Humbly, Gratefully Called To Be

I’m not entirely certain, but I believe there may be quite a few new eyes reading my blog posts due to the events of the past few days. Therefore, I feel the need to reintroduce myself and what this site is about. My name is Tammi and I started this blog as a means of taking those inclined on a journey with me. A journey into the next phase of my life and beyond. But really the next phase is here and now. A little less than a year ago, after much stress, unhappiness and a long season of Divine Dissatisfaction with my work and my life, I decided I needed to leave my job of eight years and an industry I’d worked in since 1998. It was a freeing and empowering decision for me, but I had no clue what else I wanted to do. Then came another revelation. My children were all grown, the two oldest, my sons had been out of the house for years and only my 19-year-old daughter remained. I could figure out what I really want to be when I grow up and go for it!

My therapist recommended a book called ‘The Path’ Creating Your Mission Statement For Work and For Life by Laurie Beth Jones. It is a fantastic book which defines clearly what a mission statement is, the elements that make up a mission statement and even discusses false assumptions about them. It has a series of exercises and tasks designed to help you know yourself, uncover your passion and design a vision statement. I discovered my element is water. I discovered that I want to communicate, facilitate and inspire healthy meaningful connections through spirituality, or maybe through interior design or possibly with women’s issues. I haven’t finalized the focus of my mission statement yet. This process of discovery took place late last year and into early 2015. It was a great beginning and really helped me face going into work every day. I still had no clue HOW I was supposed to go about doing those things. Eventually, I started to grow fearful and discouraged about leaving my job and starting a new phase in my life. It would require an effort, a presence of heart, mind and spirituality that I didn’t think I could live up to. So I shut down and went into a deep isolative depression for quite some time. Time spent zoning out on the couch in front of the television with a lot of emotional eating. Eventually, I crawled out of that mental and spiritual darkness enough to reach out to a particular friend. We met for lunch and as I talked about my fears and doubts about my ability to navigate the next steps in my life, she suggested I start a blog about how I deal with my fears as I change my life. I told her I’d think about it, I even had a domain name in mind, but we tabled the discussion. But the idea stayed with me. It germinated, marinated, then resonated until weeks later, on my own I checked to see if the domain name I wanted for my blog was available. It wasn’t.

In the meantime, I was doing all kinds of things to show up for my life mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I was being of service to my community. I was following a lot more spiritually uplifting pages and personalities on Facebook. I accepted a social media challenge from a local plus-sized boutique to post selfies for 20 days straight with #LoveYourSelfie2015 and #HowBigIsYourBrave to all social media. I received a TON of positive feedback with that challenge! I started writing a little about my experience in my selfie postings. I also copy and paste many quotes to my own personal facebook page. Once my original idea for my blog domain was taken, I came up with BuildYourOwnBrave (BYOB). It was available and I paid for it! You see, I’m also a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Clean and sober for 18 years, so I really liked the BYOB. And of course, build your own brave speaks to me about walking through my fears.

A dear friend came back into my life at a time when I needed someone with computer skills to help me set up the site. His name is Paulie and he was an angel. In fact, since I’d crawled out of that depression and made a conscious intention to show up, be present and move forward with my life, things have been HAPPENING! Real shit like I decided to move from the large 90 unit gated apartment complex I’d live in for 14 years into a 5 unit street level place that I just love, love, love. My blog site was launched a little less than six weeks ago and has been well received. I started taking yoga classes on another great recommendation from my kickass therapist. It seems my fear of living up to the effort and presence of heart/mind/spirit were unfounded. The clarity and presence that I have in my life now is fueled and driven by the Divine. It’s always been Divinely guided whether I acknowledge it or not. So far it’s shown me humility and grace beyond measure. It is calling me to be more loving, more giving, more open, more authentic, more of service because God and Life are sending those to me in equal measure. I promise to keep answering His Call in whatever form it takes.