Feeding my Dreams

Note from my Facebook page:

Most of you have known me for straddling a few professional careers, all with the general theme of helping other people be more successful in their lives and/or their professions. Back in 2006, I established a burgeoning business as a life coach and holistic healer, focused specifically on helping to empower people to overcome their obstacles and find true success within themselves. It thrived, and as my (now ex-) husband witnessed the transformation of my clients, he naturally desired the same for himself and decided to leave the military and go to school full-time. Due to a recent health diagnosis, I made the practical decision to return to steady employment in order to maintain health benefits (no semblance of Obamacare at the time) and took a job with the largest privately-funded non-profit.

I felt blessed every day to be a part of an organization whose primary purpose is to help people lead healthy and productive lives, and yet I struggled every day in a job that had little to do with my natural gifts and talents while opportunities for me to exercise them dwindled further and further.

On the side, I maintained my business to a small degree and expanded my repertoire to (mostly food) writing and recently, photography. Every once in a while, I would get asked to participate in some interesting projects, most notably giving a couple of workshops at Emergence Creativespace's 11.11.11 Gathering in Sedona. I was my Self, unfiltered, and I had never felt more authentic and thus more successful. 

Since returning home to DC, I've been figuring out how to reconcile this newly bared mystical side of myself with my practical side and decided to hang up my security blanket and in January, I tendered my resignation with the day job. Tomorrow begins my final week -- can you say HOLY COW!??!!?

So what will I be doing? Living (and working) a life of Taste, Travel and Transcendence. In addition to focusing on my business, I'll be head of community and philanthropic partnerships at Operation:Eatery, a consulting firm that specializes in the culinary industry. I'm also working on a number of interesting projects that all in all, help people "Feed their Dreams." And while I intend to stay here, my work is not exclusive to DC, so I hope that we may have an opportunity to connect in person in the near future.

If you'd like to learn more, you can visit my website at http://www.daphnedomingo.com or OE's at http://www.operationeatery.com.

Change Happens

. . . sometimes slowly.

I'm still at my job, but just for another month. I've been extended and extended, but April 6 is finally it -- supposedly. Funny thing, despite the economy and unemployment issues, we've had trouble finding even a temp to fill my position. Not that it's really special, but I guess finding someone with the skills and ambition (or lack of) to take the job has been far more difficult than anyone thought. Luckily, I've been flexible to stay, and luckily  they've been flexible to let me work four days a week, so it's been a win-win. 

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and the transitions are starting to happen. My sweet roommate of the past two years has moved out and is moving on to greener pastures, literally. His airline offered him a year-long furlough and he will be spending the time at a retreat center in Hawaii, and he just left a few days ago. 

It started to hit me last Friday that he left, that there'll be no more evenings of us hanging out together, having quirky conversations, trying his experimental (and mostly tasty) vegetable juices, and his mellow nature. While I enjoyed living with him, I guess I didn't appreciate it as much as I could have -- but how. 

Is it him that I'm missing or is it just the realization, and just the processing that my life is drastically changing. Perhaps this is a mourning process of losing the life I've had for the past couple of years, and by switching careers, losing the identity I've had for the past few decades. Sure, I'm scared, and when I'm scared, it's my natural inclination to stay still -- which is probably why this 2-month extension after my resignation isn't such a bad thing. Although, after the director found out about the extension, she wanted to have me out before the end of this week. While I doubt her motives had anything to do with anything beneficial for me or my team, it startled me enough to feel the band-aid rip right off, and combined with my roommate's departure, there really is no turning back. 

Feeling LOST is an understatement. So many things to do, so many places to go, and so little direction except to surrender. I'm placing my life and career in the hands of Fate, taking that leap into the abyss and hoping that the bridge like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade appears.

One Week (again)

Came home after a weekend in the woods for a friend's bachelorette party and the movie, One Week, was on the Sundance Channel. I first saw the movie right before my cross-country road trip and I can't begin to explain how much I related to it. I feel so restless to get on the road again, to see mountains and trees and valleys and more. I know I just got back from a mini-roadtrip just now, but I really want to hit the road once more. I also really want to write my experience, now almost two years ago. Yes, time to tap into that writing urge once more.

Career Confession

Failure's hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.

 -- Po Bronson

Here's a confession: I've been locked into the wrong careers for much of my life. OK, almost all of my life. I've basically had the same job since I was 6 years old and have had such trouble leaving it ever since. No, it wasn't a sweat shop, but an equally chaining confine called an office. It started because my dad didn't know what to do with me during his visitation days after my parents' divorce. He worked in real estate and Saturdays were a popular day in the market. What do you do with a precocious young girl? You stick her to work, he figured, and it began with answering phones and greeting people at the door from my desk and whatever work he and his colleagues didn't want to do and could easily train me for.

Decades later, I'm still working at a desk. While no longer that front line of reception, but I'm still basically doing work for other people. Pay is decent, colleagues are fantastic, benefits phenomenal and some of the access and privileges have been jaw-dropping. And the stickler of the global good mission, whenever I do get reminded of it somehow, endears me to the work as a greater whole.

The job, however, has always felt like a bad outfit, one that didn't flatter my interests nor my assets. I've tried for years to find ways to make this job, and similar ones I've had previously, really work for me, and I've had a fair share of glorious periods of time. Hence, why it's been so hard to leave. But I must.

I finally submitted my resignation yesterday. I'm leaving one of the most powerful charitable organizations in the world. I'm not doing this because it's a terrible situation (let me be clear, it's not), I'm doing this because its time I step into my own power and do the work I'm really meant to do. I've empowered so many people to live their authentic lives over the years with the work I just did on the side, that it's time I empower myself.

Greeting the New Year

2012 is now here and while recently, 11/11/11 marked new beginnings for some, New Year's Day marks it for others. Wishing you many blessings, prosperity and happiness.

And if you're undertaking some resolutions for this new cycle, may you have the strength, tools, perseverance and support to stick to them, as benefits you most.

A Blessing for the New Year 

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The gray window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colors,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the curragh of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these worlds
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

-- John O'Donohue

My family of FreeSpirits and a Bear

A few years ago, on the heels of one of the most difficult times of my life, I went to see a healer. I was reeling from the loss of my marriage, I was even more devastated to lose a group of people I considered my family, the in-laws.

I was never particularly close to my own family. I had a history of abandonment from my father who would randomly yet consistently leave me stranded at places as a child or simply would miss showing up for designated visitation days; my mother who "raised" me and I never really got along whenever she was home in between trips to Europe and we severed ties as soon as I graduated high school; my grandparents were virtually non-existent, mainly because they had either passed away or didn't get along with my mother. I had siblings, half-siblings, but they were part of my father's new family and, until recently, any involvement I had with them was simply an afterthought -- if at all.

So I had my in-laws, including a grandmother who adopted me close to her heart almost immediately. There was also an aunt whom I felt an immediate connection with and became my confidante and source of comfort. I felt the biggest loss from my divorce by losing my ties with them. Sure they offered the option to always stay in touch, but it ended up being a one-way communication.

I discussed this sense of loss with the healer and she assured me I'd have many families in my life -- 7, in fact. I already knew of at least 2 or 3 already, including my biological family. I was no stranger to the idea of the Urban Family, and in fact fostered the concept especially for many a holiday starting with my Oz Family, mostly of old roommates, neighbors and close friends I'd accumulated over about 10 years of living on Kansas Street in San Francisco.

The latest addition is a group of very special souls I met in Sedona earlier this month. I may have only been there for a week, but the lessons learned and the relationships I made will last a lifetime and longer. There were some amazing people I met at The 11.11.11 Gathering and I am forever grateful to Scott Love and Becky French and all the other Emergence CreativeSpace team members for putting it and keeping it together. In addition to the opportunity for me to step into my True Self, I got to join a whole new extensive family developed by Scott & Becky, and create a loving home with a core group of extraordinary individuals who have each taught me something about my Self and have given me that much more courage to be who I am. Dearest Joe, Caroline and Cory, there are as many kinds of love as there are moments in time and I want you to know I love you more than words can say. I can't help but think of you on this special day.

Buddhist Forgiveness Prayer

I'm back from an amazing week of workshops for the 11.11.11 Gathering and have had some requests about one of the prayers I had attendees recite after the Cord Cutting Ceremony.

Buddhist Forgiveness Prayer

If I have harmed anyone, in any way,
either knowingly or unknowingly,
through my own confusions,
I ask for forgiveness.

If anyone has harmed me in any way,
either knowingly or unknowingly,
through their own confusions,
I forgive them.

And if there is a situation
I am not yet ready to forgive,
I forgive myself for that.

For all the ways that I harm my Self,
judge or be unkind to my Self,
negate, doubt or belittle my Self,
I forgive my Self for that.