​I thought I was dying. It happened shortly before my 11th birthday, at school. I was a pretty healthy kid but at that moment, I had no idea what was going on with me. Other than a tonsillectomy a couple of years before and breaking my arm when I was 5, I didn’t have a lot of reasons to go to a doctor.

I had trailed blood down the corridor to the girl’s bathroom. I don’t know who said something. I don’t remember who found me. An adult voice on the other side of the locked door told me to go to the nurse’s office.

​Much like Anger or Sadness, Guilt can be a healthy negative emotion, if it’s proportional and appropriate.

 And contrary to popular belief, Guilt and Shame are not synonymous. Guilt helps us weigh the gravity, responsibility and correctability of our actions.

In other words, Guilt can help us do better, by reminding us to be better. Plus, Guilt doesn’t need my help to survive.

But Shame…

Shame, on the other hand, Shame always needs an accomplice.

​What if you had a diamond, the most beautiful diamond in the world. We’re talking 20, 30 carats of pure color, cut and clarity.

Straight up beautiful… but it’s completely covered in shit.

Not sprinkled with just a little baby feces on it. That gem, well it’s been sitting in a vat of adult and animal dukey doo, in the hot sun for a while now. I mean it’s dried on, fully offensive, knock you out stank.

There is no way possible to retrieve that diamond and to not get any of it on you.

When I go grocery shopping without a list it’s always dangerous. Whole meals plan themselves in my head when all I need is toilet paper and Old Bay seasoning.

Next thing I know, I have a cart full of items I could use but don’t need right now.

It’s worse when I haven’t eaten.

You know the scene - a kid is sitting in front of a tv screen, watching someone do something extraordinary. And the look on the child’s face, seeing them dreaming of the day when they could be that person with their name in lights, famous for doing something wonderful, something very few have done before them.

Today, I feel like I’m that kid.

Do you know? I mean do you really know you deserve your highest good? I mean you may say it out of your mouth, but do you believe it?

Too many times, you doubted yourself.

Too many times you looked past what you knew to be true because you were told it was unimportant or not real or not valid.

Too many times you were admonished “that’s not how we do things here”.

Too many times you believed the lie that if you couldn’t be like Tom, Dick or Mary you weren’t not good enough.

Who told you that?

Ummm, it’s the disconnection to your spark and the lack of humanness for me…

And whenever you have unexamined or under verbalized expectations, you can expect disappointments, assumptions, and misunderstandings to follow.

What if you talk about being valuable instead?

I was thinking about how to find Greatness.

I can tell you how I started down the path to find mine. I’m reminded of a quote by Lao Tzu. It says "The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet."

He’s basically saying, you gotta start with where you are.

The minute, no, the second you actively and willingly get to know the full landscape around your currently held beliefs, misbeliefs, hopes, expectations, and dreams, you can begin your journey towards real Greatness.

I've always been able to read a map. My father taught me. He would show me the routes we would be taking on our family’s vacations, what to watch out for on the road and what we would be seeing along the way.

Once, he showed me which roads we were going to take west through the Allegany mountain range to get to the road that he wanted us to travel. It seemed kinda out of the way to me.

There is a lot of buzz these days about self-care. It’s been a personal pursuit for decades and my professional work for the last few years. I’m always upfront that Self-Care is Self-Love and it’s very necessary. But I meet a lot of folks that are unsure or limit what self-care could look like.

In a recent conversation, I made a comment where one wasn’t needed. A simple mistake. One that wouldn’t normally trigger the apocalypse …except, if you heard me cursing myself out, you’d have been looking over your shoulder for Thanos. (If you ain’t a Marvel Universe geek, ya betta ask somebody)

A little while ago, I did some "checking in" with myself and found out to my surprise that I was ready. For what you might ask? I thought it was a new relationship. So I prayed, I wrote my list (if you want to know what kind of list, message me and I'll share), and began to prepare. I'm not exactly sure what I thought I needed to do so I followed all suggestions. I had my cards read, I signed up on an internet dating site. I even got pedicures and oils for my body while I breathed in affirmations each day to have my heart be shown the way.