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Gunshots and Confusion. What could have happened but didn't.

Have you ever imagined what you would do if you came face to face with a gunman? Well, I have and the scenario in my mind usually ended with me ducking for cover. The real-life version however was completely different. What should have been an uneventful stroll down the street turned into a chaotic, sad, and yet life affirming event. Last Friday was to be the beginning of a celebration-filled weekend for me and I couldn't wait to get the party started. Friday night was going to be a fun, small, surprise party that I had arranged for my sister-friend and Saturday my husband and I were going to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  The clock on my dashboard read 3:05, I wasn't finished shopping for these two very special people and at this moment time was not on my side. INTUITION. THANK GOD I LISTENED. I live in Studio City and absolutely love shopping at the stores in my neighborhood but not the traffic. I have a tried and true way of navigating around it, by parking...
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Follow-up Post: DawnMarie's Mercury Retrograde Guide.

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MERCURY RETROGRADE - (October 4 - 24) Have you felt off this month? Have your communications been difficult? Have you found contracts hard to get signed? New business efforts thwarted? Car problems? Have the most simple and mundane tasks seem to take a super human effort? Well, you are not alone. You have been under the Mercury Retrograde spell. This is all part of the voo-doo that Mercury Retrograde casts on our daily lives. In astrology, planets display two kinds of motion, direct and retrograde. When a planet is direct it is moving in the order of the zodiac. When a planet is in retrograde it is moving against the order of the zodiac. Both Mercury and Venus orbit around the Sun and as such can be seen in the Earth's Sky in the morning and evening. Mercury's core has a high iron content, higher than any other planet in the Solar System. Iron is among the few metals that can easily become magnetized. When Mercury turns retrograde it becomes a magnetic ball going around ...
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BIRTHDAY REVELATIONS

My birthday is this Saturday (March 29th) and as it approaches I can't help but to reflect. I can sum up this past year in three words: disbelief, horror and triumph. This year was filled with excruciating pain. I quite literally feel as if I was thrown into a barrel and tossed off the side of a mountain. With every new day I awoke to another harsh reality. Last year my birthday week was filled with one fantastic celebration after the next. Days before my actual birthday my husband threw a surprise party for me. He filled the party with some of my dearest friends and on top of that he secretly arranged for my brother, who lives out of state, to attend. My brother surprised me by walking out with my birthday cake and singing to me. I can still remember being so taken aback that I couldn't even recognize my own brother. My actual birthday was a special night out to a wonderful Jazz restaurant. The celebrations continued throughout my birthday weekend. All I could do was soak ...
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Surviving Grief During The Holidays

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It doesn't really matter what you expect from life, it's what life expects from you. ~ David Wheeler I learned to deal with the death of a loved one at an early age. My father was killed when I was just five years old and a year later my mother lost her battle with cancer. Ironically, my parents were twenty-eight years old when they passed. My maternal grandmother raised me, sadly she passed away when I was eighteen years old. These were and continue to be great losses for me. Somehow through it all I believed that there was a grand design to it all, don't know why I believed this, I just did. Life is not measured in "years"  life is  measured by the depth of experience.  I've always known that with my personal experience with grief came a unique responsibility. I know all too well that grief and suffering are intensely personal experiences.  My story seems to inspire others to survive. This is the reason why I continue to openly share my story, ad...
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Unapologetically Open & Unabashedly Vulnerable

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Life is spontaneous and unpredictable, at any given moment it can change direction. The only way to navigate through it all is to become unapologetically open and unabashedly vulnerable to the experience because everything in life happens to help us LIVE. A month and a half has passed since our Scarlett's death. Her absence has created an unbearable silence in our lives. In this silence I pray for the lesson in it all, what is it we are to learn that only Scarlett's death could teach us? This question has me holding a mirror to myself and a magnifying glass over my life. With our Scarlett (April 2013) I needed to make a change in my life - of this I am certain. Month's prior to Scarlett's death I'd ask out loud:  "What is it you want to do?" "What is it you want to achieve with your life?" As many of you know I am an actress and being an actress means having a life filled with auditions. Auditioning is a major component to this occu...
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Healing Our Broken Hearts

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Our regal furry Baby Our beautiful furry baby Scarlett enriched me and my husbands lives in many ways. Scarlett is our daughter, our furry, four legged daughter and the pain from her passing is unbearable. Just as we feel we are finding solid ground it falls away and we are left sobbing.  The constant questions persist on why she passed - did we not do enough - why's and what if's continue to swirl around and the heaviness this creates in our souls is beyond what words can express.  Having suffered many losses early on in my life prior to Scarlett's passing I felt I had a grip on grieving. Both my parents passed away by the time I was six years old and then I endured the subsequent loss of my guardian/maternal Grandmother when I was 18. Losing this many important people in my life I learned first hand of the void that is created, its a void that can never be filled and to this day I continue to grieve those early losses. HEALING...
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American Independence

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The fourth of July brings to mind images of white stars and stripes of red, white and blue. HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FLAG The American Revolutionary war broke out in April 1775 - at the time not all of the American Colonists were in favor of breaking free from Great Britain, most wanted peace. Towards the middle of 1776 that opinion changed and the then 13 American Colonies decided to start the birth of a new nation, though some civilians remained loyal to the King during the war.                                                                                                                                                ...
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