For You
I just always wanted to help people. And when I say always, I really do mean ALWAYS. I have the blessing and curse of being a Pisces Sun and Moon…a true empathetic who endlessly and occasionally dangerously will always go with the flow.
It began revealing itself young when I was 10 years old and told my parents (rather emphatically) that I will NEVER eat COWS AGAIN. We had driven past a what-looked-like a farm on our family trip to Barbados on our way to dinner when I exclaimed something about how cute all those cows looked on that happy farm. Someone, I cannot remember who, maybe my dad, maybe the cab drive, corrected me by informing me that it was in fact a slaughterhouse.
I did not have the privilege of seeing inside one until I was 18 years old in my college dorm room having a full-blown panic attack watching Earthling’s (highly recommended) but still an almost decade earlier my imagination was able to run wild with the idea of the word “slaughter” associated with “cow.” It was traumatizing to finally realize where my burger was coming from (granted, my sister kindly ordered one that night but I’m sure the Gemini in her could not resist the tease). This memory catalysts a whole list of causes and humanitarian efforts I would stand up, stand in, sit down for; essentially, trying to find my place in.
So many of us can probably remember each time the illusion of a perfect world shattered as age brought experience. I remember my parents trying desperately to explain to me why I cannot get into a car with a stranger but my young associative memories blocked my understanding because people are good, my parents showed that to me, day in and out. I still never allow the world, the news, the control of society to convince me otherwise…I believe in humanity’s innate goodness and from that belief I persevered to find ways to make this world a better place.
Of course, my love for animals brought me to wanting to be a veterinarian. Naturally, once someone explained to me how I would have to facilitate the putting down of animals in addition to healing them threw the idea out the window quickly. I then fell in love with writing, with the thought that someone, anyone must have a story to tell and that story can change people’s lives and I must be the one to tell it because who else will! Words, still matter to me; language, still my channel of truth, but I knew I could do more. I was taking my journalism degree at Illinois State University during the time Trump was elected as president. I remember going into the news station where I worked and watching the polarity that ensued amongst my classmates…what story would we tell, what story mattered to the public and who gets to determine what view is broadcasted to the thousands to listen and attach to? At that time, being a Canadian. the mess of American politics was still a new concept to me and I felt empathy for all the people who were hurting, but mostly I was confused as to where my place was to tell this story. I did not feel comfortable in the space of political correctness and “majority means all” type of attitude that developed in a news room.
Present moment and personal preference: I never watch the news.
While also in college I began my search for spirituality. Raised Anglican, but attended Catholic all-girls elementary and high schools, I had the experiences that might have or should have turned me into a faith-driven, church going gal. And I indulged in that self-fulfilling prophecy for my last two years of college. Attending one of those mega churches in central Illinois, praying and reciting a hail Mary before every race, and reading and underlining the Bible. However, during the confusing times of your early 20’s you run and hold onto anything that feels like the right thing to do, anything that keeps the anxiety of becoming an independent at bay, and sometimes that means grabbing onto things that never truly served you. During this time, I had begun studying Buddhism out of curiosity. I became interested in nirvana, the eight-fold path, and the stories of Siddhartha.
Eventually confusion brings friction and friction promotes a break. My life took many turns even before I found out my mother was diagnosed with cancer.
However, that break, was in fact a dam burst and I became someone I did not like for a long time as I navigated life with pain. I imagine most people would have described me as selfish and angry. When you refuse the ebbs and flows of life and move against the current of the universe you end up caught in the undercurrent and those jostles of you fighting with water to allow you back up for air is a lot like the fighting you do with yourself to finally allow yourself to breathe. I lost all sense of spirituality and would cry violently when my partner would gently push me towards opening up about my hatred towards any type of god. Why would a mighty being create a world such as this? At that time, there was no explanation for pain, and I sunk into the “what doesn’t make sense must not exist or be true” state of mind which, us humans often do as a primitive defence mechanism. As life continued to jostle me, I fell extremely deep and dark. At this point I was studying to take my LSAT because I had fallen into another spiral of figuring out my purpose and how I was meant to help people in this world. I had struggled immensely with understanding the questions of the LSAT but refused to believe that this wasn’t meant to be my path. As I look back, I did lack a passion, it was hard and arduous to study something that, it appeared, my brain just could not comprehend. The deep and dark place eventually caught up to me and I decided it was time to start swimming.
I can promise you; you’ll never just start backstroking your way out of deep waters. It takes repetitive, intentional actions which involve you waking up and choosing everyday that you will swim. It is at this point that I found my purpose. One of my podcasts told a story about how a study was conducted at google in which everyone was encouraged to disclose the worst thing that has ever happened to them. Afterwards, the coordinator asks each individually that if you could go back and change that event would you have done so? Every single person answered no. Because sometimes the worst things to ever happen to us make us exactly who we are. It brings us into the knowing and into the trusting that the universe will always provide, protect, and heal.
I soon blended this new found love of the interconnectedness of the world and how it healed me in meditation to movement of the body. As an athlete I love the body, I love physiology, so I began studying movement and fell in love with the practice of yoga. Our breath, our life force gives so much and I discovered gratitude in every breath I was able to now take on the surface of the water.
“I can promise you; you’ll never just start backstroking your way out of deep waters. It takes repetitive, intentional actions which involve you waking up and choosing everyday that you will swim.”
Swimming to shore is the next great obstacle. There are building blocks to living in our truth, in our health. We each come to earth with our own challenges, with our own pain, and it is important to see the individual but also, the whole. When I connected food to healing, I realized this phenomenon further. We are the manifestations of the universe existing in human form and since the universe always provides, it gives us plants for sustenance, and that sustenance heals mind, body, and soul. Holistically and synergistically, we exist to be optimal and if we are optimal, we can finally communicate to each other with kindness, and if we are communicating, we are loving, and if we are loving, we are healing and if we are healing, we are finally living. Nutrition, movement, meditation are the cornerstones in making this sequence a reality. I began realizing that there is not separation between religion and science; spirituality is science and vice versa.
This blog, website, and my services are my manifestations, my gifts to the world of everything I have learned and continue to learn. I am using my knowledge and my vigorous studying to change the world and hopefully create a change in you.
This entire blog is dedicated to my parents, whom of which there would be no Allison, no gifts, no manifestations. They gave me the world so that I may be a steward to their personal healing; I am merely a reflection of everything they gave me.
Jenn and Paul
Words hold power. Consciously, we should be aware of how we can change and shape lives using them. A young girl, maybe 10 years old was at the bar I work at with her parents the other day. Before she joined them, I had been talking to her parents for a while who told me how interested in the cosmos, astrology, and meditation their daughter is at such a young age. They also disclosed how hard of a time they have been having with helping her deal with bullying in her school. When she later joined, she was enthused to hear what I teach and learn all about the knowledge I had of the full moon that was happening the next day. She said to me, “I just want to learn… I want to learn how to SPEAK to the universe!” I responded to her matching her enthusiasm, “But you ARE the universe!”
Her parents thanked me before leaving and her mother squeezed my hand as she watched her daughter walk away still enthralled by the revelation my words gave to her.
I hope my words on this blog do the same for you.