My Grandma Margie passed last week.

Grandma Margie was great at documenting photos. I love seeing her at different ages in her youth. She was married at 17 and had her first child when she was 19

Grandma Margie was great at documenting photos. I love seeing her at different ages in her youth. She was married at 17 and had her first child when she was 19

Since the moment my phone exploded with calls from my family last Tuesday morning, I feel as though I’ve been in an alternate universe.

In this alternate universe, I am being driven by something larger than myself.  I feel my heart expanding, my body pulsating with a “knowing” that is running through my veins.

LOVE this picture. I'm wearing overalls (probably 6 yrs old), my brother, 4, is in front, while my cousins Justin and Amy are on either side of Grandma.

LOVE this picture. I’m wearing overalls (probably 6 yrs old), my brother, 4, is in front, while my cousins Justin and Amy are on either side of Grandma.

My grandmother had a 7th-grade education, was married at 17 and had her first child by the time she was 19.  Babies having babies.

While there’s a lot of love in my family, there’s a lot of dysfunction.  The older men (like grandfathers and great-grandfathers), while they did the best they could, were angry men.  There are stories peppered through both sides of my family of men hitting women.

While I’ve never witnessed any of this, nor have I ever been hit, I have this deep feeling that I’m carrying the burden of my ancestors.  I can actually FEEL my grandmother’s pain and all the pain and suffering of an ancestral lineage born in poverty where it was normal to take out anger on women.

Me and my grandma Thanksgiving 2014. Always smiling and always the jokster. : )

Me and my grandma Thanksgiving 2014. Always smiling and always the jokster. : )

I talk about this candidly right now because what’s come up for me this week is a sense of deep responsibility to the ancestral matriarchy of my past and also to women who will walk on this planet long after I’m gone.

But this feeling of intense responsibility is not only for my Matriarch, but for all the women on this planet: past, present, and future.

Because what my grandmother and many other women in my family have experienced is not special to my family.  It’s a world-wide colossal epidemic of not only seeing the Feminine as inferior, but also thinking it’s okay to hurt Her.

And while yes the Feminine is hurt through physical means, She’s also undermined emotionally, scarred and bruised on the inside where you can’t even see it.

But what’s worse, we as women carry the depth of this physical and emotional abuse, which has been handed to us from the collective consciousness, that says “women are less”.

We take it in, we believe it, and whether or not we personally experience physical or emotional abuse from another doesn’t matter.  It lives inside of us and comes out looking like this:

I’ll hate my body.

I’ll hate and judge her body because she’s bigger than me, then I’ll turn around and hate and judge my body because my body’s not as small as hers.

I don’t trust other women.  I’ll relentlessly judge and critique them.  “Ugh… she’s so emotional!

I don’t trust myself.  I’ll relentlessly judge and critique myself.  “Ugh…why am I so emotional!”

I’ll shovel food in my mouth to pacify the pain.

I’ll force myself to diet and starve…that’ll teach me self-control. “Ha!  That’s what you get for shoveling all that food down your mouth!”

These are but a few examples of how we as women choose to perpetuate the cycles of feminine suffering, and they exist at the macro level.

Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”.  How can I ever expect physical and emotional abuse to end for women, when we as women beat ourselves up by hating our body and then go on to beat other women up by hating on them, too?

The Divine message that clearly came to me last week as my grandmother passed was that my life is to be used in service of helping women end their internal abuse and suffering.

I am here to help women be the change they want to see in the world through lessons of deep and radical self-love.

How do I do this?  I’m no scholar.

But I do have extensive training in the worlds of eating psychology, nutrition, yoga, and fitness.  Through these doors I help women who are seeking to heal their mind, heart, and soul, and create a deep loving respectful relationship to their body.

Thank you Grandma Margie for the beautiful and simple life you led.  And even in your death you brought miracles into the world.

I love you.

Have you ever had profound realizations come out of awful situations like death?

In what ways have you healed your own thinking to reflect a more loving way to be toward yourself?

Share in the comments below!