Toxic Overload! HELP!

Good Morning! So it has been almost 2 months for Gods sake since I have checked in and blogged away. Wondering where I have been? Me too for that matter. The last 3 months have been a whirl wind of listing our home on the market, living in rubber gloves cleaning for every showing, making all final decisions on the new construction of our new home...you know the drill paint, furniture etc....then actually moving in March. Three months that are a bleep in time.

All I can say is I had no idea what I had ahead of me when we started this journey. I have a entirely new respect for Realtors who deal with the buyers and sellers during this stressful time of their life, for the women out there who prepare their home, become full time maids, work AND handle a family! That is from my shoes and God knows Eric would have things to add here to. So in all this mess, something had to give...so bloggin went out the window fast!

The good news is we sold our place and moved into our new home in 3 and a half months! That's good stuff in this market. Our new home is brand spankin new. I love it with all my heart. However, as it is with life I am learning a HUGE lesson at this moment in time and would like to briefly share it with you.

Environmental toxins are so real! As I mentioned our new home is brand new. We are in a new housing development here in the city where all homes are brand new, and NOTHING is "GREEN" or environmentally friendly. That's right... toxic overload of dust and gases all over town around here!

Over the last 5 years I have done a significant amount of detoxing and my diet is rather pure living foods diet. That said, any little toxic bugger out there is detected and escorted out. Now that I am breathing in toxic fumes and dust daily, my lungs, liver and spleen are shouting, "What gives sister?". They are working overtime and as a result I am experiencing lots of flu like symptoms, headaches and loss of energy.

Why? Perhaps think about it this way, in a clean house you notice the dust bunny zoom across the floor and you snag it. 100 dust bunnies all at once may just put you over the edge! Now, if it is time for the housekeeper to come, that new dust bunny just joins the fun with the others and goes unnoticed, but the day will come when you need to clean house! It is usually called spring cleaning...translate that to the body and jump on the detox wagon! If not, then you may entertain some sort of a physical malfunction or disease later in life. It just all adds up at some point in life right!

I mention this for 2 reasons.

One, as I just described it is so important to detox your body at least once a year to stay ahead of the game and keep health issues at bay. I would suggest everyone consider taking something to support your liver on a daily basis. I will be carrying a product called "Liver Rescue" on my website http://www.hipgoddess.com/ beginning in May. That would be a terrific starting point!

Second, perhaps you may think twice about making "green" choices if you are building a new home or updating an existing one. Consider low VOC paints and Google green builders in your area if you are hiring a builder. Add lots of plants to your home to help purify and oxygenate the air.

Now, if you are in a new home and have children and pets.....PLEASE open your windows and invest in an air purifier to help move the toxins out of your home for their sweet immune systems, and YOURS! You may not feel anything, but trust me your liver is working over time!

A Gentle Reminder

You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
We were born to make manifest the glory that is within us.
It is not in some of us, it is in everyone.
-Author unknown

Does anything really need to be said in follow up to that? Have gratitude for the lovely perfection that you are! Peace!

OHHH...The Glorious Day of LOVE

Happy Valentines Day! These days I have my nose in Lester Levenson's book, "Happiness is Free...and it's easier than you think!" You may be thinking...oh yeah....just another one of those mamby pamby self help books. Perhaps, but none the less it is ranking up there as one of my favorites. Why? One word, Simple. That's right, the book is simple.

Basically the author, Lester lead a life of what most of us would classify as normal. He graduated from college in 1931 and went on with a successful career as an engineer for twenty-some years dabbling in various other business along the way. By 1952 he had been through constant illnesses...enlarged liver, kidney stones, spleen trouble, hyper acidity, ulcers and 10 years of migraine headaches. It was all topped off with a second coronary thrombosis and was told he might die anyday. So he went home and realized that all the knowledge he had accumulated over the forty-two years was of no avail. He had reached the end of the line without real happiness and without health and now he wanted it more then ever.

So he began asking himself what he really wanted out of life, now that his days were numbered. His answer was happiness. To dig a little deeper, he recalled the moments in his life that he had felt the happiest. What he discovered was, it was when he was LOVING that he was the happiest. That happiness equated to HIS capacity to LOVE rather than TO BEING loved.

Sweet...simple...and true. It does feel better to LOVE than to BE LOVED.

On this day of love, perhaps take a minute or two and recall a time in your life when you were in crazy love. Pull up and dissect high moments of loving in your life. Do you too get an inkling of a feeling that it was when you were loving someone that you had the highest feelings of love and happy bliss? What an appropriate and good exercise on Valentines Day.

My take away from all this is...what can I do today for the ones I love? We all have heard it is better to give than to receive. Lester is right on!

Five Simple Rules for Happiness
1. Free your heart from hatred
2. Free your mind from worries
3. Live Simply
4. Give More
5. Expect Less

Hang with me here a moment...

Have you ever read or heard something and it didn't quite sink in? Sure, you could understand a portion of the message, but the rest just flew somewhere over your head! Quietly you choose to put it away for later, and when the later date arrives, for whatever reason, this time...IT ALL MAKES SENSE!

Well....I would like to share something similiar that just "illuminated" my heart. Some of you may be familiar with my spiritual teacher John Douglas. Everyday I listen to many of his meditations and each day they sink in deeper. Today, while taking myself for a walk around the indoor track of my health club...not a "work out" walk but rather an empty your mind kind of walk....sort of like a beach walk. Well, peaceful it was. It was like the top of my head opened up, I gave every part of my body permission to relax and swing free, and my thoughts were free to leave my daily to do list and playfully immerse themselves in all things possible. To just observe and not analyse. AAAhhhh...how delicious it was.

That said, I titled this blog, "Hang with me here for a moment..." because that is what you may need to do as I share me deep thoughts while riding on the words of my spiritual teacher on this snowy day following my bliss walk. My thoughts here may "reach you"... or not...just as mentioned above. If not, perhaps just come back to it...if you choose.

Here it goes...

"Emotional impressions in the molecules of your being are now letting go" -John Douglas

Deep inhale.....and exhale every last bit of air in your lungs...hhhmmmm....be free, loose, and open...how good it feels. Allow your crown chakra, the top of your head, to receive the divines thought forms as a download into your pineal gland...the center of your head. Do not judge what images or thoughts you receive, let them flow in and flow through you...listen. What do you see....what do you feel....what do you hear? Do not judge...your response is to just do the next thing in that very moment according to what you are receiving. Allow yourself to stay in motion with the thought form and go on to the next thing it is guiding you to do...and the next thing....staying in the flow.

Should you halt the thought form and park it while you analyze it, the thought form locks down and constricts the energetic flow which was keeping it in motion. This results in a physical block at the cellular level of your body. We label this physical block and constriction with an emotion or pain and it becomes ours....our identification...."I am in pain....I am depressed...I am stiff" Now you have to work to let it go...

Resist the compulsion to park and analyze your thoughts...let them flow in...respond to the ones that "illuminate" your heart and take a step in that direction staying in the flow of all things good.

Be open, loose and free. Do all you can to be the observer of your mind and life...not the operator working over time. Be still...calm down...allow all to be...just as the falling snow...tomorrow will be just perfect...just as it is this very moment....perfect.

peace

The Hip Goddess Club

The Hip Goddess? What is that? OH PLEASE! Stand up right now ladies....walk over to the nearest mirror..and take a look at that BEAUTIFUL, STRONG and POWERFUL being looking back at you. Does she look familiar? That's right sister....the Hip Goddess is YOU!

Coming soon, Opulent Living, Inc presents, “The Hip Goddess Club”. A Monthly girls night out to learn, share and express yourself on topics related to being the powerful Goddess you are, living a wholistic lifestyle, and of course all things trendy and HIP!

Come join the Hip Goddess’s beginning in March to stay in touch with friends, meet new ones, learn something new & express yourself!

Check in with Opulent Living at http://www.susiesondag.com/ under “Events” to confirm our location and first date of Thursday March 27th!

And...we're not stopping there! Available on line soon at http://www.susiesondag.com/
Opulent Living’s "Hip Goddess" superfoods to rejuvenate your gorgeous body and materials to support your spiritual growth and power. We’ve tried them all and done our homework to bring you the purest and best products on the market to support your Inner Goddess!

BTW...don't worry guys....we'll share our powerful superfood goods with you too so check up on us soon and spread the word! Feeling good is contagious!

WHAT! More Snow?

You are kidding right? Clearly the local weather man is not winning a popularity contest in my family room tonight as he breaks the news of yet another foot of snow to arrive in Chicago by 3pm tomorrow.

Oh help me Rhonda, help help me Rhonda! What's an Iowa girl to do when at the age of 7 she committed herself to the California sun upon her first glimpse of the Beach Boys album! And, oooohhh...when the needle hit the sweet spot and THE song was set free from the record to her ears, "A ba ba ba ba bab aran!"...this Iowa small town girl's heart would be forever committed to the sun and fun. A much better idea then snow forts and sleigh rides down candy cane hill on a silver "saucer"....that thing never did work.

So with this announcement I affirm the fact I would love to hop a plane out of here to feel the warm sunshine on my bare shoulders. But I guess I do, and do not have a choice. I don't have the option of stopping the snow...because it is coming! I do however, have a choice to accept it and love it up.

Well surfer girl, what's it gonna be? Fight it or surrender? Hhhmmm....

I choose to surrender and love the pretty white stuff that makes our city look so pure and quiets us all down. I will relish the fact that I couldn't get my car out of the alley if I tried! I will heed Mother Natures advice, and slow down a bit. Perhaps stop running here and there, as fast as I can. I will bundle up, take DEEP LONG breaths of the cold weather outside and take lessons from my dogs as they light up like firecrackers and play....just loving what is!

But even as the snow falls, I can still crank up "Barbara Ann" and dance around the room in full freedom knowing the sun and heat will come again.... and with it all things new!

5 Ways to Live and Work with a Wholistic Lifestyle

First of all remember....“No matter where you are, it is OK….just LOVE yourself”

Below you will find few BASIC guidelines to help get you on the right track. I have to remind myself, I am not going for perfection. Do the next thing in the direction you choose to go and enjoy the process. We get better each day....thank GOD!

1. Attitude, Responsibility, Power
You have a divine being inside your physical entity. Take responsibility for your life and find a reason for living. What is your legacy? YOU are the powerful creator of your life.

2. Dietary Upgrade
Begin today by upgrading ONE thing in your diet. ADD IN vs. TAKE OUT. Set a goal to consume an organic whole plant based diet for cleansing and rejuvenation.

3. Exercise and Hydration
Develop a physical resolve that suites you to free your mind, deepen your breath, and pump your heart. Drink clean, filtered and “blessed” or charged water. Observe your bodies many cries for water.

4. Rest
Quiet the mind. Budget your energy. Balance your rest with your physical exertion. Animals in nature don’t sleep, they rest. We’re a “vertically” addicted society…animals lie down.

5. Environment
City living equals lots of airborne pollutants. Do you own a good air filter and water purifier? Understand the importance of cleansing your body just as you do your home.

Wholism is taking personal responsibility so your being can THRIVE. Have 100% commitment at all costs, believe in yourself, and no backing down. You ARE living your best life!

Think you're smarter then Mother Nature?

I cannot get enough of research on topics that revolve around resetting our health back to good ol mother nature! After being a toxic waste dump of chemicals and radiation from cancer therapy...I learned the hard way! Trust me! Going through it all, my thoughts were, "There has to be a better way then this!" Clearly this is not the healing protocol Mother Nature had in mind!

Then again...we have gotten so far away from Mother Nature with our processed, preserved, boxed up stuff we call food! Even if we are eating whole live foods like our veggies and fruits, when we go to the store we see these non organic GIANT perhaps from outer space apples and pears! Looks terrific, right?! But how did they get so big?

We are a nation that wants things bigger, faster, better and super sized. We just toss in a few chemicals to genetically alter it and shazam! We have the BMW of produce ! Somewhere along the line we Americans have gotten so far away from keeping things simple. We think we can out smar Mother Nature. Let's just give her a boost...box her up and add to or "fortify" her to meet out needs.

So our grocery stores are shelved with processed, boxed up and HUGE genetically modified food...right along with rises in every disease known to man. And we wonder what is the reason for this epidemic? It is my opinion many of the diseases we are hunting to, "find a cure" would all settle down if we would get back to mother nature. Sure a drug or pill can destroy the diseased cells...but maybe an excess of such chemicals is what contributed to our cellular break down in the first place? Hmmmm...

What would happen if we allowed Mother Nature to heal us and reset our DNA back to normal? Sure it doesn't happen as fast as a drug or pill....but she can do it! If she can conceive a baby, spin the planets, and make the flowers grow...I am certain she can heal us too.

Our end of the healing contract with Mother Nature is to go back to her whole organic foods, clean water and give it time. Sounds simple right? Not in the least. It takes a good practioner to guide you along with your faith, belief and committment. I am telling you, YES YOU CAN!

Perhaps you may be thinking I am a radical unrealistic health wholistic health nut....but I have been on the end of fear and allopathic treatments only to swing the other direction to detox and rejuvenate by being back to balance with Mother Nature. Certainly, the path has not been what I would define as a good time! Far from it! And I am still a work in progress. What I can tell you is I do feel better today then I did when I was having a ball in college!

I wanted to blog on this topic this morning to just put the shot out and high five Mother Nature! ! Waking up I thought....I am less then thrilled about the sub zero temperatures today...but good Lord Mother Nature, how do you do it? You alter our weather from 90 steamy degrees to colder then my freezer! You are AMAZING! Many thanks to you to helping me restore my vitality with your pure, organic whole and living foods!!!

I hope I have given you something to think about! I job is to "toss it out there" and let you take it further if you are so inclined. For me one plus one did not equal two when I was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer many years ago. I choose the allopathic route because it felt right to me at the time. Nobody knows your body better then you. All our answers are within us. Do don't take my word for it! Try it yourself!

Lastly, I am passionate about researching wholistic health....LOVE IT! Right now I am digging into the great Gabriel Cousens book, "Spiritual Nutrition". I would like to leave you with a blurb from his book as food for thought!

"We need to mimic Nature in our work, not think that we're smarter than Nature. Continued force-feeding of a few chemicals in high-concentration fertilizers upsets the balance of subtle nutrition. This is why the whole pesticide and herbicide approach doesn't work; it does not coincide with Nature. The natural law is: The more mineralized the soil, the healthier the plants are, and the more disease-resistant they are. The healthier individuals are those who eat the highly mineralized plants."

Peace...and go eat something organic, juicy and perhaps something green today!!

What is your legacy?

Deep thoughts....I received an email yesterday letting me know Petter Morck, the founder of Arbonne International, a Swiss formulated wellness company based in California that I work with, had passed away. I was really tossed into "the moment" while reading his eulogy and I cannot help but share a portion of it with you. Perhaps reading just a bit of it will make you stop and think, "How am I living my life...what is the passionate pursuit of my life...am I continually seeking to"get" rather then "give".

During that moment I was brought back to the time I was knee deep in cancer treatments and was living for the day. Each day was appreciated simply because I didn't know how many of them I was going to have. At 29 I had so many plans for life, no different then anyone...travel, career success, marriage, family...etc etc.. However, that experience fueled a fire in me to really do something with the time I DID have. Some of my worries changed to how was I spending my day? Were the things I was doing for the benefit of me, or for others? It was a funny feeling. I really never thought about that before I was just doing and thinking about things that every other 29 year old was preoccupied with. Common things like career and getting married.

Sometimes I think it is a shame we live our lives for the next best thing. Getting married, a bigger home, salary, faster car, another child, more recognition, more new clothes, a bigger TV...MORE MORE MORE. We Americans are nutso! My Grandmother used to slap a few big words of reality on me from time to time, "Susie, don't save it for a rainy day because when life is over, you are not taking it with you!"

So I regress...reading Petter's eulogy brought me back to those days of cancer therapy and really thinking and living in the moment...did I forget? Not really. I am mindful of just how I am spending my time in my work and loving others. I try not to save too many things or the thoughts of my heart for just the right special moment. I smile at the homeless or an angry person who crosses my path...I sing every morning in thanks for the new day...stop in awe at the glory of a daily sunset....thank my sweet hubby Eric for all he does and remind him just how amazing he is...and more. However, like everyone I get stuck in the wanting of the next thing and not loving where my feet are right now! I can always improve on that!

So before you read about Petter remember this: We come into the world naked and alone, and we shall leave naked and alone. We take nothing with us but the love we have gained from the relationships we have had along the way. How will you be remembered?

God Bless You and BE HAPPY AND IN LOVE!

A man like Petter Mørck defies definition. Challenges convention. Is uniquely one-of-a-kind. And leaves the world a better place than he found it. These were all hallmarks of Petter’s life. He cared about people in a way that made everyone who knew him better for the experience. Whether you spent five minutes or five years in his sphere of influence, you knew you had been in the presence of a remarkable man.

Even now, Petter must be smiling and nodding knowingly, at his own, self-styled portrait. He never took himself too seriously and it was one of his greatest charms. From the signature red-rimmed glasses to his warm greetings and genuine love for people, he was a man full of life and humor, passion and compassion, with an infectious smile. Arbonne’s founder was, in a word, extraordinary.

Doing what you LOVE in 2008!

So we find the new year upon us and once again we ask ourselves, "What will my new years resolution be this year?" Hmm, what shall I contract with myself that I am going to change in my life for the better?

This morning I woke up thinking why is it always something we want to change? Why not take a moment and think about the things we love...the things we are passionate about...the things we love to do in our free time...the things that are just so hard to pull ourselves away from to carry on with our day?

My friend and I were on the same vibe yesterday carrying Joseph Campbell's words in our heart, "When you follow your bliss...doors will open where you would not have thought there were doors....and the world will step in and help." He began quoting Joseph while at the same time I pulled the quote out of my planner to show him those words showed up in my life on the very same day....clearly words meant for us to hear...message received.

So this year I once again started the top of a blank page with 2008 and wrote down the things I am passionate about for direction as to what I will pursue or continue to go after this year...somewhere in there my treasure of prosperity and satisfaction are waiting...or will simple show up as a reminder and encouragement to continue on sister!

The page filled up quickly as I held nothing back...there were no limits and I quieted all self talk of, "Are you serious Susie....do you really think that is possible?" Cancel clear on that one subconscious...you betcha and I am going for it!

Certainly I won't bore you with my list, but I will share that first and foremost it was clear that I love and cannot get enough of researching, reading and experimenting with the health benefits of natural, whole and living foods for rejuvenation and optimal health and spiritual growth and power. After dealing with a body that was a mess and out of balance from chemotherapy, radiation and pharm. drugs in 1999, it has been an interesting adventure ride taking responsiblity for my life cleansing and doing the emotional/spiritual work so I could rejuvenate my being and contnue to walk the planet to evolve and give back!

So as I continue to dive in on such topics this year, I am committed to share with you what I learn! Your role is not to take my word for it, but to take it all in and make it your own. I have learned we are our own doctor. Never give your power away to anyone who says this is the "way". Listen to yourself and proceed with whatever feels right for you and go for it! That is why we have LIFE! To learn, love and share!

So cheers to you and a happy new year! Follow your inspirations and say yes to your aspirations! We must decide for ourselves what success is, what "making it" means, and go for it! Yes you can!!