What’s your new “This”? Encouragement for Starting Anew!
In 2013 I packed up my office at Zhena’s Gypsy Tea and drove back from LA to Ojai in tears. The verbal violence I’d been enduring finally broke me. While I was still the “face of the brand” I’d been yelled at, ignored, and cut from all meetings and even taken out of my role as formulator. No one on the outside could really understand the strange pain I was feeling, I didn’t know other founders who’d been fired yet, and the isolation was worse than the actual firing.
Flash forward to 2018 and I am working to raise money to buy the company back. Not the company itself, granted, but my name or should I say, my great-aunt’s name: Z(h)ena. She was the only family member of my grandmother to stay behind in the Ukraine and survive Stalin and the Cold War, she had fortitude and became a leader in her community—queen of the Gypsies—in her village because she had two cows and had the village place of worship—a small house with a huge altar for the Virgin Mary. What an honor to be the keeper of her name. What an unexpected tragedy to then lose it to a Wall Street bully who could give a F.
So, I negotiated for my name—the trademark that is—and we agreed on a price. We’d gone from $250K to $25K. I was thrilled—even though when they fired me they refused to even pay my last paycheck…I’d released all of that…and I had already written the check and was about to send it. But then frustrated big chain store buyers started calling and emailing me that they were out of stock, no one had told them they were closing Zhena’s Gypsy Tea, so they thought I’d still be shipping. I asked the Chairman to notify them, and he refused, then subsequently refused to sell me back my name.
At this point, I wasn’t all that surprised, there’s some bizarre karma with this man. I’d named him Rumplestiltskin in private, because a fairy tale-sized archetypal lesson would have to come from this strange relationship—because what else could? It made little sense, and since the mind is so wonderfully equipped to deal with big issues through symbolism that name summed up the situation. Perhaps I saw my name as my first child, and this man refusing to give it back could only make sense in a fairy tale land where nothing really makes sense. So, I did what I couldn’t do in the past, I let it go.
Then one evening, as a full moon was rising over the mountains on my left, and the sun was setting on my right I received a message.
I was at the top of a mountain range with my photographer Mariana and some others, we’d just wrapped a photo shoot, and the whole sky was pink-purple-orange and infinite. I pulled my car over and as we all piled out we gasped at the sheer beauty of the moment—nature and our planet was putting on the most spectacular show. I began to cry a little in awe, you know those moments right!? It was pure wonder to see the earth and her two main planets in such perfect, harmonious balance.
Life is too precious to hold onto anger.
It’s too lovely to grasp with our grievances in the way.
It’s too spectacular and fleeting to stay stuck in a past idea.
A gateway in my heart opened, and joy poured in. I realized my name couldn’t really be taken…if Stalin couldn’t squash my great aunt, no one could squash me.
So I said a little prayer in my head: Lesson learned, thank-you!! NOW, please show me what you want me to do now! I am open to anything!
I heard a response—you know the one—directly from the ethers, the sing-song of angels. The answer was simply: This.
This awe. This moment. This planet. This movement of time. This.
This is our assignment.
This life, lived in fullness.
This spinning planet, experienced in awe.
This exchange of life—the earth giving our spirits matter and bodies.
This magic that occurs each day—this shift from night to day and back again.
This is our assignment. This is the point. This feeling, body, story, set of challenges, this this this.
And so this is what I want to give you as encouragement to start something new—something you always wished to do.
To be present in your life is the point of your life.
This.
This moment—take it!
This breath—breathe it!
This chance to love—share it!
So, I decided from the message that sharing time and ways to be present was my real job now—an assignment from the Universe, and using my name wouldn’t make sense—but wrapping an idea ofTHIS into a new brand name would!
I realized that because I was fighting over THAT, I could never truly experience THIS.
So, THIS is it. The joy of THIS is presence and awareness. It just happened to take me back to TEA! Because TEA puts me in the present moment—a magical grounding force for being in THIS!
Magic Hour would have never been born had I gotten THAT. Instead I received a transmission to share THIS—the present moment of awe we all have right now. If we’re not present to this, we can never truly be in our lives.
So, I encourage you to let go of your name.
Let go of the identity you think you are.
Let go of the “that” which you are still holding onto.
Let go of the grievances and the frustrations that are stopping you from the THIS.
What does the negative influence in your life want from you?
This.
What does grievance take from you?
This.
What does living in the past strip from you?
This.
What is possible for you when you let all of that go?
THIS.
I want this for you.
I want you to live for your “this!”
I want you to be present to THIS. The miracles, the eye contact, the touch, the precious NOW.
We all have a chance to live our full THIS.
We just have to let go of…THAT.
I love you all, please share your stories of release and the infinite now with me here in the comments.
AND, you just wait! A blog series is starting June 15th here that I think you’re going to LOVE.
Huge hugs to you all!
Zhena
