I know that I’m supposed to tell you it’s always sunny here in California and we’re all tan, wear bikinis year-round and live the good life. But I have to say as a bay area born, pasty-skinned resident, that’s not entirely true. Not for me anyway.

I have a large coat made of recycled plastic water bottles. It’s pretty neat. One time while shopping at the same store where I purchased it, I overheard two customers joking that it shouldn’t be sold here because it is’t cold enough. I cowered in between the jeans I was browsing. But why?

My constitution is just cold. I’ve always had ‘thin skin,’ ‘cold bones’ whatever you want to call it. And I have to add that I think most people who live here are warm and consider it warm. Mando consistently tells me he thinks it’s really nice and not too cold at all.

I am aware and not naive to the fact that compared to the midwest, the east cost Canada and places like Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, it’s no where near as cold here in SF as it is in those places.

Even so, yesterday it was cold made worse by intense wind and I was increasingly becoming more and more dysregulated. I was really judging myself for it. ‘Everyone else has to deal with it you can too, and ‘just get over it‘ were the toxic phrases making the loop in my mind.

It’s easy to say, well, just move, pick somewhere with a warmer climate and move. But as we all know, life isn’t always that easy. And maybe just because we learn what we don’t want doesn’t mean there isn’t a greater lesson in being where we don’t belong. As I was pondering this very thing, I put on Chani Nicolas’s ‘week ahead’ available through her app and I was blown away….

She explained that Mercury was moving into Pisces (until April 3) and it’s placement is ‘super double different than it would normally operate in its own home…it’s kinda like being in an environment that is very opposite from where you naturally function at your optimal capacity. It’s like being in a windy place when you usually don’t do wind…’

Jaw drop at this very literal example of this placement and how it was playing out for me IRL. I even made Mando listen to it because he was also very thrown off by the violent wind. So what was her advice in the face of finding ourselves way outside our comfort zones? Learning to rely on our other faculties to move through time spent in not our ideal environment. Essentially leaning on our YES’S which i discuss in length in my course.

Life isn’t always going to go our way but there are ways we can invite small change in as we work toward greater change. Which is exactly what learned from living and prioritizing my Unique Digestive Design-a term I coined to define a combination of factors determined about an individual through self-assessment tools.

Not only is it ok to have a temperature preference, awareness of this preference is a tool to use in every aspect of our lives. And when access to living within this full design is not available to us, we can adapt without sacrificing our needs.

It has been surprising how dysrgulating it has been for me to live in too cold temps for my system. Unable to work, write, create, walk the dog, enjoy breakfast some days. It’s been so tough as times that I knew I needed a change. So after weeks of allowing myself to sit in the muck of it-complain, get validation- I decided to implement what I’m always encouraging clients to do which is to aim for small, doable daily change.

I brought in several hot cups of tea, turned on all the heaters, wore extra clothes and brought out extra blankets. It seems simple but often we overlook simple fixes for greater changes but it’s the small, simple changes we make daily that add up t the greater change we seek.

After so much time spent denying my needs in order to be more palatable, sacrificing for the needs of others, I feel like the lesson has been solidified. I have tried to live outside of my design long enough to know that it does more damage than good to try to fit a circle into a square.

I so often would let the fact that it wasn’t too cold for other people cloud my needs. I began questioning what I knew to be true for me deep within. I believe that the reasons we are so influenced to go against our natural rhythms are…

~We are worth more to capitalism sick, unhappy, lonely, disconnected, etc.

~Trauma takes us away from out intuitive knowing, abusers thrive on keeping their victims disconnected from themselves because the more connected an individual becomes the less available they are for abuse.

~We are gaslit out of our intuitive knowing because the more connected we are to our intuition the more likely we are to become aware of the abuse and make changes to our current environment which means the abuser can no longer perpetuate abuse .

~We are taught that boundary-less relationships are what love is

~The more in tune we are the more powerful we are and the more of a threat we are to them (capitalism) because we are no longer reliant on what they have to offer which is often things to distract us and things to help us avoid and numb out

Standing in our the power of our choices, likes, dislikes, and owning what lights us up while allowing ourselves to create distance between us and what doesn’t light us up creates an environment in which we can thrive.

And when we are thriving, living in our unique designs we invite others to do so because we are no longer judging their way but accepting and celebrating our differences.

A lot of what was holding me back was permission, permission to be wholly, fully and completely myself without feeling any guilt or shame about it.

Well, I’ve finally given it to myself. Hell, I even created a course that allows others to give it to themselves.

It’s just is a fact that a warm or even hot environment is more conducive to my design and I am becoming unapologetic about it. It seems simple but taking ownership of this fact even though I can’t make any big immediate steps to change it at the moments, has given me back a power that I lost grasp of a long time ago.

It’s given me a permission I needed to live my life according to my own terms.

…..

By early evening the wind had died down, Mando and James went for their evening run and I finished up the dishes, my body relaxing with each drop in temperature. It had even calmed enough to open a couple of windows, much needed from the steam that was gathering from my washing dishes and making dinner. Brining harmonious balance back into my day once again.