A slide from my 4th of July post on my @hmiwellness on Instagram account… today is all about FREEDOM…and for me, my entire last 14 years of pouring my heart and soul, mind and LOVE into my work in this world, has been about FREEDOM for women. Financial. Emotional. Relationship. Motherhood. Spiritual.
It is the Fourth of July here on Kaua’i, the morning light coming up soft over the mountains, the whole island quiet before the celebrations, and I am sitting with the most beautiful kind of full-circle feeling in my chest, because fourteen years ago on this exact day I posted a red, white and blue smoothie to a Facebook page with zero followers and no idea that I was pressing the first stone into the foundation of everything that would come.
And then, just the other day, right before I sat down to go live in Lifepath 2026: The Embodiment, a new-ish neighbor came to the door. I had never met her. She and her husband bought the house a few months ago, and they are almost never here, because they mostly live in Tokyo. We got to talking, and it turns out her husband is a mergers and acquisitions attorney at a large firm, and he started in New York (what are the odds) and transferred to Tokyo, and he is still working like crazy, and she is here alone with their fifteen year old son and his friend while he works on the other side of the world, and their thirteen year old daughter is off at a camp on the East Coast. I was immediately in the midst of a LIFEPROOF moment…a moment where time stands still (because truly, we all know time is actually not real) and you FEEL everything everwhere all at once - about your own life. It’s a moment that feels like ALL the threads of your lifetime…all of the people, places, millions of decisions, huge forks in the road, relationships to self-others-and God…and it all converges into one RADICAL experience of the NOW.
That happened to me as I stood there, in my own driveway, in this home I have been in for 20 years now, this home I have raised my children in, this home I have built an 8 figure empire in, this home that is my artist’s sanctuary, surrounded by ocean and jungle and birds and butterflies and wild chickens… and I felt the whole weight of the moment move through me, because that would have been me.
Yes. That WOULD HAVE BEEN me.
That was the exact life I was on the partner track to build. The beautiful vacation home here in my DREAM LIFE location… (but rarely being able to actually BE here)…the spouse and the kids being in the DREAM life home, on that timeline, while the corporate lawyer stays chained to the deal. And to the wheel. The wheel of “success.'“
But I was ABLE to free myself.
People always ask me, HOW did I do that? How did I walk away from the top law firm in the world, from the income, the future timeline of success as a top attorney, the clout, the recognition, and importantly - THE SOCIETAL VALIDATION of a career with such high prestige.
The baseline of all of those questions is really - HOW are you SO FREE…. because only a truly FREE person could make that choice. Only a truly free person could walk away from a path that magnetizes so much validation, approval, admiration and prestige.
The answer is…the unconditional love of my parents… which meant that ZERO of my internal self-worth ever comes from what those outside of me think, believe, say, don’t say, or validate.
The interesting thing about the path I was on is that by every external measure it looks like freedom. Money, success, achievement, exciting deals, international travel, being in the rooms many people wish they could be in… but never get the invite.
But there is actually nothing free about it.
Today, 25 years later, I see the same illusions in the entrepreneur spaces online as I have watched in the 14 years of building and growing my business.
I have a very simple way of measuring how much ACTUAL freedom a person has. I never look at what they own. I don’t look at the number, the followers, the square footage, or the logo on the car.
I look at how much they MISS.
I look at:
How many sunsets do you miss each week?
How many bedtime tuck-ins do you miss, how many of those small warm hands reaching up for you in the dark, while you are somewhere else being important?
How many “I love you’s” do you say to your children and your husband through a phone, into a screen, across an airport, instead of face to face, mouth to forehead, hand to heart?
How many ordinary Mondays slip past you without one single moment of watching your child meet the world, a ladybug on a leaf, a new toy, the dog doing something so ridiculous that you can’t stop snort-laughing?
How much of your life do you rush through? The breakfast. The dinner. The middle of the afternoon that could have been given to nothing but play, just for the pure fun of it.
How much of your day belongs to you, and how much of it belongs to your calendar?
How many appointments, how many blocks, how many little boxes stacked from morning to night with no white space left to receive God who never forces, but comes FLOODING IN with something beautiful when you have true free space in your life?
How many nights do you fall onto the pillow so exhausted that there is nothing left of you to give your lover in the deep quiet hours, no deep desire, no unhurried passion and intimacy, just sleep and the alarm and the doing of it all again?
How many long, meandering, unnecessary conversations about everything and nothing have you had this week, the kind that have no agenda and no end time and no point except love?
How many art exhibits did you never walk through, how many concerts did you say no to, because you were too tired, or because you “had work”?
THAT number is the real measure of your freedom. What you were there for. What you did not trade away. What you refused to let anything, or anyone, take from you.
That is the ledger. And it is the only one that will matter to you when your soul leaves your body.
Im doing all this (for their business typically) for my child/children/daughter…I want to show them I was doing all this, (a subconscious attempt to relieve themselves of the sinking feeling of losses you can never get back).
I have freedom because I don’t have to be glued to my phone (yet when you look at their social media feed there are as many reels and videos of them talking as there are days in a year)
I have freedom because I make so much money without a team…while spending weeks on the road away missing not just minutes but whole days of a child’s life for “work” in random locations across the country, and to be “present” at entrepreneur “events” - presence for networking and validation and transactional friendships rather than present at home watching your child discover a new food and smile with a toothless grin while you hold them…because you believe that this will give you access to more audiences and more money…and justifying it by telling yourself you are “doing it for your child.”
The truth is…
That is not freedom and it is DEFINITELY not for your child. Or,
I have freedom because I make a million dollars a month - but at the literal same time saying they struggle so deeply with depression, feel “unseen” and suicidal.
That is prison. That is a cage.
Not freedom.
That is being so detached from your soul, that even with the day to day smiling beautiful faces of your children and the presence of a “supportive” partner - you feel UNSEEN…and want to die.
Let that sit for a minute.
Literally wanting to die…while portraying yourself on social media as having freedom.
I have contemplated true freedom in a much deeper way this past week….and on this Independence Day, on the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of this country, while everyone floods the feed with the word freedom, freedom, freedom, I want to tell you the truth about what freedom actually is, because so many people are saying the word, and so few of them are living the thing.
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