As I was driving this morning to take my puppy for a walk at the dog park, I had the realisation that
This voices work came to me from a power greater than myself. 

I never set out to be an entrepreneur, to run programs and workshops and host events and be the founder of this beautiful community we have grown.  I created a one woman show called ‘The Voices of Tali’ out of necessity, out of a desperate need to free myself from the things that were stopping me from living my true path. It resonated with people, so I went with the flow and began to teach others what I had learnt through my constant battle with my own voices.  And I did not know it at the time, but the more I see people transition through this work, the more I realise that this was something given to me. …

What I learnt was that anxiety doesn't go away, we just get better at not letting it control us...that we can make friends with it.

I learnt that when you have a vision for something, to surround yourself with positive, powerful people who believe in it too - that you can really bring it to fruition.

I learnt that if you bring your focus to that one thing and keep at it, even through the tasks that you don't know how to do and want to give up on and rip your hair out...to just breathe and stay with it and ask for help from someone who knows….

Years ago if you'd said to me that I'd get to a stage in my life where I'd be able to sit still for 20 minutes and experience peace in my mind & body....I would have probably belly laughed...you know that awkward belly laugh that over compensates just how uncomfortable you feel? Yeah...that. 

I don't recall hearing about meditation in school or was really exposed to it until I went to acting school 7 years ago and started hearing more about it. After one of my teachers commented on the amount of tension I was holding in my body, I thought it might be good to give this meditation thing a go!

I learnt with a transcendental meditation teacher who was also an actor, for 4 days. It was intense. I started having these massive releases - crying, sweating and feeling OH SO PRESENT...!
I guess you could equate it to someone taking drugs for the first time, not that I've taken that much, if any, but it was like being in an altered state. Although, this state felt more natural then the one I'd spent 99% of the time in....#anxietytrain….

I had some of my darkest times earlier this year. And I say dark in the internal sense. Dark thoughts, emotions were all over the shop and honestly didn't wake up feeling there was a lot of light. It's light that flickered and then went out. 

But the light never goes out, it's just that we truly have to meet the benefits and lessons of what and why the dark has come to teach us. 

I learnt that this particular darkness came at a time where I'd experienced a trauma, but even before that it was lingering under the horizon of my conscious mind. 

And then when the trauma happened it went into full flight. Revealing itself to me in horrific dreams and flashes in my waking mind as well. 

Thoughts that I caught myself with, observed and then freaked out that I'd thought such a thing. 

I didn't know addictions can also be internal.

I thought addictions meant being addicted to something outside of yourself - drugs, alcohol, food, sex... 

But I've seen in myself and in others the addictions we can have internally too. To letting our minds run the show. And not a happy positive 'Broadway' one, but a negative self destructive one.…

You know when you go to do something, that you know deep down once you start...you'll love? 
But then just before you're about to do it...
That little voice creeps in...

"Really? Do we have time for this?"
"You can't afford that right now"
"You'll be exhausted if you do that" etc. etc. 

This little fear voice ain't so little for the majority of us….

If we listened...like really listened to nature and it's ways, perhaps we wouldn't be so bogged down with the jolt of winter and what it brings.

Death.
Destruction.
Coldest of shadows. 

We somehow mistakenly think that we can bypass this stage and put the heater on so we don't feel the cold. 

But the heavens know. They know that by us not listening to the signs, not stopping to feel the coldness, to meet the deepest darkest parts, it will have to get us there another way. 

For there is no light without darkness…