Self-love is never having to say “I’m sorry” to yourself…for who you are, what you hold true, your opinions, your authentic expression, your emotions, what you’ve said or done, let alone the choices you’ve made.

It is “knowing”, in every moment, that you are doing the best with what you have and that you are your spirit on a journey of discovery.

It is “knowing” that you are creating your life through your thoughts and emotional attention for the purpose of learning and growing into more of yourself.

It is “knowing” that there are no mistakes and no accidents, only opportunities and gifts with every circumstance, comfortable or uncomfortable.

It is “knowing” that despite what others may think, you “know” what’s best for you, what your intentions are, where your heart lies and you act accordingly with confidence.

It is “knowing” that sometimes you’ll forget how to love yourself and when you remember again, you’ll forgive yourself and move forward.

How can you love yourself today?

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Our community is rich with women who invest in themselves, who choose to live empowered, expressed, and inspired lives, who choose to SHINE. You are a perfect fit!

Each month you will receive new thought provoking content as well as tips and tools to grow and cultivate your SHINE. Each of us is individual and our journey distinct. The SHINE Factor has something to offer you in each stage of your quest to SHINE including individual coaching, hands-on mastery groups, tele-seminars and workshops, SHINE Sisters’ Circles, public speaking, and last but certainly not least, blogs, books and SHINE Cards.

We are here to help. Let us know what you need.

If you’re as into social media as us, please like and follow us there too. Links to the left.

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With love and gratitude,

Mimi and Kim

Self-love is…knowing, appreciating and living your truest self.  In other words, you aren’t hiding the “so-called” good, bad or ugly. If you have something to say, you say it. If you are ready to shine, you shine it. If you’re in a mood, you embrace it. If you’ve got it, you flaunt it. If it hurts, you cry it. If you’re lost, you ask for help. If you need to be alone, you create space. If you have a song, you sing it.

Consider living from this place—your inner marriage. It is where you come together as one, understanding that the whole is nothing without all of its parts. It is where authenticity lives. It is where you complete yourself.

Self-love isn’t mutually exclusive; it is inclusive of everything. Yes, everything! Every quirk, every pimple, every gray hair…all our talents, all our brilliance, all our geekiness…even our jealousies, temper tantrums, and rebel attitudes…including mistakes we ‘ve made, lies we’ve told or tests we’ve cheated on and of course…our fears, our vulnerabilities, our broken hearts and unspoken dreams.

When we know, appreciate and live our truest selves without reservation, we can be present to the present. Our crayon box is full to the brim with all our colors, always ready for us to create the technicolor lives of our dreams.

How can you love yourself today?

The Mirror Mirror blog is a place of self-love. Here, you will find support, inspiration and practical tools for loving yourself. My hope is it ignites your own inner call to take the next steps to living a life of self-love and all that it brings.

Quite a number of years ago now, back in my “30 something’s”, I was diagnosed with a grizzly and potentially devastating illness called Lupus…you could have knocked me over with a feather. In an instant, any dreams I might have had were at serious risk, not the least of which, were those I saw with and for my two children. So, as the doctor delivered the dire news, I kinda left my body to the safety of the ceiling above to assess the real damage and figure out some plan to dodge this unexpected bullet.  As I hung out up there, contemplating my threatened future, I experienced a lightning strike epiphany that, in one fell swoop, dramatically set my course, laid out my purpose and ultimately saved my life. No joke.

Under stress, you never know where your sense of humor will show up…so there I was, hovering near the ceiling, muttering to myself in my best Tina Fey voice, “OMG, I have the self-hatred disease!” Funny? Well, I guess you had to be there, but on the other hand, it really was brilliant (part of the epiphany) and true. While astounded and feeling somewhat betrayed by my body attacking itself, I was also galvanized and ready to take on this fire-breathing dragon and where it came from…Imagine Xena Warrior Princess and Superman united as one.

The truth was, I had struggled with self-hatred for as long as I could remember. Self-esteem, self- worth or self-confidence issues were tame cousins to my searing personal dislike. While I would never describe myself as a biased person, when it came to myself, I bore my own internal scarlet letter. This searing hatred appeared in several forms:  a relentless inner critic (who I recently named Holocaust), a suffocating blanket of low-grade chronic depression as well as many mysterious physical symptomologies. And the topper was: a crippling fear that someday, when least expected, someone would discover the horrible truth hidden beneath my carefully crafted good girl exterior. Take it from me, self-hatred is the ultimate in abusive relationships and the hardest to get out of. (Breathe…there is a happy ending.)

But, the diagnosis had flipped a switch igniting my will to live in a way it never had been before. As I floated out of my body it was all so clear and simple to me…if I could just figure out why I hated myself so much, then I could reverse the illness. Improbable? Impossible? Crazy? Naïve? Unrealistic?…None of these occurred to me.

In that moment it didn’t matter whether I was in my right mind or what the odds were; I just knew that I had to try. I knew in my depths that getting to the cause of my self-hatred would free me one way or another. So that’s exactly what I blurted out as the doctor was beginning to prescribe a drug cocktail that, to me, seemed more foreboding than the damn disease.

The rest is history. I left the doc in shock, but in awe as well. Despite his western medical oath, he genuinely felt my crusader spark and supported my theory. He wanted me to win where he had seen so many other women lose to this destructive autoimmune disorder. It was one of those transcendent moments where lives are never the same again. We both wanted to help our helplessness and somehow that was the perfect drug to embolden us.

So I began my journey to get to the root of my self-hatred armed with the only antidote that made sense, self-love. Obviously I was in a foreign land, speaking a foreign language but I was undeterred.  Ironically, added to that, back in those days self-love was still a dirty word, most often associated with an even dirtier word, selfishness. I was not only in uncharted territory, but also, in dangerous waters that could have fueled my self-hatred.

But somehow, despite my tenuous grasp on self-love, once I reached out to find it, it held my hand tight and never let go. Slowly, but surely, it began to lift me up as it taught me that I wasn’t the horrible monster I had been told I was. Slowly, but surely, it guided me to and through the long-buried, gruesome memories that had perpetually seeded my self-hatred. Slowly, but surely, it moved the lupus into remission (which at the time, was unheard of). Slowly, but surely, it set me free.

Slowly, but surely, self-love can do the same for you. Like so many of us with similar self-value distortions, I hadn’t done anything wrong to speak of (except to be born into a deeply dysfunctional family where I was abused).  And, from my experience, most likely, if you are dealing with any self-approbation, you didn’t do anything wrong either. For most of us, loving yourself was a concept that not only wasn’t embraced, it was miserably misunderstood. You don’t have to have come from an abusive home to be separated from the inner and outer beauty of who you really are.

We are all born with self-love. Conveniently, it comes in the human package. I’ve never see a baby snarl at her/himself. Have you? Delight in who we are comes naturally but that appreciation, acceptance and awareness gets diminished as we grow up in a competitive world where success is predicated on how you look and what you do rather than who you are. We become strangers to our true selves in order to survive and in the process lose touch with how to thrive (our SHINE) which is self-love’s reflection.

Each of us owes it to ourselves find self-love. Each of us owes it to ourselves to reach out and invite it to hold our hands. Each of us owes it to ourselves to call forth the courage of Xena Warrior Princess and Superman. Each of us owes it to ourselves to thrive, to SHINE. Each of us owes it to ourselves to be the drop of peace that self-love brings in the swirling ocean of humanity that we are a part of.

I’m in. How bout you? How will you love yourself today?

I’m sure you are familiar with that [sometimes] annoying quip, “wake up and smell the coffee”. Well recently, the Universe, in the guise of friends, acquaintances and a series of synchronicities, has been persistently calling me out until I woke up and smelled the proverbial coffee! I’m no stranger to this often not so subtle technique of getting one’s attention. In this case, it smelled good; the message was clear and the invitation simple but compelling. In short, it said that I had underestimated what I have to offer for too long, had practiced more than enough and was ready to take my place at the head of the table. For once, I didn’t protest. Instead, I agreed.

In the past, I don’t know how many times I’ve said to clients that even with tons of support, the journey to ourselves is an inside job. No one can do it for us. But, being human, sometimes we get in our own way and need a gentle nudge, a firm push or even a swift kick in the ass to help us get unstuck. Because of my history, coupled with my stubbornness and independent, cowgirl attitude, this has been the case for me more often than I like to admit. I bought into the no pain, no gain school of hard knocks myth and spent a lot of time learning the hard way. But, fortunately, over the years I’ve gotten quicker and better at reading the early signals (which are usually fairly benign) before all hell breaks loose and the Universe resorts to the big stick approach.

So, with that in mind, starting with this post, I have decided to take a bold step, come out of hiding and take my place…as a woman in her SHINE, as a survivor of incest, self-hatred and three critical illnesses, as a champion for the expressed feminine, as an inspirational writer and a teacher, and as an expert on self-love. I have a story to tell whose time is now. Why?…because while painful, it is universal.

Our stories may differ in characters and events but in reality they aren’t different. Everyone is looking for a way out of their pain. Everyone is looking for a way to do more than survive. Everyone is looking for a way to feel good about themselves and live lives that feel good. Everyone is looking to connect, to feel safe, to come home. Everyone is looking for that elusive butterfly called happiness. Everyone is looking for love. While my story isn’t easy to hear, let alone tell, it is a story with a happy ending and a gift for all of us…self-love. Learning to love myself literally saved my life and it can turn yours around too, if you let it. It is the answer to everything above.

Through self-love I healed my body, my mind, my heart and my soul. Through self-love I have restored the years that were eaten by self-hatred and made myself new. Through self-love I have resurrected my light and let it SHINE. Through self-love I have remembered who I really am. Through self-love I can see that, for the most part, it is the missing ingredient to peace and prosperity. It has taught me that we can’t really love one another until we have learned to love ourselves and as we do, the seeds of inner peace grow stronger, eventually growing through us and out into the world. Further, as we discover and live our own inner wealth then the prosperity we all dream of shows up easily and effortlessly.

A great man once declared, “I have a dream” and that dream echoed in peoples’ hearts no matter their race, religion, age or gender. It was a unifying force to be reckoned with. It called us to action, helped us to believe the impossible was possible and to connect to that which was greater than ourselves. Born out of his brutal story, his dream changed history.

Self-love is no less of a dream. In fact, it is the access point, the gateway to manifesting MLK’s dream on another level…for once you achieve inner equality through self-love, outer equality naturally follows suite. This is a gift we can give one another, the world and ourselves.

Until four years ago, February really wasn’t on my radar. I never understood the 28 days let alone Leap Year, and besides my love life always seemed to be down the tubes when cupid’s big day rolled around. Unfortunately my love life hasn’t changed (something I am finally paying attention to) but everything else has and this month heralds those breakthroughs. Funny how things can shift gears in an instant isn’t it? In a moment, what you don’t know becomes crystal clear. Here’s what happened…

In 2008, on a snowy Valentine’s Day, two bald eagles flew into my life setting me on a new course.  They landed the morning after I had made the not so insignificant decision to dedicate all my time to writing.  Emotionally, I was at a major crossroads, determined and excited, but shaky none-the-less. All my mind monkeys were screeching wildly, “How will you support yourself? Who do you think you are? What makes you think you can write, let alone have anything to say? Have you gone crazy?” So, that night, in an effort to get the monkeys off my back, as I struggled to sleep, I asked for a sign that following my heart was the right choice.

To my surprise, when I awoke Valentine’s morning, in spite of a little gnaw in my tummy, I felt very much at peace. I set out for my daily walking meditation around the lakes where I lived with a smile on my face. There was a burgeoning sense of newfound freedom as I could feel my creative juices beginning to percolate.

I was humming along around the first bend when something huge caught my peripheral vision and as I whipped around I caught sight of a magnificent bald eagle in low flight over the frozen lake. I was stunned. Eagles are one of my totems and to see one is nothing short of winning the lottery for me, especially on this day when I was beginning my official journey as a writer. In my heart, I immediately knew it was the sign I had asked for and laughing and crying I took off at a clip to see if I could get close to where it had landed on the other side.

As I ran, I thought I saw two dark forms in an old cottonwood  tree on the northern shore but just figured I was seeing double through my tears and the falling snow. Not so!! To my unending joy, a pair of eagles, male and female, greeted me allowing me to come right up under their perfect perch. Surely I was in heaven, my own and theirs.

For the next two hours, Valentine and Valentino (Well I had to name them, didn’t I?), aimlessly and shamelessly entertained me as they flew back and forth across the lake playfully calling one another. It was pure magic. I felt like I was at my own private viewing of some National Geographic film. They pulled out all the stops and I saturated myself with every moment of their generosities. I drank in their energy and blessings, their inspiration and love, their freedom, beauty, power, and vision.  When they eventually flew west toward the mountains, I floated home, buoyed, knowing that life would never be the same.

Since then, February has been the hallmark of new ideas, expressions, blessings, love, creativity and good fortune.  Serendipitously, the eagles helped fertilize seeds within me that had lain dormant my whole life. I began to write with new vision, passion and depth. And in December that year, SHINE was born. Two months later, in February 2009, in Valentine and Valentino’s honor, the first SHINE newsletter went out, followed soon thereafter by our beloved SHINE Sisters’ Circles.

As I sit here at my desk this February, I am in awe of all that has transpired since I took such a daunting stand for myself. It wasn’t, nor has it been the last time, I’ve had to screw up my courage and dive headfirst but it was such a radical decision that it shattered a good portion of my inner glass ceiling. Valentine and Valentino were (and continue to be) the wind beneath my wings as I soar places beyond my wildest dreams.

What I know for sure now is that by following your heart, you are following your greater truth and in doing so you will always be shown the way. May this sweet, short month be the start of your heart’s voice in some new and magical way!

WON’T YOU JOIN US FOR THE “Busting the Myths and Breaking Through Your Inner Glass Ceiling” EXPRESSED FEMININE™ MASTERY GROUP?

Expressed Feminine™ Mastery Groups help women answer their own inner call for personal change with confidence and courage. These small, intimate groups are designed for women who are ready to roll up their sleeves to tap into their full potential as a woman and their intangible desire for something more. If you are looking for coaching that helps you help yourself as well as a safe community of like-minded women to support, nurture, applaud and celebrate you along the way then welcome home!

What’s “Busting the Myths and Breaking Through Your Inner Glass Ceiling” all about?

We will be busting through the barriers women are brought up with and taught to live by. What are the five things you’ve learned that hold women back and keep us in line? Have you learned that women are weak, or women are too emotional, or perhaps, you have a good girl myth nagging you…something like, “you have to be perfect all the time” so you will be liked, loved, and taken care of? We will be working the group’s myth beliefs one-by-one and busting through. Myths hold us back, they keep us from realizing our power as women, our power as human beings. Myths hold our inner glass ceiling in place.

Group Meeting Dates:
April 17, 2012, April 24, 2012, May 1, 2012, May 8, 2012, May 15, 2012, May 22, 2012
Where: SW Longmont, CO area
Time: 6:30pm – 9pm
Price: $75** (see below)
# of Participants: 10 max

What do you receive in Mastery?

• One weekly two-hour meeting for six-weeks – in person – to provide face-to-face interaction and coaching, progress reports & sharing, group exercises and community feedback.
• Two 30-minute phone consultations – The first helps us understand what you desire to accomplish in the group. The second helps synthesize your process and come up with a next steps action plan.
• Unlimited email support addressing targeted questions.
• A private community Facebook page set up for Expressed Feminine Mastery members only to encourage peer-group ongoing conversation, questions, outreach and support.

** To participate, I agree to the following five agreements:

• Pay a non-refundable administrative fee of $75.
• Buy a set of your very own SHINE Cards.
• Attend a SHINE Sisters’ Circle.
• Commit to attend each weekly meeting for the six-week segment and arrive on time.
• At the end of each six-week group, write a check based on what I feel I am worth, and how much I feel the class is worth to my growth. The SHINE Factor will then turn around and donate 5% to a women-centric charity.

REGISTER NOW for the “Myth Busting” Expressed Feminine Mastery Group

WHO CAN ATTEND A EXPRESSED FEMININE MASTERY GROUP?

EVERYWOMAN! Women from all walks of life; just like you and me! The “everywoman” is ready to be seen and heard in new and more powerful ways.

The Expressed Feminine Mastery Groups are open to women who may feel out of sync with who they are as daughters, mothers, wives, friends, businesswomen. Or women, who through some major life change, (illness, job loss, divorce, new mom, marriage, job promotion, loss of a loved one, accident, empty nest, aging, etc.) feel disconnected and out of touch with what makes them happy, with what brings them joy. We help women work through the guilt, shame and regret that not only often comes with being female but also can hinder their full realization of what is true for them (their true voices) so they may receive as well as give in all of their many roles.

Wanna know what you will get as a result of saying yes to you and joining Mastery?

Each person is unique and will therefore want to achieve different results. Mom and I will work with you to identify what your particular desire is and then work our butts off to help you achieve it.

In general, we can promise the following. By joining the Expressed Feminine Mastery Group and giving it your all, you will:

1. Feel WORTH IT and know that taking care of you is worth your time and effort

2. Be seen and unconditionally heard

3. Feel a new level of confidence in yourself and your dreams

4. Learn life skills to apply personally and in business

5. Understand why you do the things you do yourself that help you move forward positively

6. Know you are not alone. We are all in this together and there are other women who are going through the exact same things as you.

7. Experience safe sisterhood in a confidential, ongoing support network

8. Receive honest, compassionate and experienced feedback, advice and brainstorming

9. Create a doable, step by baby step action plan to create the live you have always dreamed of

10. Understand the Expressed Feminine and what it really means to be a woman

REGISTER NOW for the “Myth Busting” Expressed Feminine Mastery Group

Please accept our gift of Pinky Love to help you remember to love yourself so you ALWAYS have more love to give.

From our hearts to yours,
Kim and Mimi

Sisterhood by Maria Greene

Today, as we are inaugurating our second, monthly SHINE Sister’s Circle, I have been reminiscing about where it all began…

For the past three years I have not only witnessed an ongoing miracle but I have also been a recipient of the seemingly infinite bounty it brings. It began quite simply with a dream, some inspiring words and a small group of women who were hungry for something more even though they couldn’t tell you what.

Eight of us sat in my living room on a chilly February evening not knowing what to expect but expectant none-the-less. It appeared we were all there for different reasons and yet we found ourselves (and the answers to our questions) in one another. A common vessel of mutual support, understanding, creativity, love and courage seamlessly cradled us. And while we ate each other’s food, listened to one another’s stories, held space for one another’s dreams and celebrated each other’s unique feminine expression, magic happened.

Through our collective SHINE and our desire to live it out loud, Safe Sisterhood was effortlessly born and the circles became our sacred, monthly sounding board, creative haven and launch pad. It was instinctive, organic, easy, intuitive, graceful, fearless (well almost), comfortable, natural, unforced. It was time. Time for us as women to be real, to be true, to be open, to be heard knowing it was unconditionally safe to show up and try ourselves on.

It was time for us to come together and be one another’s wing-women. It was time to write a new chapter in women’s history­­– letting go of the old myths that women are inherently jealous, bitchy, mean, unpredictable, catty and unforgiving to other women. Each of us had felt that sting in our lives and while wary, something bigger was operating within that drew us to one another. Because we are women, our hearts knew the truth of what it really means to be female and that those derogative labels just don’t apply to our true essence. It doesn’t mean we can’t be that way, but the truth is, that just isn’t our natural way of being.

At our core, women are collaborators and creators not destroyers and dividers. It was time for us to help one another bloom out of the wounds we had suffered through these labels (among many others) by leading one another with love to the wellspring of inner strength and courage that is the feminine. Without control, manipulation or judgment, we instinctively have become powerful role models for one another.

And, in the process, we have healed previous negative images and beliefs about ourselves. We have taught and continue to encourage one another to fly. For me, it has been like watching a garden bloom captured through the lens of slow motion photography. What a privilege to witness each woman flower into her full glory, to find her expressed feminine, to SHINE! What a privilege to participate and have them be wing-women for me, for my own SHINE. What a privilege to welcome new women to the circle and see them so lovingly cared for and lifted up by their sisters.

It would appear that the universe applauds women’s SHINE and their coming home to themselves through Safe Sisterhood as this short article appeared in my inbox this morning. Appropriately, it is called: Women’s Support – Becoming Our Own Role Models and comes from the Daily OM which I highly recommend if you aren’t already familiar with it.

Please enjoy the article and let us know here about your experiences with Safe Sisterhood and of course if you’ve never been to one of our SHINE Sisters’ Circles…the door is open and we’re waiting for you. Oh, and by the way, if you like the artwork at the top by Maria Greene, you  can check her out at the Roots of She blog by Jenn Gibson which is terrific…she’s a safe sister!

In my personal thesaurus, thrive is synonymous with alive, vibrant, splash, shine, radiance, bloom and freedom. To me, these states of being are all other expressions of thriving. They are evidence that we are all meant to thrive.

When a person is thriving, they are being nurtured and fulfilled at every level of their being. All of their needs are being met and they are living the Universe’s promise that they are enough and as a result will always have enough. When we thrive, we are in resonance with that which is greater than our mind’s fear-based understanding, beyond the limiting beliefs, patterns and rhetoric that keep us small rather than as big as we are each born to be.

To me, and others, thriving is our birthright…that is why I am so passionate about women remembering their SHINE because in doing so they can finally live in sync with their feminine truth, which is to thrive. This dramatic shift in awareness will play a vital role in saving our planet’s life and everyone elses along with it. We all deserve to thrive, women no less or more than anyone else, but the time is long gone to underestimate, debunk and devalue the feminine.

I suppose I’m all fired up because I saw a movie last night called, THRIVE. I had no idea what I was in for except that all my senses were screaming to see it.  The MC, a person who knows the creators of the film, suggested to the audience that we suspend our left brains while we watched, allowing the movie to just wash over us. My senses happily sighed relief as my analytical self stepped aside hoping to get what they came for, a big dose of thrive energy. They weren’t disappointed.

Foster and Kimberly Gamble artfully and lovingly put this movie together.  They have been on a lifelong quest to answer why most of humanity isn’t thriving and this film documents their findings. provides not only answers but also solutions. In it they tackle some huge goliaths, taboos and uncomfortable subjects. While all of their facts have been verified, the information they so rationally present is still challenging, let alone shocking…to them as well as the audience.

The film is intentionally provocative in its dogged determination to answer the question about why so few in the world thrive but, equally, it is positive and healing. It provides not only answers but also solutions. Certainly, Foster and Kimberly’s hearts are in the right place and I was left feeling not only inspired but even steadier on my path to help women SHINE and in turn thrive but also clearer about other ways I can contribute to a healthy, balanced, new world.

I encourage you to see the movie and let it speak to you while it speaks for itself and the lives of everyone. Take it or leave it, you owe it to yourself, you owe it to your own innate desire to thrive. For only $5 you can stream it from their website at www.thrivemovement.com and watch it at the comfort of your desk or you can purchase the DVD. It is also being shown by individuals in local communities (the way I saw it) so you can check the website to see if it’s somewhere in your hood. No matter what, don’t miss it…even if you hate it, there’s a gift waiting there for you. And no matter what you feel, when you have seen it, please get back to me here and let me know how you’re thriving!