Somebody's Daughter: A Mix Tape, A Memoir

Introduction:

Congratulations on Buying THIS Book! You have Won the Option to live any life you choose and a free MIX tape from my life.

For those of you who don’t know what a Mix Tape is, when I was growing up we listened to music on Cassette Tape. All through my adolescence I would have to listen to the Radio all day for my favorite songs. Growing up in a lower-middle class household to a single working mom, we couldn’t afford to buy the newest albums/tapes. So we would stay close to our boombox, put a blank tape in and when your favorite song came on the radio I would hit Record and Play at the same time. This function would record your song on your tape. Each tape had about two hours of space on it, an hour on each side. So I would spend hours making Mixtapes. This was better than gold to a ten year old girl! The ultimate compliment or show of love was if someone made you a Mixtape or to give a personalized Mixtape to someone. 

The lyrics said everything you could ever want to say to another person. I would decorate and personalize each tape with markers. The Mixtape was the ultimate playlist. Hand selected for every occasion. Most anyone who grew up during the eighties and nineties could tell you about at least one or more Mixtapes that changed their life.

I had most of my mixtapes for decades long after tape cassettes started to be replaced by CD’s. It’s one of the oddest things in my life to conceptualize that music is now invisible. So I have taken one of the best parts of my personal experience and tried to share with you the Mixtape of my life.

Please go to my Youtube Page for Somebodysdaughterfanpage or My Instagram and get the Link to my personal Spotify PlayList. Together we can go back through time to the music that played in the background and the forefront of my life story.

Life has given me 1000’s of reasons to be full of anxiety and paralyzed with fear,

I am only ever happy because I choose to be ~

My life has not been a traditional love story, but in seeking out love and learning to love without expectation I have not only found self love but tapped in to Universal love. A place where all I have to do is be love and let the rest figure itself out along the way.

I have been a Light Worker for over 30 years and probably many lifetimes before this one. I didn’t know how to articulate that until much further along in my journey…..but I knew something… It would be decades before I found my groove.

We will delve deep into what I mean by that throughout my journey. I have been somebody's daughter for 45 years. These stories about my life could be anybody's daughter. An Italian, Irish, Ukranian, Russian, Slovak Girl , born in America to baby boomers, children themselves really, at a time in history where ultimate freedom , the past and the present merged and the Gen X latchkey kids were just left to figure life out….one heart break, one discovery, one day at a time. 

These true stories of my journey through imprints, abuse, exhilaration, exploration,pain, joy, and my soul’s calling to heal myself and others is set to a backdrop of a musical playlist that I could not have made up. Turn up my playlist and take this journey with me through one of the most pivotal times in human history and please know that you are never alone. We are born to learn what we see like monkees and then deconstruct everything we thought we knew to come full circle and realize we are all just somebody's daughter or son and each of us individually are here to find our way home.

There are many times in my life that I have questioned why, or begged God for help….wondered what it all means, felt sorry for myself and cried myself to sleep not understanding what was between me and whole happiness. There are many first kisses and adventures alike. In each new moment I was never certain how it would all work out. Time teaches the keen observer to see patterns in our behaviors, free will allows us to ask why and refine if we choose. PRACTICE seals the deal. Whatever we practice , we become. This was a strange lesson, although it seems simple enough in theory. There are so many quotes and things I have heard people say through the years that make so much more sense now as I grow wiser. Level 45; What doesn’t kill me does in fact make me stronger, and Stupid hurts...Larryism…..(something my father would say)

No cure for Crazy….yet another, Days are long but years are short..probably the most profound. A day can seem like an eternity when you’re stuck at work and everyone's at the beach or you're waiting for someone you love to call...but you blink and babies that you witnessed being born are now 20 years old, parents are gone, your life becomes chapters in a book…

No one acute bleed out moment, just a collection of stories about a life as an example, lessons with different characters, different backdrops and different sound tracks. WE all have the choice to regret or celebrate humbly and gratefully each opportunity. My father left me with 2 MOONS, as you will read about in this book and the greatest takeaway is that I will always remember the stories but with every passing of the moon the pain and emotion fade…into a story.

I attended and graduated from the Finger Lakes School of Massage Therapy and Business in 1998. I was 23 years old , my boyfriend at the time took $10,000 out of a box in the ground to send me to school. This school and the people I met there showed me who I was and gave me the language and understanding of who I am and how I am called to serve humanity. I sat and passed the New York State Nursing Board in order to practice massage in NY. A right of passage reserved for people who had typically completed four years of Nursing School. It took me two times as the first attempt I missed the mark by only three points. As with everything in my life I went above and beyond in the most alternative way to challenge myself and expose myself to situations I’d only dreamed of interfacing with. I signed up to teach infant and toddler massage to new moms for Cornell Cooperative Extension, focused my internship on Special populations and was blessed to work with many non-verbal, autistic, developmentally disabled, elderly and high needs clients; which only heightened my intuition and sensitivity . In 2009 I became NCBTMB Certified and then additionally PA Licensed. I have continued my education for almost two decades in many related areas and am passionate, dedicated and driven to Be the Change I want to see in the World. I am also a graduate of a Psychology of the Mind Course which allows me to treat the Body, Mind and Spirit. I am a natural empath and energy healer, only things I’ve learned about myself through my journey.

Three years after starting massage school, in 2001, I was hit from behind on a motorcycle and thrown over an embankment 170 feet. My back was broken in three places, my hands, face and hip were covered in road rash, all of the tendons on the top of my hands were exposed and several fingers were almost severed. If you had told me I was going to go through this I would have said Kill Me. Instead over the next 10 years I had to put into application ALL that I had learned. The moment I could be off the morphine drip I asked to be removed from pain killers. I started my very long journey to walk, to move my hands, to heal…Through exercise, yoga, breathing techniques, aromatherapy, swimming, jogging, practicing positive affirmations, laying down old patterns and learned behaviors that no longer served me, submerging myself into the woods and into service, choosing happiness…every new moment, every new now…and by forgiving and loving myself, along with Continuum Work, Journey Dance, Chakra Work and allowing myself to receive love…I Healed and realized how this combination could change lives and Heal others. 

I have lived all over this beautiful country and have been blessed to touch a diverse and colorful client base. I lived in Hawaii for almost five years which only amplified my HEALING abilities. It is there that I learned to truly connect and listen through the magic of the islands. I spent many days alone listening to my intuition, to the pull of other people's energies and to separate what was theirs and what was mine.

For the last ten years I have been teaching massage therapy and involved deeply in curriculum building and educating our industry and the public. While continuing to be the vessel through which healing occurs for so many. I currently see Clients on Monday through Friday at my home on Quaker Lake and have had the opportunity to work alongside many gifted doctors and healers over the last 20 years. I have been a natural Empath and Intuitive for most of my life and am always listening. I LOVE being the vessel through which healing occurs and am GRATEFUL daily for the blessing that allows me to hold a healing space for so many ~ I am called to service and my gift to you is to simply Invite you to HEAL and BE A NEW, AT PEACE, to be YOU!

This book is a journey to self love and taking a different route than most to understand, forgive, explore and pass on knowledge. One of the most profound realizations I’ve had to date was in a classroom teaching Physiology. I was giving a five hour lecture on Cells. I heard myself read out loud, probably for the 100th time, but for whatever reason this time it stuck;

At the most basic level of life, the living cell, it’s ONLY purpose is to pass on knowledge. Any A & P Book ever written *

That stuck with me and simplified the existential dilemma around this human experience. Instead of, poor me..or why me... or why not me"... It simply becomes about learning the lessons presented, choosing to grow and expand and pass on what I’ve learned as a living example.  For years I tried to manhandle people, to force change, to beg and plead. Through these real life chapters and the blood sweat and tears in between I have simply learned to tell my story and if it helps anyone at all to not feel alone, shows them an example of what's possible, empowers them to live an unconventional life or resonates with them in any positive way, then I will have lived a life worth living. I am simply someone's daughter. Through my birth, deconstruction and reforesting I hope to simply plant seeds for new life to grow in any of us and in humanity.

This is my real life story. After many years of tears, confusion, insecurity, loneliness, adventure and existential unraveling. I AM simply one story in the human collective, hopefully the hundredth monkey, maybe a tipping point, maybe simply a spec of dust. Join me on my journey, learning what it is to be in my earth suit, deconstructing ego, humiliating myself, taking chances, making choices like a choose your own adventure book but grooving all the way to music sweet music that saved my soul and put a beat to the cadence of my life. Each of my clients, friends & the strangers that seek me out have had a unique experience, specific to each individual. 

We work together to Co-Create inner Peace & Harmony. I come from a whole approach to healing focused on MIND, BODY & SPIRIT. I have often taken the harder road or the less conventional path. I have probably bloodied my metaphoric knuckles on brick walls when I could have simply walked around or scaled the same wall. But I have found myself on the corner in Winslow Arizona, in a room full of familiar strangers again and again-in Hawaii, Raleigh, Arizona, Florida, Texas, California, Santa Fe, Colorado, Nashville Tennessee, New York and Perkiomenville PA. I have jumped into the abyss, showing up as me, learning, laughing, losing, loving...each and every moment making me better. For most it has been first daunting and then enlightening, even within my own family dynamic. 

PART I: THE PLAYLIST BEGINS

Chapter 1 - Red Roots

When I was a small child my Grandmother worked at EJ Shoe Factory, in the Sunrise building in Johnson City NY. She worked long hours, from the time the steam whistle blew at 7 AM till sunset. She always had the staple medicines and remedies in the house; Epsom Salts, Vix Vapor Rub, Brandy, hot mustard, cold steak...lol, for a bruise or black eye. Often after a long day or week she would fill a white metal tub with hot water and salts and soak her feet. Many a Friday night she would have me get behind her and with both arms and legs massage her back. My mom's little brother was just out of high school when I was a child and still lived at home with my grandparents. He played on many sports teams and would always come home tattered and covered in dirt from sliding into home base. He would pay me to walk on his back. It’s funny how now 40 years later all of these techniques I organically used to relieve the everyday stresses of my family's life are actually 5000 year old Chinese medicine, Thai massage, shiatsu, trigger point therapy, hydro-therapy.

It would take me another 20 years to learn the vocabulary and understanding of what I was already doing naturally. My father too had a warmth and magic in his hands. He could put his hand on you and instantly radiate heat and healing energy. He would say to me, what is the first thing you do when you hurt yourself?... Your very first instinct?......put your hand on it. No truer words have ever been said, in relation to my journey to understanding, that I was a hands on healer. My mother would attend healing masses at Saint James Church and the priests would lay their hands on people lined up looking for miracles. From a very young age I was connected and hyper aware of the pain that existed in the world and that some how some way I was the cure. My mom always said I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders.

As the years progressed and I began to deconstruct ego and learn that source and healing energy ran through me I only gained more confidence and humility to be of service, sort out what I was actually able to do and where to have faith in the rest. Above my grandparents bed hung a small sign that said; God grant me the serenity to accept the things I don’t understand, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The literal signs were everywhere. I must have read that prayer, which I came to know as the serenity prayer 5000 times in my life. At eight years old my father took me to a bookstore that was more like a warehouse with bins full of books. Although up until that point I had only ever read fairy tales, Ramona and Beatrice, choose your own adventure, all the disney classics, the golden books, and the stories of the bible, on this day I would buy a book of my choosing for .05 cents. The book that spoke to me on that day in 1983 was Carlos Castanada, The Power of Silence, Don Juan DeMarco. It was a paperback with a red cover. I took it home and read it cover to cover. It was heady and deep and the context was spelling out something I intuitively knew. The message for me within was a reminder and an awakening of my very old soul, even at the ripe age of eight years old.

This book would be the witness of the beginning of my journey to reconnect with source and deconstruct the already dense imprint of this lifetime’s narrative. Throughout the rest of my life I will seek out truth, I will chase down what integrity and self respect mean, I will bust down doors to try and figure out the deeper meaning to life, love and our souls purpose here. I will use manipulation and entitlement until I learn how to tamp down the ego. I will repeat narratives imprinted on me for decades before I learn to simply write new stories about me. I will beg a nameless God on my knees, petition God and question a just God for many more decades until I learn about the power of gratitude and humility and SILENCE. I will be a hypocrite and a fraud and I will repeatedly make mistakes, hurt myself and others, blame, curse and spin my wheels in pain and self indulgent behavior until I learn real compassion, acceptance and about detaching from outcomes. Until then I will white knuckle life and believe I have control. I will spend endless hours pouring love into people that will never reciprocate.

I will question myself and make myself small for years before I start to settle into an unapologetic love for myself. I will forgive myself and others. I will no longer feel the need to hold people accountable or try to change them. I will learn to practice happiness and learn to practice being ok. Learn to practice daily gratitude and positive affirmations. I will learn to practice loving and not lecturing, loving myself as I am. Practice showing up as me. I will sit with myself in silence, alone, for more hours than I have spent in the company of others and learn to be ok. I will learn to trust my intuition and to learn the outcomes of the patterns of my life, to identify what my soul leans towards, successfully navigates and where it fails miserably. I’ve built a life schedule around my inner peace. I have allowed myself to live with an open heart, waiting on my orders on any given day and simply practicing showing up in whatever way I am being asked in the moment.

One of the coolest cathartic things about writing my story is that through it perspective is born. As I rewrite the stories of my life and remember all of these highlights in my life, I have come to realize that now looking back even at the moments of acute pain, when I felt like I was bleeding out….never to be ok again. Here I am...what didn’t kill me, in fact made me stronger….these many many moments are now simply stories. Not unlike any story in any book. My story just becomes a living example of a life….about somebody’s daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover, a human being in a flesh suit, fighting gravity in a life, in a body, with a soul that has lived at least 3000 life times before. There is a birth to parents that must have needed to create me to learn themselves and birth me so I could learn bliss in this particular life. My father would call it two moons, but the 45 years it took to deconstruct, re-wire and find peace would cost me almost everything I thought I knew and rebirth me….45 = 4+5=9, on 08/08/2020, my birthday this odd year

---8’s & 2’s recurring lucky numbers throughout my life...all reduced to 45 years old, which is 9. So for those of you who understand Sacred Geometry...you know, 9 is the sacred universal number.

Be here now be here <3

And so the journey begins, set apart by Soundtracks, Diverse Backdrops and all Kinds of Characters….The projected manifested reality that at first I perceived, then manifested, then simply tapped into too. You can listen to the soundtrack of my life on Spotify before, during and after reading the chapters of my life; Somebody’s daughter…. the story of a lower middle class Russian, Italian. Irish, Polish, Ukranian girl growing up in America in one of the most iconic and important times in history, on our Human Time Line. Gen X stands out as the fulcrum between the past and the present reality and how music, emotion, history, technology and progress shaped our experience. We witnessed and spent time with our great grandparents, direct descendants of WWII, The Great Depression, The Industrial Revolution, Beaver Cleaver Generation, The 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, MTV, 9/11…..as we woke up to the intensity of the human experience. The veil had been lifted. We were a cassette tape on fast forward and play at the same time. An overflow of information and evolution like humanity has never known.

My parents were hippies, they ironed their hair, sewed fabric into their bell bottoms for bigger bells, they smoked pot and experimented with other drugs, sex and rock-n-roll. They were bolder than their parents and more rebellious. Everyone smoked, everywhere, even in children's movies and on planes. Life was different. It was a scene right out of that 70’s show. Neighborhoods were alive with laughter and community, kids and classic cars. We again have hit a historic moment….as I’m writing.

Everything we know, world wide is being tested. As an empath and intuitive I am not afraid of a Virus or a Race War...I am afraid of people's Fear. I have learned that whoever you are, whatever you believe, you are only as dangerous or vulnerable as the amount of energy you put into PRACTICE. I have often thought to myself, no matter where life had placed me if I didn’t like the circumstance I would simply change it…..no matter how far I had to walk or crawl to create a better reality. This too has been my struggle in this life as I am challenged with accepting that even if all the news is out, or your instincts tell you to run, that most people will simply do nothing and wallow in the mire. Practice will be then the ongoing theme of my life and the lack there of...both in my own life and in humanity.

We get good at what we practice. If we only practice what is being projected onto us we will never truly be free. I will learn through my life's journey that I can acknowledge the negative in me and in others and then I can learn to CHOOSE to replace and repeat a New Positive affirmation or action…..No One is Stuck unless the freight train has already tumbled off the tracks and time has run out.

This will take a lifetime. Join me and groove with me , cry and laugh with me and know in all moments that you resonate with any part of my life that I am you and you are me and we are we and we are all one collective consciousness acting as one anothers witness. What I like in you, I like in me, and what I do not like in the world I do not like in me. This book is dedicated to my family, my teachers, my students, my tribe and to every single soul who is brave enough to share their story in hopes that others seeking connection do not feel alone.

Chapter 2 - Two Moons

The year is 2000, June 6th. It’s the VCMC Lost Brothers Ride. 200 motorcycles in staggered formation riding in Honor of men and women lost in motorcycle accidents. Everyone is meeting at our place. My father, a friend and neighbor riding as his passenger, my best friend and her husband and 3 other couples. It’s 8 AM, I’m getting dressed. Black leather Chaps, Jeans, Red Leather ankle high Boots, a cute top, my leather jacket with red silk lining, gloves, a helmet and clear glasses. I have my side pack stocked with hand rolled joints and cigarettes. I’m riding as a passenger on my boyfriend's Custom Blue marbleized soft tail with bags and an S&S custom built motor. We will meet at our house in Apalachin NY. We will meet the rest of the 200 plus motorcycle brigade at the Redman's Club in Vestal Center, ride to Nichols NY, then another miscellaneous stop then proceed to the Marie Antoinette lookout in Susquehanna County before making our way back to the Redman's Club for the Benefit cookout and bands. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the air was warm with a cool breeze. Blue skies for days.

Being on a motorcycle is probably the closest to flying a human can come. I grew up on motorcycles. My father had many, and had my brother and I sitting on the gas tank as toddlers. I learned the concept of leaning into turns at a very young age. He had bought a Honda 50 when we were young that he taught us how to ride solo on through the cow pasture behind our house. There were three rules. Don’t ride when he’s not home, never ride with a passenger until you have learned how to crash, and never take the bike out on the street. Of course all the rules were ignored as we flexed our adolescent muscles early on. Years later I took the Dave Carey motorcycle safety course and got my permit to ride my own motorcycle. Even at the course I noticed myself smiling big at each spotter at the turns and learned early on, the bike goes where you look…. So suffice to say I decided not to pursue my actual motorcycle license and stay content as a passenger. I had also had a four wheeler, 4 wheel drive Polaris sport that we took into the wooded trails behind our homes for years in all weather conditions. So needless to say I’d been on and around recreational toys for most of my life.

In 2000 I was 25 years old. I was healthy and had just completed massage school at the Finger Lakes School of massage in Ithaca NY.

The morning of the ride was a Saturday, I remember putting my to-do list and bills out on the table as a visual reminder as to what I needed to take care of on that Monday. After the first stop 200 motorcycles with spot cars paraded through the woods of Upstate NY and PA. It was absolutely stunning. All of the girls smiled at one another and flapped our arms like birds celebrating the freedom, the beautiful weather and the picturesque countryside. About half way through the ride, now in Pennsylvania we started to climb a beautiful mountain up towards Marie Antoinette, a stunning look out point where everyone gathered, rested and rehydrate before making the 50 mile journey back to