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One of my goals for 2013 is to inspire and challenge you to blossom into the fullest expression of your authentic self so that you can become the person you were born to be. I am always seeking to keep blossoming myself and I love when I find other women who inspire me toward my own becoming. Debbie Ford is one of those women. It’s always a treat to find a gem worth sharing; this message from Debbie arrived the other day, and I knew I had to share it with you.

Discover the Gift of Desire by Debbie Ford

Desire is the spark that ignites the flame of your soul and illuminates your innate creativity, imagination, and vision. It is the impulse that gives you the ambition and the energy to share your unique talents with the world. Your soul’s desires are with you at birth like a hidden treasure chest of possibilities for you to discover as you grow and evolve into the person you were meant to be. Yet before you can harness this powerful force, you must give voice to what you long for in the deepest place in your heart. You may be one of the many who have stopped letting yourself feel the ache of your own desires, either because you are ashamed that some of those desires are self-serving or because you’re afraid of the disappointment and hurt you might feel if you don’t get what you ask for. But unless you embrace the desires of your heart, you are left empty, estranged from the passion of your soul.

To create a life you love, you must summon one of the most powerful agents of change in the universe: desire. In its purest form, desire drives you to want something so badly that you are willing to release your outdated behaviors and beliefs in order to manifest it. Desire forces you to grow, evolve, and move closer to your highest expression. Beneath the surface of your ego’s insatiable cravings, your authentic desires wait patiently for you to acknowledge and claim them. Gently but persistently they are nudging you to go deeper, to find greater meaning, and to step into a self you have never met before. Desire is your most primal, inborn motivator to become fully expressed, inspired, and passionate, and to fulfill your soul’s mission on earth. It is one of your most powerful friends and guides.

Today you have the opportunity to unearth the desires that may be covered over with years of fear and resignation, to allow yourself to feel their potency to such a degree that you are willing to fight for their fulfillment. Desire is the most important catalyst for bringing about radical change. This is not a dress rehearsal; this is your life. Your time is now.

Transformational Action Steps

1. Make a list of all your desires — both those things that you want to achieve in the outer world and those that you long to feel inside. Do you want more self-confidence, more love, a clearer sense of purpose, greater peace of mind? If so, write it down. Do you desire more money, more friends, a soul mate, a child, or a new career? If so, write it down. This is the time to list all of your desires without censoring yourself. Be honest. Be bold.

2. Create a vision map – an outer picture of each of your desires – either by cutting pictures that you love or words that inspire you out of magazines and putting them together in an inspiring way or by adding some images to your screen saver on your computer. Look at your vision map throughout the day to remind yourself of what you truly desire. Commit to taking three minutes each morning to seal these words and images into your consciousness.

Do not wait another day to become fully engaged in your life, to learn to love and to forgive, and to live with greater purpose and meaning.

With love and blessings,
Debbie
To connect with Debbie Ford, go here: www.DebbieFord.com

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I’m a veteran at mammography, having experienced my first squishing at the ripe age of eighteen. That was when a similar “Round/Flat”duet was performed between a short, middle-aged woman in scrubs with little yellow smiley faces on them, and my left breast. I could tell she was getting frustrated with the stubborn boob as she cranked the vice harder and harder in a feeble attempt to make flat what God had made round. It wasn’t her fault. I was probably her first teenaged, premenstrual patient. My breasts were firm and dense (ah, sweet memory) and they flat-out refused to flatten out. But she was determined to smoosh them the way she smooshed the typical over-forty pair. I wished I had never told my mother about the golf ball I’d felt under my skin in the shower. The weeks since then had been one humiliation after another.

First, there was my mother feeling me up. Then, there was the gray haired male doctor who’d made me stand in front of him, topless, with my hands on my hips. “Okay, now hands behind your head” he said to my breasts. Was I being arrested? He ordered me up onto his table and frisked me. “Yup, that’s a lump alright,” he said, rolling his cold, boney fingers around the golf ball. “Might be a cyst. Here, let’s see.”  He spun around and turned back toward me, wielding a needle the size of the Empire State Building. He stabbed the lump, which was just above my left nipple, pressed his thumb into the black rubber tip of the syringe, inching the needle down down down until the entire Empire State Building was lodged deeply inside my breast. He then proceeded to – wait – I have to take a deep breath before recounting this part. Whew. Keeping the needle firmly in place, he pulled the black rubber tip up and out, trying to suck fluid out of my poor, defenseless, left breast. The force of the suction was so intense I thought my lunch would show up in that syringe. But nothing came out.  He gave up and yanked the needle out of me. “Well,” the doc said jovially, “Guess we’d better send you for a mammogram.”

That was when I encountered the lady in the smiley face scrubs.

“Do what?” I said, staring at her like she had just asked me to give her a lap dance.

“Place your breast up on the slab.” Maybe she didn’t call it a slab, but that’s what it looked like – a clear, plexiglas slab slung in mid air and attached by a giant metal arm to some intimidating looking machinery.

“Place my what, where?”  She didn’t have time to explain.  In case I hadn’t noticed, there was a waiting room full of other patients who needed to get in there. She came at me fast, arranging my body parts like I was a department store mannequin, one arm over my head, the other behind my back, face turned to the side. Then she scooped up my left breast with her hand and plopped it up on the cold shelf.  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that another shelf descending from above. I watched in horror as the two slabs squeezed together, like they were trying to pop my poor breast like a pimple. I whimpered audibly.  I thought surely Smiley Scrubs would see the agony I was in and loosen the thing. But she had a job to do.

The jaws came at the breast with a mighty force. The breast fought back, swelling up like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk.  Smiley Scrubs scrambled around the room with lightning speed, determined to win, pushing my shoulder forward, cranking the vice. Round. Flat! ROUND!  She was sweating now, too. At long last, the jaws unclenched and my breast inhaled and swelled.  “Round” it sang out loud and strong. The breast and I were breathing like we’d been biking uphill. Oh, thank God it’s over, I thought. And then I heard Smiley say, “We’re not done.”  I stood, transfixed, as the metal arm began to move the slabs.  It was like watching a Sci-Fi scene in slow motion- the jaws were turning sideways! The vice, which a moment ago had tried to make them horizontal, now intended to make them vertical. My breasts clung to me, shivering in fear. I touched them and whispered in a motherly tone, “Be brave, girls. Be strong.”

I emerged from that room as if I’d just wrestled a mountain lion. My hair, which was bouncy and shiny when I’d arrived, was now clinging to my forehead, in frizzy, stringy strands. My sweaty, red face dropped down to look at my badly beaten breasts. There were so many groove marks on them, you could have played tic-tac-toe across my chest. Even the weight of the cotton gown felt oppressive.

A short while later, a kindly female doctor explained to me that the mammogram had been fruitless. I may be paraphrasing here, but she basically said that until my peaches ripened a bit more, they would be impossible to press properly. I would need a biopsy. She would recommend a wonderful surgeon.

The golf ball proved to be a benign tumor – something they called hyperplasia – which I came to understand as a bunch of cells dog-piling on top of each other.  “The good news is,” the doctor said as he read the pathologist’s report “there is no evidence of atypia.”  “Isn’t a golf ball inside your breast pretty atypical?” I asked. “That means it isn’t cancer.” Just hearing the “c” word gave me a chill.  “It is only atypical in the sense that hyperplasia doesn’t frequently present in women under thirty.”  I remember feeling secretly pleased that I had the mature, and therefore sexy, breasts of a thirty-year-old.  Now, having rounded the corner of forty, I wonder why in God’s name I would have wanted anything other than what I had – the breasts of an eighteen-year-old.

I’ve had many squishings since that first one and I’ll be honest, they’re never a party. But they are the Jaws of Life for millions of us, so squish we must. I’ve actually grown to look forward to my monthly self-exams. Before bed, in a tub full of lavender scented bubbles, I give my girls a thorough once-over. I hold them like two babies’ heads. “Thank you for staying typical,” I say, “If you stick with me to the end, I promise I will never take the two of you for granted.”

P.S.  If you’re not already doing your monthly self-exam, set yourself a reminder so you won’t forget.  And, if you need guidance, here’s some information about breast self-exam.  Or better yet, there’s an App for that!
Watch this for inspiration!

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Don’t Play the End of the Scene at the Beginning

Did you know you have twelve nerves in your head? I don’t get too picky about the exact whereabouts, but I know that they are located somewhere around your brain stem and each one has a different gig. For example, your eighth cranial nerve controls the hearing in your left ear. Or maybe it’s the right ear. I’m absolutely certain about the job of the last one, the twelfth cranial nerve. It controls the motor function on the left side of your tongue. I know this definitively because in January 2007, my doctor called to tell me that “unfortunately” (the word you never want to hear after a scan of your noggin’) I have a small mass on my twelfth cranial nerve.

This explained why I had found it increasingly difficult to articulate certain words that require major use of the tongue, like “Google.” Say it out loud right now. Really. Notice the Herculean job that goes on inside your mouth as you pronounce this relatively recent verb? Your tongue gets a workout from stem to stern. Go ahead, say it with me: Google. I can pronounce it, but I’ve lost about 40 percent of my motor function due to the tumor on my last nerve.

So what’s the big deal about losing 40 percent use of one side of your tongue? I suppose it wouldn’t be much of a deal at all if it weren’t for the fact that I use my voice for a living. Maybe you’ve heard of a little Broadway musical called, “The Phantom of the Opera”? There’s this dude with a gnarly face who wears a white mask and chases around a young soprano named Christine Daaé. That young soprano on Broadway was me from 1998 until 2006 (at which point the “young” part became debatable). For an actress and singer, the tongue, as well as every other mechanism involved in vocalization, is of critical value.

The good news is that the tumor on my last nerve is not life-threatening. But the docs stop short of calling it benign due to its rather precarious position at the entry point of my brain and the fact that unfortunately it could become malignant at any time. So what does one do when faced with such anxiety-provoking news? Fortunately, my acting background provides several useful tools for dealing with what, in a script, would be called “the given circumstances.”

My given circumstances currently look like this: I may lose my ability to sing. I may become incurably ill. I may die.

But as I begin to play out that scene, I can almost literally hear my acting teacher clap his hands to interrupt the action: “Sandra, don’t play the end of the scene at the beginning.”

Sometimes actors enter a scene prepped for what they know is coming – the emotional breakdown, the knock-down drag-out – and they bring that negative energy into the scene before the conflict has even begun. It lends an unnecessary weight and edge to what is actually happening in the moment.

Do you ever find yourself doing this in life? I know I do. If we’re not awake and aware, it’s all too easy to project forward into imagined circumstances that haven’t even occurred. We brace ourselves, armed for battle and bring fearful energy into our current reality. When we do that, we rob ourselves of the joy and freedom being offered in the here and now.

Even in a play, when the script is already written and you know precisely how it’s going to end, it doesn’t serve you or the play to act with foreknowledge. In acting, as in life, you and your fellow players are best served by staying present, saying “yes” to what is happening right now, and allowing room for surprise.

Today, the little beauty near my brain is holding steady not causing me a bit of trouble. If it weren’t for my tiny tumor, I may never have found Kris Carr and gotten my Crazy Sexy lifestyle on. When I remain present to this moment, the given circumstances of my life look very different:

I am sitting at my desk typing a guest post for my favorite blog. I feel better than I have in years. I love and appreciate the gift of being able to use my voice not only to sing but as a tool for positive change in the world.

As you act out the script of your life, ask yourself, “Am I playing the end of the scene at the beginning?” “Can I say ‘yes’ to what is happening in the present moment?”

Meanwhile, mind if I ask you a favor? Celebrate your tongue today. Use it wisely. Sing at the top of your lungs. Speak your truth boldly. Give a special something-something to your honey. Significant others can thank me later.

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Huffington Post Interview

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Health and Happiness Club Interview

xoxo,

Sandra

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