Are your priorities straight?
Please forgive any rough edges or miss-speaks in this blog. I'm still processing it all and don’t want to stop the transmission by over-thinking it.
I was so rocked yesterday when I learned of Danna Omari’s passing (@noyskincare)
She was one of the most radiant and influential women I have ever witnessed. She was so beautiful, so graceful, and so inspiring. A mother of three small kids, a wife, a spa owner, a beauty and wellness practitioner/influencer. She brought facial massage, Gua Sha, and facial reflexology to Instagram and the media in a way that no one had before. She was so deeply loved by so many people and the tears just won’t stop flowing. We’re all so shook.
She paved the way for so many of us just starting to share our practices with the world and made the power of facial massage known and hot. She simplified, demystified it, and amplified it. I used to watch her tutorials when I was in massage school and dream of having a practice like hers, and of working with women the way she did.
Yesterday I posted a very small tribute to her in my stories and my DMs blew up. Everyone shared how Danna had impacted them in one way or another. Her story is so incredibly tragic. She never shared how much pain she was in or how much she suffered. Everyone was in shock.
I learned through listening to this pod episode that she had Hashimoto's and bone cancer. The cancer was in remission, and it came back to her lungs. She was so determined to beat it. Through this whole process she suffered in so many ways and was in tremendous pain, barely sleeping, and yet still showed up for her business, her clients, her family. She still cranked on Instagram and pumped out content. She worked long hours and saw many clients a day. She created an online biz. She said she wanted to ride the wave of her success. She was obviously building a huge brand and had a big, beautiful family depending on her. She paused seeing clients after her tumor removal.
Now full transparency I had to listen to this episode in chunks. I was so triggered by a number of things that she shared for deeply personal reasons, that I paused it when she said tearfully “it’s back and in my lungs, but I’m going to f*cking beat it.” My anxiety skyrocketed and I had to put it down. I felt every inch of my body getting activated and I found myself worrying ten years down the line. But the rest of the episode was so uplifting and inspiring and also regulating. They were talking about taking the pride out of hustle culture and prioritizing your stress management. it was so wonderful to bask in her energy and feel close to her.
It’s unimaginable to me how people suffer. How women suffer. How women who care for people suffer particularly. How women who are self-care advocates and wellness entrepreneurs push themselves even when their bodies are screaming at them. Dana talked about getting “tapped on the shoulder” and bypassing it. Ignoring her pain. Not listening to her body. Now please, hear this - in no way am I saying she’s responsible for this tragedy… I’m just here to give you some food for thought. And I truly believe so many of the challenges and illnesses we face are fated. Part of a larger soul journey and plan that our human selves can’t comprehend. Trying to control our health at all costs can be so draining and frightening. We can’t live in constant fear and prevention.
So last week I got sick. A bad cold, not covid but something severe enough to knock me out of the game. Those of you who are embodied beauty pod listeners are probably rolling your eyes at me because I was all like “I’ve been so in my feminine with this launch of BLOOM, I usually get sick when I launch something, but I feel great” ~ yeah LOL.
But I can’t contribute this to BLOOM, I actually feel like it’s from pushing myself in other areas and trying to front load my week in order to give myself “time off”. I’ve also been dealing with some hardcore feminine wounding coming up around my power and I’ve done a lot of healing work this week which often wears me down. So there was lots of sobbing, processing, and clearing. And amazing realizations have come through.
I have so much to share about that and will do so soon! But my voice is currently barely there. And I know that I need to conserve my energy and voice because I have a lot of people to care for this week. I’m fully booked with clients, I have all of you who have joined BLOOM to be present for and guide, I have children to watch, family to help, and animals to tend to. I have to be mindful of where I put my energy and so I’ve decided that the most self-loving, and self-preserving thing I can do right now, is write this, share it, and then rest.
So here’s where it all comes together.
I’m seeing so many women pushing themselves when they need rest. When they need healing. Pushing themselves because there is stress around needing to make money and promote their offerings at all costs. Pushing themselves to handle EVERYTHING alone. I see it over and over and over. I’ve been there over and over.
Then we get depleted AF, we get ill. I want so badly to shift the paradigm. To help women shift into their softness and be self-loving, self-nurturing, and in turn, ultra-magnetic. To stop trying so hard and trust that the universe will fill them and support them. To carve out time for relaxation, for healing, and for regeneration.
I want us to have so much trust that we can relax around the urgency, and fear, and scarcity mindset, and us trying to live up to the expectations that we’ve put on ourselves, and how it influences how we act in the world. I’m so guilty of pushing myself beyond the limits and I’m just not willing to do it anymore.
So, I’m sharing all of this because I want to remind you of how important it is for you to slow down and take care of you FIRST - for your health, your happiness, your beauty, your longevity, your quality of life. BLOOM starts in 2 days, on March 20th. I wanted to do a pod, to put out some awesome reels showing you some self-massage and gua sha techniques you’ll learn, to go live and talk about it, to promote it the best I could, but I can’t right now.
I would be pushing myself to do it. And I’d rather save that juice to facilitate the program itself and show up in the fullest way I can for all who have already invested in themselves. And in doing so I’m proving to myself that we can have tremendous impact in the world, and change people’s lives for the better, while taking the most loving care of ourselves, because it starts with YOU!
A 4-week self-care immersion to awaken your beauty, vitality and reconnect to your feminine essence.
Reveal your radiance through guided self-massage, Gua Sha, movement, meditation, and deep self-nurturing.
BLOOM BEGINS WEDNESDAY 3/20 at NOON EST