The Messy Truth of Manifesting a Dream

As I write this post, I’m sitting inside my brand new home in upstate New York. It’s one of those “pinch yourself” moments, where you suddenly realize you have arrived at the very place you’ve tried to manifest for years. But I want to bring you behind the scenes and show you the messy truth of what it took to get here.

The messy truth of bringing a dream to fruition.

You see, my husband and I had a dream to live part-time in Brooklyn and part-time upstate in the Hudson Valley. We have spent the last few years exploring how to make this happen. While we’ve arrived at a version of this dream manifested — (a rental shared with friends)–  we struggled to believe we could have our real dream: to own our own home upstate, in addition to our home in Brooklyn.

As I’ve written about in the past, synonymous to our search to find our home with a capital H, we contended with my husband’s mother’s battle with breast cancer– a fight she fought for years with the best alternative and allopathic care she could get her hands on. I affectionately love her as a parent. She’s someone I confided in from the moment Doug and I got engaged.

Sadly, saying goodbye.

A little more than a year ago, however, she entered hospice care when her condition took a turn for the worst. We heard the news of her decline while traveling in Bali and quickly dropped everything to be by her side. And there we stayed, living with her and caring for her every day until she passed away. Losing our beloved Susan was devastating and seemed like the worst thing that could have happened to our family.

But the Universe wasn’t done yet. The same week of her passing, the house we had rented in upstate NY experienced catastrophe too. We had spent almost all of our time with my mother-in-law during a record cold winter, and unbeknownst to us, the pipes in our home froze and burst. It literally felt like any foundation we had to stand on was crumbling beneath us. My residence, where I created everything for my business, became unlivable.

So just days after saying goodbye to one of the most important people in our lives, we entered our broken, freezing cold house, packed up everything, and moved out with some thrown-together alternate temporary living plans until our renter in Brooklyn moved and we could resume our city life– a life I wasn’t sure I wanted to return to.

The crucible of crisis can bring exponential growth.

2015 was a year that cracked me open. I was forced to surrender big time, sink into my heart, and search for the lesson in all the messiness. Clearly, life as I had lived it was over.

The messy truth is, I had a breakdown or two, returned to therapy, and cried a lot.

What did this mean? To be honest, I didn’t know. I just knew things needed to change. So I put my business in cruise control. I didn’t launch anything new; I intentionally stopped selling out my services so I could have space to think. I created space for creativity. And I trusted that things would align in their own time.

This trust, this belief, and my ability to embrace the messy truth of being in a crisis allowed me to get real. I had to confront a few things I was avoiding, and make amends with some aspects of me that went off the rails. (Hey, I am human!)

But here’s the deal, embracing the messy truth helped me immensely.

A year later, not only am I living in the space of my dreams, (we just closed on our new country home last week where I will live part-time) but I just completed an entire revamp of my business and website. It all represents a new beginning that feels entirely aligned and gorgeous.

Wondering why I’m telling you all of this? Because you need to know the messy truth, and to perhaps embrace and trust your own!

So often in the personal development space, we think: desire–> action—> result. We forget to create space in our life for the messy stuff that inevitably happens in between. In fact, if we could have it our way, I’m pretty sure the majority of us would aim for a life free of any messy stuff at all. But the truth is, that’s impossible…

Dreams will be challenged. People may die. Pipes could burst. Things will definitely take time. Tears need to fall. Old wounds need to be excavated and revisited to be handled and healed. Business sometimes needs to take a back seat so that genuine creativity and prosperity can blossom.

Welcome to my new website!

As I welcome you to my new website and new online home, I’m also inviting you into a profound expression of my heart and soul. This website comes from a year that broke me open and reminded me that sometimes love hurts, and that’s ok. It also reminded me never to give up on my dreams. Ever.

If you gain anything from my story today, I hope you’ll take this to heart: sometimes dreams take time. Sometimes we have to go through shitty, stressful, times; but if we stick with it– and do the work to dig deep and stay devoted to our healing/truth/highest essence– the difficulty becomes the gateway to your next level of evolution.

Come explore the very thing that has been birthed from my crazy year. I hope it inspires you! Leave me a comment below and tell me where your challenges are birthing your evolution.

As always, I send you my love.

Warmly,

Jenn