Not trying to rub it in your faces or anything… LOL

Reminder (1): Scroll down for Reminder (2)
- I will see CHI Massage Therapy’s last birthday, 9th birthday this coming April. There will be a party to celebrate this milestone and also to celebrate the connections I have made with you.
- I would also introduce everyone to FlickerMill Candles and YFFR and the wonderful couple who run these amazing companies.
- Lastly, I will be doing a book launch, for my 3rd book, on this day along with Eric Brenneman and his book, Everyday Stoicism for Public Safety.

Save the date: 4/26, Saturday, 10am to 4pm. @ FlickerMill Candles location.

For more details click on the button below.

Party details

Do you feel good about the new year? Have you ever looked back to every new year and reflected on how you felt about the new year? We can learn something about ourselves by reflecting on how we were in the past. There may or may not be a consistency, but, if there is, it is a good time to look back and ask yourself why the consistency?

Did you feel bummed out looking back on the last year that you accomplished nothing? Do you start the new year with hope, but the hope dies out within the first month? Are you usually optimistic about the new year? If you were, how does the year usually end?

When I was younger, I never really looked at the new year as a NEW year. I was in complete survival mode. I never knew what the new year would bring me and never thought about it. It was just another “day” for me. You could say I lived day by day. Starting my late 20s, when I joined the military, I had the ‘luxury’ to start thinking farther ahead. It was new, exhilarating, and liberating. Most of all, I was excited to be able to think about these things. It wasn’t new to me, but somehow my new found ‘freedom’ gave me the opportunity to look at this ‘new year’ in a different light and it was spectacular.

I made goals, resolutions, and they were to be met by the end of the year. What I didn’t realize was I made goals that made me look better, but not feel better. I always disappointed myself for failure of not meeting these goals. At some point, goals became a dead thing to me and if I tried to bring it back up, it always backfired. Since then, I have evolved in the way I set goals and intentions. I have talked about this either last year or the year before. I am repeating this, but I won’t go through the same thing. I am just bringing this up again because this year alone my goals changed 4 times! By September, I had 5 different goals!

Goals have to change as your life changes. It does not have to be carved into stone. If you did carve it into stone, get a new stone! As I have mentioned in the previous year, I create a word of the year that will bring a sort of prosperity or abundance to me. A word I put focus and emphasis on for the entire year.

Side note: Most of you know, I am not religious, but I am spiritual. No matter what your beliefs are, one thing most of us have in common are the beliefs “things happen for a reason”, “there are no coincidences”, and more things of this nature. If God (your God, whoever that may be) already has everything planned out, why are our hardships a bad thing? Without experience, we cannot learn or grow strong or resilient. Without love, we cannot experience the most devastating pain a human being can experience. We are not being punished for being human. We are being stronger the more we experience and, when it happens again (it is inevitable), we know exactly what we need to do. However, when we start placing blame for what is happening to us, instead of focusing on the support we have surrounding us, we have lost the opportunity to grow. We are not being punished by anyone… Unless of course you are the type that do not offer support in the right way, then that is the kind of support you will be getting… How you treat people, blaming people for what you go through, not supporting others because no one is supporting you, then that is also how you will be treated by others; being blamed for things that may or may not be your fault and staying in the state of loneliness, because nobody loves you enough to support you. Ok, moving on!

In the year 2024 for me, in January, I sat down to think about what I want. I am always focused on growing my business and I found an amazing opportunity to get contracted with the VA. However, I knew that opportunities do not stop there. I may have said somewhere, that I decided on the word connections, because that is where opportunities come from, however, I remember I had the word opportunities because I wanted to run into all opportunities available whether through connections or not. So my word was opportunities. My specific goal was to gain a VA contract and start hiring as soon as I could. (Goal One)

Josh’s 2nd mentor was starting to prove no good, by March, and I shifted my focus on to my husband’s real estate business. That was when my goal changed to helping Josh build his clientele base (Goal Two). Then I got pregnant. We both decided we didn’t want to stay in New Mexico for our child’s sake, so our/my 3rd goal went back to the VA so that I can build my VA clients to make CHI Massage Therapy sustainable without me and we were going to go to Florida or Hawaii (Goal Three). I think we were thinking about Hawaii first, then we decided Florida. Then I had the miscarriage. Nothing mattered, all of the sudden, because I was numb to my own feelings. Everything got put on pause and I focused on me and me only. I was desperate to feel again. Lucky the BYRD became a thing (Click here to read about Lucky the BYRD) and during that time Josh and I started finding there are VA medical facilities throughout the world for expat veterans. (If you don’t know what expats are, google it, you will find a lot on the internet with that one word.) We decided we were still going to move overseas instead with a self sustainable CHI Massage Therapy (Goal Four).

4th of July parade with my Jeep and Lucky the BYRD (Big Yellow Rubber Ducky)

As I was getting my feelers back and getting less numb, I wrote the book, The Birth of Lucky the BYRD Through a Miscarriage. Just before and after, I had found myself longing to be outside to feel the fresh air, to feel the breeze on my face, the sun on my skin, to be engulfed by a body of water… I miss water and trees and flowers so much. We had already made plans to go to a more tropical place, but I decided I wanted all of that NOW.

I talked about it with Josh and a day or two later I had a conversation about Okinawa with a friend. I brought it up to Josh and all of the sudden Okinawa became our main priority. In order to make this happen now, I can’t keep CHI Massage Therapy, because if I held on to that it’ll be a couple of years, or more, before it can be self sustainable. So either it will be sold or closed, depending on the outcome, and the rest will follow (Goal Five).

So to wrap this part of the story up, I changed my goals 4 times, however, my intention of being open to opportunities did not change. No matter how off my life got from my plans, I kept my mind and my heart open to possible possibilities. Having “intentional” awareness for opportunities was my key to get to where I am, not the goals I “failed “ to achieve. Did I actually fail? Hardly! My life kept bringing up curve balls, there was no way I was going to be able to keep any of the goals I had, so I changed them, instead of being adamant for something that wasn’t meant to happen.

I could have blamed God and asked Him why he was punishing me, or blamed Josh for what was happening to me. Instead, I looked within myself. What was I feeling and what could I do to understand my new situation and what did I need to do to support me. Without excluding my immediate family, of course. They were just as involved and hurt as I was.

I was where I needed to be, no matter what was going on. If we didn’t go through the motions we went through, starting from the beginning of the year, there was a big chance we would not have been open to the possibilities of the opportunities presented. I have always wanted to go back to Japan, but I didn’t want to put my husband in a spot he didn’t want to be in. We had been wanting to go to a tropical place for years. However, my business kept us from going anywhere. During pregnancy we decided to to get out of the state. During the miscarriage, Josh found out about veteran expat communities abroad and the VA support that was available, which warmed him up to the idea of moving abroad at all. Then the conversation about Okinawa happened, which made everybody involved happy. Also, I found the writer in me and decided this was what I want to do as a profession. Helping people through writing.

Every step, every change, every happening, every incident, heartaches, every loss was necessary to bring us to this point we are at right this very moment.

Now, for 2025, I decided my word of the year will be GRIT. It is perseverance with passion. I will dearly miss CHI Massage Therapy and my clients, but I am also excited to start my new venture, personally and professionally. With passion and perseverance, I will still take care of you, my clients, to the end and try to sell my biz. Whether I do or not, I will find a list of other massage therapists you can try out. With the same ‘grit, I will (we will) tie up all lose ends in the United States and work our way to Okinawa. Then start our new ventures there and grow our roots where we find our ‘home’.

Grit is perfect for all scenarios of what may or may not happen for me in 2025. Every step by step goal I have set has everything to do with passion and I will need the perseverance to get through them all.

I would love to stay connected with you all! There are too many for me to remember, so it would be a lot easier, if you could do that for me!

REMINDER (2):

If you want to keep in touch with me whether through newsletters I will be keeping up with or just have a place to go to find me: Go to VigorfulLife.com

This is where I will continue to help people through writing. Through, books, newsletters, and a subscription based learning where I share what I learned about the body as a massage therapist.

Other ways to keep in touch:
Email: vigorfullife@gmail.com
If you have Facebook or Instagram, or even TikTok, send me a friend request!

Good Morning 2025!

Introducing FlickerMill Candles

CHI’s 9th Birthday!!