KMM #3: My Awakening

Hi everyone! I'm Kacie May.

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It was 2011. I was living in L.A. pursuing fashion styling and a business venture.

I felt lost and helpless as I was struggling to find my niche, support myself, as well as make genuine friends. I also missed my family who lives all over California. I wasn't taking very good care of myself.

I started getting symptoms like the flu and asthma, and I didn’t know what was going on.  I took herbs from my Dad who's an Herbalist, and they helped at first but then stopped working and my symptoms got worse. Then I lost my appetite and started losing weight, and lost energy and strength.

I drove out to my Dad's house in Rancho Cucamonga to work on my car, and I was so physically weak I couldn't turn the crank to lift the tire. He put me to bed and wouldn't let me go back to my apartment in LA. Then he called my Mom, an RN a few days later and requested her help.

One of my brothers picked me up and drove me to my Mom's house in the Sacramento area, and it was Thanksgiving. And by the way I had nothing but the clothes on my back and my purse with me. I slept during a lot of the drive, as well as through Thanksgiving. Then I got an x-ray and found out my left lung was collapsed and that I had millimeters of trachea space left to breathe. I was near dying. I was scared, but I knew I wasn't going to die then. I knew because I believed I was in the right hands, some of those being my Mom’s.

I chose to put my life in other people's hands as I got on breathing treatments and an IV, and was transported in an ambulance to a different hospital where I stayed for 8 days and had chemotherapy and many other drugs. My whole life was turned upside down. I couldn't go back to my apartment, and thanks to my family they packed my things and put it all in storage.

For about 2 years I lived with my Mom. She was my caretaker and I took both drugs and natural treatments, and as of the day I write this I am still receiving treatments. My Mom fed me, helped me sit up in bed, bathe and walk at my worst times. My Mom is my angel.

The great news is that I consider my diagnosis and conquering Hodgkin's Lymphoma to be a blessing and my awakening. I dove into personal development more so than before, asking questions like: What kind of a person was I being for this to happen, and what is a healthier way to be? I found out that when we love ourselves, our insides reflect that.

My motto is Love Yourself & Feel Beautiful, LYFB, and it's part of the title of my upcoming eBook. It’s also hash tagged on social media. Join us and comment, follow, as well as hash tag your own media that’s LYFB!

I found out that we're all connected and here to lift each other up, to give each other a hand up, and help each other. This ongoing, morphing life experience is teaching me that I am a force to be reckoned with who's got to lead by example and pay it forward. It's my mission. Helping others to love themselves too and become amazing leaders- I feel this is my purpose. Also to live lives fully expressed. I can identify with this too, because for years I had severely repressed myself. And I am still uncovering who I truly am!

What causes repression? Fear. What I found out is that fear is false. False Evidence Appearing Real. It's a mask. An illusion. I found out that we can be whoever we want to be and do whatever we want to do. And the sooner we figure out what this means to us, the sooner we can journey this path.

So I serve as a role model for strength, leadership, empathy, courage, self love, body love, valuing your voice and vision, and probably a few other categories as well. The experience forced me to open up and connect with people more, because almost everyone I converse asks me about it as if I've come back from a war. And I have.  I'm winning because I turned it into a peace treaty.

They're curious about the experience, inspired and enlightened, so I took that as my queue to grow quicker into the leader I already know I am deep at my soul's core. The experience liberates and humbles me, and of course as Marianne Williamson says: "As we are liberated from our own fears, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same."

Recognizing Other Women’s Beauty

I used to think that it was a competition- who was the most beautiful? Or like the witch in Sleeping Beauty said, “Who is the fairest of them all?” If you come from a perspective of competition, that could mean that there is only so much to go around, and that there’s only one winner, only one most beautiful woman. This could be a fear based way of thinking. What I’m learning is that you can only love others as much as you love yourself. There were times when I thought, “You’re so beautiful” when meeting physically beautiful or spiritually beautiful women. I realized I wasn’t telling them, I was just thinking it. I used to be afraid to speak on it. I changed and decided to tell them. I noticed that once I did, they lit up! And so did I.

Marianne Williamson writes, “As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Maybe this enlightening was triggered by a spa event I attended sometime in 2010. Two women were presenting. One of the women came to the stage and while she was speaking, looked directly at me in the 2nd row and said “You are so beautiful”, in  a high pitched, enthusiastic and fascinated tone. Maybe it was how I made up my face that day, or what I was wearing, or maybe it was my spirit that she recognized. Whatever it was, when she said that I smiled and maybe blushed too, and she smiled back. This was a woman who loved herself a lot. She was also living a life she consciously chose and designed. I know this because it’s what she told us. She also had a huge, emanating, positive energy that I hadn’t seen too often up until this point in my life, so I figured she was living life in a way that was different than most. She seemed to be on a different wavelength than the majority of people in America (as of the day I’m writing this in November 2013).

Last week I walked into a Pete’s Coffee in the Sacramento area. This girl came around the corner. My aura automatically lifted and my eyes lit up, stunned by her presence. I said without thinking: “You hair is so beautiful!” Vivid, red, small ringlets cascaded halfway down her back. I recognized her beauty and spoke on it. She smiled and blushed, a similar reaction I had a few years earlier. A quiet one, she rang me up at the cashwrap. What’s interesting is that a few hours later as I was leaving the shop when they were closing, one of her coworkers said, “See you tomorrow!” with a lot of warmth and certainty, in a similar voice I complimented her coworker with earlier. This is the first time I’d ever set foot in this Pete’s, and I had conversed only about 10 words with this coworker a few minutes earlier. I’m wondering what caused her to say that. It was as if she read my mind. I was thinking to come back tomorrow, and that I liked the calm atmosphere and the kind girls working there. I wonder if the redhead told her of my compliment and she wanted my energy there again with them.

There is so much beauty in the world. I’m talking about more than physical beauty. Someone’s personality, their warmth, kindness, generosity, consideration, families, communities, sceneries, landscapes, art, music, houses, fashion...there’s so much! What we put out into the world, we also get back, so by acknowledging the beauty around us, we are acknowledging our own beauty at the same time. When we do this we’re also more at peace with ourselves and we open the doors to more abundance in our lives. It’s about paying it forward, too. You pay a compliment to someone, and because you did, they do the same and pay a compliment to another person, and it’s a never ending chain of compliments! So let’s recognize women’s- and all kinds of other beauty- around us for a better, more beautiful, more abundant life!

If you like what you’ve read so far, stay tuned and check out my upcoming book: 8 Values of a Cancer Conquering Personal Stylist: How to Love Yourself and Feel Beautiful to be released in January 2014!

In the comments below, tell us about the best compliment you’ve ever had from another woman. Let’s have some extra lady love time and give some shout outs!

Thanks for reading and let’s connect at KacieMay.com