I have been thinking a lot lately about Shame. Brené Brown did some incredible research on this topic. Recently, among my colleagues, there was a discussion about shame, and more so, shame and how this emotion is different from guilt.

Many of us feel so guilty – All Of The Time. Like we caused pain or harm, or did something “bad” just by speaking or acting in a way that felt right to you, but resulted in another to react as a result (e.g. turning down an invite or a request and you just know the other person is resenting you for it). But did you really cause harm? There are many of us out here that work so hard – So Hard – to make others happy, or to accommodate or adjust our own needs and desires so those around us can feel okay (e.g. kids, partners, clients, friends, parents, siblings, coworkers, neighbors). We tend to feel guilty if we have to (or if they) set a boundary (e.g. say “no” or “I don’t want to” or “I don’t like that”) and they seem or actually are unhappy with us. Many of us tend to even take their displeasure as our fault and is we are doing damage to the relationship as a result. But is it your fault? Did you really do anything “bad”? Really? If you legitimately did something harmful or hurtful, make amends, repair it with that person (Note – Repair is the most important part of a conflict anyway). But I can almost guarantee your feeling of being wrong or bad or the cause of their pain actually ties back to Shame. Shame is caused by core wounds, usually occurring early in our lives, where our Spirit or core sense of self was wounded or threatened by repeat negative messaging that something about who and how we were was wrong in some way. Shame is the emotion tied to the sense of "I am bad" or "I am not enough". This happens from religion, from parents or even our peers who had unhealed and unidentified trauma or shame wounds of their own, that your very nature of being triggered their own shame completely unrelated to you.

Research has identified that Shame actually acts exactly like trauma biologically in the body and is stored in a very similar fashion. We experience an arousal and a need to protect.

Shame triggers defense mechanisms to keep us safe from harm to our Spirit or core self. Often looking like many of the following behaviors:
-Defensiveness
- Over-apologizing
- Looking away or avoiding eye contact
- Avoidance of someone
- Irritability or Anger
- Being quick to tears
 
Often, I find for myself, when I am ruminating or what I like to call “spinning out” in my mind about something, with a strong desire to fix, correct, or to figure out how to change it – I am in a state of Shame. I see parents do this all of the time when their child has a meltdown and they have an intense need to make their child happy again and quickly for fear of causing damage to their child and it being all their fault. I believe that the majority of the time we were absolutely not the true cause of the other person’s reaction, but rather we only triggered their own Shame, fear, and unhealed trauma wounds. Sure - we triggered the reaction with the boundary - but the reaction and the intensity of the others' reaction is completely stemming from their own unmet core need, sense of lack, or fear. For any of us, we need to tune into and explore where we learned we were lacking in some way. 
 
Many of us are walking around protecting our shame by our very actions and efforts every single day within many of our interactions. It is not our job to make others feel happy or content. That is their work. We are actually preventing their soul growth by taking it on as ours to heal or fix. Sure it makes the other feel okay or even you with yourself if they are okay with you again, but you are actually just giving up your own power. You end up fracturing a piece of your energy body to “help”. But who is this truly helping?

We, as humans, really must learn to tolerate and regulate around emotions period. Ours and others' emotions. We cannot keep trying to turn off the faucet and we cannot keep fearing they will never stop. To truly understand another's emotions, we must get comfortable understanding our own.
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When we mask or bury our shame we are not authentically showing up in relationships. This impacts the magnetic pull within the relationship. There is nothing to connect to and you both are left feeling uneasy or unfulfilled. You’re just left feeling unheard or unseen. The other person blocked from having the gift of you being their mirror or having them as your mirror.
 
In healthy interactions, we all become each other’s mirror, showing us what we need to attend to our Spirit for growth, and showing us our worth to receive Love. We are gifts to each other, holding the keys for each of us to grow so we can once again return to our unified state within Source/God/Creation/Universal Energy of Love.
 
I have found for myself, whenever I have that feeling within an interaction that I just did or said something “causing” the other to react, I am actually experiencing shame. Just the practice of labeling it “Shame” actually feels containing. I can handle working through my "Shame" when I realize that is all it is and that there is not something unworthy about me (which is never the Truth anyway). When I contain it in this way, I can be more present and hold the energy of Love for the other by honoring and hearing or validating their feeling or experience, because I know it is true for them and it is not actually about me anyway. It is never our job to tell another what is or isn’t happening. This is their reality or truth – Their experience. When you can meet shame with Love and Compassion it can immediately take the power out of it for both of you.
 
Meeting your own shame with Compassion and Love will also help take the power out of it for you too. Showing your body and your Spirit you will protect it – That the pain of the past is no longer true today.
 
We all enter little (or big) Shame Spirals, but to truly heal we must learn to recognize, honor, and love ourselves enough to understand our shame. To truly be able to be present with another person’s shame, we must understand our own.
 
Remember – We too are Source Energy and cannot be harmed nor are unworthy. We must repeatedly meet our own Shame and others’ shame with Love, Compassion, and Containment so we can finally unravel the knots that are sitting in our energy bodies and causing us fear or over-caretaking in our relationships.

If you are struggling to understand your own Shame or emotions and it is impacting your relationships, I would be happy to join you on your own journey to greater realization and growth, check out my services page for ways I might be able to support you. 

The Holidays can feel really exciting, but very draining and stressful to many of us sensitives. That intensity of energy on both ends often makes many of us want to avoid all of it, yet we play that tug of war internally desiring to make it feel extra special for everyone around us. When you are a highly sensitive person, some call this kind of person an "Empath", you tend to feel the subtle (and not so subtle) emotional energies of others around you as if they are your own. Add that emotional energy on top of the over-stimulation of all of the lights, sounds, smells, and busy thoughts and activities of others and in every space you enter, it can get quite overwhelming. Everything is energy and all things vibrate and send frequencies that bounce off of one another and impact how your energy is vibrating if you are not grounded.

Many of us also come from hurting family systems. When you are already over-stimulated and stressed, on top of entering a system where it's members struggle to show love in the ways that feel loving to us, our guard goes way up when we re-enter that system. We find ourselves wanting to keep the peace, trying to mitigate or stave off topics of conversation that are sure to lead to conflict or dead ends, and keep it light. But 'keeping it light' also means continued avoidance or dismissal of some really deep hurts between each other. Yet - it's the Holidays - It is not the 'appropriate time' to 'go there'. I wonder sometimes if this is the mantra of traumatized family systems.  

This is what I think of as the boiling pot that is left unattended on the stove.  Stress heats up in our bodies, directs our thinking and perception, heightens what we notice (or do not notice), shuts down our digestion (not what we want to happen when eating all of those holiday treats) and keeps us stuck in old automatic patterns of behavior. We end up responding in ways we used to, having specific expectations of others, and leads to the same old expectations others have for who us and how we should or will be (you wonder why you all of a sudden feel 10 again when you go 'home' to see the family). Our bodies stiffen and we put the cover on the pot, so to say, keeping it together and inside. Eventually that cover blows off and sends boiling water everywhere or more subtly - energy, words, thoughts, behavior, and awkward interactions seep out sideways and become confusing. We leave feeling vulnerable, maybe insecure, worried about what others will think or say, or we leave replaying every interaction and feeling upset. We swore we wouldn't let it get to us this time. We thought we worked hard enough on our selves and were managing our energy so that this time we could be the Light and shift the energy automatically. 

Each year, as the Holidays roll around, I am reminded of the pain and unmet needs from the memories of the past complexly mixed with all of the moments of Joy and Hope, wishing the Joy and Hope can continue to fill up the space when I visit family instead of the hurt. Expectations for myself, for the experience, and for others can get high. My body pushes around and through the days, gripping to get everything done in time so I can feel Peace going into the few days that I may be around family and so I can feel really grounded in my energy and my heart when I re-enter this system. While I do not know what it is like for you, I do know that I am not alone in these feelings or the efforts made as we enter into the few days we have with our families. The feelings are information, little messages from your body to cue what is left to be healed. Sometimes they are just little whispers to show you how far you've come as well as to humble you into remembering you are Human and there are other parts of you that still need to be held and listened to. Sometimes they are the feelings of disappointment; reminding us that it may not be your actual family that will join you in healing those wounds.  But for now, you must remember the gift that is your Breath. 

Breathe. Breathe deep. Breathe slowly. Breathe in, hold it for a moment in your Heart, and Breathe out, very slowly, letting it release out of the bottoms of your feet. Send it deep into the fiery layer of the Earth. Slow it all down even more. Do this with your hands on your Heart. 

You alone cannot change your family system and you alone cannot heal the energy patterns that are embedded into that system. But you can pay more attention to your body as you enter into that system. Teach your body that it does not have to be on guard any longer; that you are in fact in charge of yourself and have Sovereignty. Your breath is the #1 Best way to calm down your sympathetic nervous system (the system that triggers your fight or flight response), and triggers into action your parasympathetic nervous system (the system that cues your ability to "Rest and Digest").

There is another very helpful NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) tool, that once you get the hang of it, can help you mitigate how your brain responds to those messages your body sends it (i.e. how you interpret your feelings and happenings around you).

Find the Highest Positive Intention (HPI). When Mom says something about your food choices, consider what her Highest Positive Intention could be and sit with that for as long as you can. She might desire to still be supportive or helpful to you. Even if this is not helpful to you, sit in the energy of her intention as opposed to what she says or how she does it. Regardless of doing this, if you need to establish boundaries about how you are treated. You get to do this too. But do it with her intention leading the boundary you need to set. Same goes for your own responses and reactions internally. When you find yourself ruminating on why something is bothering you so much, consider why it is so important to you, such as "I desire to be helpful and to have others see me with love." Pendulate (swing back and forth) between your ruminating mind and this Highest Positive Intention, until your stronger thought it the HPI.

If you find you need more support for managing all of this, let me know. I offer a few services to support you on your healing journey. Consider a Distance Reiki Session to help support you in sending Unconditional Source Love energy into those places that need nurturing, cleansing, or releasing of stuck or wounded energy. If you are ready to dig in a little deeper and then commit to making some profound shifts and changes, therapeutic and transformational Coaching may be a fit for you. If you just need a reminder, a talisman, holding your healing intentions, find all sorts of Reiki Charged Crystal and Stone Necklaces in my Etsy shop. If you are interested in even greater wrap around support and accountability and connection with other like-minded women, let me know you are interested, by putting your email address on the list for Sacred Sovereignty | Creating a Divinely Embodied Life. "Sacred Sovereignty: Creating a Divinely Embodied Life" is a women's coaching and empowerment group to support you in creating a deep reverence and divinely embodied connection with yourself. The group will provide you with weekly support from me, the group, and your accountability partner for 3 months, with the option of continuing for a full year (or more if you desire).

I wish you the Happiest of Holidays! May you remember to Breathe and May you remember we are all Human doing our best to show and to Be Love. 

Last week, at a New Moon Meditation gathering lead by my favorite set of Sister Healers, I ended up chatting a little bit with a woman who was new to “this stuff”. She courageously shared this with me as we sat to wait for our mini healings/readings after the healing meditation, her sense that “something” or “someone” possibly her “Spirit Guides” were trying to communicate with her, but did not know how to listen nor did she feel she could trust the message. Today, another woman I was chatting with via Instagram, shared the same concern. That she knew she was tapping into something but that she was often too scared to allow herself to “go there”.
 
Why are we so scared to "go there"? 
Here’s what I have come to learn throughout my Awakening process. And it may be slightly unique because my training has been in treating trauma from a mental health perspective before I began doing energy work in the form of Reiki.
 
Everything “Spirit” is so ambiguous to most of us. It falls in the Unknown and Unseen of life. There is often, unless you are Clairvoyant or Clairaudient, not a whole lot of tangible validation. We are taught that Science must prove something in order for it to be true and that we can’t prove what we cannot hear, see, taste, smell, or touch. But many of us can FEEL something to be true, or SENSE or KNOW something without having any real physical evidence. But TRUST is so much more difficult to settle into at times because of how we are conditioned.
 
A history of Traumatic and Stressful Experiences impacts our ability to Trust what we know, feel or sense to be happening.  
We Humans have long histories of trauma as we have evolved on this planet (e.g. wars, famine, death, disease, rape, slavery, murder, etc.). Intergenerationally, because of nature (epigenetics) and nurture (family patterns, beliefs, and attachment styles) these trauma histories pass on down the line until we become aware enough and attentive enough to change the cycle. These patterns embedded both physically and through learning, create vulnerabilities in us as well as protective and defensive styles of relating with others that can put us or others at risk, in the worst sense, harming others or being harmed only continuing the cycle. It all becomes our Blueprint for living in and surviving this world. It becomes our embodied experience on this Earth. These experiences encode in our body's DNA to enhance survival. 
 
Here’s what Trauma / Extreme Stress does to our bodies:
Science has now proven what we in the New Age / Metaphysical communities knew to be true all along, that Trauma does in fact become stored in the body. And from a metaphysical perspective, not only in our body but in our energy bodies, in our emotional bodies, and our spiritual or etheric bodies. Our experiences of trauma get recorded in such a way that if we were ever in danger again we could survive and protect ourselves. Unfortunately, we have experienced so much intense stress and numerous traumas that go unresolved or repaired that our bodies are in a constant state of protection and defense (“Fight, Flight, Freeze” response). Anything that could potentially signal a threat, our biology fires up all the stress hormones to Act and act Fast without anywhere for all of that excess energy to go when it is all over. When we are in this state everything (all of our senses) becomes heightened, but if the stress is heightened long enough it eventually dissociates or numbs to keep us alive. Many of us have had to dissociate and numb out on some level to keep going.
 
Here’s where I believe Trauma keeps us from accessing, or at least Trusting, our innate gifts of Intuition and Connection to Spiritual Guidance or Accessing the Unseen forces of Source, God, Universal Energy and causes us to be Terrified of what is happening when we do get a glimmer of the connection:
In order to truly “tune in” to Spirit Energies we have to be able to allow ourselves
1) To relax and surrender to not controlling the experience
2) To connect deeply into our body’s experience of the energies
3) To learn to listen, hear, and feel all of what comes through or comes up
4) To stay present enough in the moment to not disconnect from the energies or the experience as it is happening.
 
Because of high amounts of stress and trauma in our histories – our bodies, brains, and energy bodies have developed in such a way that these things are so difficult to do without becoming triggered in some way.
 
Think of it this way – Have you ever had a car accident and then when you do get back on the road, you are Super sensitive to any chance that someone might hit your again or you might hit someone else and tense up, maybe honk your horn a little too quick, drive much slower than you would typically do, or avoid certain routes just so you don’t have to feel or experience any of it? It all recorded within your being, your body, to prevent it from happening again.
 
Now enters Spirit – You get a tingle in your body, a flutter in your heart, a buzzing around your head, a ringing in your ears, a shadow out of the corner of your eye, a flicker in your mind, hear a voice, sense a message, see a face pop into your mind that may or may not look “weird”. For those of us who have experienced trauma or high amounts of stress (which happens to be most of us unfortunately) are going to immediately go to “worst case scenario”. Wonder if you are sick, if you are crazy, if you are in danger, if you made it up, if your body isn’t working right, or as the movies teaches us - are being haunted. You will ultimately doubt (i.e. not Trust) your experience. You get stuck there for fear of what might happen. Media has also prevented us from actually seeing that all of these things are in fact, harmless. But I won’t go into the Conspiracy Theories here about why this is what we are shown in the media.
 
We can all tune into Spirit and receive messages and guidance. We can all access and utilize Healing energies from Source / God. But for the majority of us, we need to deal with our Shadows. We need to sometimes get a qualified healer, coach, or mental health professional to help us work through our automatic reactions and triggers and understand where they are coming from so we can learn to trust ourselves and our experiences. So we can actually receive and decipher the message. So we can discern what is right for us and honor what we are feeling to be true that isn’t clouded by trauma and stress, or at the very least clouded by the need for someone else to tell us what's true. 
 
Now I do know some people are just born with their filters blown wide open or even partially open so that these esoteric and phenomenological experiences just happen regardless of how scared they are or triggered. Some of us are just more sensitive to the energies and see differently, but that does not mean that if you don’t that you don’t “have the gift”. And that does not mean, that if you can’t SEE it, it is not True. Learning to love yourself unconditionally and trust yourself, this includes trusting the messages felt by your body primarily, will assist you in developing a deep and strong connection to your Intuition and your Higher Self, Spirit, and Source.
 
​It’s not always about predicting the future. This can potentially change with every choice you make. What doesn’t change though is that you are a piece of Spirit living in a physical body to experience this physical and material reality. Living in this level of density allows us to access the densest of energies to break them down, heal them, understand them, embrace them, and no longer be afraid of them.
 
Comment below about what you think of this post. I would love to hear about your more esoteric or phenomenological experiences that you once found or do find it hard to trust that they were or are actually happening. How do you experience Spirit energies? Do you See, Hear, Sense, Know, or Feel? Can you physically make things happen? When we open up to share these experiences we call in the validation to trust them to be Real. 
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The new Netflix show “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo" has officially gotten to me. I was initially adamant that I was not going to jump on that bandwagon. But she definitely makes a point about the importance of showing gratitude for what you have, being fully aware of what is taking up the space around you, clearing out the items that do not truly induce a sense of joy (ie. dealing with the attachments, grief and loss that often hold us hostage to the past or our core wounds) and increasing a sense of freedom in your life through organizing your material things in a way so that you can see them and know exactly what is there.

A number of years ago, when I made a deep commitment to “Cleaning Up My Side Of The Street” I decided to invest in a coach. I had big dreams for my life and relationships with others that no matter how much I learned and applied I just could not manifest what I wanted out of life. My health had declined due to stress. I was overworked and my schedule was at the whim of my clients. I had experienced the loss of my mother the year prior. I was “trying to date in a healthy way” very unhealthily living out my own relational blueprint (Google “Attachment Styles”). My past traumas were triggered constantly and although I was fully aware of them; I was not doing well at addressing them and making longstanding change. Even as a trauma trained mental health therapist! One thing you must know, is that even as a professional fully able to help others make meaningful changes in their lives, actualizing change in your own life is just as challenging as any other human being’s life. True and long lasting behavioral and emotional change is hard no matter who you are, but it doesn’t mean that it is not empowering. Doing your work need to become a continuous practice and change does not happen in a continual linear trajectory upwards. There are ebbs and flows. There is regression. There is giving up. There is starting again. And again. And again. And again. What really matters is that you DO NOT GIVE UP and day after day you START AGAIN.

While there are many many ways to make meaningful changes in your life and cleaning up your energy field; here are some of the monumental activities that I did that made lasting meaningful change in my life (that have to be done as a ritual or practice over time):

1. “The 27/9” – This was the name I gave to one of the first tasks my coach gave me to clear up space in my life for a partner and to manifest my dreams into reality. Now I do not know the true origin of this activity, but believe it has something to do with numerology (if you know, please teach me. The mission is to get rid of (sell, donate, trash/recycle, giveaway) 27 items each day for 9 total days in a row. One item can be as simple as a single sheet of paper. What I found, doing this twice 6 months apart, was that by days 7, 8, and 9 I was getting to the real emotional Sh@$. I was making the decision to Let Go of the very things that created my identity…. in the past. I found that I had an attachment to a persona that was not true any longer. I had these things stored in a corner of an overcrowded closet, broken, and yet… still there taking up space. What is truly magical is adding the following mantra to each item, “By releasing the energy of ___, I call in ___ into my life.” KonMari style – give gratitude to the item first. By doing this you are creating the exact space you need to bring in that Magic you dream of manifesting

2. Ho'oponopono – Ho’oponopono is a Hawaiian forgiveness prayer. “I’m Sorry, Please Forgive Me, Thank You, I love you.” Now there are many ways to practice this prayer. What was truly enlightening was actually taking ownership of the energy on my own “side of the street”. I was initially quite resistant to this. I was after all, a victim, to many years of traumatic situations and neglectful relationships.  

The task: Take an inventory of every last past important or pivotal relationship and write down every last person you feel something, even slight, discomfort around or while thinking about. Now write a letter addressing each part of Ho’oponopono to that person. This could take an afternoon, or days, or weeks. What I bet you’ll notice, as did I, is that there is a theme in how your approach relationships that is the key to changing the relationships you have in your life, or at the very least, your perspective. And honestly, perspective is all that needs to shift to send you in a whole new direction. What you are doing here is releasing energetic chords and/or attachments that you have to these past relationships; not letting them “off the hook” for what they “did to you”. To transmute the energy surrounding these relationships and relationship patterns, try engaging in a ritual to give this back to Source to cleanse and clear you of these energies. I’m a fire sign, so burning them has been found to be the most powerful for me. Other options: send it down the river, out into the ocean, bury them into the earth, shred them, or if you need to and may actually be supportive to the other person’s life, send it to them. But ultimately, this is for you and your own releasing and energetic healing.

3. Identifying your Core Desired Feelings or otherwise known as Desire Mapping (Danielle LaPorte). I’m not going to go into how to do this exactly, Danielle does this exquisitely. But by going through the exercises to identify what you honestly want to FEEL in your life each and every day, provides a clear map to discerning where to focus your attention and time. When you can identify your Core Desired Feelings, you have a baseline to check in with yourself about which direction to take or decision to make. When you feel clear about this, you have no need doubt yourself, and trust in your higher-self and the communication with your higher-self and spirit strengthens. When you can have an ongoing relationship with your higher self, you develop this trust in life that becomes unshakable.  

4. Clean up your diet – Honestly, I think most of us have food sensitivities that are greatly impacting our mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health. I know that when I eat gluten my joints hurt, my thoughts aren’t clear, I’m irritable, and my perspective is off. Most foods sold in our stores today are not true or real foods. To start somewhere - Just start shopping the perimeter of the store or buy whole foods and ingredients. Pinterest has been such a good resource for recreating your favorite comfort foods out of whole and real foods grown from this earth. While veganism is currently said to be the most High Vibe diet; I am not yet there; however, just making sure you are taking in food that is grown and cared for ethically, lovingly, free of pesticides and antibiotics will do wonders for your health and your mood. Autoimmunity is on the rise and our bodies just can’t naturally cleanse the level of toxins (e.g . Electromagnetic Frequencies from all our WiFi devices and towers, chemically created body care products and cleaning products, scented candles, etc.) that are ingested from our diets or absorbed by our lifestyles. We have enough energetic toxins to cleanse through our bodies environmentally, at least with your diet you can take some control back and make meaningful choices. When you feel better, you have cleaner energy surrounding you. That higher vibe energy naturally attracts to you the same higher vibe energies. It’s a process. Remember to show yourself grace and compassion throughout.

5. Clean up your household cleaning products and body care products – Environmental toxins are greatly impacting our endocrine systems. This is a gigantic topic. Please do your research – Google “Endocrine Disruptors”. We have some great changes to make in the way we live our lives on this planet. What I will say is that I was able to put into full remission an incurable autoimmune issue that usually requires a surgery by cleaning up my diet, cleaning up my products, and learning to manage stress more productively.  

6. Move your body. I don’t care how you decide to do this. You must move that energy through your body. Our bodies hold on to so much physically, emotionally, mentally, and energetically. Some of my favorite ways: Shaking, Dancing, Walking, Sun Salutations, Yoga, Stretching, and Hip circles. This doesn’t have to be a big work out. By history, I am an athlete, but as I’ve approached adulthood, things get busy, and time becomes short. Lately, I’ve been committing to a practice in the mornings of doing Donna Eden’s 5 minute Energy Medicine Routine and the shaking that Rochelle Schieck teaches in her Qoya movement practice. I encourage you to try Rochelle’s Shaking routine and let me know what you notice. 

7. Meditation, Breathing, or another form of Spiritual Ritual or Practice – Tune in and Connect. There is so much more happening beyond what can be physically seen, tasted, touched, smelled, or heard. Just sit quietly for a while. Take a walk in nature. Look at someone or some thing you Love. There is an energy so much bigger and more powerful than what is currently able to be identified in the present moment. Sit with it for a while. Let me know what you notice.

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Bonus – Develop a daily Gratitude practice. This goes beyond just listing what you are grateful for; while very good too. This is an all the time practice. To get started, try writing down a few things you are grateful for, but share Why you are grateful for this in your life. What does this situation or thing help you to feel? We know now that The Secret was missing one big element to actualizing any manifestation and that was holding a particular feeling and emotion along with the visual as if it has already happened. Having a daily Gratitude practice will put you in the energy field of appreciation and receiving with a purpose. I plan to write more on Gratitude and practicing Gratitude later on the Blog so check back or sign up for my Newsletter to be the first to know when I post something new.
 
If you decide to try these activities, please share your experience with us. These have made monumental changes in my life; among other forms of energetic, therapeutic, and personal work and self-care. If you’d like to experience energy work in the form of Reiki; contact me here. If you’d like a more tailored coaching experience, stay tuned. I plan to create a coaching package to support you creating a life that feels more meaningful and fulfilling.
 
May We All Be Infinitely Blessed.