What is a Big Life, and Where Can You Get One?

Eight years ago, I found myself unpacking my things in a little apartment outside of Salt Lake City where I had just moved when I left my husband of 23 years. As I was going through boxes, I found my grandmother’s childhood bible that I inherited when she passed in 2028. It was so fragile and falling apart that I had never opened it until that night, and I was so delighted and intrigued at what I found! My grandma was not an intensely religious person like my parents who converted to the Mormon church the day before they were married and a year before I was born. She was Unitarian and I don’t know if she even really read the bible or not. We never talked about spirituality. When I found her bible, I was nearly three years into being an ex-Mormon and working hard to dismantle all my beliefs about God, life, and myself.

It's my grandma who’s life inspired the name of this website and blog and this whole business. She was a 1950s housewife. She divorced when my mom was in college, then went through a transformation where she bloomed into life. She lived on a shoestring, supporting herself as an artist, but traveled the world, took lovers, had adventures, recorded her life in art, and just lived so fully that her daughters called it her Big Life.

In her Bible I found a piece of paper pressed between pages where she had written, "Mom's Death" and the date her mom died. The bible’s title on the top of that particular page was “Day of Affliction.” I found a bunch of pressed flowers on a page in The Acts with the title “The Decision,” and I found a feather marking the beginning of The Song of Solomon, the sort of sexy Leaves of Grass of the bible. Marking it with a found father just makes it even more so. I am dying to know the story behind the decision and the feather. I guess I’ll never know.

My grandma's mysterious bible

I find myself eight years later sitting at a coffee shop in Houston writing this entry. It’s the first entry on this blog, and my website isn’t even officially up to start this new phase of my business, but I wanted to have this ready when you find it, because it is for you.

I still live in a little apartment, this one a little one bedroom in Houston, about thirteen miles from where I went to high school. I lived here from 1987-1991, my high school years. My family all moved away from Texas in 1996 when I was a young Mormon housewife in Utah pregnant with my second baby.

After my divorce I got in another relationship that lasted until the end of 2021 when passed away and I found myself starting from nothing yet again. I lefy Atlanta where I’d started a new life with him and moved in with my high school best friend who still lived in Katy, TX where we went to school. She had a spare room and invited me to stay there while I got on my feet. I decided to stay there until I could afford my own place then I’d leave Houston and move to a “good place.” It turns out Houston works for me and when I could afford a place on my own, I’m here three and a half years later.

I have definitely lived my Big Life since I moved to Houston. Once I was done with the most intense parts of the grief and trauma, my great big beautiful life began. I started dating and exploring the city and having all kinds of experiences I could never have when I lived here when I was a kid.  I find myself now a few years into my Big Life with an actual dating history that isn’t Mormon-ish, but full grown up. I have fourteen and counting tattoos, several of which I did myself. I’m remembering when I heard the song that is being played right now over the coffee shop speakers being piped through outdoor speakers last year in the middle of the night in Shinjuku Tokyo. I just went through the photos I took in Rome a few months ago. I’ve been to rooftop parties in LA, run around the Las Vegas Strip at night, walked down a sacred mountain in Kyoto, explored my sexuality dating men, women and non-binary people. I have supported myself reading cards and doing energy healing work remotely so I can heal and live my quiet life that is punctuated with adventures. I have Big Life’ed for sure in more ways than I can write here. I used to think I was nothing like my free-spirited Grandma. I was wrong. We are very much alike. I’m so glad!

Me in Rome a few months ago

Like my grandma, I did it all on a very limited budget, not pretending I am a rich woman from my energy and coaching work but making the most of what I do have. I am rich in time and opportunities, though, and rich in bravery to say yes to what comes my way. I fully expect this to be just the beginning.

What will my great big beautiful life have for me going forward? I have no idea, but I’m here for it, and I am here to help you find and live yours. What we will be exploring in this blog and all that supports it is learning what a Big Life is to me and to you, and getting you some tools to create it. A Big Life is as unique as you are. For some living fully is setting down deep roots and creating a lasting legacy for your home, family and community. For others it might be to hop on plane see the word. For others it might be to live in a way that you are very aware of the beauties in the everyday, so it feels like a romantic ritual to drink your morning coffee and open the blinds letting in the morning sun.

To me the thing that is missing in most coaching and healing programs is the reality of real life. We are where we are, and that is part of the beauty. I have seen so many people who say, heal yourself and follow this program and suddenly you will be a millionaire and have nice cars and world trips and have a perfect life of happiness. I’m sorry, but for most of us that is not a big life, not in this sense anyways. A great big beautiful life that I want for myself and for you might involve those things, but before that it is falling in love with your life as is and making micro steps every day to change the things you aren’t in love with. It is to breathe into your real daily life and give yourself permission to be who you are, live that way and be your own best friend. That way you can attract to your life what you actually want. It’s not about pretending happiness or trying to achieve what people tell you is desirable. It is feeling all your feelings and taking daily purposeful steps to create what makes your life feel satisfying, even if it’s different than it is for others.

For me, some of the things that make me feel like I am in my big life are when I am allowed to feel the full scope of my feelings. I can cry, laugh, feel mad, feel scared, feel joyful, grieve and feel satisfied, and all the things. I feel I am in my great big beautiful life when I am doing things I love and am good at that might have been forbidden in my past like when I make homemade tattoos out of antique lace patterns, read tarot for a living, drink coffee and savor it with my whole soul, spend Sundays refreshing myself, having time alone, working on my own business, dating who I want in the way I want, basically doing most things I do now that I think about it.

One of my homemade stick and poke tattoos that I made out of an antique lace pattern

The purpose of this blog and the business is to talk about what big lives are and how to get them. If you learn to look at things right, your big life doesn’t start later, when you hit middle age, when you retire, when you have a certain amount in the bank. It starts this moment, today, right this minute. For now, stop what you are doing, even reading this blog for one minute. Look around you, where you are sitting, what you are doing, how does it feels in your body. Does it light you up in some ways? Does it not light you up in others? Are there pieces of pleasure in this moment? Are there things you could add that would do that? Are there changes to make to help you feel more satisfaction in your life that can’t be done entirely now but can be started step by step one day at a time?

This is how the big life starts—noticing, presence, awareness of your life and your space in it. That is where we are going to start to work on your big life, your greatest project. The thing you have to offer future generations, present generations, and what you have to offer to the collective, is you living authentically, fully, purposely and with joy. Where you find your big life is inside of you, and how you get it is to take purposeful steps daily in the real world to make what is inside manifest on the outside. We will talk about those tools in this blog, so let me pour another cup of coffee, and let’s get started.

My morning coffee in Rome