One of the benefits of age is being able to connect the dots looking back.This post is part journal to show up in my memories, year after year FOR ME…and part public for you – as a gift -that you might see we are all one.
I am clearly a woman of range. This has been a THEME in my life in the last few years, becoming, both/and, mystic & logistic, soul-full and strategic. This range is both a gift and a pain in my ass – because I can’t set it and forget it. Integration and attention are constant. There is no arrival. As you probably know, the work is never done.
I’ve built an ever-evolving business over the last 17 years from both the masculine and feminine. Sometimes independent of one another, and other times exquisitely integrated and working together. At this point, I am deeply proud of my intuition, coaching skills, and my strategy and structure both for myself and my clients. I am living my dharma, my soul’s calling as a woman of range — Soul-Full and Strategic as a life and business coach (both what you see online, and what you don’t see behind the scenes in my life and work).
At one point my Spirituality was so visibly integrated into my work…and eventually, “White Spiritual Women Coaches” became so cliche online, and in some places, many in the “spiritual coaching space” were being harmful – and I was terrified… OF DOING IT WRONG. I so wanted to be “good” so I pulled it back not just online by in my own personal practices.
*my need to do it RIGHT and GOOD was stronger than my personal faith and spiritual practices/connection. That need was also exacerbated by personal, political stress, and overstimulation in the last 4 years…and then covid climate. And so my nervous system has gripped what it thinks it can rely on. LOGIC, INTELLECT, and STRUCTURE. These things provided me physical and financial, and emotional safety.
What’s funny – actually perfect is this: I DID need to strengthen my logic, my structures, and my physical and financial, and emotional safety.
My soul needed to learn how to not numb difficult emotions and truths with toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. I remember asking God one time, why someone close to me had such miraculous and OBVIOUS spiritual gifts and mine were so invisible. God said to me, “because you have so much faith you don’t need miracles.”
What I find so fascinating as I look back and connect dots, that have also been waves, is that it has been a MIRACLE to let my faith rest (i never lost it – I just stashed it in a closet for a while) and to be fully HUMAN and to build these structures in my life.
I’ve been saying, the last few years, that allowing myself to be fully HUMAN is the most spiritual experience I’ve ever had. Not just structure (chopping wood and carrying water) but also the deep emotional shadow work of meeting difficult (and often labeled negative) emotions.
As I lift my head to the light, this morning, from my “WORK” over the last 5 years…. I can see the form of what I have created and know that it is good, and what I have created can support me. I can see that I am learning to meet myself and others with compassion. I am also able to CARE DEEPLY and let that hurt, for myself and for humanity. I am able to take my desire and pain and move toward change, for myself and for humanity. I also see that I have created financial systems, and legal systems, and spending/saving habits that support me. I am still learning to ask for help – and I have built a personal and professional team of support, releasing daily, my need to control and over-functioning as a trauma response.
Today, my “house” is more in order than it has EVER been in my lifetime.
Wild and colorful Allison, with all the spiritual faith in the world, was really not congruent if I didn’t embody my responsibility as a human in this life, to build physical structures of support, and to FEEL more than the good shit.
My mess is my masterpiece. Thank you to all of you who have stood by and with me in the messy seasons. Most of all I thank ME for being willing to be in my mess, perfectly. This is not an easy, nor always pretty path…and it is the one I will take over and over.
I can feel the next season of Spirit INTEGRATED with the STRUCTURES – both FAITH AND FORM working in partnership. I’m pulling my spiritual practices, faith, and quantum thinking back out of the closet for full participation.
Ooooohhhhh, this is gonna be sweet! Who is coming with me? 
Thank you to my coaches and mentors and therapists (Rich Litvin, John P Morgan, Tara Newman, Chris Zydel, Rebecca Ching, Heather Doyle Fraser). Thank you to my husband (Bill Flanigin) and my powerful and amazing clients (so many of you), and to my staff (Stacey, Cali, Elyse, and Amber) and financial advisors (Blake & Lisa Westerterp, Jessica Salzman, and Sandy Eichel).
Holy Shit, y’all help me get good!
More is not better, better is better.
This is 49…watch out 50….I’m coming for ya!
Love, A
