stephanie brail

I am very lucky in that I won a scholarship to month-long teleclass to help get clarity and focus on my life. It’s called “The Lotus and the Lily,” and the teacher is Janet Conner, author of Writing Down Your Soul. I got to see Janet at a workshop here in Austin, Texas in October, and she’s a hoot. She’s very real…she doesn’t pretend that she sailed through her life, but shares that she’s made it through a lot of struggles, which I can relate to. And she’s funny. I like funny.

So I had signed up for Janet’s newsletter after the workshop and checked out her website to see what else she had to offer. She had some teleclasses I would have liked to take, but unfortunately, I had just blew a whole wad of money moving to Austin from Los Angeles, and I was very nervous about my future income, as I was unsure what to do with my (struggling) online business and career. She offered a scholarship that anyone could ask to be put on the list for. She would take these names to St. Michael’s Shrine in Tarpon Springs, Florida, pray to St. Michael, and pull a name out of the hat for the scholarship. (St. Michael, as in Michael the Archangel.)

So Archangel Michael has been kind of my patron angel ever since I got my Reiki Master attunement ten years ago, where my clairvoyant Reiki Master told me rather nonchalantly, “Archangel Michael is sitting over there in the corner; he has a special connection to you.” People who don’t believe in this stuff may find it rather fruity, but after you’ve had a good number of coincidences with the angels you get a bit more open-minded about angels sitting in corners.

With this in mind, I put my name into the virtual “hat” for the scholarship. I simply said, “If I am meant to take this class, then great, and if not, then I hope the person who really wants it gets a chance to take it.” I was actually feeling a little worried about taking an opportunity away from someone who might really be eager to take the class and could not pay. Surely there was someone who was more needy than I? Maybe I could scrounge up the money if I sacrificed something else? Maybe if I hadn’t spent this money on this or that item I might have been able to pay? So with a little bit of guilt I threw my name in. But otherwise, I was very neutral about it…feeling like I would take the class if spirit meant me to. (And strangely, there was a small part of me that expected to get it, can’t tell you why.)

Well, the funny thing is, Janet went to St. Michael’s Shrine with the intention of pulling one name out of her hat, and instead of pulling out just one name, two names stuck together. So she ended up giving the scholarship to me and someone else. What was really awesome about this is that I am able to enjoy the scholarship without feeling like I kept the person who “really” needed the scholarship from taking it. Yes, I am sure you can write me a long comment about my own issues with deserving. Of course I deserved it too! But I do feel better that someone else got it along with me. That feels like a win/win.

The time that I got word of my win was a week I was having a bit of a meltdown with my life. I was having one of those “days,” and I was mad at God. I was going on a “spiritual strike” and telling God I did not want to be asked to do anything else “for spirit,” until God saw fit to give me what I really wanted in life. This is not something you can really understand if you are not in the healing business, but it seems like a lot of people who go into healing are doing so because they feel called to do so. And yet, I know too many healers who struggle with their own lives. I have been one of these healers and I am sick of it, so I was kind of saying to God (or the Universe, or whatever you call it) that enough was enough, I needed my needs met and I was done trying to fix the world until that happened.

It was in this state of mind that I got the email from Janet that I’d won. OK, I’ll admit it, the news made me cry. I feel like a sap but there it is.

So I’m blogging here to post a few notes about my process with the course. It’s also a way to “give back” to Janet to share her work so that maybe others can benefit (and she can reach more people).

Week 1: Intention
Our first task is to set an intention for the course. I am not sure what it is, so I am going to see if I can find that while blogging this evening. I will tell you where I’m at: I just moved two months ago, and I love Austin, but I am still adjusting. I have chronic fatigue syndrome, and the stress from moving and acclimatizing to new weather patterns has caused me to relapse a little bit. My sleep patterns are off, my cycles are off, and I’m tired and also more emotional than usual. I feel like I’m undergoing an emotional and physical detox from my years in Los Angeles.

I turned 40 this year, so I’m having my “mid-life crisis” as they call it, though I’d like to reframe this as a “new life awakening.” I learned a lot in Los Angeles, but I know I needed to move because it was time to create something different and be in a new environment. What I experienced in Los Angeles was an extended adolescence that lasted about ten years too long. Los Angeles was good to me, and it was horrible to me. I apologize to some of my friends in LA who may be reading this, but I dealt with far too many effed up people in LA. Narcissists, drama queens, drug addicts and primadonnas. And yes, there were and are tons of lovely, wonderful people in Los Angeles…though it seems that the longer I stayed there, the more the best people seemed to move away.

I can characterize many of my years in Los Angeles as being “broke, sick and alone.” Well, I’m tired of being “broke, sick and alone.” How about “rich, healthy and loved” for a change?

The thing is, for so many years I worked hard to try to build my business, which involved holistic healing and coaching. It was hard, because my health wasn’t the best and I was not ready to put myself out there as a guru in part because my own life was not what I wanted it to be. It is also hard to have the energy to do private one-on-one sessions when your health is up and down. I have some days where I can type just fine but don’t feel up to talking. Yet, I wanted to help people. For the longest time I was doing a mix of Internet consulting and Reiki healing, and then finally got to the point where my online Reiki business was strong enough that I could stop doing consulting full-time to pay my bills. This was great, because most of the Reiki work was distance healing that I could do when I felt up to it, on my own terms and time.

Then the economic crash happened at the end of 2008. My website sales dropped to 25% of what they had been previously, just at a point where I thought I was finally going to move to the next level with it all.

This has been really tough. I did not want to go back into consulting to pay bills, but ultimately I had to, so I am consulting part-time now and this may end up full-time depending on what projects come in next year. I am good at it – I am an Internet goddess (I am not shy to say) and know my stuff. But it has not been my life’s dream to build other people’s online advertising brochures. I had wanted to build my own dream.

So here I am, in a new city, starting a new life (and a new relationship! finally!), and wondering what the hell to do with my career and business with the economy very shaky and things looking not so great for the world at the moment.

Here’s the thing. I never felt quite comfortable putting myself out there as a healer. I don’t have a healer’s personality. I am not all sweetness and light all the time. I don’t like to sign my emails “love, light and laughter.” I am cynical and opinionated. I like arguing politics. I don’t have the typical beliefs that you are supposed to have. I can easily offend people sometimes because I am maddeningly pragmatic in my brain and can be very cut and dry.

Here’s an example: Once, I offended my mom’s friend on Facebook because I was trying to tell her that if broke local governments have to choose between libraries and police, we may have to choose police, and that people shouldn’t rely on the government for libraries – because our country is bankrupt! I did not mean to say that libraries are bad or we shouldn’t have them. I love libraries! What I was trying to say was that, given that our governments may not be able to provide basic services that we have taken for granted, it is up to the people to do it themselves. Start a citizens library! Do not wait for someone else to do it for you! I personally think this idea is empowering, the idea of “doing it yourself,” but to other people, it’s kind of killing a sacred cow. I got a lot of people mad with my library comments, which kind of shocked me. But it also seems like we live in times where people really freak out and get upset if you don’t agree with them politically, which is an unhealthy trend I’ve blogged about here and plan to write about more.

So how do I put myself out there as this “healer” woman when I am the killer of sacred cows and offender of sensibilities? I really don’t know. I feel torn. I like challenging people’s thinking. But this kind of seems to conflict with the notion of providing “comfort,” which is what a healer is supposed to do.

And how do you create a business that challenges anyway? I have no freakin’ clue. How can I inspire and challenge? Can I do that?

But I can’t be the super kind sweet healer who never offends. It’s not who I am. A mentor coach in one of my coach training programs many years ago called me “brutally compassionate.” That about sums it up.

So, how do I take my skills and talents and passions and use them to create a business that works for me and helps people, where I can be myself and not stifle my natural feisty nature? I have no clue.

I feel I do not fit in anywhere, and I am not quite sure how to balance the different sides of myself out (analytical, but intuitive, practical and pragmatic, but fruity “woo-woo”). With this in mind, I guess the only intention I can come up with right now for my Lotus and Lily practice is the word “integration.”

“Integration” simply means that I can be whole within myself, not compromise myself based on what other people expect, not put myself into a box, and feel like somehow the totality of who I am is able to express itself positively. I want to be able to flow with life and have the right opportunities come to me that work with my traits, not against them.

I also want to be healthy, happy and vibrant. I am tired of being drained and tired! Mostly I have been getting better over the years, but it’s clear that there’s still some “stuff” that needs to be healed. Beyond that, I want to be energized in my work, not overwhelmed and drained and worried about money.

Because so many people around the world have used my Reiki systems and benefited from them, I don’t plan on shutting down my Reiki site or disavowing that work I have done. But I wonder if there’s not something else I should be doing. And if I was doing it, maybe true financial success would come a lot easier What that is, I have no clue. Any ideas?