I remember the rain running down the windshield of the tow truck as I sat in a beautiful long silk 1920’s thrift store dress that I’d bought just for the audition. Watching in dismay as the tow truck driver guy hooked my booted car up into the air so he could impound it.
“How is this my life?” I remember thinking to myself. “How did I get here?” was my inner monologue as I sat there helplessly.
My car was being impounded. I hadn’t paid my parking tickets for months. I couldn’t afford to. I was barely going to make this month’s rent. And in 28 minutes I had a final callback. It was a screen test with the famed film director Milos Forman for the lead role in his next film, Valmont. My face was streaked with drying tears. I had come out of my apartment in Los Feliz to jump in my car so I could get to the audition early. I was gonna nail this one. This was gonna be the big one. The one that would change my life. Money would never be a problem again.
And there he was, Tow Truck Guy, booting my car with a giant shame-inducing orange car boot. “Wait! No! What are you doing? No, I’ve got to get to this audition. Oh my god, no, please oh please don’t do this!” I pleaded. This is where the tears came in. I couldn’t help it. They just came. Erupted out of my eyes. My desperation made Tow Truck Guy super uncomfortable. The tears made him offer to drive me to the audition. I thanked him and jumped into the passenger seat as he hoisted my car up. 27 minutes to go. Would I even make it in time?
For years this was my life. In one form or another. Not every scenario was this painful or this pathetic but each episode in its own way was filled with desperation and scarcity.
Throughout my entire adult life I had the hope that the big role was always coming right around the corner. It’s going to be a juggernaut. I was going to get my movie produced. Gonna get the next hit tv series. Later on the dream was that my business was going to pop and pop big. Gonna blow up. I lived for the future. I worked toward the future. My present life was a servant to what I was working toward. My eyes are always looking forward. And my body followed. I was tense and shut down. My scarcity mentality led me to an emaciated unhealthy body, a defensive protected heart.
I lived check to check. I tried all kinds of survival jobs. I waitressed. I worked in PR for the circus. I sold ink toner in Venice beach. I lived off of credit cards. I took small roles in movies and tv shows. The tv shows were never big enough, the movies didn’t pop enough. But in my mind…the next one would.
“Something is going to give,” I thought, every single moment of every single day.
I was always priming. Never primed. Yearning. Never sated. Hungry. Never full.
I existed as an empty tank. Only hope and hunger kept me going. I was psychically evacuated and depleted.
During this time in my life I would fantasize about this house in the country. It felt open and was filled with light yet still warm and cozy inside. I would sit in a window seat and watch the snow fall as I drank my steaming earl grey with coconut cream and sweetened with Manuka honey. It’s where I would write books about my passion, the feminine body and the erotic. I fantasized that in this house was a man who loved me beyond words, a man I adored and lusted after on the daily. Our children would come and go living robust lives. I would have a horse and a dog and a couple of bratty cats. I would learn to cook like a professional Michelin-starred chef. I would go for a swim in the ocean every day. I would work out. Dance. I would have a gaggle of glorious friends who would fete me and love me and raise me up. I would have enough money to live this life and not on someone else’s time table. My life would feel epic and complete and impactful.
I had this fantasy 20 years ago. Today I live it. My life has become exactly what I desired.
It is Epic. Every day I wake up and pinch myself and squeal with delight, “Is this real?”
An Epic Life is an extraordinary life. It is a life where every need is fulfilled. An Epic Life is dazzling. It is a life you have orchestrated and then surrendered to the flow of. It is a life that trusts the body taking you through it. An Epic Life is a fully embodied life.
To find your Epic Life, you must first discover and express your Epic Body. You can try to live without it, but inevitably you will end up feeling that you are missing something…because you are your body (Epic Body). Once you have access to all of yourself, fully charged, and ready to take your bite out of life, you can build your Epic Life using your body as the fuel and as the implementer.
An Epic Life starts with understanding who you are. What you have learned from your body. How you love and how you want to be loved. An Epic Life is what you create by changing the paradigm by which you currently live. You’re likely living through the masculine model of “more is better and even more is best,” which demands a body that is controlled and obedient to the mind. Now, you will learn the feminine model of life, that quality and pleasure are tantamount, which demands a mind that works with the body instead of lording over it.
An Epic Life is a fully embodied life with your needs fulfilled to the point of overflowing.
It is a life where you are aware of your feminine. You take ownership and accept that you must be the cup that runneth over in your own life. Filling your own needs first is an absolute necessity in an epic life. A feminine creature giving from an empty cup creates an unhappy body; a drained and bitter body. That bitterness infects everyone who drinks from your cup, your children, your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, you name it.
But when you can give from a place of fullness and satisfaction, a place of pleasure even, to all those in your life, they will be filled with sweetness, robustness, and radiance. Everyone in your life who comes to you for sustenance will be made fuller and better from the life force they absorb from you in your fullest state.
3 STEPS TO CREATE AN EPIC LIFE:
1.The Living Breathing Life Guide (LBLG) is a magical tool that will lead you toward your Epic Life. The LBLG will answer the question: What do I need in my life that will make me feel full and overflowing? It is constructed with five clear doable steps.
a. What do you need to feel full in every aspect of your life? Write a list – Example: A loving relationship; quality time with my friends; a job that lights me up.
b. What do those needs look like to your body? Break each need down to the physical aspects. Ask yourself, “how will I know I have fulfilled these needs?” What will it look, feel, smell, taste, sound like? – Example: Long hugs, 5 second deep eye gazes, laughter.
c. How can you fill these needs for yourself? What steps do you need to take to attain each desire not dependent on anyone else?
d. If you have needs that involve another person, script them out so you can speak with them with no expectations, just the reality of your needs.
e. Schedule your needs throughout your week.
The purest magic lies in step 2, when you ask yourself the question: What does this need look like to my body? What will I experience in my body when I attain this need? Breaking your needs into do-able bodily experiences makes this guide unlike any other desire or needs list you may have worked on in the past. Once you know the concrete doable experiences, we can build a clear and simple pathway toward fulfilling them.
2. Feminine Movement Practice – will encourage your body to move to her fullest potential in every direction. Breaking down constrictions, blockages, and scar tissue in the process. Opening your body and flow to receive all the universe has to deliver.
3. Discovering and Honoring who you are as an Erotic Creature. When you know who you are as an erotic creature, you become clear as to how your body desires to be loved. As you unveil and embrace this side of yourself in your body you will attract the erotic energy from a partner that complements your own. You will learn how to disseminate your erotic desires to this partner in a clear and doable way.
Awesome insights Sheila. As a meta-thriver living with stage 4 cancer, my body care is critical as an adjuvant therapy. My body care collaborates with my care of spirit and mind. Together they create my healing therapies. It involves whole plant nourishment, juicing, cleansing and detoxing, meditation and sound therapy with just enough gentle movement that my stamina will tolerate. Nature walks, grounding, a gratitude practice, clean un-flouridated water.
I applaud your leadership and outreach to women offering them a path to love themselves and their bodies. Bless,
Awesome insights Sheila. As a meta-thriver living with stage 4 cancer, my body care is critical as an adjuvant therapy. My body care collaborates with my care of spirit and mind. Together they create my healing therapies. It involves whole plant nourishment, juicing, cleansing and detoxing, meditation and sound therapy with just enough gentle movement that my stamina will tolerate. Nature walks, grounding, a gratitude practice, clean un-flouridated water.
I applaud your leadership and outreach to women offering them a path to love themselves and their bodies. Bless,