"If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine." -Morris West

Part of loving yourself is not being afraid to feel your emotions and feel them fully. It’s okay to cry, it’s okay to be upset, but more importantly, it’s okay to be happy.

I never had a problem feeling sad; it was the happiness part that scared me. I developed a coping mechanism during my depression that stayed with me for a long time. My basic instructions were 1) don’t get excited 2) if you start to feel happy, cut it off because it will end up a disaster anyway. Any kind of happiness was too good to be true in my mind, so I just didn’t believe in it. Long after my bouts of depression, I still held onto that belief. People actually commented on my lack of being able to be excited about anything. It’s because I was scared. I was scared to death that if I became too happy or too excited that somehow the universe would say, “Gotcha! It was just a joke. There’s no such thing as happiness.” It always felt like if things were going too well that I could expect a monster to pop out from around the corner and snatch my happiness away.

I’m here to tell you, there is no monster waiting to see you smile so it can trip you up. Yes, things happen in our lives that are uncomfortable and sad and discouraging, but they don’t happen because you embraced happiness. They happen because that’s life and it’s all part of this living and learning journey. And more often than not, the bad stuff that happens opens a door to something even more amazing. In my own life, this has been the case over and over again. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore and my life was a wreck and I cried my eyes out, a light shined through, a window opened, and magic happened.

Loving yourself means not being afraid of happiness. Let yourself feel that joy. Open your heart and soul to the goodness of life. There is plenty of it to go around! And when the sad times do come, keep loving yourself and remind yourself that happiness will return. Happiness may be like a butterfly that flutters from here to there, but joy is constant. Put that joy in your heart. You deserve it!

What is challenging for you? Is it telling yourself you're beautiful? Letting people know how you feel? Believing in yourself and your dreams? For me, it's challenging to speak up, even in casual conversation. I'm quiet by nature, but sometimes I hold back because I feel like what I have to say isn't important enough. 

Let's create something to remind us that we have the power to face those challenges and conquer them. 

1. Find an interesting shaped rock, but one that is easy to write on.
2. Paint the rock any color(s) you'd like; let dry.
3. Write an empowering word on the rock to remind you of your power to overcome the obstacle. I wrote "speak" to remind me to speak from my heart, even if it comes out silly.
4. Keep your reminder with you or set it in a place where you can see it.

Now, whenever you need that extra boost, pull out your rock solid reminder and start kicking butt!

Fellow Goddess Circle member Sara, gave GLW a stellar review on her new Soul Branding Spotlight series! Yay!

While you're there, check out Sara's Summer of Self-Love; a whole summer of projects, assignments, and journaling prompts to help you get to the core of all your self-loveness.

Imagine yourself dancing in the light of your own beauty, your own courage. Your hands are in the air reaching towards the sun and you can feel the warmth on your fingertips, your shoulders, and all the way down your spine and into your feet. Your feet are strong and grounded into the earth, but your soul is light and drifting between clouds. In this moment you are in complete love with who you are and what you bring to this world. You can feel love overflowing. You have so much to give and there is an abundance of love and happiness for you.

I come from the West Texas desert where sunsets are tangerine cotton-candy and you can see for miles. I've always been a desert child, although parts of me belong to the sea and some to the green mountains of Tennessee, but at my core I am a desert cactus bloom. Now I live in the city - San Antonio to be exact - with my love and little doggy, Freddy.

Although the city provides a great deal of things to do, it is also stuffy and hot and people are always in a mad rush. I do enjoy it, but we hope to move to the country and grow our own food someday. I used to be such a city girl; it's hard to believe I'd rather have wide open space now.

I was never much of a social person. In fact, my childhood friends consisted mostly of imaginary people whom I had crazy adventures with. I've never much cared for the traditional or conventional and I've always been called weird - mostly in a good way.

My teenage years were rough; I never felt like I fit in or that people cared what I had to say. I battled depression, anxiety, and self-esteem issues throughout my teenage and twentysomething years. For the longest time I felt like being sad was who I was. Without that lingering sadness there was nothing to talk about, nothing to write about. I often asked myself, if I was not a sad girl, who would I be? Even within the past year I've struggled with self-love and whether or not I could be truly happy and not be afraid. Not be afraid to be happy? What a concept!

It took a sudden life change and a lot of introspection for my old way of thinking to crack open and bloom something new. That's when my Gypsy Love Warrior was born.

I used to have a nasty habit of comparing myself to other women. "So-and-so has prettier hair than I do; she's a better dancer/writer/artist; I bet my boyfriend would like me more if I looked like her." But then a voice came through, a voice I had not stopped to listen to, and she said,

You are loved because of who YOU are, how YOU look, what YOU say. You are perfect just as you are and no one can compare.

No one else can be me and I can be no one else. Isn't that amazing?! What's more amazing is being myself and being fully present in my own skin. Now, I don't waste energy on being sad or feeling like I'm not good enough. The truth is, I am good enough and have a lot to bring to this world, and so do you!!!

To me, being a Gypsy Love Warrior is being free, unique, creative, adventurous, ambitious, confident, courageous, and loving abundantly. My goal is to continue on this self-love journey and I'm inviting you to go with me. We'll encounter dream following, beauty in the darkness, happiness (without fear), balance, gratitude, inspiration, and lots and lots of love.

I want to help you unleash your inner Gypsy Love Warrior (she's a bohemian wild child!) because there is freedom in loving who you are. There is freedom in realizing that you are not lacking anything, no matter what anyone says.

So pack your bags - we're going on an adventure!

P.S. Dearest gypsy love warriors, please feel free to email me or leave a comment with your own story and what you'd like to see from this website.

Much love,
Cassandra