Sunday, March 22, 2020

HUMANIZING OUR LINK TO THE UNKNOWN




How are you doing Lovely Souls?  I ask this question as the open-ended multiple choice question of life.  My hope is that you feel safe in being honest, at this point, and get REAL with your answers.

It’s okay to be human.

It’s okay to FEEL.

It’s okay to not have the answer to this question and say “I just haven’t fully processed it yet.” 

THAT is your NEW NORMAL reality and it is 100% valid.  

Our lives are changing not just weekly or daily – they are now changing HOURLY… and in some cases BY THE MINUTE.

I could ask you – “Are you prepared for the deep excavation and introspection?”  

You do have the time now.

First, do what you need to do and what you are familiar in doing what you do… if that is your ‘go-to’ – but take note of the TRUTH – none of us are going to be exactly the same after this.  We’re not.  

We will be changed as to how we LOOK at LIFE… again.  

When I asked you these varied questions four years ago or even two years ago about being vulnerable, raw, dealing with your truth, linking to the ‘unknown’ and sitting in the ‘void’ – now over 100+ videos I have recorded and shot and 200+ blogs I have written – these questions may have been super-low on your priority list to answer.  You may have thought about joy and happiness, peace, and gratitude from certain places of the known.   

But how do you look at them NOW?  Will gratitude rise up and swell up around you for what it is you DO have right now, even though it is scary and overwhelming?

When life was happening, you were ‘making things happen” – busy living in the fast lane or the mellow slow lane, taking that ‘selfie,’ --- maybe you didn't give yourself the gift of love to self-nurture in a way that is so imperative right now.  Or maybe you were too busy to even muster up the energy to find that space to FEEL.   Feeling was something you ‘put off doing’ until you had to confront it.

But NOW – here we are … and you have time to FEEL. 

And YES, I know it is OVERWHELMING, eh?  It is, if you denied yourself time to think, feel, process, express, cry, scream, laugh at yourself, and be frustrated with too many overloaded emotional rollercoasters at once.   

Everyone is feeling a sense of loss, grief, and a buffet of emotions based on whatever their root triggers are, past traumas are, and also what their current circumstances are – in the present moment that is an ever-changing landscape, that is not pleasant to see.  The only pleasantries are the acts of kindness you see, the gratitude you feel for what it is you do have and no longer taking for granted what you once did.  In essence, this is a shake-up and a wake-up and it makes many uneasy and queasy with life changing on a dime. 

THIS IS A LOT. I understand if you have had to be the ‘brave face’ and ‘strong warrior’ out there for everyone else for oh-so-long.  Whether you are a parent taking care of a child, a child taking care of an elderly parent, an employer trying to take care of all of your employees and their individual livelihoods, and a business owner with your lifelong labors now gone in a dash, or if you are someone on the front lines or in the foundational spine of existing necessary services still expected to show up to serve the rest of us.  I SEE ALL OF YOU.  

For some, this is a bigger adjustment if they are juggling all of the above at the same time (!)  For others, they may feel the inconvenience of having to adjust to working a different way, and many of us have to adjust to not working at all.   It’s a time of resurrection and reinvention and it is not easy this time because lives are at stake in doing this – and any risk taken now, has its own list of grave consequences in a terrain of territory we have not seen in a very long time.  

Meanwhile, everyone has questions. I understand if everyone had to come to you for answers and support, but you are now in your isolation space and it is time for you to be your own anchor for the moment.

For many people, being there for themselves feels like a guilty-spot, or a selfish spot, but it is imperative if you are to continue onward at this point.  We all need cocooning periods in order to emerge stronger, and better and more capable of being of service.  This is particularly true for anyone in a service industry.  

It’s okay to admit you do not have all the answers.  

Does anyone?  If they say they do…you cannot fully trust this, for no one is presently alive today that has lived this scenario before. 

Take a deep breath.  I’m sticking with you at this time.  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.   

I am here still to help guide you into your own realization and to help you LINK to your human side of the unknown as you learn to embrace the SOUL SPACE of what you are feeling, seeing and realizing about yourself. 

May I request one thing?  

Don’t forget your ‘awesomeness and your ability to learn’ in this process.  Pat yourself on the back for making it to this point and give yourself the kudos once arrive on the other side and use this energy in reshaping your existence for the better to help in a way you could not see to do before.

We are all equal in our being; but it is in our uniqueness that we can take stock in seeing we have our own rhythm and way in the world and we can see it clearly in our aloneness, our isolation – because it is HERE we do the soul work.  

Last year I presented a series of homework assignments that I had you go through if you were experiencing the ‘dark knight of the soul’ warrior exercises.  It was here sifting through your “rising to the next level” in that series of exercises and INNER HEALING were to link you to your own awareness so that RIGHT HERE AND NOW – you could access those magical strength tools within you to USE to navigate this process of what we are all going through right now.

This is the time to shed ego and attachment to controlling outcomes of things we cannot control. 
Can we grieve the process?  Oh heck yes!  It is necessary to purge your emotions so they do not fester within you manifesting a compromised immune system of suppression. 

We can grieve the process, but we must not drown in the process.  People are counting on us.  And while that is daunting at a time when we ourselves feel like that drop in the bucket, but the bucket is gone…. Well, we have choices and what we choose will ultimately be important from here, yes? 

We need to work through it TOGETHER and realize everyone is floundering, fumbling and finding their way.  We must be patient with ourselves and each other at this time, and offer help where we can. 

This is the time to let go of ‘old tapes’ in your brain, you’ve procrastinated getting rid of… you know the ones… the ones that criticize, the ones that defeat you.  

This is the time to NOT JUDGE ANYONE, including yourself.  Because RIGHT NOW – We are literally all being given the Universal lesson of being on the same page, having the same NEEDS – and that is compassion, respect, patience, love, kindness, and putting ourselves in restoring faith, hope, and truly confronting every darn TRUST ISSUE that exists in your body, being and cell system memory. 

Based on WHAT we discover and find here…. Is how we’ll end up showing up at our very worst and our very best and at the end of it all, if we’re lucky to come out the other side, we’ll all be looking at life through A VERY DIFFERENT LENS.   We need forgiveness, we need open minds for learning and patience in the process.

How do I know this?   I’ve done it.  Not once, not twice, practically thirty-three times in ‘resurrection’ – for that is my name Stacey’s actual Greek meaning…. Resurrection. At this state of the juncture, while I am familiar with resurrecting, I will tell you, my soul is tired…. Not just my human.  But I must still be present.

It wasn’t until I understood who I was, where I came from, why this ‘destined’ card hand I had been given had absolutely NOTHING to do with me, but for something bigger than myself that I was able to deal with this hand better.  

Did I fumble?  Yes. Did I have to get hit on the head with a ton of bricks and a cast iron skillet?  Yes.
Did I have to battle cancer a couple times and an autoimmune disease alone by myself?  Yes.  Did I have to endure back-to-back deaths of all of my networking colleagues, my parents and double digit numbers of family members?  Yes. Did I work 18 hour days 7 days a week compromising my own health in fear of dreams not coming through to fruition in time while facing mortality?  Yes. 
Did I have to finally learn that life wasn’t only always about living out the Chumba Wumba song of “I get knocked down, but I get up again?”   Oh. H-E-double hockey sticks- YES.

What did I learn?  

Distraction (as tempting as it is for your own sanity in isolation lock down) is like a Band-Aid….
Then eventually you’ll have the uncomfortable space of having to deal with things for real because that is all that there is LEFT as you start to look at your ‘unknown’ and decide what the heck you’re going to do next and if you are satisfied with how you lived your life with the tools you had at the time.

Then you’ve gotta do the work, and just when you think you’re done - you have to do it some more.
We are CONSTANT works in progress.  This is a fact FOR EVERYONE.  

This is why I created tools…. Many of the exercises in last year’s videos and blogs gave you tools to figure it out on paper, see it, confront it, learn from it so you can be strong RIGHT NOW to endure what is going on in the fight for your life in this aftermath. 

YOU CAN DO IT. 

I believe in you – you can finally declutter that overload of old habits that compromised your real living with a deeper grasp of intention. You can finally remove ‘negative speak’ that doesn’t help you or anyone else and instead choose better thoughts to be supportive and helpful at this time.  

We all need it.  

Don’t underestimate yourself.  While we are all sitting in the void, and all sitting in the unknown – we don’t have to let this defeat us, rather we can instead look at our blank slate as a way to get things on the right path of how we can do things differently when we come out of this. 

So I ask you, Lovely Souls:


  • ·       What patterns have you seen within yourself since the first of the year to this present moment that you would like to change?



  • ·       How do you presently deal with your feelings and what prevents you from feeling them    fully?

  • ·       What fears can you let go of right now?

  • ·       How are you presently coping and what can you do better in your habits of doing so?

  • ·       What are your BIG QUESTIONS right now – and in what order would you place them?

  • ·       What can you learn from this ‘list’ you’ve made with your prioritized choices in terms of who you think you are vs. who you have been working on becoming?

  • ·       What do you have left to reconcile internally with your soul?

These are good starting points --- we need to examine what we are going through in order to fully comprehend any anxieties, fears, worries, concerns, questions….. AND THEN we can in turn flip this around to finding answers.  When we are in ‘answer mode’ – suddenly we are strengthened to call our cities, our governments, our service centers and feel proactive to get in this groove of solutions.

I have spent the last couple of weeks doing this.  I had to ask myself, “If this virus gets me and I die, wouldn’t I rather leave the planet knowing I made calls to help my neighbors and my community instead of binge-watching a TV show?”   YES. That is the only way I would have peace and could reconcile my own bucket list of things I could not complete should this all go down.   

I had to be an adult and think hard about this reality while balancing that tightrope walk of optimism, hope and warrior fighting forward…not to merely live in that space, but to prepare so I can have that be one-less-thing to dwell upon and move forward with what I have, with where I am and not judge how ‘little’ efforts are in making the difference my bigger dreaming soul wishes to accomplish. 

Thus, I made phone calls. I had to find out answers. I gathered information to pass onto older people who didn’t have the access to these answers for our local space.  I found resources for certain small businesses who didn’t think they had options and I’m doing what I can with what I have with where I am, even if it is to be a ‘neighborhood watch’ on lock-down to get help for the people coughing profusely in the hallways (!); reporting to management that I have SO MANY symptomatic people in my building so they are aware of our community needing to ‘get ready’ in a bigger way --- both in safety as well as their need to make calls to check on people that none of us are allowed to have access to - so they don’t end up dying alone in their apartments.  

I am literally surrounded ---- coughing, sneezing, everyone around are all outside my front door. They are NOT adhering to the stay isolated and stay home indoors mandate.  I keep standing in my trash can pushing it down with my feet like a human compactor because I don’t know if there will be any clear air for me to go outside to take out my own trash…. That is what I am facing right now.  

But I have to allow myself the ‘out-of-body-experience’ to laugh at this sitcom of a moment of inconvenience now not allowing fear to override all this hard work I have done to stay grounded --- because in a couple of weeks this could be tragic consequences all around me. It’s all I can do in this moment. 

But it all starts with humanizing your own link of the unknown – INSIDE OF YOU first so you know what it is that you can do and how you will be able to show up with your new normal and new sense of purpose in the coming days, weeks and months ahead.  

We’re all being asked to SHIFT.  Things are not the same and we won’t be either.  

But it is here – we are together and we can shift together to adapt and be agile in what we shape tomorrow to be and to be grateful for each day as it comes.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay centered and know you are loved and you matter!  I am humbled with gratitude to be able to be here right now, to share, express and write, right now.

Taking things day-by-day WITH YOU...  

In strength and support, with love and prayer, hope and compassion,
Stacey Kumagai

Friday, March 20, 2020

LINKING TO PURPOSE DURING ISOLATION



“Alone again… naturally.”  This Gilbert O’Sullivan song blasted from a hybrid car that normally drives up silently.  With its windows down, it had just dropped off one of my neighbors, now stumbling into his home ‘hugging’ a 6-pack – this time, not beer, but a 6-pack of toilet paper like a child would a stuffed animal.  He was smiling as if he had won the lottery, delighted to somehow find some from the stuff with nationwide-wide barren shelves that were attacked by human animals in panic-stricken doom.  

The timing was epic – as it was just announced on the news a few minutes prior, we’re officially on “stay-at-home-mandate” in isolation, as the entire state now hunkers down, closes nearly all businesses-except for government service, and essentials sending employees to ‘work-from-home’ and millions now jobless. 

After everyone began receiving a barrage of COVID-19 emails – we understand what is here.  It was at this moment, I looked up and said “THANK YOU” – my eyes needed to see what I just witnessed and capture it as if my eyes were cameras to share this with you right here and now. 

If I had not been news zombiefied trying to stay informed myself glued to updates, while exhausting my multi-tasking energies sending out press releases to announce a PR client’s event postponement earlier this week, I would have been quicker to pivot to write this blog and get it out earlier to share. 
It was one of those oh-so-sad, but with streaming light ‘pristine cinematic moments” that any Director of Photography would be salivating for as punctuation to bizarre movie.  

The reality check is that this isn’t a movie ….. This is our life 2020, ironically a number that is about ‘hindsight’ … but something most humans did not believe they would see coming as we’re seeing it in its full magnitude.  

At a time like this events throughout history and centuries, peace, humanity, compassion, love, patience and kindness are imperative for life to go onward.  It is essential.

If history has taught us anything (even those of you who yawned in history class) --- We should automatically be doing this every single day anyway, but the Universe has made its wake-up call to everyone and is asking this of each of us to do even more so right now.

Right now, we have a “new normal” we have to abide by with our own individual responsibility to do that safely, responsibly with the optimum goal of health and well-being at the forefront.  

The thing to remember at this time, is everyone is doing the best they can with what they have with where they are…. And for many, it is a mass adjustment.

I have lived through the 1994 earthquakes, California wildfires, L.A. Riots, bird flu, swine flu, MERS and SARS, and dealt with the upheaval and rebuilds with many post 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Irma and more, and what I have witnessed time and time again is that we can and will get through this, but it takes E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E.

My parents who went through the U.S. Japanese Internment Camps taught me what survival looks like, what will, grit and tenacity look like and how survival, even when you think you don't have anything left within you -- you DO, because it is belief in your purpose that will get you there. 

They gave up a lot... their livelihoods, land, belongings, home, all of their dreams, wishes, and initial journeys only to start over.  There were sacrifices made for me to be here.  Thus, I know my purpose... I am to remain strong, survive, be grateful to be alive each day, and for every little thing (even for witnessing scenes as I described at the top of the blog).  Every moment we are alive to experience what we see and do matters and to make sure previous sacrifices stand for our existence right here in the present.

The question of humanity is – did you learn something from all of those events in history through your own families legacies about yourself in how you would choose to act or react differently from those times?  Do you realize your purpose NOW in this moment has a purpose to be grateful to be here for the sacrifices your families have made?

How have you changed to do something differently from your own lifetime's challenges and events?  Are you kinder and more patient, understanding what it took back then to be a better person with what we’re facing NOW? 

The bigger question at this moment we all need to ask and remind ourselves….

Do you believe in yourself and your purpose through this time? 

Purpose is the root-base in being. It is important not to lose sight of yours. 

Everyone has a purpose. Rather than lose sight of yours, it is a time to use what you have with where you are and understand that your being here right here, right now is that purpose.

For many of you who are joining the millions calling everyone from your doctors, former employers, service workers, information lines, getting your necessities from the store, your tax people, health care providers, and even your local government offices, asking ‘what is next’ and ‘where you go from here’ etc. – be sure to THANK EVERYONE…. They are doing their purpose, they are being here for YOU right now and they matter in this equation, just as you do with yours in where you are going next. 

Even saying THANK YOU to all of these people can be YOUR PURPOSE – they need you, just as much as we all need them. 

It is in this place of thanking those who are acting with purpose that you will be given help at a time when you need it to get back to yours. 

Do you believe in the power of a collective will to unite, regroup, resurrect and reinvent, and rediscover?  This is your time.

Perhaps you have shelved something for a while – a hobby or pastime or even things you’ve procrastinated doing.  This is the time to do that.  In doing it, you may reignite within you a part of you that has been forgotten.  This energy is like fuel for your psyche, your soul, your spirit to spark you at this time and put your brain on a fresh wave you denied yourself of living your status quo. 

Do not allow your spirit to be squashed in waiting for the information that you feel is being spoon-fed oh-too-slowly like anticipating Heinz ketchup to pour out of a bottle while you are on hold listening to elevator music. Instead, celebrate the hardworking earth angels on the ground are also questioning things for themselves, as well.   

So take a PAUSE, take yourself out of your own shoes and put yourself in theirs for a moment as you see how fortunate you are that you have access to help. Everyone is needing it right now – and THIS IS COMMON GROUND. It is a time to understand this, with heart and great compassion.

If you are feeling isolated due to the public health officials encouraging us to be on lock-down and distance ourselves – this is a time to connect in other ways that have ignored when you were in busyness mode prior to this pandemic.

What we are being shown right now is a chance to:

·       Appreciate what you have.

·       Take some quiet time for reflection.

·       See where you default in distracting yourself and uplift your spirit with something you enjoy.

·       Train yourself to sit with your feelings, own them, process them, allow yourself to FEEL, because it is your human right.

·       Understand that this serious shutdown is for us to start to prioritize in our lives what truly matters…. Answer the question, “What matters to me most? What have I been neglecting?”

·       See that all those ‘excuses’ you gave yourself about ‘not having enough time to…..’ now you are being given the time to address it.

Emotional and spiritual work right now is probably something you have not done in your day-to-day living.  You can honor this place within right now, recognizing the value of introspection.

From here, making that phone call, video chat, email, or even sending a handwritten note in the mail take on a completely different vibration and mindfulness context, enriched with greater understanding and connection.   

If you are by yourself, you are not alone. There are others just like you and your emotional wellness is vital to your total well-being. Your own purpose is essential to the greater good and it is your inner-strength that is the light to carry you through. You can connect with other like-minds, spirits and hearts at this time.   And yes, Lovely Souls – I am here for you, too! 

For those of you who do not live alone and with your families, you have an opportunity to reach out to those who do live alone and make that difference, and that is your purpose throughout what we’re experiencing right now. 

Everyone’s purpose is being here – right now to do the work necessary as you are with what you have, with where you are.  You can make someone’s day with gratitude appreciating them in what they are doing.

With that, Lovely Souls – I say THANK YOU TO YOU… thank you for being here – we are LINKED to this purpose of being in this together.... let's exercise this privilege in showing who we really are in compassion, love and in supporting energies for the highest and greatest good as we move through this.

Sending strength, support, blessings and light – wishing all of you safety and peace not just during this time, but always.

Namaste.
Stacey Kumagai