I stood in the hospital hallway, desperate. My mother had been there for weeks. Her condition wasn’t improving, and I needed answers. “What is she actually dying from?” I asked the doctor.
His reply hit me like a freight train.
“Basically, poor self-care.”
No rare disease. No complex condition. Just decades of ignoring her needs. Of pushing through, giving endlessly, and never restoring. That’s what took her.
That moment rewired something in me. This wasn’t about illness. It was about depletion. And I realized this is how it happens. Quietly. Slowly. Unintentionally. You fade from your own life.
I stopped calling it self-care.
I started calling it Sacred Devotion.
Because this isn’t about indulgence, and it’s not about escape. It’s not a reward for productivity or a bubble bath you earn after exhaustion.
It’s the steady, intentional honoring of your energy because your life matters. Because your family feels it when you are depleted. Because the people who love you, even if they don’t say it, need you well. Even the woman at the checkout stand feels your presence when you smile and mean it. At a physiological level we are tribe creatures.
I’ve lived the contrast and the choices became so real. My mother passed at 78, worn down and tired. My grandmother, Irene, lived to 103. She jogged every morning into her nineties, carried no grudges, and passed peacefully in her sleep. Her vitality wasn’t luck. It was practice. It was devotion.
My mother withered. My grandmother thrived. That contrast became my truth: how you live is how you die.
Sacred Devotion isn’t about putting yourself first.
It’s about keeping yourself whole so you can keep showing up that way as an honor to your life. You really can be whole to the last days of your life, because if you've lived that way, you'll die that way.
Here’s how to begin.
1- Move with meaning.
Not to burn calories. But to circulate life. To be the generator of your own health and good energy. When you stretch, walk, dance and lift, your brain responds with helpful neurotransmitters. This is by design! Physical movement is medicine.
2- Let go often.
Grudges are heavy. Release makes you light. To let go is not a mental practice. So many people say, "Oh I let that go" while inside, subconsciously, they hold resentment and fear. Letting go often means being devoted to a practice of surrendering the things you've been conflicted with. Whether it's a family conflict, a conflict with your weight or even with money. It's a practice of trusting life. What is your letting go practice?
3- Put yourself on the calendar.
You’re not optional. You and God are the source. If life falls apart, its your respons-ability to trust deeper and piece it back together. Don't ask for life to be easier, ask for you to trust yourself more. Make dates with designing your life. Just yesterday I was on a call with a wonderful client I've had for years. I consider her a treasured friend. We talked about her next steps after yet another plot-twist in her life. She put herself on my calendar as an act of putting herself on her calendar.
4- Reflect and realign.
Not to fix, but to return to your heart.
To the quiet home inside you, where truth lives and God still speaks. All of my Hypnosis meditations are created from this space. They are designed to be meaningful manifestos that bring you home to yourself once again.
5- Create. A painter never stops painting.
In the noise of life, Sacred Devotion brings you back to your joys, talents, interests and developed skills. They are a container for what makes you, YOU. Just as I create Hypnosis meditations from a place of true-desire-to-help-you-live-your-most-courageous-life, you have your own incredible sense of love and purpose. Keep doing it!! (There are not enough exclamations in the universe for that last point.) For some that means volunteering and crusading for a cause, for others its building a legacy or crocheting a blanket for a friend. KEEP DOING THAT.
The world doesn’t need more burned-out people trying to prove their worth or the opposite- not living as they're worth. It needs YOU as a lit-up soul rooted in your strength, led by love, and fueled by devotion.
My mother taught me what happens when we forget that life must be honored. My grandmother showed me what’s possible when we don’t.
Now it’s your turn.
Devote to yourself like your life depends on it.
Because it does.
