Surrendering to the Universe Pt. 2 : Mother Earth
I had previously written about the experience of doing a past life regression and what that looked like for me at the time and moving forward. The past life regression was only a small piece of what I had experienced during my 4 day 4 night event. As some of you know, I have some interesting abilities to channel spirits as well as some other things like clairvoyance and telepathy and remote viewing. A year ago, I knew I had these abilities but I wasn’t quite sure how powerful they were or how to utilize any of these god given “skills” in my everyday life. This is what I set out to find during this “out of body experience.” My goal in doing this was to figure out what I was capable of, how to separate my own thoughts from those of others, and to take in any messages that the spirits wanted to give me. I don’t initiate this type of channeling often because it is incredibly mentally and physically taxing and can be very dangerous. I initiated it in December 2023 for the second time in my life ( first time in April 2023). I felt stuck and I needed answers so the only thing left to do was to totally let go and let the spirits and god take the wheel. In this blog post I will be doing my best to recollect what I had experienced during those 4 days.
At the beginning of this “quest” I was meeting an old coworker for dinner at one of my favorite spots close to me. She had a family member pass years prior and I felt this family member's presence heavily before leaving my house for the restaurant. I was so scared that I sat in my dry bath tub trying to muster up the courage to go. This family member also wanted me to pass a message to her about what had happened to them when they passed. When we were at dinner I told her this and she asked me if the spirits go inside of me to speak or if they stay outside of me. I told her that I wasn’t sure I just knew that there was a heavy presence and that was what he wanted me to tell her. After I left the restaurant I felt an even bigger spiritual presence with me than there was when I walked in, specifically a heavy military presence. On the drive home I was merging north on I 25 and there was a semi truck passing me at the same time. I sensed dozens to fifty human lives in the back of that truck and I wasn’t sure what to do. What was I supposed to do? Call the cops and say “hey I was driving and I got a sense that there are a ton of people on a semi-truck heading north on I25” with 0 evidence. I got home and started writing everything down.
After I got home another friend had reached out to me and her grandfather was dying. She asked me where his soul should reincarnate. I told her I wasn’t sure what the rules were and started asking questions. Does he have to come back as a human? Can he come back as a cat? What happened to Einstein when he died? Those were the types of questions I asked in regards to the concept of reincarnation. After that, my friend and I hung up and then I was taken for a ride. My past life regression began and like I mentioned in my previous post, I started to experience feelings of warfare. “If I am mother earth what do I need to know?” They showed me landmines, nuclear warfare, chemical warfare, and a lot of things as it relates to the holocaust and various wars, past and present around the globe. At the same time, I was remote viewing in Gaza and experienced some horrific things when it came to the hostages. Rape. I have a hard time talking about / thinking about that part of the experience as it is too traumatizing.
The two last things I had experienced was the feeling of dying in a gas chamber and drowning in the ocean. At one point I had asked the spirits to identify themselves by showing me how they died. On day 4 of 4 I was in the shower and I began to smell gas. I sat on the floor for 3 or 4 minutes and cried as this spirit showed me how she died in a gas chamber during the Holocaust . After I got out of the shower, I began to feel like I was at sea diving gasping for water. That spirit was in the Navy and died by drowning. I had at least 100 more of these “mini experiences” through these four days. A lot of military , a lot of family members, a lot of family members of friends all came to me during that time.
What did going through all of this accomplish? Well to start, any outstanding questions that I had had been answered and if they weren’t answered during those four days, they were clarified over the course of the year. This was an incredibly spiritual experience and it did force me to let go and trust something I couldn’t see . It also gave me a better sense of myself, my true character, nature, and my purpose on this planet. It also allowed me to face any fears that I had that were holding me back. Sleep wasn’t coming easy prior to this experience and I can say that the year of 2024 was the year where I got my best sleep; up and down with the sun. I still channel but not as often and when I do I do it for much shorter periods of time. The only thing I can’t do is move objects with my brain like Matilda… never say never ;)
Gratitude
Out of all of the things in the world, gratitude is one of the ways, if consistent has the power to raise ones vibration in any state. I believe that gratitude is important to practice every day, if not multiple times of day. Gratitude is a powerful practice to cultivate when things are bad as well as when things are very good because. When things are bad, it may be harder to find things we are grateful for forcing us to look deeper into ourselves and into our lives to find something to be thankful for when during most times, we would probably tend to take these things for granted. When things are good, it is easier to find a sense of abundance in our lives with a gratitude practice. Either way, in both scenarios practicing gratitude raises your vibration and helps you maintain a positive outlook setting yourself up for a more fulfilling life. Today, I thought it would be a great to practice a little gratitude myself with a consolidated list of the things I am grateful for this holiday season.
My family, immediate and extended for being there for me when things are good and when things are not do good
My new job for letting me continue to heal in a safe environment while learning more about holistic/ complimentary medicine
My cat, Elliot Stabler for being my protector in this realm and others the last 8 years of my life.
My health. Working in the health care industry with people between the age of 1 year and 100 + years has really made me grateful for my body, what it has done for me over the course of my life.
Music. I am a very deep thinker and sometimes I have a hard time organizing my words and articulating my thoughts, music by artists such as Stevie Nicks and Florence Welch have helped me navigate through some tough times
Being able to get some good, deep sleep. There was a time probably close to three years, where I would hardly more than four hours a night. I now sleep anywhere 8-12 hours a night depending on the night which gives me more natural energy through the day
Myself. The last four years of my life has really been a journey of self discovery and a challenge to learn how to trust myself. I am grateful for my work ethic, my compassion, my empathy and my ability to get back up again and again.
The people who have had my best interests at heart who have pushed me to become the best version of myself. They are the people who have stood by my side when I was at my lowest, and helped guide me back to the light.
When things get hard
I know I am not the only one who is feeling this, it feels like the whole world is, but things seem tough right now from a personal to a global scale. Whether it is a fear or anxiety about what is to come on a global and national level, health issues like cancer or dementia within a family, substance abuse or homelessness, financial hardship, depression rates are at an all time high; it just seems like more people than not are struggling in one way or another. On a personal level over the last four years, I lost a job at a place I thought I would spend the rest of my life at, I lost friends who I had trusted, I have family members who are battling cancer and cognitive decline diseases like dementia and. The saying is true ‘ when it rains it pours’ and I honestly never expected it to pour this much during such a short period of time. I know at the beginning when all of these issues began to present themselves, one on top of another, it seemed like it was going to be impossible to overcome because it just seemed like everything was “going to shit” for lack of a better term.
Once I knew and sensed a lot of these challenges were going to come fast one after another, I knew I had to trade in some old habits for new to prepare for what is to come. Now, I do think that these new habits like yoga, mediation and energy healing were helpful and in my overall wellness during this time, there are things in life that we can not prepare for and if we spent our time trying to prepare for all of the possible things that could go wrong, we wouldn’t be living at all. Balance in life is key and that is true with focusing on the things that we can control and the process and letting go of what we can not control, or getting on the same frequency of the universal flow of life. Now, I am not talking about toxic positivity here, it is ok to acknowledge that circumstances are shit and that there are things that happen to people in life that are not fair. People suffer for things they shouldn't have to suffer for and denying and pretending everything is perfect when they are not is counterproductive but at the same time obsessing over the suffering is also counter productive . This is the human condition and it is painful to be a human sometimes. I think that making this acknowledgment first is important when it comes to dealing with pain and suffering. From there, the decision on how to proceed is yours.
It is the challenging times that help a person grow and reveal their true character. Intention is important and something I try to do when faced with a challenge in my path, is ask myself what I can learn from the situation and what I think I can get out of it while also understanding that I need to be flexible because what I think the lesson is upfront compared to the universal lesson may be different. An open mind and a growth mindset are two things that if used with intention, will help you learn and grow from any situation, good and bad. It is also important to let yourself feel anything you need to feel because the only way for the brain and the body to process life's events is through emotion. Getting in touch with your body during these times will help you better understand how different emotions present themselves in the body and your behavior. I know for me, I always struggled with the emotion of anger so I used these situations to help me better understand the emotion, how it feels in my body, how my brain processes it and how to move that energy in a healthy, productive way.
Now even though it is good to learn some of these things on your own, having people in your life to support you through difficult times is imperative. I will admit that after the shit hit the fan and I lost “friends” my trauma response was to isolate myself from everyone. I do think that this step was necessary for my healing since I am sensitive to other people's feelings and emotions, so that I could separate what they were feeling from what my feelings are, I needed to be mostly alone in order to do this. It is good to be with and understand yourself but you don’t want to isolate yourself too much. Humans are social beings and need support systems during times of turmoil, support systems that love you unconditionally. If you are ever in doubt it never hurts to reach out to a trusted friend or family member to talk through some of the harder emotions that you may not be able to work through on your own, and of course seek help if you need it. I still see my therapist at least once a month just to make sure I am on the right track.
This holiday season hold the ones that you love tight and tell them that you love them because tomorrow is not guaranteed . Always choose kindness and that starts by being kind with yourself, you can not fill someone else's cup if your own cup is not full so take care of yourself and give yourself grace. Gratitude is probably the most important thing when things are tough. Sometimes when we are forced to look harder at things to be grateful that is where true growth happens and it also makes us more grateful for what we have when things are good.
Past Lives
I debated all week about whether or not to write on this topic because it can be or come off as a little controversial depending on who you are talking to. After sitting on the idea of writing about my past lives this whole week, I decided to go ahead with it because if I am blogging and the point of the blog is to put me and all of me out there then nothing that I have experienced is off limits. So if this isn;t your thing you can stop reading now but if it is something you are interested in whether it is just curiosity for the topic in general or if it is curiosity about your own past lives then this one may be for you.
About two years ago this week I was fired from my job ( thank god), which was the catalyst for the beginning of my spiritual journey to self discovery and enlightenment. A year ago this week I took a vacation with my good friend Anne and her younger sister and her sister's husband for their wedding anniversary. I had never been on a cruise before and I was terrified of bigger boats after watching the Titanic in Kindergarten. What better time to do something totally outside of your comfort zone than when you are in the spiritual trenches? This was a 5 day Princess Cruise to the Bahamas and The British owned Turks and Cacos. Our flight number on the way there was Flight #444 and I just knew this trip was going to be a powerful one before I stepped foot on the plane on the way down to Miami.
I remember doing research about the cruise line and the island because I like to know a little background information about where I am going before I go so that when I am there I have some context to work with. I remember having a visceral hate for King Charles without really knowing anything about him and after going to Grand Turk and seeing the poverty levels there, I disliked him even more. It wasn’t a normal dislike for a political or royal figure, it ran much deeper than that and I found it especially odd that now all of a sudden I felt this way about someone who had never crossed my mind before.
Upon getting back from the trip, I knew I had more work to do to heal from what had happened to me in this life and I felt like I had a new energy with me to be able to do so. After reacclimating to land after a week at sea, I got back on the horse with my meditations, yoga, therapy and all of the other things I was doing to heal from the abuse I had endured over the previous three years of my life. After about a month and a half after the trip I still was feeling stuck despite doing all of the right things. I knew I needed more than what I was doing and that there was still quite a bit of unresolved emotions and trauma deep under the surface. It was December 13th, 2023 that I finally decided to “let go” and let god and the spirits help me in my quest for self discovery. I had read in the book “Mother Earth Spirituality” that what I went through was similar to the “Calling of the Spirits” in their culture.
Four days and four nights later I found out who I was in my previous life and it was too crazy for even me to believe let alone anyone else so I kept it to myself and went on with my life putting what I had uncovered on the backburner but wanting desperately to talk to someone about what I had experienced.. Everyone who has suppressed an emotion or a feeling knows that suppressing that would only make matters worse so I kept a close relationship with God and kept asking if the information I had received was true. Blink once for yes two for no- and I blinked once for yes every single time I asked over the course of the next 6 months.
It wasn’t until about two months ago when I started my new job that things became even more clear that even a skeptic would have a hard time being skeptical. Signs came in songs, magazines, books, news articles, clothing, etc… All of this made me believe that what I knew deep in my heart was true but I wasn’t totally convinced yet. It wasn’t until last week I was talking to a patient who had also explored their past lives in a regression. This person also happened to be a therapist so I immediately felt safe. What they told me they experienced in their regression gave me 100000% confirmation of who I was and that god works in the most mysterious ways and that his timing is perfect.
What do I plan to do now that I have accepted who I was in my last life? Accepting something like this isn’t an easy thing to do and integrating this information into who I am today in this body is even more of a feat but I do believe that I know this information for a reason and that knowing who I was will help me be a better person in this life. I know I was incredibly kind, compassionate, caring, loving, hard working and empathetic in my last life and I believe I have a lot of those attributes in this life which I continue to lean on especially since those attributes are aligned with the frequency of love. What I hope to have learned from the last life is that money can’t buy love or happiness and material things are second human love. I have also learned that begging for someone's love probably means that the love wasn’t there in the first place. I also have learned that speaking out about the truth is important for not only the individual, but generations to come even if speaking out gets you exiled or killed. Most of the things I am going through right now, have striking similarities so what I went through then is just in a different location and timeline. I also hope to utilize some of what I was able to use in my last life when it comes to navigating this particular situation I find myself in right now.
I have told a few people I feel closest with about my story as it pertains to past lives over the last few weeks. I can honestly say that the right people will entertain the idea and to my surprise, most of the people who I have told aside from one or two have believed me and now want to dive into their own past lives . Another thing that I hope to learn from my last life and probably the most important thing is that it doesn’t matter if everyone believes you, just that the right people do and even more, if no one believes you, then the most important thing you can do is believe in yourself. Your calling is higher.
Friends and Followers
Whether you are losing friends or followers in real life or on facebook those people were probably not meant for you in the first place. Now more than ever people are seemingly becoming more and more divided and issues seem to be more and more polarized. This is normal during an election year but is it really normal and what is driving people to become this divided? I consider myself very lucky to have grown up at the very beginning of the technological revolution in schools. I also remember being taught that freedom of speech and expression and healthy dialogue are paramount for a healthy democracy and society. I can not remember a time in school whether it be high school or college that I felt uncomfortable sharing my opinion or speaking up on any matter even if I knew someone was going to disagree with me because the disagreement was always respectful.
What I am noticing now whether it be with me personally, or what I am seeing on social media platforms and in everyday life, is that people are less likely to have respectful conversations where disagreements are bound to happen. What this has done has not eliminated these “hot button issues” rather it has further polarized individuals and society and exacerbated the problems that already existed after temporarily pushing these issues under the rug only for them to come back stronger and more extreme on all ends of the spectrum. Think back to the throat chakra post, without communication and expression there is nowhere for this energy to go. What we have done as a society is not discuss these issues with our fellow citizens, rather we find echo chambers of people who only think like us and demonize people who may have different opinions.
Obviously there is a difference between hate speech and discourse and there is no place for evil speech in any space, but what has happened is that we make assumptions about people based on their political affiliations, who they associate with personally, what they look like, our own personal biases and a number of other factors. We do not listen to understand, we listen to respond or we don’t even listen at all because we are so complacent with where we are at, that we don’t want a single idea or conflicting concept to permeate our carefully put together reality. Human egos are fragile and some people do not have the capacity for an identity crisis which is why we hold onto our egos so tightly. Love and understanding are obviously the end goal here but in my experience over the last four years, not everyone is at a place or has the capacity to meet you where you are at. It is important to be able to discern those people who you can have an intelligent conversation with and be respectful with each other even if there is an agreement to agree to disagree at the end. There are other people who are unwilling to hear any opinions or ideas other than their own and those people are probably not worth your time and energy.
At the end of the day we are all on this earth together and we are each given various gifts from god all of which are important for the progression of humanity and in order for humanity to progress all ideas and views need to be heard. Oppression or suppression is not the way forward, but there needs to be a personal accountability that must be taken by each and every individual on the path forward. Change is hard but change is necessary and change can only happen when ALL voices are heard, not just the ones that are convenient and easy to hear. The issues facing the world today are heavy and complicated and they will not be solved by people staying quiet because they are afraid of getting attacked by someone with a differnet view. . My advice is to speak up wherever you can about WHATEVER you are passionate about and if there are those out there who want to silence you they can go fuck themselves.
Surrendering to the Universe Pt. 1
As I was growing up, I always considered myself to have a Type A personality. I generally liked things to be done a certain way, in a certain order and at a certain time. I had major anxiety when it came to being late, even if I was 5 minutes early I wasn’t early enough. If things seemed like they weren’t going my way I would get all tense and think about ways that I could control the situation. If I or someone else were driving and they missed a yellow light or there was heavy traffic it would severely affect me because of the tension that it created in not only my mind but physically in my body. I am not talking about my adulthood, I am talking about my childhood and early adolescence. It wasn’t until a good friend of mine passed away my freshman year of college that I started to realize the things that really matter in life and look at those so-called “inconveniences” as blessings.
I am not sure where that need to control everything during my childhood came from but looking back, there was no real reason why a kid should feel this much tension and pressure to be perfect, expect everything to be perfect and try to control everything. The amount of pressure I put on myself as a kid and a teenager to get into a good college on a hockey scholarship was incredibly intense for a person of a young age. When I reached that goal, signed my letter of intent, and got my summer workout program I put that pressure and even more on myself because I didn’t want to ride the bench as a freshman. Not to say that this did not pay off because I was the leading scorer as a freshman but the negative consequences of this began to creep in later in my life and I realized that high personal expectations are great and necessary but not at the cost of your health.
When my friend died halfway through my freshmen year, everything that I thought I knew changed. I had to grow up fast leaving for college in Connecticut halfway across the country and I was already incredibly homesick and I wasn’t sure I could play hockey, grieve, keep my grades up and have a normal personal and social life. The mountain seemed impossible to climb, especially from where I was at the bottom but I did my best to embody my friend's energy and keep going and playing for her. I ended up getting Rookie of the Year and was the leading scorer as a freshman that season and I honestly couldn’t believe I did it through all of the adversity. I know I had someone that was and still looks over me. This was around the time where I really started to embody living for the moments, knowing that everything happens for a reason and finding a way even when it seems like it is impossible.
After my freshmen season I ended up having shoulder surgery. Truthfully I was exhausted from everything and this was truly the first time that I saw something “negative” as a positive. I was in incredible pain from the surgery but I knew I needed the rest from hockey and off ice strength training to focus on my physical and mental health and really dial down on the school work. I had amazing teammates but more specifically my classmates who took care of me during my long recovery and I could not be more grateful for them. I studied Biology in college and was in the lab at least once a week so this freed up some mental and emotional energy for me to focus more on studying for some of my more challenging courses. I was excited to use the time to rest and recover so that I could produce the following season on the ice and eventually graduate as a UConn Husky…..
Be a Good Teammate
During the course of my hockey career I was always told and taught to be a good teammate. If a teammate was struggling whether it be on or off of the ice, it was always taught that you be a good teammate, support them and lift them up. I have had great teammates and coaches throughout my youth and college hockey career who have lifted me up when I was down, pushed me to my personal limits, and have made me into the person that I am today but what happens when you are on a team with some not so good teammates ?
As a player, I consider myself to be very lucky when it comes to my teammates. I am still close friends with many that I grew up playing with in Colorado and I am still in constant contact with teammates from both the University of Connecticut where I got my start and THE Pennsylvania State University where I finished my college hockey career as a two year captain. These are the girls that will remain my teammates and sisters for life. Not to say that there weren't any disagreements or that everything was perfect but this is my tribe and these are the people who have and continue to stick with me through thick and thin.
Being a good teammate isn’t about telling someone something they want to hear but rather telling them what they need to hear. This can be done in a number of different ways and it depends on the dynamic. I think this is where emotional intelligence comes in and those that have a high degree of emotional intelligence and diplomacy, can say something that might be hard to get across but they have the patience to plan the right seeds. In other cases, what needs to be said or done needs to be done in a more direct way. Being a good teammate or a good friend or a good family member isn’t about enabling, it is about making decisions out of a loving place and sometimes the hard thing is the right thing.
I call on you to ask yourself if you are a good teammate or if you have good teammates in your life. If the answer to either of these questions is no, then there probably needs to be a little self reflection and behavioral adjustments. It is also important to remember that as human beings we all make mistakes and are far from perfect so give yourself a little grace if you have slipped up… we all do I know I have. What matters is that you get back up and you are growing moving forward.
My First Retirement
After the dust began to settle after the tower had fallen in the Spring of 2023 it was time for me to decide what was next. I felt a lot of pressure from my family to get back on the horse and start the job search and work as soon as possible. I also had someone close to me tell me that searching for a job was a full time job, which wasn’t necessarily the wrong advice, but I knew for me and for this particular situation, that this time around that was not the case. I had a feeling deep inside of me that there was something waiting for me down the road but it was not something that I would go searching for, rather something that if I stayed true to myself and to the process, it would reveal itself in time. This was a big leap of faith for me to seemingly “do nothing” but it ended up being the best decision I made and it paid off big time in the long term.
It took me a couple of months to ease into my decision to dip into my savings and enjoy my life for a little bit until the right time came. For those that have known me for a while knows that this was incredibly hard for me; to spend money without having a steady cash flow in, but wildly enough a few years ago I had the thought “save as much as you can now you will need to use it at a later time” and again it was my intuition about the future that was right. I am not saying that I bled money, I made some financial adjustments so that I would feel comfortable taking this much time to heal and be with myself . Since I got my first job at Portal Pool in the summer of 8th grade up until I was 30 at my last job, I always saved the majority of my paycheck so this was a major adjustment for me, but either way, the point I am trying to make is that now I made the conscious decision to reap some of the benefits of those financial decisions I made at a younger age and enjoy the free time that I had now without feeling suffocated by a major financial burden. It always pays off to be smart with your money.
One of the highlights of my first retirement was joining the “Wine Tasters” Golf League on Tuesdays with a bunch of ladies up in Denver (I call them the Lads). My “second mom” Anne the Man was kind enough to introduce me to this group of amazing women from her neighborhood up in Roxborough State Park. These women have backgrounds as CEOs in various industries , Finance, Real Estate, Education, Earthquake Science (watch the 3 Body Problem on Netflix) and more. They are the people that listened to my stories without judgment and the ones that made me cry laughing after every single golf round. I am so grateful for these lads and I am thankful for the new connections that I was able to make after what seemed like I lost almost everyone.
Now moving forward.
A week ago my current chiropractor posted on Facebook that she was looking for a full time Business / Office Manager . I was going to sleep on it but during my meditation I couldn’t stop thinking about it so I sent her a message and told her I was interested. I sent over my resume and we agreed to meet the following week. I accepted the job on site with a gracious feeling in my heart. I have been going to this chiropractor since I was seven years old for migraines, and have continued to see her once a month for a massage and an adjustment over the last year for overall wellness. She is a woman that I feel incredibly safe with and inspired by. Talk about divine timing .
The Difference Between Justice and Revenge
I have had multiple conversations with people throughout the years, especially when it comes to my current situation about whether or not to get “revenge” or be the bigger person and walk away from the situation. I have never been a person who has ever felt that I needed to get “revenge” for anything even if I had been wronged. It has generally been easy for me to walk away from a toxic situation and let karma take care of it. In my previous posts, I have mentioned how getting fired, especially from an environment like I was in, was a challenging situation in a number of different ways. One of the challenges here was that it was not so easy to just walk away this time and I wasn’t sure why that was. I knew there was a major injustice that took place for me personally, but I also knew there was a greater systematic problem woven deep into the culture of hockey which I provided evidence for in last week's post. This is about justice, not revenge.
According to Psychology today “ Revenge is mostly about “acting out” (typically through violence) markedly negative emotions. Justice is as logically, legally, and ethically defined—isn’t really about “getting even” or experiencing spiteful joy in retaliation. Instead, it’s about righting a wrong that most members of society (as opposed to simply the alleged victim) would agree is morally culpable.” I DO NOT enjoy any of this. In fact, a major factor in me waiting over a year to speak up about what happened was because I was in a heightened emotional state and I needed to work through those emotions and heal the wounds before I made a decision on how to proceed. I also spoke with numerous people during this time, including CEOs, about my situation to make sure that I was seeing the situation clearly. After telling my story over and over again to various people, the reaction was the same generally consisting of emotions of disbelief and disgust of what was allowed to and continues to transpire in a so called professional setting.
The conversation around revenge and justice needs to be reframed. This has been and will always be about justice, not about revenge. Wanting a wrong to be made right isn’t revenge and that exact mindset is why women do not report or speak out about things that have happened to them because they know that it may be perceived as an act of revenge. Maybe instead of putting the onus on the victim, the perpertraters should be held accountable.
Hockey Has a Culture Problem
After I graduated from Penn State, I had a few different types of jobs in different industries. These industries included : software, higher education, educational technology and hockey which included coaching and administrative roles. The differences in culture that I experienced between hockey and any other industry that I have worked in is like night and day. Hockey will always hold a very special place in my heart and it is a major identity of mine that I hold dear, but at the same time working, playing and coaching in hockey is responsible for a lot of the darker things I have experienced in my earlier life. I experienced things working in hockey related jobs that would not be acceptable in any other industry.
As a youth hockey player growing up, I had teammates who were raped and sexually assaulted by male players and coaches at the youth level. When I was playing D1 hockey at UConn I had a teammate who was raped by a mens hockey player and was thrown off the team for “being a distraction.” I don’t believe any actions were taken against this male player. When I was coaching, in Nebraska I was sexually harassed for two years by my boss and assaulted at a local bar by another athletic department employee. This was after he asked me to teach his grandkids how to play hockey earlier in the day. I’ve been roofied a few too many times in my life and two of these times were in hockey related settings and I know I am not the only one this has happened to.
Hockey has a culture problem whether anyone in hockey leadership wants to own it or not. I have included links to numerous articles below all related to different cultural issues in the sport of hockey. There are hundreds if not thousands of stories that go unreported in the USHL, the NA, Tier 1 & Tier 2 , High School and many Canadian Junior Hockey leagues. In my opinion, a lot of these behaviors are condoned and perpetuated by league leaders, coaches, managers and older players.
My hope is that one day sooner rather than later, a capable woman either becomes an Executive Director or President of the National Governing Body or a similar position in the NHL. Not a mean girl, but a woman who has the qualifications and leadership abilities to do what is needed to take the sport of hockey where it needs to go on an ethical and moral level but also on a performance level. You can win championships without being a dirt bag and perpetuating a culture of rape, bullying, silence, and misogyny.
I call on anyone in hockey leadership reading this to take a serious look at what they can do and their part in perpetuating this culture. I think that hockey has come a long way from where it has been but it still has a long way to go and it does start at the top. Are you practicing what you are preaching? Are your employees practicing what they are preaching or are they scheduling work trips around who they are sleeping with so that the company can foot the bill ? Is your culture truthfully inclusive or is it all for PR? Are your initiatives and policies fair for everyone or do the rules only apply to a few and benefit the ones already in power? Are your board meetings safe for women or are they getting roofied at these ? Has there ever been an instance of prostitution at a company event? Are your high level board members bullying current and former employees ?
I think that it is pretty clear that there is a culture problem.
UConn to pay $1.3M in sex assault handling lawsuit | AP News
USA Hockey president being investigated for alleged mishandling of abuse claims against coach - ESPN
Hockey Has a Sexual Assault Problem
CHL Hockey Abuse Class Action - Koskie Minsky LLP
Carson Briere receives probation for tossing wheelchair down a flight of stairs - CBS Pittsburgh
‘Uncomfortable and scared’: Abuse allegations inside the USA Hockey sled program - The Athletic
Vanbiesbrouck resigns from OHL team after racial slur | CBC Sports
Skating on thin ice : professional hockey, rape culture, & violence against women (Book)
Another former Blackhawks player sues team over mishandling of sexual abuse
What a police report shows USA Hockey knew about ex-NHL player's sex assault case
Harvard women’s hockey coach Katey Stone retires amid investigation into program - The Athletic
The Throat Chakra: Using your Voice
Throat Chakra Healing: How to Unblock for Better Health
On Sunday I briefly mentioned the chakra system when I was talking about my personal yoga practice. The human body has seven major chakras starting with the base, or root chakra, ending at the top of the head with the crown chakra. Although I have worked with all of these chakras during yoga, meditation and energy healings, the throat chakra or the chakra located at the center of the throat is the chakra that I had serious challenges during the last few years of my life. This is the chakra associated with communication and speaking your inner truth and it was largely blocked for me until recently.
As I mentioned in my previous post, you can not always control what happens to you but you can control how you respond and that sitting around complaining isn’t going to do anything. If any of you have seen my LinkedIn profile in the last two months you may be thinking “sure looks like she is doing a lot of complaining.” I am here to tell you that speaking your truth and standing up for yourself is part of the healing process . After being dismissed by some of my peers and bullied by “friends”, old-coworkers, and old bosses, I felt what it was really like to have a closed or blocked throat chakra.
A closed throat chakra, at least for me, felt like I was permanently being choked and I felt like my voice would never be heard. When the throat chakra is closed, it feels like there is a ton of excess energy in the body and that it has nowhere to go. It is kind of like the opening of a dam, all of the water accumulates at the opening of the dam if the dam is closed but if it is open, it will flow freely to its next destination. Without the dam opened, the water has no were to go, causing more and more water to build up until the dam can not hold it, eventually causing it to burst. This happened to a few times. When my throat chakra was closed, it felt like I was drowning and it felt like there was something inside of me that wanted out . I kept my mouth shut for as long as I could about what happened to me because truthfully, it didn’t seem like anyone around me really cared and I didn’t want to bring anyone down. I was also concerned about some of my other old coworkers and how it would effect them; there are some really amazing people there who are doing some amazing things and I didn’t want that to be overshadowed. The longer I kept my mouth shut about what had happened, the more misunderstood I started to feel but at the same time, part of the reason I didn’t talk was in fact because I was constantly being misunderstood, projected on, or totally shut out by people I had trusted.
After over a year of deliberation on trying to figure out what to do, I knew that speaking out in a big way was the only answer given my experiences in the past with some of these people. I reported what happened to me to HR and other “leaders” in the building and I was shut out and dismissed. No wonder the culture of silence still runs rampant in ALL of hockey today. I am speaking out because it is not only the right thing for me to do personally but because it is the right thing to do on a bigger scale. Hockey has a major problem with rape, racism, bullying, misogyny, and meangirls and it will only change when people speak up for what is right even it it means that you will be isolated and ostracized.
My post on Sunday will highlight the dark realities of the hockey culture and why I think it is important that these issues are continuously brought to light.
Healthy Habits for Healing
Introduction
Last week I talked a little about what habits helped me heal and grow over the last few years of my life, especially the time before and after I got fired. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I saw the writing on the walls for years leading up to my termination. I knew my life was going to change dramatically, so I did what any good athlete would do to train for what’s to come so that I was mentally and physically the best I could be during this time of turmoil. In this post, I will be discussing how meditation, yoga and extensive trauma therapy has helped me through one of the darkest times of my life and how implementing these good habits has changed my life for the better.
Meditation
A few months before I was terminated, my company started to offer access to Calm Premium as an employee benefit. I had never meditated before and I cringed at the thought of spending minutes sitting in silence with my own thoughts and emotions. As a hockey player, I always valued the attributes of speed, power and finesse which was probably why mediation was never on my radar. Knowing what I know now if I could go back, I would have started a daily meditation practice a lot sooner in my life. During this time, I had severe anxiety which led to major sleep issues and other downstream negative effects. Once I started meditating a few times a week, I started to see improvements with my overall mental health. Once I realized how much better I was feeling by just taking a few minutes out of each day to sit quietly with my thoughts, I increased my meditation cadence from a few times a week to a few times a day. After about a month, I noticed that I was able to see colors more brightly, hear sounds more clearly and the anxious thoughts became more organized and less chaotic. Ironically, the more I meditated, the more I started to realize that the environment that I was working in was incredibly toxic and I began to accept what was to come. I would not have survived the months leading up to my firing or the months after my firing if it wasn’t for my daily meditation practice.
Yoga
Yoga is another tool that I picked up later on in life that I wish I would have found earlier. Again, as a hockey player especially at the Division I level, my mind was focused on strength training, conditioning and on ice training, not “soft” practices like yoga. During my college years, I considered yoga to be a softer form of physical exercise and that there were no benefits that came from it because you don’t feel like you’re dying when you are doing it. It is crazy to think that we were conditioned to think that a workout is only a workout if you bring yourself to exhaustion. Boyyyyy could I not be more wrong and more grateful that I was wrong! Today, I use yoga as my main form of physical activity along with walking. I like to think of yoga as a physical mediation. As you move your body through the various yoga poses, the physical, mental and energetic bodies are all targeted and challenged. Yoga is very efficient when it comes to working with the body and it is sustainable for the long term. As much as I love to throw around heavy weights and sprint on the treadmill until I almost pass out, this is a practice that I can carry with me through a lifetime.
If you are aware of the chakra system in Eastern medicine, yoga is one of the foundations for longevity. The difference I feel on a physical, mental and emotional level from the start to the end of a yoga practice is two fold making it clear that yoga is the perfect movement medicine for a healing mind, body and the soul because it incorporates all three of these aspects into its core. There is a reason an ancient practice like yoga is still around and heavily utilized today.
Therapy
I forgot to mention it in my last post but aside from meditation and yoga, extensive weekly therapy was needed to help me work through and heal from the turmoil. We can not control what happens to us most of the time, but we do have some control in the way in which we respond. I knew what I had experienced was unjust but I also knew that sitting here and only talking about how it was unjust and not doing anything about it would get me nowhere. There are different types of therapists and therapy practices out there but my therapist’s focus is trauma counseling more specifically the use of EMDR (see link below) with people who have experienced some kind of sexual violence or trauma. At first I was weary of the method but as I came to learn, the medicine will only work if you believe in it and if you buy in. It has taken me years to reprocess some of my worst memories but with a good therapist it is possible, you just have to stay open to the treatment and be consistent with it.
Therapy is not a ‘one size fits all” kind of thing. It works for some better than it works for others and some approaches work better for some people while it may have no effect on someone else. Finding the right therapist is key and the relationship between the therapist and the client must be safe and supportive. I am so grateful to have found my therapist years ago while working in Denver and to still be able to work with her via telehealth.
EMDR Therapy: What It Is, Procedure & Effectiveness
Conclusion
Mental Health has been a taboo subject for as long as I can remember. Even when it seems like mental health is at the forefront of discussions, it still feels like there is a stigma attached to it. It is especially hard when the circumstances of life do not seem to be in your favor. Think of life as a hurricane and you’re sitting right in the center of it. You can either sit in the middle of the chaos and focus on what you need to do to heal yourself or you can let yourself be swept away by the storm. Meditation, yoga, and therapy were three major tools, among many, that I had in my toolbox to help me better weather the storm and do it by staying true to myself. You may not have deserved what happened to you but if you transcend the pain and turn it into love then you’re in a better place than you were before.
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Silver Linings
As most of you know or maybe some of you don’t, I was fired from my job in October of 2022. It did not come as a shock for me, I saw the writing on the walls for months leading up to it and even years prior. Although I believe there was an injustice that took place, I am here to talk about the positives that came out of that situation as it was a time of immense spiritual and personal growth for me. As we go through our youth and early adulthood, we are taught or at least shown that getting fired is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. I am not saying that it was fun and that I had the time of my life (although I did get to do some amazing things with some amazing people during the last year and a half), but rather the challenges I had to overcome during this time were painful but worth it to feel how I do today. During that time, I had space to reflect on where I have been, who I am, who I want to be and where I want to go without too many outside influences so that I could focus on what I really wanted not what anyone else wanted for me. Below I cover three of my major takeaways and learning experiences over the course of the last two years.
The most important lesson that I learned during this time was that caring what other people think is robbing you of what you deserve. I am not saying go around and be an asshole and be terrible to people but everyone has a different set of life experiences and those experiences shape their core beliefs and approach and views on life may be way different than yours. People love to offer their opinions, unsolicited, often from a good place most of the time but they are only able to comment on the depth of their own understanding, not yours. Discerning this context was important for me when it came to learning how to not take things personally and what things to take in and what to let bounce right off. I am an empath and a highly sensitive person so I do feel things intensely and I am very in tune to small nuances, change in body language, change in text tone. I had to learn not to take these things personally and once I was able to strengthen this skill through yoga and meditation things started to get a lot easier for me. That doesn’t mean go live in a cave by yourself and only listen to yourself 100% of the time but rather go internal when you need to and seek advice from a supportive group if you feel like you need guidance which brings me to my second silver lining.
There were a lot of shake ups in my personal life when I got fired as well. At the time, it felt like I was losing a lot of people but what was really happening was that space was being made for the right ones to make their way in. When you have people and mentors in your life that you can trust and that you feel safe with, information flows more freely and less confusion ensues. When you can openly talk to someone about a problem you are having without any fear of judgment, you are more likely to get to the root of the problem because there is no space for shame. I am very grateful to have some incredible women in my life who have guided me through this with grace and love. These are your people.
The last thing that I think that grew through this experience was my capacity to handle harder more complex challenges has increased exponentially. I’ve played elite hockey my entire life and I have had my fair share of challenges but something like this is different than anything I have ever experienced. It’s isolating, you know people have made assumptions about you that you know aren’t fair but as much as I hate to say, this our parents are right, life is not fair and those probably are not your people. Sitting with this has really helped me realize that no matter what there will be people in your corner and people not in your corner and that’s part of the challenge. Standing alone is hard but through the pain and suffering, my self esteem, self worth and belief in self has become more solid. I trust my gut and my intuition more now which is something that I have struggled with my entire life. I’ve enjoyed taking this time to spend time with family and friends and really slow down to focus on what really matters in this life.
I plan to use this platform to speak authentically about my experiences in life, hockey, work and personal life. I hope that most of my entries will be positive and uplifting but sometimes the truth doesn’t go that way. I urge you if you have any questions or are struggling with anything, especially young female adults please reach out. You are never alone.