One of my favorite things to grow in the garden are sugar snap peas. As they grow, they put out these curly, grabby tendrils. They then grab onto whatever they can that's nearby, using it for support, and creating these beautiful swirls with their vines. It's one of nature's perfect art forms.

Every morning, I come out and admire my sugar snap plants. I love how the sugar snaps emerge from soft white flowers. I love seeing the delicate vines and leaves swaying in the breeze. I love the sensual curl of the tendrils, as they hug their support system. And most of all, I love the taste of sugar snaps! You can eat the whole pod (and you should!), beans and all.

I hope you find something today that brings you joy also. 

Much love my friends.

​Melissa

​The last few days I have felt myself sliding into feelings of doubt and fear.

I kept trying to fight it, to bring myself back to hope and optimism. But this morning I couldn't do it. And so I didn't. I didn't get up and get to work like I usually do. I didn't read the news or listen to a podcast. Instead, I sat quietly in my chair, looking out the window.

I sat with my heavy feelings. I sat with my fear. I sat with my worries over the future. I sat with the feelings of discord and breaking apart that keep rising up around me. I fought nothing and surrendered to it all. 

After awhile, I started to remember simple things that are still beautiful and perfect about this world.

​Snow slowly falling over pine trees. Morning fog that makes everything feel soft and calm. Rain drops on the window. Hugs from friends. Fiction books, travel books and pretty much all books because books are the best. And so are libraries. And so are people who work in libraries. People can be pretty great.

As my feelings softened I didn't leap right from the heavy feelings to the light. I wasn't ready to jump out of my chair and shout my happiness to the world. But I had come back to my center, and from that centered place, I asked myself if sitting around all day, paralyzed by heavy feelings, is what I want to remember myself doing when I'd felt stuck while facing a challenge.

I made some coffee and thought about it more.

If my future self was looking back on me, twenty years from now, what would she want to see me doing? What will she be glad I did? What will she want to change? 

As I sipped my coffee, I could feel that thinking of things I still love about this world was a positive step. It was getting me back to my inner light. I could feel that I want to focus more on what I want, rather than what I'm afraid of.

I also wanted to honor my need for rest. Fear and doubt generally come from a place of not feeling secure in myself. If I try to fight the fear, it's going to fight me right back.

It was time to pause, breathe, and remember that I am deeply loved and cared for. It was time to know that my future self would thank me for resting, because that rest recharged me enough to get back in there, dream bigger, and reach higher.

If you're feeling lost, afraid, or just overwhelmed, try this simple yet powerful exercise. Close your eyes, and imagine you future self walks into the room. What does it want to tell you? How did it get where it is? What would it want to change about the path you're on? What would it say to comfort you and to remind you of your potential?

Aside from making meditations, my main creative passion is screenwriting. I am not a filmmaker, but I do love all things about film, and so I recently joined a team of people who set out to make a 5 minute movie in a 48 hour period.

It was all part of a "film race" that began last weekend. On the day the film race started, we were given a genre, a prop to include, and a line of dialogue to incorporate. Without knowing our genre, nothing could be written until the start of the race. It was very exciting!

We received the genre of mystery. All teams also received the same prop - a lighter - and the line "Nothing a little elbow grease can't fix."

Thanks to the incredible kindness and generosity of a local family, we were able to film at a real Victorian mansion. Known as the "Crow Mansion," it had the perfect setting for our mysterious thriller.

We spent over 12 hours filming on Saturday, and I learned so much about what it takes to make a movie. We finished up our shots on Sunday, and the directors went home to continue working on editing. I volunteered to make the movie poster because I love creating graphics. 

​I only had a few hours, and I was a little nervous I wouldn't do the team justice. But with a shot our director took of the house, I had a solid starting point. I edited the photo in Photoshop, added some text, and sent it off.

Last night, the top 16 films were shown, and ours was one of them. It was so fun and amazing to see our film on the big screen! It was also incredible to see so much ingenuity and passion from the other filmmakers. I'm so unbelievably grateful to have been a part of this.

The other films were so good I had zero expectations of winning anything. And then to my surprise, we won top student film! The poster I made flashed up on the screen and my jaw dropped. I have to say, it looked really cool towering over us. The directors were given a copy of the poster, which is a great memento from an amazing weekend.

A big thank you to everyone that was part of the 48 hour film race! I can't wait to do it all again next year.

"No one else can do what you do," is an oft used phrase to motivate and inspire people.

In other words, no one has the perspective you have. No one has lived the life you have. No one will express themselves in the way you do, and the fact that you have your own unique way of doing things is powerful.

If you were to write a song, no one would sing it in just the way you do. If you were to create a shirt, no one would design in the exact same way as you. No one would teach, heal, or speak the same as you. You will have ideas and ways of executing them that will be entirely unique to you, and because you can put new things into the world, the world needs you!

Sounds great, right?

​I guess so...

To be honest, for most of my life, this motivational message did not motivate me. It terrified me. It pushed on all my self-worth issues and made me not want to show up at all.

If I put my unique work out the world, which is essentially me putting myself out there, what happens if no one likes it? What if people don't actually want it the way I do it? What if my way is in fact the worst way? What if I'm in the way of someone better? What if my own unique perspective is one no one relates to? What if people just absolutely HATE what I put forth?

Does that mean they hate me?

And this is where people would say, "Don't worry what other people think!"

Uggggggggggggggggggggggh.

I mean seriously, UGH.

We're constantly telling each other not to worry what other people think while living in fear of being judged ourselves.

Can we all collectively stop telling each other not to care? We care, okay. We all care. Telling people not to care is like telling them not to be human. People never stop caring. We just put up walls upon walls, which is not the same as not caring - it's just shutting off the flow of our feelings. This in turn causes a major backup in the emotional system, which leads to depression, anger, and sickness.

I don't want you to get depressed and sick. I do want you to know it's okay to feel sensitive to other people's opinions. It doesn't mean you're not tough enough. You're not failing in some way. It's challenging to put yourself and your work out to a cynical and critical world. Especially a world where our humanity depends on us listening to each other and keeping our hearts open. 

If people tell you that you should follow your passion because you're unique, and the world needs your unique vision, and that scares the shit out of you, I can relate.

​In this world, achievement and ambition is almost always valued over self-love and self-care. And so for that reason, we are often quicker to encourage someone to "go for it" than we are to ask them how they feel and if they feel ready.

And so, if no one's asked you, are you ready to pursue this thing that scares you, or do you need a moment? It's okay if you do. In fact, I would prefer you took that moment to pause and breathe. That moment of recognizing your feelings and valuing them, that's the thing that's saying, I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm worthy of being heard.

You cannot value your unique gifts if you do not first value yourself as a person.

I wish you could. I know it seems it'd be so much simpler if we could do our thing, have everyone tell us how amazing it is, and then our self-worth would explode. But that would actually have the opposite effect - it would make you entirely dependent on other people's approval. It would not raise your self-esteem. It would just cause you to live and die based on outside opinion.

The only way to truly put your unique work out, and feel good about it, is it to start with a solid foundation. Start with you. Nurture yourself. Treat yourself like precious cargo. Do whatever you need to do in order to see yourself as a valuable and unique member of team humanity. Go to therapy, meditate, talk to a coach, float in an isolation tank, read all the self-help books you can. I've done all those things and more. 

It took me years to build up the kind of foundation I needed in order to value my unique gifts and perspective.

It did not happen over night, and it did not happen because I charged ahead and overpowered my fear and did it anyway. I have put things out to the world when I was scared, insecure, and did not feel ready. It did not help. It only made me more scared.

How long it will take you to build your foundation depends on where you are and where you're coming from. I have no idea what kind of life you've lived nor how big your dreams are. All I know is, you have something to do that's entirely unique to you. And you will share and do that thing when you feel ready and in a way that feels good to you. Your way might involve two people, it might involve 20,000, it might involve the whole world.

​It's all up to you, cause it's your life, and only you get to decide what your heart and soul need.

​Human beings are artists.

Before the age of mass media, by which you can passively sit and be entertained, the only way to get through the dark, hard times was to make stuff. And everyone did.

​My grandparents were dairy farmers who lived in the depression. They were literally almost losing the farm every single month, and they had to deal with sickness and poverty and way too many kids. And they were Swedish Lutherans who lived in Nothern Minnesota. You can't get a more grim life than that. At the same time, they were artists, and they made things.

My grandfather made beautiful silver jewelry. My grandmother made everything, and everything she made was beautiful.

They helped to provide me with what I think the definition of art is, which is anything that you make that is more beautiful than it needs to be. My grandmother made quilts because it was cold, and they couldn't afford to buy them, and it was also a really good use of rags. All of those things are very pragmatic. There's no reason those quilts needed to be as beautiful as they were. She could've just slapped some rags together and thrown 'em on top of her kids and been like, "Goodnight!"

But instead, she spent months on it because it pleased her. It was necessary to her happiness because it's what we are. I feel like the entire Universe is a big creative project that's on going. There's this static state version of the Universe, which is the sort of Biblical idea of it, which says, "The Universe was created and then it stopped. And we're just rattling around inside of it." And then there's the actual truth about the Universe, which is that it's being created.

It's creating itself and it wants to be more complex, more beautiful, bigger, bolder, stranger, and so it's constantly working with new form. So literally every single piece of energy in the Universe is going in the direction of expansion, invention, creativity, the new, strange combinations that make no sense - this is what's happening in real time.

That's what the river and the current of energy of the Universe are. Whenever we step into that and make stuff and participate in that we are healthy because we're being backed up by literally all the energy of the Universe. And whenever we step out of that, and stop being creative, and become passive, the reason we get sick is because we're going against the entire grain of the Universe.

It's unnatural not to make art. It's no wonder you feel heavy and depressed and lethargic when you stop your creative flow. It's because you're in the wrong direction. There's a field that's going this way, and you're going the wrong way or no way at all. And so when you enter into that stream, you're healed. You're healed by everything else that is also going in that direction. 

I get really upset when I see people stuck.

It makes me anxious when I see people who want to be doing something and they're not doing it. I think part of the kind of physical anxiety I feel is similar to watching an animal in a cage and the door is open. And the animal is pacing in the cage, and you're like, "The door is literally open." And the animal is like, "Get me out of this cage! Get me out of this cage!"

​When they release chimpanzees back into the wild, they open their cages, and the jungle is all around them, and the chimpanzees literally do that - pacing, circling the cage, stuck inside of it. They could just walk out. But they don't know what the wild is, and so they stay in there, freaking out.

The jungle is your natural habit. The cage is an artificial reality. It's like you've been living in captivity, but that's artificial. What's natural is the wild.

I want you to come out here, and come into the jungle where you want to be, and play, and make things, and make noise, and try stuff. Because it kills me to see you in that cage. 

Take a deep breath

 Let it out slowly

 Feel your body move with the breath

 Take another breath, feeling your whole body move and respond.

​Notice your shoulders rise with the in breath,
​and your stomach shrink with the out breath.

Each breath is a moment of freedom

It's a moment to feel your body rising and falling as it responds to you.
You choose to breathe, and so you breathe.

Whenever you feel you've lost control, that you are no longer the director of your life, return to your breath. Only you can make you breathe. Only you can stop your breath.

I choose now to breathe in.
I choose now to breathe out.

Each deep breath is a moment of your own design.
You command yourself to breathe and so you breathe.
Breathe in the freedom of this beautiful union between mind and body.
Breathe in the intimacy that is shared only by your own Self.

Breathe and know that freedom is always just a breath away.

When you return to your breath, you return to your point of power.
From there, you recenter with all the power, energy, and help that the whole Universe has available to you.

You are powerful
You are breathing as one with the Universe
You are the Universe breathing

I breathe in, the Universe breathes in
I breathe out, the Universe breathes out

I am the Universe

Breathe and know that all is well. 

​You got this.

​Top athletes who excel in their sport all have one thing in common: they know how to focus.

They are powerful visualizers and use that to their advantage. Whatever the outcome is that they want, they hold it in their minds and hold it so forcefully that they refuse to acknoweldge anything else. The outcome begins as a vision in their mind, and it's held there until it's manifested as a reality.

We know that focus is a powerful thing. We know that visualization is a powerful tool in making our dreams realized. People have proven time and time again that these aren't just the tropes of overly optimistic people.

Focus and visualization create results.

I've often wondered, when we put out our focus on something, do we genuinely create something real in our minds, on an energetic level, that is then manifested in a physical form? Have you ever wondered what exactly happens when you put your attention on something? I love the phrase, "energy flows where attention goes." But what does that mean?

Through the double slit experiment some physicists have given us a fascinating piece of this complex puzzle:

Basically, when the electrons are not being studied, they create a wave pattern. Without rhyme or reason (but always on cue) when they are being observed, they create two solid lines. An entirely different pattern, even though nothing about the experiment has changed, except the introduction of a piece that can observe and measure what's happening on the level of particles.

This makes zero sense. This is crazy, weird and totally awesome.

I love when he's talking about the electrons not being observed and he says, "The single electron leaves as a particle [and] becomes a wave of potentials."

For me, this brings up so many thoughts and questions. It makes me wonder if electrons are constantly cruising about, seeking a path of potential. Are they just waiting for somebody to focus in, to put their attention on something, and give them a solid direction to fly in? Are they waiting for us to use our focus and visualization, to put our attention on something, and change the observable world around us?

It really makes me wonder, if electrons change when being observed, what happens when we observe our own thoughts? Do they change? What happens when we observe people around us? Obviously something happens. Our attention has a direct impact on the world around us. This much we now know thanks to this experiment.

Beyond this, we can only speculate. But damn if I couldn't spend hours imagining what this means. Just imagine if they could study our own inner thoughts in this way. Do you think they'd find that when we focus on something, when we observe an outcome, that we're creating solid patterns that lead to real fruition?

Now imagine that all that power that is your own free will is flying about, scattered in waves of potential. Then you find something you want. A car. A job. A new mate. You focus on it. And you focus on it. And you keep putting your attention on it, giving all those waves of energy a solid direction to build in.

Whatever this experiment makes you think of, have fun with it. Don't stop questioning the world around you. Keep looking for clues and insights into the mysterious fabric of the creation of reality. This world is far too strange and mystical for us to just take it all at face value, assuming it's all one predictable slog to the end. If quantum mechanics has taught me anything, it's to expect the unexpected.

Each of us has the potential to see our lives as an ongoing experiment full of crazy, amazing and mind blowing results. And each of us is so much mysterious and powerful than we know. We only have scratched the surface of who and what we really are.

​There is a crack running through the cement in our backyard.

Awhile ago, a little plant sprang up from it. Although I know this should be seen as a nuisance, as it will only cause the cement to deteriorate further, I couldn't help but feel awe and wonder over how this plant so effortlessly brought life to a place where it seems no life should be.

I looked closely at this little plant, wondering how a seed got in there in the first place. Did it fall from a bird in the exact perfect way so as to land right there? Did the wind blow it in, knowing that below this hardened surface was fertile soil? And how did the seed grow a plant right up through the crack? It's not like it had a map to the surface!

As I looked at the crack it made me think about cracks within myself. Cracks from fear, cracks from anger, cracks from disappointment.

There is an oft repeated quote by Leonard Cohen that says, "Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in".

When I saw the little plant, I realized that cracks aren't just how light gets in, but also life, seeds, the possibilities we can't see. 

What I see as a personal detriment, like overwhelming fear, is really a crack waiting to show me something unexpected and beautiful. The very thing that makes me so afraid, such as a big, scary new career step, is the very place something miraculous and transformative can happen. 

To never feel afraid would mean nothing new was happening. It would mean I wasn't exploring, growing and reaching for new heights. And without that growth, which leads to the cracks of fear, I would never open up to seeds that come from places beyond me.

Just as the seed in the cement came from an unknown place in order to bring the exact plant that was meant to grow there, I too can receive unknown gifts which come in ways I cannot control or plan. But it will only happen so long as I allow myself to stop trying to be shiny and perfect. I must give myself space to crack open to my inner depths.

Fear and anxiety are some of my biggest inner blocks. But I am now realizing that they aren't bottomless voids holding me back. They are showing me hidden potentials.

​Within the fear is the potential for something strong to grow. Something so hardy and centered that it would not only not be dettered by cement, it would break through it, calmly and patiently planting itself deeper and deeper, growing bigger and bigger, until that which seems bigger and harder has no choice but to cede to the beautiful, life giving plant.

The cracks of fear and anger and pain are not the things holding us back in life. They are places where the seeds of our courage and strength take root and grow, showing us the true meaning of persistence and the power to change the seemingly rigid and fixed.

​​"As you unfold the new self, remember to move into that state of mind and body that feels invincible, powerful, absolute, inspired, and overjoyed. 

​Let the pictures come; see them with certainty, with a knowingness that unifies you to those events or things. Bond with your future as if it is yours, without any concern other than expectancy and celebration.

Let yourself go and begin to free-associate without concern. Become empowered by your new sense of self. With clarity, hold the image of each manifestation in your mind for a few seconds, and then let it go into the quantum to be executed by a greater mind …then go to the next one …keep going …this is your new destiny.

​Allow yourself to experience that future reality in the present moment until you convince your body to emotionally believe that the event is coming to pass now. Open your heart and experience the joy of your new life before it actually manifests."

- Dr. Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself