This Birthday I Ask For Your Help

Hi Everyone,

I hope everyone enjoying a lovely holiday break and will have an amazing new year.

For my birthdays this year I ask for help with reaching my goal of raising $3,500 to help me pursue something I’ve wanted to do for the past 20 years. I’d like to participate in a 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Rishikesh, India during the first half of this year.

When many of us reach the big 3-0 we look back on how far we’ve come in life, how rich of friendships/relationships we have within our community and family, what we’ve accomplished, and think about the direction we’d like to go in the future.

Before I turned thirty I had always thought about launching a Go Fund Me campaign on my big day to help raise funds that would allow me to signup, participate in, and complete a 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training. I had been practicing yoga for over a decade at that point. It was everything helping my mind/body/soul to stay healthy and balanced in my later teens and all throughout my twenties. The

autumn before my milestone birthday a director/co-producer and I finished a final edit of a documentary film called Kindness Is Contagious. We had a screening at Stanford University where I led a panel discussion at the Center for Compassion and Altruism. We partnered with Gathr a digital gateway for storytellers that brings together talent, event organizers, and venues to create unforgettable events in communities across the USA by allowing individuals/communities to host screenings of films at their local theaters. To help strengthen and enhance the health and well-being of individuals nationwide, my ask to friends/family/colleagues on my 30th birthday ended up being to simply watch and/or host screenings of Kindness and Contagious and start a dialogue about kindness, being nice, and altruism in their lives as well as ways to improve the health of their neighborhoods and quality of their daily interactions. I don’t at all regret making that ask.

At that age, I had been training Muay Thai for a little over two years. I was working full-time, and managing an unmanageable workload from the MBA program in which I was enrolled. The MBA program consumed a majority of my life and with what little free time I had left in a week I fully immersed myself into my twice a day Muay Thai training and took learning and practicing all the techniques very seriously. I still practiced yoga stretches yet I’ll admit my yoga practice as it was before had been put on a back burner. Needless to say things escalated quickly in Muay Thai and what started originally as concentration training for me ultimately turned into an obsession and business concept that led me to living the life of a professional Muay Thai fighter in Thailand (where I also was able to finish and graduate with an MBA). It’s amazing how quickly 10 years flies by when you’re living daily what you’re completely passionate about and engrossed in. It was a massive privilege, certainly not without sacrifice, but during those years I used yoga as my active recovery and stress reliever regularly.

This year 2022 isn’t a milestone birthday for me. I proudly turn 38 today. A few big updates with regards to Muay Thai might soon come about from me in the new year, but at this exact moment in time I know in my heart/mind/body/soul that a 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training is the best thing that I can do for myself— for the exploration, learning, and development of asanas & breathing principles and teaching frameworks to not only deepen my own yoga and meditation practices but also to learn the skills to better share this special therapy with others.

I’ve never asked for anything for myself over social media before. Up until this year I had always had trouble asking for help. And I learned some hard life lessons when finally asking for help earlier this summer. So I hope I don’t lose any more dear people in my life by posting this campaign. I have always have been a woman of action and service to others. I have helped many individuals and companies organize their thoughts, plans, finances, actionable items, etc. to help achieve their dreams/goals and have also helped to breathe life into new projects to then hand over once it’s developed legs to continue to grow.

After over 20 years of practicing yoga, attending and completing a 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training this year in Rishikesh, India is a dream/goal of mine. Not only will it help me become certified as a Yoga Instructor it will also help me become more self aware to heal the parts of me that still feel as if they have been maimed from some pretty gnarly experiences. I’m ready to finally recover from some incidents where others and/or situations have tried to dim my light.

I want to keep allowing the light within me to shine. I want to maintain my kind loving empathetic heart. I intend to keep being authentic and to keep helping others when I’m able for no reason at all.

I want to continue to able to be vulnerable.

I want to unabashedly continue to show my heart.

I want to be myself.

I’m not asking for much but whatever amount you are able to gift and donate to my birthday cause in helping me reach this goal, I will be forever grateful. Thank you for talking the time to read this. Warm wishes to all. May all being be at peace.