Victoria's Compass
 Life can be more than getting through repetitive routines and crossing to-do lists. Through the midst of what we may feel is a mundane week, we can be receptive to life’s magic. There are moments we may feel like we aren’t making that great of an impact as we know we can be making. When I feel like this I am careful and alert because in these times we could make the mistake of gravitating towards short term stimulation instead of seeking food for the soul.
Daily question I began to open myself up daily with one single question, “How can I be of service?”. I pray to God about this every morning and throughout the day. I just had this hunger to be obedient to life’s needs which includes the needs of others around me. I wanted to be connected to life outside of me. To be a part of a bigger plan that wasn’t curated by my own pen and time table. Nice to meet you To my surprise, the day had come. It was cold, rainy and the wind was blowing vigorously in all different directions. I was at a Starbucks 5 minutes away from my house and I ordered a big iced coffee despite it being cold haha. I had planned to catch up on an investment course I had purchased so I was determined and focused with my headphones on. Only 30 minutes had passed when I noticed a woman in her 50s come into the store. She carried multiple blankets and a large bag with clothes in it. She charged her phone just enough to make a short phone call and as she began to walk out of the store she walked past me and asked, “Do you have $1.25 ?” “No, I don’t carry cash, I'm sorry” I said. She smiled, thanked me and left the store. I wanted to help so I got up to check my wallet to make sure and I had no cash. Then, I felt a very subtle tug in my thoughts, “Go offer her a ride”. I’ve never done this before but I felt so honored that this may be the moment I had been praying for, the opportunity to be of service and I ran outside. I noticed she had reached quite a distance away so I shouted, “Could I give you a ride!” She turned immediately and said yes as she paced towards me, she seemed relieved and in awe of my offer. I was so delighted! Answered prayers She asked me to drop her off at her parents and we made small talk. Her name was Roshelle, she’s a grandma of a boy and a girl. As I approached her parent’s house she thanked me and I said “God told me to give you a ride” and she said, “Oh, I believe it! Right before you came outside I prayed ‘Oh, God, if only someone could offer to give me a ride!”. I sat there knowing that we were each other’s answered prayer. Once I dropped her off, I was overjoyed and I wanted to do it again! I wondered how many missed opportunities like these I had passed by because I was too busy in my own plans to look up and become available to the needs of others. John Maxwell said in a sermon, “God will never give you blessings he can’t use through you”. MESSAGE FROM VICTORIA I hope that as you go through your busy day, you can ask yourself, “How can I be of service?”. I know you are busy and I know you have places to be but the world is filled with magical moments. Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”.
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 As a kid I grew up seeing two types of girls in movies, the girly girls and the tomboys. I was maybe 5 or 6 when I saw a movie where the “tom boy” got all the attention. She was tough, fast, liked by all the boys and she wasn’t a drama queen. Oftentimes the girly girls in the movies were the pretty, stylish and mean girls. Since I was bullied over my looks, I never identified as a girly girl in the movies. I had made up my mind that I was a Tom-boy.
Proving Something My only favorite part of school was P.E. (Physical Education). I loved sports and this is also a quality that was associated with Tomboys. I was extremely competitive and as I played sports I could tell there was this part of me that wanted to beat the boys. I wanted to prove to them I could be just as fast, just as strong and just as good. I had this narrative in my head given by society: “Girls can do anything boys can do!” so I felt like I had to prove myself. During our weekly mile runs, I never beat the boys. I was always the fastest girl but never the fastest person compared to boys. Looking back I can’t believe I was comparing myself. Business I entered sales in the financial Industry at a very young age, I was 18. The more successful I got in the company, the more I was asked to be less like me. I was always very friendly, laughed a lot, wore bright colors and encouraged everyone. Well, this was a problem. I was told many times by different mentors to start wearing pants over business skirts and dresses. I was told to stop being too friendly, nurturing and bubbly. I was told to be more serious and more distant towards my team because this caused men to be distracted by me. Don’t get me wrong, I understood their concerns but now looking back I saw how this bit of my femininity was the reason why I was unique in my style. Why I could see things that a lot of men in this industry weren’t seeing. My mentors couldn’t see that at the time they were protecting what they had always seen and known as normal to them. They wanted me to blend in and achieve success the way masculines have. I don’t think that’s how they saw it at the time but I could feel that they were asking me to be more masculine. Family My culture is Mexican-American, I was first born here in the U.S. and mostly in Mexican culture, men lead everything and to be quite honest it’s done in what we call a Machismo-way. The Machismo way is what we describe as a dynamic where the man decides and runs the household because they don’t value the opinion of their wife. They think it’s irrelevant. Now, my family has changed a lot since my childhood years but this was something that I dealt with for at least the first 15 years of my life. On my dad’s side of the family, my grandparents had 9 chilen, 7 of which were men. As a little girl, I witnessed these uncles portray a lot of these machismo qualities. The women weren’t respected much and there was a lot of infidelity. As I got older I talked to my girl cousins and we found something in common, we all had adopted machismo traits in our dating life because we didn’t want to be at the opposite end of the stick. A lot of us subconsciously thought, if I am the “tough” one, I won’t be disrespected like the women in our family. A lot of us thankfully have healed from this but it was a fear we allowed to that made us think being feminine was weak. Embracing my feminine grace I think I was about 23 when I realized that I wasn’t my true-self. That I wasn’t this soft nurturing girl I once was as a child. I knew it at the core of my being. I sat down one day like a detective for 5 hours writing down where the shift happened. As you may guess, it was a sequence of so many events. I bawled my eyes out, I cried and I was ashamed to learn that I had done this in a very settle way. I had rejected my femininity a little due to one event, then a little more, then a little more until I buried this gift that God had given me, my femininity. I can’t explain how it clicked but simply that it was by asking God to show me what true femininity was. What it’s true purpose was in the world. How it looked like in marriage, raising children, in society and what it would look like for me to embrace it. Then, little by little I began to honor my feminine energy and it’s purpose for it. I had to learn to forgive others for their opinions that dealt with my embracing this energy. Many women thought I was wrong, many men took it for granted but those that heard my story were able to relate in some way . Both men and women were able to see themselves in my story because this also happens to masculinity. Message from Victoria I hope that you can walk forward with an open heart to both challenge your God given energy to truly embrace it. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask for an ear to listen. If you wonder about price, don’t worry, the first session is free and I never talk about prices over a session. I am there to just listen and if you are then curious, you can email me to ask about any interests regarding rates.  I think many times we get self-consumed that we turn romance into this game and we get lost in it. We start asking, “well, why does it matter who asks who on the date?” “How long should I wait to text them?” “Should I play hard to get?”. I get it, we are influenced by this entity in us we call the ego. No one wants to be the fool, everyone wants to look cool and collected while they pursue or are being pursued. The ego wants to protect our image, I get it. Better yet, let’s accept it but let’s not let it consume our intentions. This is why I do believe there is a purpose for this dance that the pursuer and the one being pursued part take in. Although there is a purpose for it, I do believe that it’s gotten lost and it’s become a gray-zone for many.
So, now we wonder, “well, then how is it supposed to be? How do we come back to the nature of romance?”. For a while now I’ve talked to my clients about masculinity and femininity but never posted anything public because I feared confusing anyone. Now that I see the world is becoming reintroduced to these energies, I am choosing to now write about this partnership. If we look at nature, we can easily find our way back to its true purpose. Despite gender, there is no doubt that masculinity and femininity is a partnership, a powerful one. There is a documentary on Netflix that deals with how birds pursue their mate, “Dancing with the birds” . I encourage you to watch it. I love recommending this to my clients so that they better understand these energies. They soon find out that masculinity is the pursuer and femininity the one being pursued. Why is this so? Whether we choose to procreate or not, that’s up to everyone individually. We cannot argue with the fact that reproduction is the reason we all exist and so we naturally have this attraction to the pursuit. Chemicals are also released in our bodies to signal to us that “Hey, this is a good thing”. Which is no wonder why we make such a huge deal about romance, intimacy, flirting etc we naturally can’t help it! A blog by Psychology Today states, “Dopamine is stimulated by the ‘chase’ aspect of love… Oxytocin is stimulated by touch, and by social trust”. Again, let me repeat, THIS IS A NATURAL THING. Where does it get all messed up? If we don’t know how to control the ego, we will let it get in the way of this beautiful romance. Being that masculines pursue, they have a responsibility and they have the lead in the dance. I love salsa and bachata, there is such a thing as a lead and a follower, they are both just as important but it does mean that there must be an initiator in the matter. The masculines are the initiators, they are the ones that must be courageous enough to start the dance. Why does it matter? This matters because this sets the tone of the relationship. I have sat with many women who complain about attracting passive men and when I ask who is the one who initiated the romance, they look at me like I’m crazy wondering why it matters. Then, I sit with men complaining about how they aren’t attracted to these women that want the relationship to go in a direction they aren’t ready yet. Again I will ask, who initiates the romance and they will say “well, the women do. I don’t have a problem attracting women”. I smile and we get into how important it is for masculines and feminines to honor their energy in these romance dynamics or they will build a relationship that isn’t fulfilling. The truth is just that simple, fulfillment. Just like we seek this in all the other areas of our life, the purpose of this dance is to become fulfilled in our love lifes. Honoring this dynamic feeds us in a way that we were programmed to but may be unfamiliar to. It takes genuine effort and genuine reciprocation on both parts. Trying to play games only feeds the ego that craves different things at different times. It will never lead you to true fulfillment. Being the pursuer does take effort, integrity, and courage. Allowing yourself to be pursued takes a leap of faith, patience and honesty. Message from Victoria I hope you develop the ability to let go of your ego and partake in this dance when your intuition asks you to. Peace and love be with you. If you have further questions on how to develop this in your life. Please, don’t hesitate to inquire about your session because the first one is free!  There are days the lake is fluid with ripples that unfold gracefully. Other days, you wake up and notice the same lake becoming frozen with no expression covered in a sheet of ice. The trees have let go of their leaves and have purposely become dormant. Night and Day seem like they’ve become two equals appearing to carefully share the day with no daylight. The energy seems to become slower. What does this say about ourselves?
It’s no surprise to anyone that we are all connected. We all serve a purpose to each other whether we can help it or not. So, how does Winter do this for us? If the earth itself is going through a specific season, how foolish of us not to consider that it may have an effect on us. Winter for the majority of us may be a time for family and holiday-fun. For nature around us, it’s a time of preservation and preparation. Harvest will purposely slow down their flourishment and conserve their energy for new growth. Some animals will migrate to different areas, others will hibernate and several will just adapt. Now, it is true that our winter is different from others and that this season affects others differently in other places of the world but I think it’s still wise to consider how this season affects us individually. For instance, how do we align or better yet connect to it in this current space of our life? I believe we are always being guided by life and a higher-power you may believe in which for me is God. This energy guides us, pulls us, and has given us this beautiful world to use for pure motives. Let's observe and see how we are connected to help each other through this journey we call life. As we look at our life, I challenge you to ask how winter is showing up in your current path? What is winter pushing you to do? Whether it’s adapting, letting go of something, or even just slowing down, it’s time for us to prepare for new growth. There can be much more meaning to this season than we think. I think there’s power in the fact that January became the first month of the new year, during one of the peaks of winter (for many). Wikipedia.com states “In order to realign the Roman calendar with the sun, Julius Caesar had to add 90 extra days to the year 46 B.C. when he introduced his new Julian calendar. He also changed New Year's Day to January 1st. Caesar wanted to honor Janus, the two-faced god who looks backwards into the old year and forward into the new year”. After having read this, I am blown away by how important it is to acknowledge the seasons in nature as we live the seasons in our own life. We are two of the same, nature-earth and nature-beings. Let's take a moment to look back for the sake of reflection and re-evaluate on how to move forward. I have thought of questions for a moment of reflection. I invite you to sit down, pull a journal out and start reflecting! REFLECTION
Resources: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January#:~:text=Although%20March%20was%20originally%20the,BC%20(Roman%20writers%20differ). Photo https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1455231 |
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