Heading west and digging into the 8-plus hour drive home.

Oh, hi there. Thank you for joining me on this foray back through my trip to Sedona, Arizona this past weekend. 

Yesterday morning marked the last time I could hike one of the myriad trails in Sedona before I started that long-ass drive. I had changed in a Starbucks bathroom because no one wants to feel that gross while driving for that long, you know? 

It’s a trip that actually began over 20 years ago. I know that makes zero sense…there’s a lot to sort through and I don’t even know where to start.

Wait…here it is. I found it.

I’ll start in October of 2002. 

I was dating a super insecure dude who presented it in the grand forms of bravado and toxic masculinity. (That lasted all of three weeks.) 

I was about a year into hosting karaoke shows in West LA and the South Bay five nights a week, and during the 40-hour workweek daylight I was a new employee at the bottom rung of post-production for the MTV show “The Osbournes.”

I was also about to move into an amazing 2-bedroom rent-controlled West Hollywood apartment with my then-best friend.

Life seemed pretty good. 

But underneath the surface, I was absolutely freaking out that I had been forced to file for bankruptcy and was, at age 31, relying on my wonderful parents to pay for the BK attorney and to help me buy out the lease on my car so I didn’t lose it.

Let’s back up the truck a bit further. In October of 1999 after being in LA for something like 15 minutes, I was perusing the back pages of Music Connection magazine (ah yes, pre-internet) and found an ad for an independent music producer. 

My ex and I met with him. His pitch described the process of recording my own CD and taking control of my own career by managing myself. He would deliver an amazing, quality-sounding product for me to run with and, if I loved the product, he could help me arrange a tour schedule. 

We both had a “really great feeling about this.” 

So you can probably see where this is going.

We invested all of our “move to Los Angeles” money into my album because 1) we believed the rhetoric he sold us and 2) there wasn’t any way to really research him beyond the absolutely glowing fake references he provided.

He gave me just enough rough tracks to listen to in order to keep me on the hook, and throughout 1999-2001 (while also navigating a painful breakup and divorce) I desperately continued to believe his lies and invest more money that I didn’t actually have (kids, don’t abuse credit cards…they don’t like it) to finish the project and “set up a tour.” 

My God, was I fucking stupid or what?

Looking back at it I wish I could’ve screamed at myself to take our money and put a down payment on a condo in Agoura Hills with it instead. But alas…things didn’t happen that way, obviously.

Just in case you’re wondering…he continued to defraud aspiring musicians for many years. He was eventually outed on MySpace, of all places.

No, I will not name him here. I don’t want that energy back.

Yes, I did attempt to sue him. That was a disaster; the lawyer I hired appeared to be a cokehead and gaslighted me about actually doing the things he was supposed to be doing the entire time I retained his counsel. 

I was also way beyond out of money to continue paying legal fees past the retainer.

So I dropped the lawsuit and worked hard on letting it go rather than allowing it to continue eating me alive with bitterness, humiliation, and shame. (I already carried enough of that back then.)

So back to October 2002. Recap: 

1. Dating a dickhead

2. Moving into a great apartment

3. In the process of filing for bankruptcy (I didn’t have any more time left in the day to work off the debt…unless I gave up sleeping. So BK it was)

Note: this was a time of raging bulimia. (See my previous blog about that, if you are so inclined. Let's Talk About What No One Will Talk About...Bulimia)

Enter Sedona, AZ.

I had been there once, very briefly. In 2001 I appeared in a terrible reality show that was really fun to participate in but was torturous to watch (trust me…it was so, so bad.) It incorporated a drive from New York City to Los Angeles with stops along the way and zany challenges at those stops. (Yes…zany. Absolutely ridiculous. But oh man, I had such a great time.)

One of our stops while filming was in Sedona. It was so beautiful there that I couldn’t believe it was actually a real place. Then as we left and headed toward Las Vegas, I longed to return. 

So while I was wallowing in the spiral of my financial ruin and the crushing realization of my “independent singer-songwriter” dream being nothing but a way for a criminal to rip me off, I was also fantasizing about taking a solo road trip to Sedona.

I’d talk about it often over the next couple of years, but I was either working too much or didn’t have the money or whatever else I let get in my way. 

Quick tangent: I did record a new demo in 2003 by bartering with an actual (and talented) music producer named Travis Allen, trading my very expensive (and fucking heavy) Alesis QS8 keyboard for one track and saving up my tips from my gigs hosting karaoke for the other two. 

From that demo, I was signed by a small record label out of Illinois called Outback Records…and recorded an album (“Listening”) throughout 2004-2005 which was released in 2006 (and is available on all music platforms). 

So things do have a way of righting themselves.

Then I met my future (and current) husband in January 2005, and my road trip to Sedona was put away as one of those less important things that might happen “someday.”

This past Friday was that day. On October 20, I drove from my home in Southern California to Sedona Arizona. By myself. 

It was fucking glorious. And enlightening.

I did a lot of hiking while I was there because…that’s one of the main reasons why you go there. I love to hike, and I wanted to experience the magnificence of Sedona on foot as much as possible. 

And while I was out there hiking for hours, I felt this indescribable spiritual energy. It was as if I had been pulled there to discover something…or maybe uncover a few things within myself.

It was during my first hike early on Saturday morning that I realized why I’d not made that trip 20 years ago. I knew that if I had, I would never have met my husband because I would’ve sprinted out of California.

Have you ever felt a sort of compass within you? Is that what Christians describe as being moved by the Holy Spirit? 

I had that feeling of just “knowing.” 

It’s similar to when you feel connected to someone you have absolutely nothing in common with; where there’s no reason upon meeting that person for it to be anything more than a passing social interaction, and yet there’s just this… unexplainable, synchronistic connection.

I had that feeling when I first visited West Hollywood 25 years ago. I ended up moving to Los Angeles a year later and have lived in Southern California ever since. 

Well, I felt that “knowing” in Sedona.

The idea of running a mindset-shifting immersion retreat in Sedona sprung to the surface while I let its spiritual energy flood my entire being.

Then all of my fears and insecurities came out to play, and I’ve been emotionally wonky ever since.

I do know this. Things always have a way of working themselves out. I am exactly where I am meant to be right now. I started my coaching practice instead of getting a corporate job because it’s what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m meant to be helping people live healthier lives and finding what lights them up, not spending my life feeling like I’m wilting then dying a little inside every day…the way I did all of the years I spent working for other companies.

And if that vision I had while hiking through Sedona is meant to come to fruition, it absofuckinglutely will.

In the meantime, beauties and cuties, keep digging in to your own personal sense of knowing. That internal guide will help you in weight loss and managing depression more than you realize.

That “knowing” leads to your “whys”…those are the reasons that you are on this weight loss journey in the first place. Those are the things that keep you going and not giving up, even on the hardest days.

The knowing is what drives you to practice sitting through an urge instead of caving to it. It’s what leads you to listen to your hunger cues instead of blowing right past them.

Keep listening for that sense of knowing. It’s there, even if you can’t hear it yet.

And if right now you’re saying to yourself, “I have no idea what this bitch it talking about,” I’d like for you to reach out to me because we need to have a conversation immediately. Email me at dana@revolution-within.com.

I’ll write to you next week. All will be well.

Love & hugs,

Dana