued to cook and shop and be your sounding board because I was now an equal in your eyes.

Looking back, that was the root of the problem. In that long year I grew up, concentrating on the mundane struggle of getting through the day. At the end I had crossed the Rubicon and couldn’t cross back. My childhood, my teenage years of growth and learning and experimentation had gone—disappeared without ever really being explored, every unanswered question buried in a shallow grave with a sprig of rue on top.

I couldn’t go back, so I walked forward into life, ill-equipped to deal with the nuances of this strange, new world. But it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t realize that I hadn’t asked the questions. You’d been lost and I bridged the gap and when you looked again you saw a woman, an adult and I allowed you the deception.

So I stand here and look in the mirror. Picking up cleanser and tissues I start to wipe away the mask. Stroke by stroke, bit by bit, the walls come down and then tissue is dirty with beige and red and black. I stand and stare into the mirror, my face clean and bare and finally, I see myself with all my flaws and faults and I’m happy with the reflection. And as I look, I see you too. I finally see the person—not the mother or the wife, but I see the woman, with all your fears and insecurities and joys. I see you and know you did the best you could and I don’t blame you anymore.

 

As always, please leave your comments below or join us at Junie’s Writing Sanctuary to join the conversation.

All blessings,
Junie

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03 Mar

Mitch Rockert: 1957 – 1983

Self-portrait by Mitch Rockert

This is the second in a series, featuring people who have gone through difficult times and, through their own processes of healing, have come to a place of peace. Unless we are people like Eckhart Tolle or Byron Katie who have had spontaneous awakenings, it can take a very long time… and yet with perseverance and grace, we are healed.

This week I am proud to feature a dear friend of mine, Judith Rockert. I met Judith approximately twenty years ago in Toronto and there was an instant camaraderie. Not long after we met, she learned of my bouts of deep depression, the revolving-door hospitalizations, and became a rock for me.

Unfortunately, she had had plenty of experience as a caregiver for someone with mental illness—her very own precious and truly gifted son Mitch, who lived with schizophrenia. Mitch took his life some years before I met Judith. Judith is a hero to me. Below is Mitch’s story told in Judith’s words. In addition there is an audio-file you can listen to, starting with a recording of Mitch playing music with friends.

In November 2015 when I was visiting Toronto, Judith took me to see Mitch’s artwork in the gallery where it is now permanently housed, and I had the privilege of having Judith share the stories that went with each piece.

If you have a story you’d like to share with us, please tell me about it or leave a comment below.

Mitch Rockert: 1957 – 1983

by Judith Rockert

fragmented-face
Fragmented Face sculpture by Mitch

Much of the 25 years of my son Mitch’s life were a living nightmare for him and all of us who dearly loved him. He was conscious, warm and loving, funny, handsome, tender and charismatic. He was brilliant, a talented musician, a creative artist and he also had paranoid schizophrenia with severe psychotic bouts. He was in pain with no relief in sight. He was a spectacular person with deep insight into his condition.

It was the dark ages of mental illness. Very little was known or explained, there were poor medical facilities for people like him, and terrible communication between doctors and families. In these times, secrecy was standard, and people hesitated to discuss suicide for fear of triggering another attempt—and there were many. Meds were riddled with side effects that were unmanageable.

In Canada, there were no locked facilities and the professionals clearly indicated that if Mitch wasn’t confined, he would surely take his life. Keeping him alive until after he turned 30 was the goal, as apparently the illness becomes a washed-down version after that. I was determined to find answers, doctors who could help us—I committed to leaving NO stone unturned.

I found a hospital in Connecticut that met our prerequisites, and he was admitted in 1978, remaining there for 4 years. Following his return to Toronto, he took his life in a subway in April of 1983 at the age of 25.

Mitch looking his best
Mitch looking his best

How did I cope? Those were gut-wrenching days for me. I was the owner of a travel business that was very demanding. In some ways, it probably saved me, occupying my mind with something other than mental illness.

In other ways, my physical being was breaking down. I experienced huge weight gain, crying and sobbing daily in emotional pain, hiding from those that didn’t ‘get it’, trying to keep the family together, keeping the peace between our staff and my business partner, whose morals and values were the polar opposite of mine, and always wearing a mask to the outside world. I lived a pretense.

Mitch-pianoQuite apart from the issues of psychiatrists, hospitals, electric shock therapy and anti psychotic drugs, I came to realize that the rest of my life was toxic. I was pulled in many directions and needed a warm heart and arm around me. Both eluded me. There was no refuge.

I was really alone and from that I learned to be strong within myself. I discovered that I had whatever I needed inside of me. I was my light—my light was in me. I was my strength; my strength was in me. I relied on my own resources for comfort and sustenance. I found my power.

I also think that having a fatal food allergy has strengthened my core. I must be vigilant daily in my food intake whether I’m cooking for myself or eating in a trusted restaurant. My very life rests in my hands so I’ve grown strong within myself. I’m very outgoing, well-travelled, and love people, so I bond with others easily and am interested in their lives.

Judith speaking at Mitch’s art opening

During those years, I connected with two psychotherapist friends that I could talk to. It was a great relief to speak openly about Mitch’s condition and the heartache caused by the chaos of mental illness.

For those of you facing a mental illness diagnosis of a loved one today, the dark ages have morphed into the light. There are now better drugs, improved medical facilities, better communication between families and doctors, and a host of supportive services available. An openness and acceptance have evolved where only hiding and shame existed.

Search out every resource and give some of them a try. Some will fit with your story and others will not. But know that hope is here where there was a vacuum in Mitch’s time. I encourage you to search, to find a new piece… something you didn’t know before; something that will help you and your loved one. My open heart wishes you many insights on your journey.

After Mitch’s death, I sought advice and guidance and when I was ready, there was a divorce, saying goodbye to the business I’d nurtured, and finally a knowing that Mitch had achieved the success he was so driven to accomplish—taking his life and ending the pain for which there was no other answer.

Years later, I wrote this poem:

The open window frames the midnight sky.

A sliver of a silver moon hangs suspended, keeping company with a myriad of stars.

Translucent clouds appear as if by palate, brushed here and there amongst the heavens.

During this tranquil moment, I think of you Mitch, a spirit free of pain, having paid your karmic debt while here on earth.

Gone are the incarcerations and confinements that bound your soul.

Your purity and goodness transcends the higher plane you now call home.

My heart is full of maternal love for who you were; for the legacy and life awakening lessons you left behind.

There is great peace in knowing you are finally free~~~and so am I.

Gainey Ranch, Scottsdale, Arizona | Winter 1992

Mitch’s Art Exhibit Opening

MitchArtExhibit3Several years ago, I was looking for a permanent place for Mitch’s paintings to be displayed. A friend introduced me to Dr. Nehama Baum, the Director of the MukiBaum Accessibility Centre in Toronto. Dr. Baum opened her arms to the idea of being a home to Mitch’s some thirty pieces of artwork. She suggested an opening night to introduce his work. She is a maverick in this field; a woman of great wisdom and experience. Using Dr. Baum’s person-centred Multi-Focal Approach, the Centre provides services, treatments, and opportunities to people with complex autism and other developmental, and/or neurological sensory disabilities.

Below is a recording of the art exhibit opening (wait 10 seconds for the sound to start). You’ll hear Mitch playing guitar and bass on two songs. He and some friends recorded the songs in Connecticut a few months before he died.

There were several speakers that evening: Bob, a cousin, spoke of his connection to Mitch and their shared love of the outdoors, Dr. John spoke of his work with the brain, Dr. Baum spoke of the dream every parent has for their child, and I spoke of Mitch, his life and his death.


…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Instead of offering a writing prompt this week, I would like to put this to you: if you are a parent, friend, or caregiver of a person with a mental health challenge, or are someone with a lived experience of mental illness, it would be wonderful to receive your comments. You can leave a comment for Judith or share your own journey below.

For myself, as a woman with bi-polar illness, diagnosed at the age of 19, I can say that today there is so much more hope. I am blessed to work part-time at BC Schizophrenia Society in Victoria and there are wonderful programs that are life changing and are also free of charge. You can see what we offer here.

As always, please leave a comment below or join us at Junie’s Writing Sanctuary to join the conversation.

All blessings,
Junie

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28 Dec

2016: Finding Your Key to the Kingdom of Self-Love

love-rA brand new year is approaching, the holiday rush is over, you are alone with your thoughts and begin to reflect upon the past year. You think about your successes, those things you had set out to accomplish, and you did them. You think about the things you wished to accomplish but did not. Ask yourself, do I put more weight on what I was able to achieve, or on what I wish I had achieved? Rather than get upset by what didn’t happen, know you have not failed. YOU ARE ENOUGH JUST AS YOU ARE.

Let’s commit to making 2016 the year we stop judging ourselves. Let this be the year that we put our hands over our hearts and commit to loving ourselves more than we ever have before. Would we not treat a child in who is hurting with compassion and love? Let us give more love, not less, to the parts of ourselves that are lying awake at night anxious and worried.

Let us stop the barrage of judgments, criticisms, the ‘not good enough’ statements. Instead, let this be our New Year’s resolution—a resolution for each and every day, to feed our tender hearts with reverent kindness.

One of the best ways I know to do this is simply by being honest with ourselves. Instead of slapping down a whole bunch of affirmations for the New Year that do not ring true, bring yourself back into this moment instead and write down what is true.

Let writing become your meditation—a place to rest your heart on the page with your words, your truth, your hopes and dreams. It is private. You do not need to censor yourself or please someone else. Let writing be your key to the kingdom of self-love. Your journal is as close as a hand’s reach away, ready to reveal the deepest insights and wisdom you could ever ask for, possibly even the seeds of a book in you that is gestating there, ready to be birthed. Dream your biggest dreams and may the universe bless every one!

Writing Prompt 
Take an hour alone. Light a candle and set an atmosphere of serenity and beauty. Write a letter to Your Higher Self, God, your Guardian Angel, The Universe. Say everything that’s on your mind and in your heart. Next, write a letter back from that deity or your Guardian Angel, or Higher Self. Don’t engage your monkey mind and start to think that you’re making it up. Simply listen, breathe and allow. Know that your words have been heard and that you are being responded to with love and grace. Know that you are loved beyond measure.

Writing Tip
Yesterday, in my Sunday Afternoon Sacred Writing Circle, we were writing about living our highest vision. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote: “I always knew, even as a child, that somehow I was protected. When I was given my first diary at the age of eleven, it wasn’t just a place to write down my thoughts, it was a place to commune with God. On the pages I have always been met with an omnipotent presence ready to love my tender heart.”

As you write in your journal, allow whatever you believe is All-Loving to be present with you as you write. Perhaps God is not a word you would use. Maybe it is Universal Intelligence, your Guardian Angel, The Beloved, Nature. Or perhaps it is someone you know who loves you unconditionally. Imagine as you write that that deity or person is with you as a benevolent witness, cascading you with compassion and love.

How did this work for you? Please leave your comments below, or join and contribute to our private Facebook group, Junie’s Writing Sanctuary.

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14 Jul

Ready To Transform Your Life?

Have you ever considered writing your life stories but then have stopped yourself because there are things you’d just rather not remember let alone write about?

What if there was a way of returning to those same stories that when you thought of them, you felt empowered rather than disturbed? A way that would transform how you felt about yourself as well as certain people and events from your past?

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12 Jul

Journey Into Your Deepest Truth

Through June’s counsel, and your own Intuitive Soul Writings you will be guided to find the answers to questions you have about current life situations.

Divination Readings provide a roadmap to accessing your Higher Self. It is here where truth, beauty, creativity and love reside.

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02 Apr

Welcome

My name is June Swadron. Please make yourself comfortable and have a leisurely look around while I introduce myself to you through some of the services and workshops I offer. It is my hope that everyone who visits me here benefits in some way. Either by deciding to call for a private counseling/coaching session, registering for one of my many workshops, or simply by having a sense of well-being while browsing through these on-line pages.

May your day be blessed with peace, kindness and joy.

Namaste,
June

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