Hot Pink YOUniversity

The News We Don't Always Hear When you travel, you are immersed in the culture of the people.  Included in that culture is the news that does not always make the American papers.  On day two, we visit the central area of Guatemala city and at market is this small memorial.  Crosses, ashes in the center, flowers and a board painted with three girls swinging on swings all surrounding a central memorial plaque. Extending to the memorial are two ladders with the names of the 41 orphaned girls killed in a fire at an orphanage.  A mother of one of the girls stands vigil over the memorial, cooking and selling some food as people pass by and stumble upon the place honoring the young girls' lives.   When we use the term orphans in America, there are no parents.  Unicef estimates that of the 132 million orphans in the world, only 10% don't have parents.(1)  Conditions of poverty force parents across the world to leave their children to the social wel...

Singing the Passport Blues and Other Fun Travel Adventures! I love to travel.  And for the first time, I am taking this girl ...my daughter...on her first international adventure.  As we touch down in Guatemala and see the culture that is waiting there, it is hard to imagine the anxiety I felt for the past two weeks waiting to receive Maya's passport!  Life is funny that way...we immerse ourselves in that moment in time and play through our heads the worse possible outcomes available to us.  When the passport did not come by July 1, even though we applied back in May, panic edged in, we leave on the 15th!  When a letter in the mail came asking for more documentation that I was indeed her mother, panic waltzed into the room and took up residence. A trip to Chicago with the documentation to prove parenthood was necessary.  C ome on, don't other people have hyphenated names...one of which matched her name perfectly!  We left with passport in hand......

Free 12 Tips and Tools to Increasing Love for Self A few weeks ago we launched the Summer of Love-ing ME!  12 weeks to increase your capacity to love self.  We know that in order to live an Ignited Life, you need to love self first and best.  Take care of self, sometimes even Radically Care of self...meaning extreme care during times of great stress or expended energy.  And, put your pleasure at the top of your To-Do List.... It's not always easy.  The others in our life can take over, form a mutiny, need from us, want from us. We only have so much to give. Sign-up for these free tools here! Hot Pink knows that you see this message a lot.  From us and others out there in the coaching and health and wellness business.  But, the importance of this message is such that it needs repeating.  The more you receive this message in your newsfeed, your inbox, your daily life...the more we are hoping it hits home. What are these twelve tools? ...

As you hang the 2016 calendar and throw away 2015, it is a symbolic ending and beginning that causes us to pause, for just a moment.  What did 2015 mean for you?  What did you create?  And, what can you celebrate.... Hot Pink YOUniversity invites you to create a ritual to review your 2015. Take a moment and think back, month by month....what was happening?  What did you learn about yourself and about the world?  What feelings did you create?  What did you manifest for yourself? As you think of these for yourself....Hot Pink YOUniversity will exemplify the ritual we invite you to create. January launched the very first Woman on Fire:  7 steps to Reignite Passion, Purpose and Play.  We combined everything that we knew to be true academically and personally into this 6 month intensive program.  We felt nervous, excited and humbled as we began the work that felt like birthing.  Birthing our ideas into the world and hopin...

      I am feeling another rush of powerful emotion as I sit down to share this story with you.  There is no doubt that I have been forever changed in many ways by my recent trip to India and that the transformation continues. Christie and I talk and teach often about The Art of Receiving .  Most of us tend to be great givers but we struggle with receiving .  Christie and I had just decided this would be the playshop we would be holding for our travel tribe on this trip-little did we both know how we would personally be in the need to receive on this trip!   My story shows that we are always able to learn more and that the Universe will provide the divine right opportunities at the divine right time-often when we least expect it!      We were just coming off an amazing, deeply spiritual sunrise ceremony on the sacred Ganges River .  I was in a truly open, loving, peaceful state as we entered the streets of...

It is the morning of our adventure.  My bags sit packed by the door.  My family still lightly sleeps.  I am feeling a mix of emotions....excited, yes.  Curious...no doubt.  A little afraid...stories trickle in from a variety of solicited and unsolicited sources on precautions and concerns.  It is this time before the trip, the books on India splayed out before me, my imagination centers of my brain on fire for what I might see, feel and hear.  These are the moments I feel plugged back into life, reignited with passion and perhaps a little purpose as I seek to understand and experience the various cultures of the world. For many of us, that fear holds us back from these experiences and we say "no" before we even consider the potential of a YES in our lives.  When you retrain your brain to say "YES", you plug back into that passion-seeking side of you.  Motivation is lost in 5 seconds.  If we look at the obstacles or potential...

Transformation Scary...exciting...powerful...Like lions and tigers and bears...oh, my! Transformation can keep you from going into the forest of change. We just wrapped up 6 months of transformation with the women who joined us in Woman on Fire : 7 Steps to Reignite Your Passion, Purpose and Play.   Each of the 6 months were filled with powerful one-on-one work with the women of Hot Pink YOUniversity .   The months held steps to contain the process of transformation.   Life isn't always like that, steps to transformations. Sometimes transformation is like a butterfly, gently releasing from a tissue-like cocoon.   But, more often it is   like a lotus, surrounded by muck and mud, rising slowly through the ooze and emerging bright and brilliant, better than you were before.   Or, transformation is a wrecking ball, bashing out of nowhere, unexpected, unwelcome and with devastating outcomes. We don't always get to choose what our tran...