Why Did I create Be Move Have?

Why did I create Be Move Have? I brought this platform into existence out of my own battles as a woman entrepreneur silently wrestling with overwhelming anxiety and crippling depression. Be Move Have was born because it's precisely what I longed for during the early days of my first business venture.

Let me transport you back to that pivotal moment. I was enrolled in the stellar women's entrepreneurship program WISE (Chicagoans may recall this gem!). We were delving into the fundamental building blocks of building a thriving business. What's more, we were given the opportunity to apply our knowledge in the real world, testing our products at a bustling pop-up shop in the heart of the Daley Center during the Christmas holiday season.

On the surface, it seemed like a recipe for success, even if your products were only average, but there was one catch. The only thing standing in the way was your own relentless self-doubt and paralyzing fear of striking up conversations with strangers. Yes, you guessed it, that was my challenge.

This set the stage for years of struggles in connecting with potential buyers, facing the same issues repeatedly, and having no one to turn to for guidance in navigating this intricate terrain. I knew the smart business moves to make, I comprehended what I should be doing, but the actual act of overcoming the overwhelming anxiety and executing those steps was an entirely different ordeal.

It felt like a truth I couldn't share with anyone, a burden I thought no one would truly grasp, and worst of all, the possibility that they might dismiss my struggles as mere laziness and a lack of desire (and believe me, they did).

Now, years later, having become a seasoned serial business owner and entrepreneur, I am resolute in my determination not to let other women silently grapple with the challenges I endured. Be Move Have now stands as a beacon, providing ambitious and committed women a genuine source of compassionate empowerment to transcend fear and thrive.

How I Found Out I was an Empathic Snob...

Photographer: John Canelis | Source: UnsplashPhotographer: John Canelis | Source: Unsplash

I was intrigued by my default responses. This post was clearly triggering me - but why? Why did I care so much that someone was tooting their own horn? Why did it matter to me one bit at all that through tooting his own horn, he'd received hundreds of messages affirming his "awesomeness" and hundreds more brownie points in the form of the desperately sought after "likes" confirming that?

Why on this beautiful earth did I care? And even more importantly, why did it sting so much for a dear friend to then call me out as an intellectual snob when I mentioned my affliction to him?

These were my ponderings on a slow Sunday when all the world felt a little too melancholy and grey for my liking. This is when I got all the way into feeling like I am not for this world and all the way back to, I am exactly for this world.

Let me explain.

It all has to do with this word empath and my new revelations on how I have been living a mostly shielded life instead of the fully empowered life that I thought I was living. I thought that I had done such a good job of crafting my life. My outside triggers were few and far in between. I mostly had people around me that supported me and looked at life similarly to me. I didn't interact on a regular base with people that upset me.

I thought this was good. I thought this was cause to pat myself on the back. I thought living inside of my bubble was a positive thing to be celebrated.

But what I've been realizing over these past few weeks is that in fact, maybe this is NOT a good thing anymore. What I've been slowly seeing is that where it was good back then, when I needed shielding and a safe place, now there is good reason to change and diversify my exposure and experiences.

What I've been realizing is that I've not been allowing myself to really go there with people, to really let myself completely feel, connect and understand them individually and intimately for fear (subconscious mind you) that I'll get lost there - that I'll get lost in all that it means to be them.

Right now, I control my exposure to pain very well. My own pain is more than enough lol. Allowing myself to be openly exposed to other people's pain brings on the fear of not being able to control it - not being able to shut the gates and stop the flow.

And so what do you subconsciously do as an empath? - you shut it completely down and you begin creating this false sense of disconnect/superiority/intellectual distance.

It's protection and fear and it's very subtle. This isn't your blunt - "I don't like you, I like you" deal. This is much more nuanced and whispery. It's a silent forcefield that once protected you and now just isolates you. It feels very safe, but it also keeps you from really connecting. And you have to wonder if, as an empath, at some point, it keeps you from really doing the work you're here to do.

So this is my current challenge. I'm actively exploring ways to engage more fully with the world and practice NOT being overwhelmed by the world. And by "the world" I mean with individual people of the world - engaging with them genuinely without deflective INFJ, empathic barrier shields up or self-deprecating tactics in play. Finding the ways to "feel them" without getting lost "within them".

I've had many years of strengthening my own boundaries and learning how to let energy and feelings flow through me, especially those that aren't mine. I feel like I'm strong enough to put it into better practice. So we shall see.

And what about you? How are you doing on this front? I know that many of you struggle with your own version of this type of empathic barrier. Maybe you are on the side of not having enough of a barrier. Or perhaps you too have been way too rigid with yourself and the world as of late.

It's good food for thought and there is a lot of gold to be found within it. I encourage you to explore and if you like, we can explore it together in an intuitive tarot reading. I'm offering these again and I'd love to read for you!

You can purchase a reading here: Empowerment Readings

What's Right for YOU?

Photographer: Glenn Carstens-Peters | Source: Unsplash

Boom, we’re all of a sudden at the Virgo New Moon - a day past it in fact. And I’m doing my best to really tap into the energy and feel into (and figure out) what my next steps in life look like. As per always, my life is filled with potential change and potential paths. That’s why a Virgo moon is really a great gift for a multi-passionate person. It helps immensely with clarity on what path, out of the thousands available, is the best one for you right now.

What my intuition, readings and personal knowledge say about this one though, is that it’s not just about what makes the best sense, it’s also about what feels the best. After all, our feelings are really the barometer of what is actually *right* for us.

That’s one thing that I have difficulty with however because it all feels right. It all feels like THIS, THIS is what I should be doing. But when I go deeper, I begin to see just how much of what I THINK feels right, is really just residuals of what OTHER people think feels right, what I THINK other people think is right and even what I think will make other people feel that *I* am right.

Let me explain with real-life examples. This weekend two things have come up as triggers for me about what I should be doing with my life. They both are things that in the past, caused me to fall into doubting myself and questioning my path and asking yet again, why can’t I just be normal.

(The beauty is that I’m catching myself faster and I’m asking more insightful curious questions. AND I’m moving forward with what I feel good about anyway.)

The Houston BIG Salsa Festival.

The Houston BIG Salsa Festival is this weekend. I’ve been seeing posts about it from salsa friends and acquaintances and it’s been picking at old wounds and begging me to *go there* - into the space of wondering why that never happened for me. Or if I want that to still happen for me. And what that even looks like in real life. And even why I THINK that never happened for me when in fact it did, just not quite how I envisioned.

Seeing another mental health advocate receive praise.

There’s a website that I admire that regularly features articles about mental health advocacy, specifically from and about women of color. Yet they’ve never featured anything of mine, though I’ve submitted things for their consideration, have tagged them on things and even spoke with the founder over the phone and connected really well. Today I saw that they posted something else and I spiraled down the comparison well. I fell into the space of asking myself why *I’d* never been featured, why *I* couldn’t be more consistent with my work as a mental health advocate and why I couldn’t just focus on one thing.

And all of this introspection makes perfect sense for Virgo season, especially because I’ve been diligently working on understanding what my business is really about, how I want it to grow and what I want it to look like in the future.

One thing that I have to continue to remind myself of and make peace with is that I’m doing things a different way. I’m just a different person. I have different ideas and different ways of thinking. And this is RIGHT. This is the way it’s supposed to be. I am a paradigm shifter. I am a changemaker. I am a catalyst creator. It’s what I’ve always been and what I probably always will be. I’ll always have different ideas. I’ll always see things in a different way. I’ll always want to combine things and create synchroncities where they may not have actually existed before. I’ll always want to do things in a slightly different, very me-esque way.

That’s just me. And the sooner and more often that I make that right in my OWN mind, the more quickly and consistently everyone else will believe it’s right too. It’s on ME. NOT on them.

And one of the really interesting things I’ve found in my life is that this statement that it’s on me and not on them is more true than most realize.

Most of the time, YOU are the one standing in your way. You probably have tons of cheerleaders around you, trying to convince you of your awesomeness, reminding you of your innate power and birthrights and telling you that you can do it. It’s YOU that is still standing on the edge of the pool, barely dipping a toe in.

So in this season of Virgo, especially over this next week, see what comes up for you about what is really YOU. Yes, there are a bazillion things you could do because you are in fact that awesome. But you owe it to yourself to NOT to try to do them all. At least not all in the same span of seconds :). You owe it to yourself to make YOU just as important as all the things you could do.

This is what I’m working on. This is what is going to help me streamline MY life and say to myself - “that’s ok Leah” when HardAss Leah shows up to point out that I could have been an internationally famous salsa dancer or I could have been a nationally known mental health advocate - if only I’d done more.

I”m not about doing more. I’m about doing what I want, what makes my heart sing. What makes me ultimately just a little bit happier.

If you are about figuring this out for yourself too, I’ve created some journal prompts that can be helpful.

Why I'm Doing a Dance Documentary

A few days ago, I was talking with a filmmaker friend of mine. I was telling her about how excited I am to be performing at the St. Louis Salsa Bachata Festival and how big of a deal it is for me. You see, I'm 42 years old and I’ve been out of performance dance shape for a long time. I told her about how awesome it would be to step out on stage, feeling completely fierce - back in dance form, head to toe, maybe even better than I’ve ever been before. I told her how empowering and affirming that would be for me - especially after all the frustrations of this year.

I told her about how this entire year has been one difficulty and disappointment after the next (when it was supposed to be a step up from last year) and how it’s resulted in me feeling like I’m completely rebirthing myself - walking through the fires of disappointment again and making peace with certain things about my life while still stepping up to the plate and trying again with old dreams and goals. Even despite my battles with anxiety and depression, I’m rising every chance I get and doing my best to say “maybe it could work this time” instead of “nope, been there, done that”.

I told her about my plan to “go hard” in my own way to prepare for St. Louis. That in the midst of relaunching my makeup line, launching my skincare line and generally trying to live a productive life, I was also going to get “badass dancer” Leah back too. I was going to get back in dancer shape. I was going to lose the weight and the lethargy. I was going to find my energy and unshakable stage presence again and I was going to perform so well that I high-fived myself. Because why not? Why not take it all on. Life is to be lived afterall.

And she said Leah, this needs to be a documentary and I’m going to shoot it for you. And so here we are, with me launching a GoFundMe campaign and setting off on this epic adventure :).

The video below talks more about the project and you can view and share the GoFundMe page here. Much thanks and so much love <3!