Inspirational Speaker: Practical, Spiritually Uplifting Support for Women in Business

I was up in the Colorado mountains earlier in the week and witnessed firsthand the devastation of the pine beetle damage on the beloved lodgepole pines, magificent beings who cover the mountainsides as far as the eye can see. What last year was lush and green and vibrant is now rust and brown, dried…done. The lodgepole pine goes the way of the American chestnut and the glorious elms. I am so saddened by the loss of these beautiful trees and am frustrated by having no one to blame. It is so much easier to have someone or something to blame. Blaming seems to take the edge off the pain of loss. That’s why we are accustomed to, and like to blame. But who is really ever to blame in our interconnected lives? We are all to blame and we are all responsible for our planet and what goes on here. 

My mother has been gone 5 years now or it could be 4. I am terrible with time and can never remember when things happened. Everything sort of feels like it is happening simultaneously. My mother was a very wise person. One of her “Mollie-isms” was: “You don’t have to look very far to find somehting to cry about”. And those trees were really making me cry.

Then I got an email from the Fox terrier group I am involved with. There is a dear, adorable Smooth fox terrier who was abandoned on the highway (there are no words for the type of people who would do such a thing to a harmless, vulnerable creature). His name is Zippy and, through some miraculous chain of events, he ended up in Fox Terrier rescue hands, which is like falilng into a vat of angels.

As I write this he is being lovingly transported by angel drivers who are taking him from somewhere in the mid west, through Denver (where he will be fostered overnight by a saint here in town) and will be then driven to another saint in Southern California. That woman takes in fox terriers who have all kinds of behavior issues (all due to terrible treatment by humans) and older, abandoned dogs. She works with them so they are ready to be adopted into their forever homes of loving, adoring humans.  Sometimes she just keeps them. Zippy is 6 months old so she will for sure find him his forever home.

So today as I cry over trees gone, never to return, fires decimating ancient redwoods in California, floods taking peoples’ homes, wars gone wild, bodies of young soldiers returned home in bags to families who will never recover from the loss, young women killed by their fathers for shaming their families in countries not so unlike our own, I choose to not dwell on these atrocities. I choose to think about the Fox terrrier Rescue and all the kind and wonderful people who take action to care for other beings so in need of love and support.Sometimes the very best we can do is to take some small action to support LIFE.

Today do not dwell in the horrors. Use your power of choice to think of good deeds being done eveywhere in every moment. Do something kind for some other being today. This will soothe your own tender heart and someone else’s as well.

With the help of SO MANY wonderful people from around the globe my book, Priestess Entrepreneur, made  it to to the best seller list yesterday, where it still sits happily ranked at #17 today on Barnes&Noble.com. This has been nothing short of a mircaulous process of organization, coordinating, asking, and receiving.

I am basking in the pleasure of this success and already focusing on the next VERY IMPORTANT goal:  getting an agent to represent my entire Priestess pacakage, being picked up by a fabulous publisher, and receiving a substantial advance for the books.

I am already waiting by the mailbox.

For the past few months I have been learning how to do an online book selling campaign to promote my book, Priestess Entrepreneur: Keep your Soul Surviving as your Business is Thriving.Tomorrow is the big launch day, the day that thousands of people around the globe will be informed that my book is FOR SALE ( buy it through my website!) and how much good stuff there is in there! Many women have come together as joint venture partners with me to help me. This,i n and of itself, is astounding. Some of these women I have never even met. God bless the internet.

I feel like I am going in for a scheduled C-section. I have bit my fingers to the bone and I have been sweating uncontrollably. I know the book will be OUT tomorrow but will it be ok? Will people buy it? Will people like it? Will I get to go on Oprah and The View? WIll Stephen Colbert have me on his show and mess with my Priestess head? Oh…if only!!

So I will go to a dance class today and walk the dogs by the creek. I will look for items to wash (obsessively doing laundry seems to help) and I am SURE there is chocolate in today’s program as well. I have done what I can do and now it is up to the universe to deliver this baby!! I hope it will thrive and reach millions.  And I hope that I can surrender to the process without having too many brain cells spin out!

Until tomorrow, then, this Practical Priestess is heading off to do some major communing with the powers that be!

Cindy, Practical Priestess

As I see it, managing Life comes down to some very basic techniques, the best ones being the same ones I use to manage my garden hose, or rather how my garden hose manages me. 

First of all, what is it with that particular type of rubber or whatever it is that makes up a garden hose? No matter how I attempt to maneuver it around the yard it bends back over itself, forms a crimp, stopping the flow. The crimp always happens in the part of the hose that is farthest from where I am standing. That’s a given. First I curse. Then I take a deep breath and force myself to think about how lucky I am to have a yard to water, the gratitude headspace being so much better than the foul-mouthed head space. Though I have to say the muttered cursing under my breath does feel good.

I put the hose down, and because I have given up on those fancy adjustable nozzles that ALWAYS leak at the connecting juncture, I have to choose where I place the end of the hose in the yard so as not to burst the heads off of any delicate flowers as I stomp over to deal with the crimp because as soon as the crimp is uncrimped the water will flow like mad from the open end.

I make my way over to the crimped area and lay the hose out nice and flat. I head back to the watering end of the hose. The full force of the water flowing after being stuck in the crimp now makes the hose swing around, spraying everything in sight, including me. That water is shockingly cold. Where has that water been stored? In an ice house? It’s 90 degrees outside, in the shade, and that water is cold enough to soothe a polar bear. Needless to say when it soaks me I scream. And I am wearing the wrong shoes because I thought I would do just a ”little” watering before I head off to town. So now my nice sandals are soaked and water is squishing up between my toes, caking mud in between my feet and the sandals, which feels like I have stepped into a family of worms or worse…dog poop! I know this because I have stepped into both at different times in my forays around the yard and the feeling is all too familiar and, well frankly, oozy.

I turn around to water the apricot-colored roses and …another crimp forms further up the line! I curse again.

I slide over to the crimp in my oozy sandals and uncrimp the second crimp that has formed and return to my watering the north part of the yard where the roses are blossoming.  My plan is to make my way over to the south part of my garden and water the magical wealth garden I have created there. In that garden I have made a small shrine for a precious baby robin that fell in early flight training, was poked by the snouts of my curious dogs and is now recuperting in the Wildlife Sanctuary in a nearby town (Greenwood Wildlife, Lyons, Coloado. ALWAYS in need of donations…please help!). I have been calling them to check on that dear robin, whom we call Robert.

I watched Robert grow from when he emerged from his gorgeous blue egg to the speckled youngster he became when he crash-landed in the yard. I moved his nest to my wealth garden and put crystals and a ceramic bird in it to remember him and send blessings to him every day for his full recovery, a refuah shlemah. Birds don’t return to their nests once they have gone. You never can go home again. Though we don’t seem to know that, birds do.

It turns out Robert is a perky, feisty little guy. He is now in a cage with other wounded robins, and will be moved soon to a flight cage for full rehab. When he is ready to be released I will go get him and return him to the yard where his parents, who think he has gone off to war and have tied a yellow ribbon on the tree where he was born, wait for him with hope in their red-breasted hearts.

I am making my way over to the wealth garden, which I call the wealth garden because it is in the wealth corner of my yard, according to what the Feng Shui people  say who have visited my place.The garden is planted with red flowers and purple flowers and lots of greenery and all kinds of talismans in it that trigger in me my daily affirmations of abundance attraction.

The south part of the yard is a bit of a trek across from where I am now watering so I start to drag that beast of a hose, which is ten times its normal weight now that it is running water through it. Who knew that water could be so heavy? No wonder I feel fat. Aren’t I 90% water?

I pull on that hose and I pull and I pull and nothing is happening. I look over to see that the hose is entirely and completely entangled unto itself. The more I pull the tighter that knot of twisted rubber becomes. And that entire rat’s nest of hose is wound around the stump of a tree that was supposedly “removed” last year. All the pulling in the world won’t budge that hose.

With another big breath I lay the hose down and go shut the water off. I know that this untangling can only be done with no water flowing or what kind of insane mess will that make? So I approach the knot of all earthly knots. Very slowly I look at the knot. All I see is dusty green snakes, each part looks attached to the other. A bed of sleeping snakes. I start to slowly move different parts of the hose until it is loosened enough so I can see where one part folds back onto itself. As I lift different parts of the hose, dried, caked mud deposits itself on my lovely skirt. Who waters the garden in lavender silk?

I start with an end and wind it through the tangle. After what seems like days have passed and the moon went from New to Full I have untangled that mess of hose. Once again patience and perseverance have won the day. I turn the faucet back on and water the wealth garden.

When the garden is well-soaked I turn the faucet to off, wind the hose over its holder as neatly as I can. I am now totally exhausted and cannot even think of going off to do what I had planned. I get in my car and go to the frozen custard stand where I order two scoops of vanilla in a waffle cone, covered with chocolate spinkles, which drips all over my lavender silk sheath dress. I just don’t care anymore. My yard is watered. I am eating frozen custard on a sunny day in my beautiful town, Robert is recuperating and will return home soon, so what do I have to complain about? My clothes can be washed, my shoes will dry out, and tomorow is another day in the ring with the hose. What could be better than that?

Moral of the story: Life is a tangly, unpredictable mess requiring patience, perseverance, occasional cursing, laughng at onself followed by hefty rewards of sweets. And if you are lucky you get to save a bird or two along the way.

I have been brweing over a piece I heard on NPR last week about the ritual killing of “witches” in a tribe in Kenya. Today. Last week. Not last century. Not in another time and space. Now, Today. As it turns out this practice has  been going on forever and not at all seen as a problem by the perpetrators.  I had to pull my car over and get myself through the nausea that gurgled up from deep inside of me.

I could smell my own flesh burning as I, and so many of my ‘witch” friends were no doubt burned at the stake in times gone by for our “witch” practices of  hands-on healing, prophecy, herbal remedies, and midwivery. That’s right. Those are, and always have been, the “witches”. I still get sick thinking of it. I think of the children of the women who were put to death JUST LAST WEEK for practicing the healing arts. And the great loss to everyone who knew them, the grief they now have to carry in their hearts, added to all the other grief already there. I think of my healer friends who are hesitant to shine their light for the ancient fear they carry of just this type of atrocity.

I have waited this long to write about it because I was trying to find something inspirational to extract from this horror. As it turns out it is also Memorial Day, the most tragic day in the year of our “holidays” I always cry my eyes out on Memorial day, as I feel the unabatable grief of the families who have lost beloved children to the war machines that have dominated this Planet for centuries. War machines perpetrated by men still functioning from their reptilian brains. Not that all men function from that part of their brains, but the ones in present power do, and so we are all victim to their fear-based, Neanderthal way of conducting business, which is based on killing.

I walked out of Indian Jones yesterday becasue it had so much gratutious killing, from the very first opening scene. How can Spielberg make a Schindler’s List followed by this crap?

This Memorial Day I recommit to not killing. I don’t kill anything. Not bugs, or spiders, or ants, or dreams of a peaceful world that is safe for all “witches”. Today I keep my light shining brightly becasue that is what I have to offer, my light.

Offer what you have and do it with all your conviction to transform this world into the world of your dreams, not the dreams of those who choose to live in darkness. No matter how much darkness they choose to perpetrate on us, one single solitary light annihilates the darkness. No matter how much darkness they bring it can never make my light shine any less bright, nor yours.

Today let us join in our collectove choice to kill no more.
Let us each shine our precious light of LIFE.

Greetings!

As some of you may have noticed the last entry on this blog is from 2007.
According to my calculations that was last year. Now I KNOW I have posted entries since then so where in cyberspace are they?

They are gone. Finished. Kaput. When I changed hosts, not the kind who greet people graciously into their homes nor the kind that transport you on winged chariots to your final resting spot, but the kind who take care of the needs of your website, all data on the blog disappeared. My web guru, dear Robert, was hesitant (that’s putting it mildly) to inform me of the mass disappearance for fear I would have the meltdown of all meltdowns. Fear not, Robert! I have learned a thing or two about the computer and I know to have back-ups of all my writing so…I actually have all the Priestess Chronicles elsewhere stored.  Deep sigh of relief, for all involved. 

The fabulous news is that I am compiling all those postings into a book which you will be able to purhase as an “ebook”off of my website in the not so distance future.

The collection is to be called: Lift my Soul to Heaven: Musings of a modern-day Priestess. The stories are being edited by a real live profesisonal editor so they will be even better than when I first scribbled them down. Another deep sigh.

My suggestion for today is: HAVE ALL YOUR WORK SAVED SOMEWHERE other than where you are writing. It’s WAY easier to do things right the first time. And aren’t those famous last words?

Website Wrestling:  Priestess Chronicles, April 2007

I am beginning a new newsletter/ezine ( I balk at that pseudo-word!) entitled: Priestess Chronicles. This is the first one!! I sent it out to everyone I could think who might be interested or who, even if they aren’t interested, like me enough to delete them without telling me to kindly take them off my emial list! You know who are…thank you!

These days I am struggling with birthing my new business of being a published author, keynote presenter, workshop facilitator, and all around guide to helping people who want to be more empowered in their business and the business of their life. If you think it’s a mouthful, try birthing it! It’s yummy. It’s delicous. It’s work! Work to know when to move forward and when to surrender. Work to know what action to take and when.

The thing is that when you are in business for yourself, as I am, when the business is under construction, so am I! As I reinvent my business I also reinvent myself!  No wonder I am exhausted! It’s like I am doing a million dollar remodel all by myself!!

Oh God, why could I not be empoyed by someone else like normal people?

Such as it is…I am blessed and cursed to be an entrepreneur. And we entrepreneurs, especially the Priestess kind like myself, have no hope of being employed by someone else. We are free agents, roaming the universe with our various wares!! Traveling tinkers, as it were. Not a question that the entrepreneurial life is one of excitement and adventure but  also one of deep risk-taking complete with daily reevaluaton, constantly needing to adjust the navigation.You know that T.V. show the of world’s most dangerous jobs? I think the entrepreneur has it heads of the Arctic crab fisherman any day! Talk about putting yourself on the line, day after day after day, with no guarantee of making it home alive, with money in your pocket?!

The reality is that the managing of the nuts and bolts of setting it all into action AND keeping yourself intact while doing so is nothing short of a fantastically elaborate juggling act of vision, action, and prayer.

To attain all these lofty goals I aspire to I must develop a website that Google can search and find wiht its ”search engine”. I can barely get my mind around what a search engine is. I keep seeing the little choo-choo who could. And that little choo-choo is scouring cyberspace looking for I’m not sure what.  All I know is that I hope and pray it finds me and directs me to people who want me to come and speak to their group. And pay me to do so.  

WOW! That is quite a thought considering I have been hiding in my yard for nigh on 6 years.  I will definitely have to get something to wear other than my Target relax-a-pants and sage green crocs.  This has been the standard uniform for writing and reinventing myself. Clearly that will have to change. J.Jill here I come!   

I wrote a book on my experiences owning the European Flower Shop here in Boulder. The book is called: Priestess Entrepreneur: The MUST HAVE Guide to creating success in your business and the businss of your Life. I wrote the book, published it independently and now I need to sell that baby. I am praying that a publisher who has expressed interest is interested enough to put his money where his mouth is, put the pedal to the metal, and every other cliche I can think of that points to someone else taking the burden of self-publishing and distribution out of my hands, plopping it into experinced, and eager, ones.

The book information is on the website, as is a blog ( blah blah blog!!… A MUST HAVE for the Google search choo-choo. Apparently the choo-choo LOVES to scour blogs for words that feed its hungry little mouth…who knew? You’ll also find there a bio, one of hundreds I have written trying to portray me as someone that someone else just MUST contact, a photo of me from last century because I can’t seem to find any new ones that look like what I want to look like, and of course the testimonials which are all glowing, because why would I put a testimonial on there that thinks my work is crap?

So right now I have what I would call a very amateur website. Not at all the type of website that a prospective person who is looking for a speaker would probably use, even if the choo-choo directed them directly to me!

So I am needing to upgrade.

Uh oh.

Through some suggestions from people I trust, but who obviously don’t know me and my appalling lack of computer expertise, I decide to go with a website company that provides a template from which I can work and do the set-up and maintenance myself.  I must have been on drugs when I signed on to that.  I know I have neither the patience nor the interest to take on such a project. So yesterday I find myself trying to follow the instructions being given to me over the phone by such a nice computer guy in Washington State and I realize my mind is going blank, my eyes are glazing over, and I am fantasizing about what kind of a cookie I will be foraging for as soon as I can get this nice, but techy, guy off the phone.

As far as I am concerned he is spekaing Swahili. Who am I kidding? Swahili would be a piece of cake.

This is after endless emails going back and forth between my graphics person in Vancouver and the guy in Washington State and me in Colorado because I cannot seem to feel comfortable with any of the colors that they are suggesting for the website. I finally accept a color scheme, though I am not really happy with it, but, for God’s sake, I have got to move on to CONTENT, before yet another century passes.

As soon as I hung up I thought: “WHAT AM I DOING? CALL that talented website woman you met in the networking group last month and have her do this for you! Let her create the website of your dreams! Don’t settle for the website of your nightmares, which is what it will be if you do it yourself!”

Which is exactly what I did, and all in the nick of time, before the carrier of the present site passed my crucial information over to the carrier of the do-it-yourself website and I would be forever trapped in cyberlimbo with no calling card to get me home.

WHEW! Another narrow escape.  From myself.  Sometimes I feel like I am in an elaborate video game of my own making and I forget that I know how to run the controls!!

Well of course I lost the deposit I had given the do-it-yourself website poeple PLUS the extra money I gave them to play endlessly with the colors I never was satisfied with, but that’s all part of the gambling game you play when you do your own business.

You take a chance.  Some times you take a loss, but you always show up to the table again to play yet another hand!

MORAL OF THE STORY:  Never forget that you know how to use the controls in the game that is your life.  Never give those controls over to someone else who doesn’t know you as well as you know yourself.  Know what you like to do and deegate the rest to someone else!  AND MOST IMPORTANT of ALL:  KEEP SHOWING UP TO PLAY!!

Thinking today about the publishing world and all I am learning. I feel like I am in a maze (amazed?…truly!) going in directions I thought surely were leading me somewhere and end up walking straight into a pricky hedge. I reaserched for hours yesterday on what would be the most lucrative and easy way to accept credit cards for book orders I am planning to come pouring in (that’s when I start tackling the distribution puzzle piece of the self-publishing super hard, bazillion (and tiny) piece puzzle) and come to find out that I am already set up to accept credit cards through Paypal. Why did I not know this? There it is right on the payment page. Absurd!So i nother words you can buy my book online through Papypal OR through putting your credit card number in. They all get cleared through PayPal. Again…why did I not know this?

The easiest and most efficient way was right in front of me and I THOUGHT I was looking for an easier way and come to find out that the easier way was already there.

Same with setting up a toll-free number. YES! You can now call me and order books directly from me on the phone. We can even chat a bit about the book. Researching getting a toll-free number was yet another stroll through the maze only to realize that it was easier and equally as affordable to do it directly though QWest, which already manages my phone and my internet.  And it took all of 1 minute to set up. Again the easiest way was right there in front of me. Absurd!!

You  can now order my book from me on my toll-free number: 1.866. 440. 6545 or online on the website or at the Boulder Bookstore or ask your local bookstore to order it!

So…I am asking the Divine forces that seem to manage and control all these things that need to get done that are so challenging when one does business via the phone and the internet and have no office to go to and  where you can actually CHAT with someone…I ask for ease and grace, efficiency and prosperity as I launch my book, Priestess Entrepreneur, into the landscape of women wishing to live their businesses with joy, satisfaction, and profit.

More peace of mind, more joy, more profit, more to be able to give away!!

Just returned from a matinee showing of THE QUEEN, starring the perfect Helen Mirren. I completely respect Helen Mirren as an actress and as a person. I read a great article on her in Esquire (I think) when I was last having my hair dealt with at the salon. She is 61 and has really started to come into her own. She has recently married (been flying solo for oodles of years) and is a role model for women who might consider that any age other than the one thay are at is “too old”. Think of Jessica Tansy, making incredible films well into her 80’s. Have you seen “Camilla”? That’s a fine one. And ah, my favorite, Ruth Gordon, Maude ( n “Harold and Maude”) taking a very young lover AND a “cause” up to her chosen passing time. Strong women characters with strong voices and strong ideas…living them.

What about Grandma Moses? Started her painting career in her eighties!! And created an entirely new style of painting as pure Americana, and uniquely her own.

Which is all to say that as I am living in my fiftieth year on Planet Earth and I look at my life and the choices I’ve made, well, at least they’re mine.  I always feel that I make choices for myself with as much information as I have at the moment and so if, upon reflecting back ( which i think is unwise…Martha Stewart NEVER looks backward. Forward only for that dynamo! I am still practicing “FORWARD ONLY!” ) I might question a choice I made. I remind myself that I make ANY life decison as best as I can in the moment, with the information at hand, and there is just nothing more I can do about anything that is already done.What I can do something about is make good decisions for myself in THIS moment, with all the information I have at hand. When I get more info (I am always looking!) I use it to make better decisions.

SO back to “The Queen” movie…

The Queen was in between a rock and a hard place after Princess Diana’s death because she was following protocol and duty when heart was required. She had never been asked to lead with heart, responding to the emotional needs of the people, beyond the precedence set by duty. It was quite fascinating. Her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria,  also had to leave her grieving for her husband behind because the people needed her presence. They needed her to  ”show up”, even though she didn’t want to.

How often in our own lives are we required to show up, even if we don’t want to? How often are we confused by duty vs. emotion? Whether we are queens of countries or queens of our own domain, we are daily called to show up as leaders of our world. And more so now than ever. More so now than ever before a woman’s way of looking at her world is needed, required. Our presence is required in all its fullness.

How are you choosing to show up?

I always suggest that women see movies and read books about women who have held power throughout history. How else can we learn to hold power ourselves if not by learning from one another? We are each other’s greatest teachers.

Women do not hold power as men do. We cannot learn that from men. We HAVE to learn it from other women…and teach it to other women as well!

See Judi Dnech in “Mrs.Brown” as Queen Victoria  in the years after Albert’s death and Cate Blanchett in “Elizabeth “and anything at all about Eleanor Roosevelt, our own  beloved incredible woman of power who lead with her heart, wounded and beaten as it was, a brilliant intellect, and endless compassion.

SO that’s my soapbox talk for today. I’m off to find my sceptre and lead my dogs to an  evening of fun and merriment, ( that would be a walk around the holiday-lit streets) as that is what is called for right now!!

TA!

Been in contact with LeAnn Theiman about an idea I have for another Chicken Soup for the Soul Book. I heard her speak at last month’s Speaker Meeting in Denver at the Renaissance Hotel. Whoa! As usual a good idea seems to come equipped with a huge uphill climb of work and promotion. mmm…. the endless selling of oneself. I’ll check out the suggestions she gave mw an dsee what opens up.

I am completely ready for things to be not QUITE so much work!

Some work is great ~ feeds the spirit and the mind. But too much work, if the uphill climb is just too overwhelming in scope…well it can stop me right in my tracks.

Considering many options as to which foot to next put forward and how exactly to step into the next part of my career. Book promotion for Priestess Entrepreneur, teaching women enjoyment, contentment and success in her business expereinces, whether that be in their won business or the very business of their lives! But how to best go about doing this mammoth venture? and what is the timing? Sometimes it is just all about the timing of promoting, speaking, and being out there. Meeting just the right person at just the right time and recognizing that.

Self-pubishing my guide to sanity and soul survival while doing business was an adventure. I am thinking that I would so much prefer to be picked up by a local publisher so I can hand over the distribution to someone who knows how to do it! Always the learning curve! The endless learning curve.

And isn’t it all just seriously committing to telling oneself the truth? What is my truth for my work? How wiling am I do let the help of the Unciverse guide me to the next right step for me?