These are my reflections
This space has been dormant, like a seed buried, waiting for the conditions to coax it from its dark, warm hiding place.
I’m thrilled to share all the places I’ve been. The peace I have worked to feel
and in the tools I’ve gathered along the way.
It is my deepest hope that by sharing my story, it will benefit even one soul walking this journey of life. Thank you for being here with me. It is my greatest honor.
All My Love,
Natalie
Forever a Knight.
And what I learned there, the support it provided and the love it gave to my life have left an impression in my heart that I will carry for as long as my soul goes on.
There were several times during my three and a half years there that I wondered if I’d even graduate. My family was struggling at home and I felt stress, deep sadness and even guilt around enjoying that time of my life.
And I worked to keep my sanity and scholarships one semester at a time. It was at UCF I learned the balance of having fun and working hard and the struggle of not letting go.
Sometimes with friends, sometimes with brothers, sometimes with mentors and just once with my neighbor across the hall.
I was very active in that business fraternity where I fell in love with those brothers; now I call them family. There is a friend from that time that gave me the honor of being a godmother. There is a mentor who became a second mother, and is even today.
That neighbor, yeah, he’s the one I make a home and a life with now. He’s the one I worked through my last semesters with. We had the same major even before we knew the other existed.
And even now there’s pain as the distance that separate those I made such deep bonds with have gone off into their own lives after school.
I often say if someone would pay for me to go back and do it all over again, I would. But the truth is nothing could possibly compare.
It’s nostalgia that I feel when I reflect on it now. But like so many others with their own Alma Matter, that place will always feel like home.
I will always bleed black and gold and I will always feel indebted to the place that held me so tightly and so tenderly as I transitioned from a youngster to an adult, as I fell apart and built myself back up one new memory at a time all across that campus.
Love,
Natalie
Yowza… Duke
I think this was the first time I really realized how awkwardly out of place I was in my life. I know it was a great opportunity, and it did give me the experience of a lifetime, bit it was here that I noticed how different I was.
There was an obsession throughout with the ranking of our program. As a group, we were spoken to about it several times. The questions had come up enough that it was necessary to address us as a whole.
I knew the experience was far beyond any other program available. And indeed, part of why our ranking was so illusive was because there was nothing to rank us against.
During the course of study, at about the midpoint, a professor of ours decided to use our ages as part of a class demonstration.
Actually, there were two of us.
Later in that residency a group of students went out for dinner together. There was a birthday celebration to be had; someone was turning 30. Just after he reveled the milestone birthday, the next words from his mouth were, “Yeah, and whoever that fucking 23-year-old is in our program…….”
This was my first real encounter with this person. The next one would be when he spilled his drink on me.
Months later, I’d have someone sit in front of me this time, and tell me I was brining down the average age for the program, a critical metric in how school rankings overall are calculated.
I couldn’t see how small spirited these comments were.
And now, as I approach my own 30th birthday, I can see so very clearly how truly amazing it was for me to be traveling the world and learning about how people different than us conduct themselves in a business interaction.
And I can see where I was frozen, where I allowed for my own internal struggles - mirrored back to me through my peers - to get in the way of my excellence, and where these same feelings kept me from standing up for myself.
I remember loving the class everyone hated enough to try to get it removed from the curriculum.
And I’m grateful it happened. And I’m grateful for the people who made it possible.
It was the best feedback I've ever been given.
I received deep blessings in being able to attend that program. It’s one of those moments of my life that I feel I snuck into, or even stole, like it wasn’t really mine to have.
All my love,
Nat
Life is a channeling of energy.
It cannot be created nor destroyed. As humans, we are masters of working with and channeling energy - except when we’re not. This is when we feel tired, drained, manic, depressed.
Think of this in terms of your day. You wake up in the morning and what’s the first thing that happens? Your brain begins to run, to buzz with all the things that make up whatever your life has going on for the moment.
But what if we each woke up tomorrow morning and decided that instead of energy running us, we would channel it into what we wanted and needed for the day?
It’s how we use energy that makes it powerful.
Today I almost let this energy get the best of me.
Love,
Nat
If at first it sucks terribly, it might be worth trying again.
I was beginning to seek physical fitness and joined a small gym in my community. Yoga was on the roster of classes, and always being a flexible kid, I figured it would be a good fit. I mentioned wanting to try it to a friend and her mother who were also members of the gym. Her mother’s eyes grew wide and she said, “Oh no. You can’t do that. It’s not Christian. It’s worshiping another religion.” And so, being a “good Christian girl” I refused my intuitive desires to try a new form of exercise.
It would be many years before I finally realized what I was told that day by a well-meaning soul was an absolute falsity, a deep misconception around yoga and the type of principles it encourages.
Though yes, some posture may be named, in Hindi, after certain deities, there is no more an aspect of worship involved in a split pose, which does have such a name, as a forward fold, which doesn’t.
The philosophy of yoga is broken down into eight parts, or limbs as they’re often called. What you experience in a traditional class, postures, are but one aspect of eight.
The purpose of yoga is union; to unify the mind, body and spirit, to bring each aspect of the human experience, both ordinary and divine into alignment.
And so, this leads into a much broader conversation of what is yoga.
Can running be yoga? Can laughing be yoga? Can crafting and creating be yoga? From my perspective, certainly so.
And this is because yoga is really much more about the attitude, mindset and intention that you bring to an activity.
Each time I release the false need for something, like achievement, I am practicing yoga. Each time I choose to take a deep breath before lashing out at someone who pushes my buttons, I am practicing yoga. And each time I step to my mat and make it about the perfect posture, I am not practicing yoga.
When I was in my junior year of college, I took yoga for the first time. But I didn’t just walk into a class. Per my usual style of operating, I jumped all the way in and took a full semester of yoga.
In the past I’ve said, “he just wasn’t my teacher.” And though in this tradition we often talk about “our teachers,” as those who guide us down the path of knowledge with whom we resonate, it’s become clear to me that if he weren’t my teacher, he wouldn’t have been my teacher. He would have never crossed my path. So if I’ve felt so misplace in him crossing my path in the past, but I understand he is indeed been placed here to teach me something, what did my first teacher teach me?
My teacher was so deep into yoga that this statements and practices were incredibly unrelatable to me. It became a class I disliked.
...Ok fine, I dreaded getting out of bed at 6 AM for this class.
It’s interesting to understand now what impact a teacher has on a student loving a subject, or absolutely rejecting it.
In 2012 I started at a new gym. My muscles were the sorest they had ever been. To help, I started taking the yoga classes offered by the gym for recovery. Like so many, I came to yoga for the physical benefits. I remember my teacher saying “come to the studio, come to the studio.”
Yet, I still resisted.
I walked into a yoga class. I stood on the mat. As we prepared to set an intention for our practice, my newest teacher said “think of all the people that have made it possible for you to stand here today.”
Nowhere in my life was I being told to be grateful for what I had.
My mother.
My father.
My immigrant grandparents.
Our founding fathers.
I had to find out more about this practice that was way beyond what it seemed.
Love,
Nat
Dreams never die.
It seemed that with each department I stepped into across a variety of different companies in both size and industry, I kept coming across the same issue. Employees were evermore unappreciated and their work, personal lives and even physical health was suffering because of it.
At the same time this was happening, I was becoming conscious of what I was eating. Increasingly, I realized that what I was putting on my skin was just as important as what I was putting in my body. I thought I’d run over to the natural food store and find a solution. But was I ever wrong.
Being comfortable in the kitchen, I searched for some recipes and got to experimenting.
The disappointment in my working environment collided with my passion for a nature rich, holistic life and from this, The Pure Collection was born. One day, I walked into my office and said I wasn’t coming back.
I realized I’d never allow a friend or a loved one to treat me like my boss did, so why would I take it now?
I’d teach yoga until the products took off. Then, I’d be the full time Chief Everything Officer at The Pure Co and hire a team to help me grow it. But, like I’ve shared before, all the business knowledge and fancy education did nothing for me when it came to my own personal demons.
In late 2015 I finally decided that it was time to give some space between the products and myself. I set up a campaign to give away the remainder of the inventory I had left as gifts for the holidays. I was able to send special packages to those who supported me deeply throughout the venture.
It had started as a labor of love, then transitioned into a thing that I “had” to make money off of to support myself. In the process of making The Pure Co a real business, I lost the love for it. I was scared to share my baby, I was judging myself against a standard of unattainable perfection, I was petrified to make a mistake and terrorized by the thought of letting the people I love down.
So where is The Pure Co now?
I often say it’s taking a nap. In this time of rest my passion for it has grown deeper and my vision for it has become wider. I see now I’ve been thinking too small.
We’re facing many problems as a society, but I deeply believe getting into alignment with nature will solve nearly all – if not all – of them.
What will become of The Pure Co?
But as the tiny note near my desk says “you are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.”
I have deep faith that the work we’re meant to do here never misses us. Now, I await the grace, without attachment to any one path, to see it come to fruition.
All my love,
Natalie Christine
I wonder what you see in this photograph.
It fills me up. It makes me happy. It brings me joy.
To create something with your hands that was once just an imagination in your mind’s eye is a kind of magical experience. When I’m making art, there’s a sense of allowing something deep within to come forth without inhibition.
Art is made just for the sake of itself.
Before I sit to type, each word is crafted on paper with pen. There’s something to forming the letters and seeing the ink flow, of hearing the pen drag across the paper and noticing the emptiness of the page fill. It changes the quality of what comes through me.
Likewise, with photography, I can pick up my weighty tool and create with it by moving parts and pressing buttons. By playing with light, I render an image of a moment frozen in time.
Yes, I as the artist can change an angle or shift the lighting to evoke a mood, but ultimately, I am simply an observer, and the individual observing my finish work of art is no less informed than I am on that one moment of life, real life, without filter or dialogue.
When I write to you, I’ve skewed your opinion by sharing my own. When I show you a photograph, you get to do that forming all on your own.
And then we can talk. And then I can give you context.
To many more shots of life, each with their own story.
All my love,
Nat
Don’t show me the tallest building in the world and tell me there aren't floors to visit at the top.
See I crafted this list of topics for this project weeks ago. I remember even when I was writing it down then, I had no idea why this came up.
After 16 hours on an airplane, it felt like I had landed in Vegas…. except it was 16 hours away.
Being on a cultural studies tour with my graduate program, I couldn’t understand why we would come all this way for minimal exposure to culture. The few souks, or markets, that were still around were empty and nearing their end.
Lavish buildings, facades of opulence, man made islands. It just wasn’t for me. I remember being very unimpressed.
As part of our schooling we were offered the opportunity to visit companies working in the region.
It was amazing.
The smell of cocoa butter was overwhelming, the intricacies of how a factory line worked mesmerizing, and the sweet treats to take home for gifts decadent.
The very small and specific area from which their cocoa came was impoverished, so the farmers’ practices were shortsighted. This major conglomerate realized if they wanted to continue to sell their popular candy bars around the world, they would have to help the people of this region with funding and long term thinking. They went in and trained the farmers on how to raise their trees for health and strength and educated them on predatory lending practices that eventually would bankrupt their livelihood. When I left that factory I understood there was a different way of approaching a business arrangement.
I remember hearing from classmates afterwards about the other company trip; it was for an investment firm. They went on a boat. It was lavish. But like the city we were in, not very profound. Yet, I felt sad.
And here is the lesson.
Every time I’ve ever tried to hang out with them, I realize, I just don’t fit.
I once heard someone ask a very old woman what the best part of being so old was. Her response was, “no peer pressure.”
I’m glad I didn’t go on that boat. I’m glad I did the nerdy thing.
Because I still remember that day. I had a meaningful experience. And it’s shaped how I approach my world and my work today.
Be you my friends.
Love,
Nat
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This photo of a very insecure woman was taken in the desert in Dubai by a classmate in July of 2011
The art of grit and posh. It all intersects here.
And indeed it doesn’t.
I have many deep ties to this city. It’s the first place I felt grown up, walking around alone and without fear. The hustle and bustle, you’re never alone, it’s never a quiet moment.
Metamorphosis occurred in so many different ways.
Apart from the cities I’ve lived in, New York is the city I’ve spent the most time in, the one I’ve visited most often.
I had a particularly interesting day there last summer, one of the most defining days of my life. It’s worth a deep exploration, so I’ll save the details for now, but it suffices to say that hot, tragically beautiful day I spent in Brooklyn changed my life.
I left sad and shaken and full of love and joy. I experienced terror and compassion at the same moment. I questioned what it meant to be human and have a shared experience. Those moments on the pavement, those hours in the garden, they change my world forever - just as that city does each time I visit her.
I sat on the cushion most earnestly in those days that summer, and it broke my heart open. New York gave me a piece of myself I couldn’t find anywhere else. And while it would be a challenge difficult to accept to live amidst the chaos, I’m grateful it’s there to go see every time I need to feel a little more alive.
Love,
Nat
I'll go anywhere once. Probably twice.
There is nothing quite like coming out of your everyday ordinary and exploring a new place, a new land, a new people, a new culture.
Even a trip to a neighborhood you don’t frequent can flip your perspective about where you live and your system of functioning.
As a child I grew up in what most consider an international city. I didn’t have to go far to taste a culture other than what is typically thought of as “American.”
From my perception, particularly in the years I was there, that city was fairly homogenous, being predominately Hispanic. The majority of my peers were Cuban, which was a blessing. I was able to experience a version of my culture, without being in a country that prohibited certain freedoms.
Not only because it provided opportunity for deep connection outside of the daily routine of our lives, but also because it exposed me to worlds beyond my own.
I heard once someone describing the life of socioeconomically challenged kids. They talked about how a short trip outside of their neighborhood, even if it was in the same city, greatly increased their potential for success and upward mobility. The experience of seeing something different, a distinctive way of life from their own, allowed them to understand they had another option.
As a graduate student I again had ample opportunity to travel as part of my coursework.
As part of the curriculum we were required, in groups, to interview the local people about their lives and their views.
There was the woman who left the countryside for the city to send funds back to those left behind; there was a butcher that fled his South American country for a better opportunity in the poorest neighborhood of his new city, and there was the street sweeper whose parents brought him as a child for a better education. These stories are all around, and indeed, it is the story of my family’s history.
To put it into physicality, a major issue amongst those who struggle with poverty in our country is obesity. In others, it’s a lack of food.
We all strive for happiness and we all hope for a brighter day for our families and ourselves. We are each individuals, but the purpose we share is the same.
To learn.
To grow.
To thrive.
All my love,
Natalie
They don’t realize that what we have, what they want so deeply, can potentially rob of them of what we are missing so badly.
Since that time my heart has been yearning for that magically fractured place.
What follows are entries from my journal on the days of my visit.
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October 8, 2015
8:30 AM
As I sit under the majestic palm tree in the land of my ancestry I can’t quite explain the feeling.
But over that, what you see and sense is an emptiness, sadness, lethargy, a sense that it will never change, that nothing matters and that includes “me.” But how could we feel that way in such a beauty. The ocean vast and stretching as far as your eyes can see, the simplistic beauty of the flag that flies everywhere, stripes of blue begging to speak. They love to joke, and laugh, but more to joke.
As for me, I feel some sense of stillness of wholeness, of nothing I’ve ever really felt before – at ease, safe, adventurous.
Stillness and love.
11:55 PM
A full day in Havana and I can’t even begin to describe it.
The group is so thoughtful and magical. Professor Pimentel – wow. And the energy of a city surrounded by ocean and a major sea wall.
These people do give.
I’m in love with this island. I’ve never felt more myself. I’ve never felt so free. I’ve never loved so hard. There are so many connections here. I feel like I’m on the verge of something huge – but aren’t we always.
What if I stopped censoring myself? Stopped pausing where there is flow. Stopped rushing or dragging my feet, but found balance instead? Took time to process when it was necessary. Opened my heart.
What’s gold is understanding the value in all. That perception is just that, perception, not reality or truth, but subjective interpretation. Open your heart, process your life.
It just is.
Havana.
La isla bonita
La isla encantada
La isla bella
La isla princesa
La reina
Amor
October 9, 2015
10:55 PM
Another fabulous day filled with so much love and learning and trust. Going out on El Malecón by myself took serious guts for me.
And of course, I was met by more than I could have ever imagined. I would have never gotten that experience any other way. A floating hummingbird, a double rainbow to the ground. A stunning picture of a Cuban life. I love my country. I love my roots. I am safe. I am sure.
October 10, 2015
What a place to be, what a thing to see.
But he still had a team, he still had support and if the energy can be used for destruction and oppression it can be used for construction and liberation as well.
October 25, 2015
This entry was after returning home.
While in their workday it seemed as though they were dead and drained, it was clearly only temporary. The music and the fun and the life sprung up, truly it was always right underneath the surface.
When you live in an economic system that doesn’t require “hustle” or the need to get another dollar out of you, you are able to engage with a person just for the sake of engaging. There’s nothing to sell you, nothing to need out of you.
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A special, heart filled thank you to those who guided me through this journey.
All my love,
Natalie
Love me deeply.
::shudder:: ::gasp::
Yeah, I said it. And I believe it.
When I go out and spend my money at a local restaurant, this is an expression of appreciation and gratitude. For the food they prepare, they time they spend, and the service and ambiance they provide while I'm in their four walls.
Likewise, when I pour my heart into the world, though teaching, consulting, coaching or helping in general, it’s rewarded with money by those who appreciate its value.
And it is my practice, to keep that attitude both when I’m giving and receiving currency.
As means of trade, it’s worthless if I stock it up in a bank. It has all the potential, but is just sitting on the shelf. And beyond saving enough for my rainiest day, it’s foolish to hold it hostage. It creates less love to go around for all. It’s hoarding love, and that doesn’t do anything but keep me all backed up. Money is not physical security.
Yet, we’ve turned the acquisition of money into a sport, and trust I was just as caught up in this game.
I remember getting a call for a new position just before I left my last job. When she told me the salary would be $30,000 a year, I replied, “sorry, there’s just no way.” I was making well over double that at the time.
And certainly, with my lifestyle, there wasn’t. With $7 to $15 lunches once or twice a week, nice and frequent trips to buying clothing, accessories and shoes, travel to see loved ones at any life milestone or event, yes, this would have been impossible to maintain.
But I didn’t have a car payment.
I didn’t have debt. Or cable.
I lived in an affordable city.
But I had no concept of that. I truly had no concept of a dollar. Not because I wasn’t taught the value of it, but because I was making so much and I was so unhappy internally I thought, “well, if this is supposed to make me happy, then let’s spend more and more, and acquire yet more.”
“More leggings!”
“And those pairs of heels!"
"And that shirt I’ll never wear. And that dress I’ll give away with the tags still on it. This will be perfect for that outfit I’ll wear once, because after the pictures no one can see me in it again.”
The only repercussion being the space I didn’t have to hold all the stuff I did have. Oh yeah, and all the money I spent that I wish I had saved instead.
It wasn’t until I stopped making cash, froze and bled it out slowly, like an unattended superficial wound…
And came to zero...
And then a little negative…
And then a lot more negative…
And then had to ask for help from family...
that I finally understood the value of money in my life.
It’s totally unnecessary, yet our entire society depends on it, making it very necessary.
It’s a complete paradox, and that’s usually when I know I’ve landed on truth.
And so, after much processing of this confusing contradiction, I’ve come to understand that if I continue to practice the mindsets that one,
and two,
then truly,
Until the next time, all my love,
Nat
Still brewing this one in my head, though it's clear in my heart.
We, as a community, equate it to many things in this life. I often say money is oxygen. We need it to live in our world just like oxygen. And if I’m being 100% truthful – which is what I strive to do here – I absolutely hate it.
See it’s not that I don’t love what money affords me, of course I love that. What I do hate about it are the mindsets we hold around it collectively.
There’s a misconception that money is scarce, that there’s not enough to go around for everyone, that there’s a limited supply. And yes, while quite literally there’s only a fixed number of bills out there, there’s also a constant flow of these bills.
And while this might be a bit idealistic, bear with me through this thought exercise. It just might flip a piece of your perspective.
We have arrived on this planet, and hopefully you believe that we would not have been brought here had it not be because this planet can and does sustain us in the most critical ways for our survival.
You need to breath oxygen? We got that covered. Water? Yup. That too. Nourishment in the way of food? Ditto folks. These trees grow your leaves, fruits, nuts and veggies and there are a few animals running around here too if that’s your thing.
So if what money has come to represent are facilitated exchanges of all these things, and there’s an abundance of these things on our planet readily available to us, then there’s a scarcity of money?
A brief history on how money came about…
I have a stalk of corn. I’m tired of eating corn. It would be nice to have some potatoes for dinner tonight, so I go over to my farmer neighbor Mary next door, and she decides “yeah, I’m kinda tired of potatoes now that you mention it. I’d love some corn.” And so, Mary and I trade some ears of corn for some potatoes. I leave happy and she leaves happy and when we return home we’re even happier because our families are happy to eat something new for dinner.
Somewhere along the line Mary and I decide we’d really like some leafy greens in our diet, so we go over to our farmer neighbor Roberto next next door and see if he’s interested in some corn or potatoes in exchange for some kale.
He’s on a strict Whole30.
Mary and I look at each other and think, what on earth can we do? We really need some roughage in our diet.
As Mary is kicking around the dirt, she notices a special looking little shell. She picks it up and says to Roberto and I, “what if we all agree to exchange kale for this little shell. The next time Roberto decides he wants some corn or potatoes, he can bring this little shell to us and we will provide them to him happily. It’s a unique shell, so we’ll know it’s from our agreement.”
And this is exactly how money came to be. Humans decided they needed a token to “hold” value to facilitate trade.
But we’re confused, and so we hoard money, fear when we do spend it or screw someone over we love because we need for money so badly.
The thing is, I get it. I understand what it feels like to be desperate for cash. And what I told that desperate girl and what I’m still telling this woman now is, don’t ever doubt that this place has more than enough to sustain you.
Money is something we made up. It’s fallible, and like any system, it has issues and imperfections. And to live and die by an imperfect system, to sacrifice the things we sacrifice in the name of money – our health, our sleep, time with our family – it’s short sighted.
The next time you’re panicking about money or are thinking of sacrificing big things for it, like your happiness, think about its origins, how it came about and what it truly represents. I’m not saying it’s going to stop your need for it, I’m just saying it might put it into perspective.
All my love,
Nat
Photo credit goes to:
Advertising Agency: TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris, Johannesburg
Executive Creative Director: Damon Stapleton
Creative Director: Nicholas Hulle
Art Directors: Shelley Smoler and Nadja Lossgott
Copywriter: Raphael Basckin
and https://thisisnotadvertising.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/the-zimbabwean-the-trillion-dollar-campaign/ for sharing it so beautifully.
Someone asked me what topic I’d be writing about today. When you’re doing your work, people want to see more of it.
Our work is what we put out into the world to enhance it. It’s where we provide value to our communities, and in turn, to ourselves. It’s what we’re here to do; it’s what we use our gifts for. Our gifts are the how and our work is the what we produce with them.
This morning I sat in a meeting and listened to someone in my community talk about their why.
After much moving around the country, when this family finally landed in Orlando, they knew it would be home for the long haul. With stakes planted in the ground, it became important to this individual that they make a lasting and positive impact on their community. It was from this place that his work was born. Everything he does, everything his business engages in reflects his desire to leave Orlando and the people in it just a little bit better than he found them.
As an entrepreneur, ever mindful of cash, I’ve spent many days in his name-your-price coffee shops without feeling pressure to purchase or shame for leaving just what I could. It’s one of the first places I walked into in my city that I felt “got it.”
And before your business mind goes into the yeah sure, but does he make a profit speech, he does - every single month.
When this individual began his journey into building a business he started in an interesting place. He first structured a manifesto, a written representation of his values. He felt if others adopted this same attitude towards life, the whole community would benefit. He uncovered and articulated his why first, then he crafted a business around it.
My enthusiasm around my own work is about just this: to find your work, you must find yourself first. That’s the part of his story he didn’t tell, but it’s the part of my story I’ve told many times before, and it’s quite literally what I’m doing here through this writing.
Not just my work as in the final product, but the process of how I got to teaching and what makes me able to coach. If I didn’t practice digging deep down and pulling this out of myself, there is no way I could hold a space to help others do the same. Or even if I could hold the space, I would have no idea what to do when they fell apart, or how to help them get back up. I’d have no idea how to celebrate with them, how to share in the joys of deliberately climbing up a mountain or spontaneously scaling a wall had I not done it with my self first.
Coaching is the gift, teaching and writing is the how, but the why is much more interesting, the why is the reason my work resonates, the why is my expertise.
One interaction, one client, one friend, one deep bond at a time, moment by moment, choosing to pour out from my heart into my world.
If you’re enjoying it, you must not really be working – or you’re not working hard enough. But time and again in my studies and experiences of companies I’ve learned that the most impactful, the most meaningful work that’s being done out there is by those who don’t see their work as drudgery or feel pain when they wake up each morning to do their work.
Steve loved his work.
IDEO loves their work.
Credo loves their work, and you know this because it shines through everything they do, from the inspiring founder, to how they source their coffee and what they charge, to the passionate baristas. And you know what’s special about that?
I can’t tell you how many interesting people I’ve met at those little coffee shops around town, there are too many to count. And I know if I walked in tomorrow, I’d find a host of interesting people doing what they do in love.
When I said I wouldn’t settle from living from a place of fear, this is what I meant. I would not stop my search, my internal search, until I could show up for my work with pure love and passionate commitment.
The world has its momentum and its roadblocks. And an aspect of our work is to press on despite what appears to be in our way. But rather than taking it harshly, our opportunity in these moments of tension is to reassess ourselves and our commitment to our work. Like anything you commit to, there are days where it will break your heart. But if it is truly our work, it’s easy to wake up each day and say, let’s try this again.
Love,
Natalie
Hey family, this one is for you.
The one I was born into, the one I’ve co-created with my partner and come home to at the end of each day, and my larger group of friends-who-are-family.
What these groups have in common is each are full of people who love with their whole heart, and at the end of it, do whatever it takes to see me in joy and success. These people are unconditional supporters of my life.
It’s an interesting thing to be in a moment where I feel the need for my family and they’re physically far. And yes, cellphones and internet, but there’s nothing like the mundane existence of a Tuesday when your loved one drops by for dinner, and crumbs on the countertop turn into late night conversations with laughs and learnings you remember long after the moment passes.
It’s the mundane that has the power to imprint on our hearts, the unplanned, the uncontrived, where we’re not trying so hard, or for anything at all, when we’re just being.
It’s the doorbell ringing at 2 AM and your drunk friends-who-are-family show up downstairs for a surprise visit.
These things just don’t happen when you live too many miles away.
But we don’t learn the value of these things when our family is close, or when we’re feeling great and having fun. We don’t truly learn the value of a family until the sun isn’t shinning as bright and you just wish mom would come over and make chicken soup for your cold. Or you had the greatest day and celebrating over text just doesn’t cut it.
I think this is yet another cruel joke of our modern way of life. I know, I sound like I’m 75 years old, but when we go off and away from our family for the first time it’s typically for college. And you’re usually having such a great time. I was having such a great time. It didn’t matter so much that my family wasn’t around.
See, I was establishing my new, “chosen” family. While very important to do so, I think it wasn’t until after that second family moved away, all at once, that I really realized how much I missed our moments, and in turn, the moments with my first family.
Family for me is where I feel most at home, most free.
As an adjustment to the absence, I’ve worked in creating new circles of friends and colleagues, and every once in a while I come across another human who fits right in and, in an instant, I’ve known them my whole life. But it’s rare these days, it’s like my heart knows exactly where it belongs and there is no replacement for those bonds.
While they’re away, I continue to work on me, work on my own stuff, so that when we do meet, and when we do talk, and when we do eventually make it back to each other, we will be that much richer in knowing what it is to miss the everyday Mondays and nothing special Tuesdays. Those days will be so much sweeter.
And then, there’s this little family I have formed that I participate in every day, one that doesn’t follow any of the rules. Sometimes I look at this little family and I wonder how it got here. It’s certainly mine, I’ve co-created it with another, but it seems as though if I have any shit, it all comes pouring out here.
We’re at an interesting point of our journey together; we’ve come from moments of brining out all the fun, laughter and encouragement for one another to ones where we don’t know if we’ll ever figure out how to bring our best selves to the table again. But we’re still here, one moment at a time, full of that type of uncontrollable, indescribable love that happens only for your family.
I love you all more than I can say, but I know you understand.
With my whole heart,
Nat
This is dedicated to every person that’s helped me along this road of life.
I’m done waiting for perfection to present myself, my product, or my story.
In November of 2013 I left my salaried job to pursue a more genuine, fulfilling life. I taught my first class as a yoga instructor two weeks before and started what would become The Pure Collection the year before that. I planned to teach until the products sustained my life, but if that were how it happened, this wouldn’t make for a very interesting story.
I became caught up in myself, my internal dialogue. My ego, the smallest part of me, had all my attention, and it was paralyzing.
I couldn’t sell, but I wouldn’t quit. I would create all day, but I couldn’t share. I would set up my tent and then afraid to talk about my products, return home defeated. When I’d receive constructive criticism from people who love me, I’d cry, shout, shut down and retreat. I felt that no one understood me and they certainly didn’t understand my vision.
It wasn’t until after abruptly halting all of the achieving of my previous life that the tidal wave of suffering hit me square on. For the first time I had to STOP being in my head and start feeling the piles of shit that had accumulated inside of me through the years after I shutdown, which I came to learn had occurred long before I realized.
See this frozenness wasn’t something new in my life, but with a clear roadmap given to me, it had just been masked by all of the thriving. It was almost as if all of the pain, resentment, fear, and anger I felt inside was fueling the successes of my past.
In that way, I am grateful for the pain, for the tears and the locked away frustrations, for they provided the spark, igniting my power. It is this understanding of what I am capable of, evident through my past accomplishments, that has kept me going in the darkest moments of the journey.
But this next phase of my life, I decided early on, would not be fueled by anger but instead by love, for myself first, so that the love for others would flow effortlessly. I refused to be who I had been, a girl acting from fear, but didn’t know yet how to be a woman approaching my work from love. I would have been better off had I resorted to action like in the yesteryear of my life, but I felt I had made such a mess that I couldn’t and wouldn’t trust whatever next move I had planned. And hence, frozen, no way forward and a stubborn refusal to go back.
Sometimes I wish I could have shared this journey in real time. Certainly, it would have made it easier. The single most detrimental thing I’ve done on this path and in this life is isolate myself from the people that love me. But as it goes, we always get – or do – exactly what we need. I’m incredibly blessed with a strong support system. It was only in my own fears that I felt alone. My own fears blocked the way to asking for and receiving help from willing others.
It’s been said before I’m too hard on myself, and the likelihood is I am. It’s that quality coupled with the incessant need for “perfection,” or an attachment to a false, unattainable, singularly successful outcome, that has kept me in my own shadows all this time.
Cause though I haven’t shared in the moments of crisis, it’s a wonderful truth that I have documented it almost daily. I am a constant thinker and I learned at some point paper and pen is the perfect container for all that runs and flows inside of me. It’s my safe space, my respite, my oasis in the desert. There is no degree of frantic that can’t be cleared at least in part by putting my flowing words on to this blank space.
And so, come on this journey with me yet again into a place of retrospective understanding. It’s what I’ve been wanting, wishing, waiting and praying for the courage to do all this time, to share my true voice with you, in all it’s sassy, feisty, explicitly personal candor. So that you may understand me, so that I may understand me in all my perfect imperfection and so that maybe you will be encourage to embrace your own story with loving confidence and show yourself to those you love deeply, because it is our collective stories that will get us out of, or hold us through, whatever suffering we face.
On my path I’ve often (always) neglected the work I need to do for some crazy understanding of the work I “should do.” It seems as though it’s finally aligned, the work I need to do, the work I want to do and the courage to DO.
Not to think.
Not to feel.
Not to analyze.
Not to contemplate.
Not to learn.
Not to avoid.
Not to procrastinate.
But to do. To actually put pen to paper, get it done, and then share it.
Thank you for allowing me the space to sleep.
Love,
NC
The feminine energy.
And don’t mistake me,
I’m not talking about exclusionary.
I’m speaking of visionary,
And all the qualities that are of the she.
He possesses them too,
Greatness is of the we.
No more divisionary.
Identifying as us and them will never
Bring complete integration,
Complete domination
Of bad,
Of the other,
Of the mother,
Of all that’s troubling
Each of us.
Those that feel deeply are out of conjunction.
How else do you explain all these lights
Dulling their main function,
To bring others to this place?
Enough hate
Enough right
I’m wrong
You’re left
Get swept up in this wave,
Or ride it.
Light it.
YOU are the reason I write it.
