I was an esthetician working in a tiny little spa that felt like it was the size of a cardboard box. I was making barely above minimum wage. I was also the single mother of a 12-year-old son who I had been working hard to support alone since I had him.
I desperately wanted to provide everything my son wanted and needed so he wouldn’t have to grow up poor the way I did.
Not knowing where my next meal was coming from. Having the phone cut off and having to give my friends new numbers all the time and having to make up a lie as to why I had a different number again.
Having to have cold showers cause the hot water was cut off.
Having to use candles and a snow suit to sleep at night because there was no heat.
Not being able to do anything I dreamt of doing because my dad couldn’t afford it.
I dreamt of doing gymnastics, dance, martial arts all of which I pretended to do on the hill by my house because my dad could never afford to pay for it.
I remember how bad it felt knowing that I couldn’t ask my dad to do the things my friends were doing because it broke his heart having to say “NO” to me.
He worked all day as a Journeyman Cabinet maker, then went out at night and did side jobs for extra money.
My father was a ghost. I never saw him, and it still wasn’t enough, and we really struggled.
I never wanted to see my son suffer that way.
When I was little I would dream about what it would be like to be able to take dance classes and do gymnastics.
I choreographed dance routines for my friends, and we would do shows for the neighbors on the hill. The hill was the place to be as kids in my hood.
Imagined being wealthy and being able to do anything I wanted. Have anything I wanted. I imagined going on vacations and having adventures.
My friends parents were always taking them places and they would disappear for long periods of time and then come back with all these cool stories about adventures they went on.
I never went anywhere with my family. So, I was the one who was always watching my friends leave and I had to stay at home and use my imagination.
I developed a powerful imagination because I couldn’t have the things I wanted in reality.
As a mother all of this struggle lead to a desperation to provide for my son. The strong desire to have him never feel the sadness, embarrassment or cold water when it should be hot like I did.
At the time I was struggling with just barely making enough money for him and me to get by.
I was working 10–12-hour days barely spending any time with him.
I was missing my son growing up while working endless hours just like my father did to give him just barely enough.
I recreated the same scenario that my father did trying to do the opposite. I never wanted to be like my dad working insane hours and barely getting by.
I don’t even know how I got into that situation.
I went to school like I was supposed to. I got A’s on all my exams. I was the top student in the school.
I got work right out of school. I quickly became the highest grossing Skin Therapist in the spa and yet at the top of my game I was barely scraping by.
I did what society told me to do and it got me nowhere.
I was struggling to provide for my baby, and I was so tired at the end of the day I had a hard time finding the energy to really engage with him.
I had soooooo much guilt as a mother because everything I was doing was for him and in the end he was angry with me because I was never there.
It made me feel so guilty, hopeless and lost.
I did what I was supposed to do, and I worked so hard and I was poor, just barely getting by.
I felt defeated having spent 12 years of my sons life working so hard and not seeing him grow up. Missing so many important moments. Not being able to get on the floor and play with him because I was soo tired. I was losing at life in every aspect.
I really didn’t know what to do next.
I had a strong desire to help people on a much deeper level than I was in my job.
The people I was working with more often than not work very self-loathing and were trying to make themselves feel better by getting their nails done, getting facials, slimming body wraps, etc.
They were perfecting everything externally thinking that it was going to make them feel better about themselves.
IT NEVER DID!
I had this deep desperation for something more and felt lost as to how to move forward.
I was also paralyzed by fear and insecurity.
I was afraid that if I took a risk and made a career change that was going to mean more schooling for who knows how long.
How was I going to provide for my son as a full-time student?
I was afraid to take a risk and fail to provide for my son and I was afraid of failing to successfully learn and become something more.
I was such a screw up as a person coming from the messed-up family I came from.
Who AM I to help anyone?
No university would accept a poor high school grad with a degree in Esthetics.
What did I have to offer that would make a good university accept me?
I would have to take another student loan and I was already paying off a huge student loan from esthetics school and not making enough to pay it off.
I had been out of school for 7 years at that point and I was still paying off the loan.
I had the desire to help others, but I didn’t even know how to begin to help myself and it was PARALYZING!
Then on October 18, 2012 it happened!
My life changed forever in one second.
It wasn’t my choice.
I wasn’t brave.
I didn’t take a risk and jump off the cliff and grow my wings on the way down.
I didn’t quit my job and force myself to thrive and them become hugely successful.
Something happened to me.
It was the only way to get me unstuck.
I was in a major 4 car accident. My injuries were so severe that I couldn’t work at the spa anymore.
I was devastated!
I was so afraid of not being able to provide for my son and then WHAM!
My health was taken from me and I still had to find a way to keep a roof over our heads.
I had no family and no man to support me. I was totally on my own.
With a severe concussion I struggled more than I have in my life and I found a way.
I chose the one service that I did at work that made me the most money with the least physical and mental effort. Eyelash extensions.
I could do 1 client a day 5 days a week and bring in enough to pay the bills.
I was in soo much pain that I would send my son to school in the morning and go back to bed.
Wake up when my neighbour brought him back home from school and put the tv on for him.
I bought Mr. Noodles, Pizza pops, pizza, canned food, whatever he could make for himself to eat because I was in too much pain to cook complex meals for him.
My son would help me set up the massage bed in the middle of the Livingroom.
I lived in a tiny little basement suit that composed of one little Livingroom, 2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a hallway that had a makeshift kitchen installed in it. I had an induction countertop stove to cook on and a toaster oven. That was my kitchen. The whole place was maybe 400sq feet.
I sat on my couch and did a set of lashes and then my son would take the massage bed down and I would take pain killers and crash.
The only time I was awake was between the hours that my son got home from school and when he went to bed.
The rest of the time I was alone in my room with the lights off and no sound at all. Any stimulation at all sent my pain through the roof.
I survived that way for a year and a half.
I kept asking myself “What am I supposed to learn from this?”
I knew there was a reason this accident happened.
I knew that it wasn’t truly an accident.
I just didn’t know that with my wishes, dreams, desires, and thoughts that I had asked for this to happen for my expansion.
I received a forced friendechtomy. I don’t’ know if you have heard of those but it’s basically when all your friends scatter. Life got hard for me and it turned out all my friends were “fair weather” friends.
I was forced to find a way to bring in money without a job. Which to my surprise I was able to do even with extreme injuries.
I happened upon an amazing loving, caring, sweet, giving, unconditionally loving man while I was visiting my sister who decided to move to another town after leaving her husband.
She lived there for 6 months to take a break and I went to spend time with her to see what her life was like.
I didn’t know it at the time but the man I met there would end up being the love of my life. Clearly I was too concussed to see it and it took him 4 months of chasing me to get me to date him.
To support my sister having her 2 children I found a way to rent us a 4-bedroom house with an ocean view.
All of a sudden I had a business that was giving me enough money that I could rent a place that took care of my sister and I and all 3 of our children. Shortly after that the lovely man I met became my boyfriend and he came to live with me part time contributing to the household.
THEN IT HIT ME!
Like a lightning bolt it hit me!
The accident that was not an accident happened for a reason and I knew what it was.
I needed a whole life make over.
I needed the opportunity to show myself what I was really capable of.
When things got really bad I thrived.
From that point on I knew that I had what I take to not just survive but THRIVE.
BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE…
It happened again.
One more brick wall.
Feb 6, 2015 I was at home with my family and I received a call.
My father was in the hospital. He had tried to commit suicide.
Then seconds later Scott my amazing boyfriend also received a call, and his father was in the hospital and was diagnosed with liver cancer.
I was still dealing with my injuries and in the process of putting my life back together and I was kicked in the rear again.
First we had to go and take care of my father who I had put in a facility where he was watched and got the support he needed.
We had to fly from Vancouver, BC, Canada to Toronto, Ontario, Canada to go see his father. He had surgery and was in ICU not doing well.
I spent a week in Toronto going in and out of the ICU visiting and talking to Scott’s father who was unconscious and hooked up to all the machines.
Over that time, I was so overwhelmed with everything hitting me that I ended up feeling like an egg that was going to crack into a million pieces if you tapped me with you pinky finger.
I forgot to mention that over the course of my recovery my mother took advantage of my injured state and convinced my teenage son to leave me and go live with her because I was a horrible mother. As you know it doesn’t take much to get a teenager to rebel against their parental figures.
Between losing my son, almost losing my father, Scott’s father in ICU with liver cancer, and of course dealing with severe injuries myself, I BROKE.
That is when I hit the point where I was forced to look outside myself for answers.
Walking through the halls of the Toronto hospital I talked on the phone to a person on a 24 hour help line that was provided by Scott’s work.
I must have talked to that person for what felt like 3 hours. I just vented everything.
I ended up going and seeing a Psychologist when I got back to Vancouver.
I was in the room with this older man who looked like he was about to retire. His body was in the room and his mind had already retired. I left the room feeling way worse than I did when I went in. I called a requested to meet with someone different.
I met another psychologist who was again not at all who I wanted to work with for another set of reasons. I found myself feeling really lost and realizing that maybe what society dictated was the answer WASN’T!
I continued looking for someone to work with and I opened my mind to other options outside of the scope of what is considered to be the traditional expected authority.
I ended up meeting a Hypnotherapist. I was launched on a totally different path that had me tapping into the most powerful part of my mind. The Hypnotherapist taught me that resolution was in working with my subconscious mind. She taught me that my whole reality was being created by my programs.
I had another powerful Epiphany, AH-HAH moment. I had to go on a journey to learn how to communicate with an aspect of my mind that no one had ever talked about or told me about.
WHY ISN’T THIS EVERYDAY KNOWLEDGE?
WHY AREN’T WE TAUGHT THIS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL?
Were my thoughts.
I chose in that moment to become a Hypnotherapist. It was the only way to really submerse myself in the teachings. In doing so I began to find the resolution I was looking for.
There was one more puzzle piece.
One more roadblock I had to hit before the puzzle was complete.
I was working with a client practicing my hypnosis. I chose to take her back to see herself when she was 7 years old.
At the time she was in her mid 20’s. When she went back she saw herself wearing a dress, looking at herself in the mirror, swaying the dress side to side, admiring how she looked in the mirror.
The adult her looked at that little girl and called her a horror, a slut, dirty, ugly nasty. She said she hated her.
She watched her father walk into the room and say just those things to that little 7-year-old girl. In the state of hypnosis, she accessed trauma. I connected with her and the trauma and I felt it in my own body.
It was this intense ball of energy in my gut that hit me so hard it brought me to tears. I felt deep sadness, wounding, pain, violence, and I felt so lost and powerless. I didn’t know how to help her release the pain and trauma.
I had to find a way to empower my clients to free themselves of their programs and most importantly their pain and trauma. I realized there was more to this picture from this one powerful life altering moment.
In the end, it sent me on a journey to certify in Pranic Healing and ultimately to discover Dr Bradly Nelson’s Body Code Healing which became the launching pad for Awakened Body.
This supported me creating a process and a program to go with it that supports my clients Updating their Mental Operating System. It’s kind of like when you update your phones software at night when you go to sleep.
Believe it or not your brain just like the software on your computer or phone. It needs to be accessed and updated regularly.
If we treated our brain like we did our phone as we are obsessed with our phones and on them all the time. Our brains would be optimized and running like a dream creating everything we want in life with ease.
The other piece of the puzzle is releasing the energy that is trapped in our body (Energy Body) that needs to be released for us to truly have holistic resolution.
If we release the programs but not the trapped energy, our body over time will create pain and dis-ease to communicate with us so we will hopefully get on board and do the work.
If we release the trapped energy in our body (Energy Body) and don’t update our Mental Operating System we will continue to create the same situations over and over again trapping new energy as our mind is trying to place our outdated programs in our face so we will pay attention and do the work.
That allowed to me provide holistic long-lasting resolution for my clients.
In the end I was able to create a program that took my clients through all aspects of their lives so they could really have resolution as well as create a new life in service of themselves.
A new life by design in control of their reality.
In communication and working with the power of their mind.
In harmony with their mind and body.
In a place of peace living a life with love as their compass.
When all is said and done I can see that walking through the challenges I did as a child was perfect the way it was.
It allowed me to hurt which pushed me to seek answers and resolution for myself.
Walking the healing path, myself showed me the effective path to walk to get to where I am now.
Which is a place of Self-Love, owning my Power and knowing that I am a Powerful Goddess having a human experience.
Knowing that everything is happening just as it should be, and I am exactly where I need to expand and to live my life’s purpose.
What is my purpose you ask?
I am here to flood the earth with love.
Which is why I am here sharing my story and doing this work.
The way I am going to do that is by guiding the people I work with to create an unconditionally loving relationship with themselves.
Each person then becomes a lighthouse for Self-Love and one person at a time the earth is flooded with love.
Harmony Woodington