Next week is my little brother’s birthday..
I often say he is the one who saved me. Without him, the darkness of my childhood would have swallowed me whole.
But that’s just me being melodramatic.
More accurately, we saved each other.
We’re only 14 months apart, almost Irish twins. My mother says that when she went into the hospital to give birth to him, I was speaking words. When she came out, I was saying complete sentences.
Maybe it was an early sign of me becoming his tiny bodyguard.
In a side quest that seems unrelated, but isn’t, as you’ll see shortly…
Earlier this week I went to an osteopath for pain in my left shoulder. The source of the injury is no surprise. I’ve been training handsprings on the pole for some months now, a feat requiring my shoulders to balance 50% of my body weight hanging upside down.
Apparently, my left shoulder isn’t on board with this arrangement.
The osteopath, Dr. Andryi looks so deeply into my eyes that I know he’s really looking. He asked about my shoulder and I filled him in on the crazy things I ask my body to do.
And then the detective work begins, asking strange questions while muscle testing different parts of my body.
At one point he looked up and asked:
“Are you startled?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“Terror?”
Nothing recently has felt terrifying. But then something came to mind:
Pole.
Unlike most of the other women at the studio who need to psyche themselves up before attempting a particularly scary or painful trick, I usually just throw myself into them.
Like the week before when I attempted a suicide spin (yes, the actual name) and fell hard on my knee.
The osteopath muscle tested this idea.
“Fear of falling,” he confirmed. “If you fall, what do you fall on?”
Without thinking, I pointed to a spot above my hairline.
And suddenly a memory returned…
I’m twelve-years old and my brother is being chased by a bully.
We hide behind a fence and the bully throws a rock over it that hits my brother on the head.
There’s blood pouring down his face. He’s crying.
The bully runs away, which is a good thing, because I’m about to go Mama Bear on his scrawny ass.
And then I’m running. For my mother. My step-father. For someone to save my little brother.
The wound turned out not to be serious; head wounds just bleed dramatically.
But apparently, somewhere in my nervous system, the memory still resonates.
So there I was in the osteopath’s office.
I went in for a shoulder injury and came out realizing my body may still be trying to protect my little brother from 30+ years ago while upside down on a pole in Portugal.
Life is strange.
And bodies are wise.
One of the girls at the studio, who’s from the Ukraine, joked recently, “To train on the pole, you have to override the instinct not to kill yourself.”
She’s not wrong. Apparently even my shoulder is terrified.
What’s fascinating about experiences like this is the wisdom that lives underneath our conscious stories.
Sometimes what looks like procrastination, confusion, fear or resistance is a protective pattern that once made perfect sense.
When we stop judging ourselves and get curious…things start to move.
Tapping into this wisdom is what inspired me to create the Paid to Be You Workshop.
Too many people are building a business from pressure, comparison or survival, instead of from who they actually are and what they really want.
The compass for a business you love is your real desires. Your natural creativity.
Your inner weird. Your joy.
The stuff you secretly want but don’t fully trust.
Inside the workshop, you’ll discover:
- A 3 minute “aliveness reset” that instantly dissolves confusion and reconnects you to what you really want. (Your body already knows, and we’ll prove it!)
- Why your most magnetic business strategy might look more like dancing, doodling, or daydreaming than a funnel.
- How to design your own “Paid to Be You” compass — a creative, visual guide you can use to reveal your next right step.
- A surprise dragon cameo (or two) because your soul’s compass comes with wings and fire. 🔥
This is not a business strategy workshop. It’s a creative recalibration.
A space to reconnect with what wants to move through you.
The Paid to Be You Workshop: Realign Your Business to Create the Life You Love
📅 May 28
⏰ 2pm EDT / 7pm BST
Free live. $25 for the recording.
Bring your dreams and some paper. I’ll meet you there.
https://www.theawakenedbusiness.com/paid/
Yours in love and play,
Steph 🐲❤️🔥
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