It’s been a while, and so I’m taking this opportunity to reintroduce myself. I’m Laura Martin Bovard, principal at LMB Interiors, mom, wife, sister, friend, and “recovering perfectionist.” Over the years, I’ve learned to release the hustle for approval, healing the parts of me that used to seek self-worth through achievement, comparison, and caretaking.
If you knew that the pain you are going through was going to become your greatest learning and would set you free if you could just be with it, would that make it easier? Ok then.
Somewhere along the line, our culture decided we should do anything we could to avoid pain. Take a look at the pharmaceutical industry, for example. Got a headache? Take an aspirin. What if that headache had some information to offer you about something you are ignoring or unwilling to be with?
I am the beloved daughter of the motherf—ing Universe, in all of her glory. I take a stand for myself. I take my personal power back. I ascend this fear that seeps its toxic poison through the cells and tissues of my body. I claim a spontaneous healing of this fear and anxiety that is not mine and does not belong to me. I will prevail and rise like the phoenix I am, from the ashes. I stay in my own lane and allow all souls to have their own life experiences. I take responsibility where it is mine, and relinquish all other responsibility for anyone but myself.
We’re here to wake up together, to walk each other home, to turn on each other’s lights when we forget, so that no one has to sit in the dark. You can have a sister turn on the light for you. There’s no need to ask who is more wise than the other… instead, think about what level of unfolding you are in. You don’t make a peony wrong, whether it’s a tight bud or a full bloom.
I can tell I am in my ego when I vacillate between feelings of inadequacy and feelings of thinking I am special in some way. And I don’t mean ‘special’ in a good way. I mean ‘special’ in that awful way where I can feel superior because I think I know better, or am better in some ways because I work on myself. But when I am in my heart, all of that duality disappears, and then I am love. And from that place, I can forgive myself for feeling inadequate and special.
What would it be like if you realized that every thing, every person, every moment of your life has been for your awakening? One of the most beautiful takeaways from my journey into the shadows via plant medicine, network care, and the myriad of other tools, is that this reality isn’t reality. It’s an illusion filtered through my perceptions.
Once upon a time, a few years ago, as my now-multi-million-dollar business was growing rapidly and I was riding the waves of intensity, I had a conversation with another woman-business owner, Catherine Baldi, who runs a large painting contracting business, Arana Craftsman Painters. She said to me, “Your business is an entity separate from you now. Ask it what it needs.“ Indeed I have come to see my design business, LMB Interiors, as its own separate being. I revere her. I treat her as a lover. I ask, “What do you want, business?”
Sex and pleasure! That is a forbidden topic! If you know me, you know that I was raised Pentecostal. Pentecostals do not like us to talk about pleasure and sex and in fact, it is such a taboo topic, I still don’t talk about it easily, at 53 years old, even though I left that home almost 40 years ago.
I have to tell you, it has been through recognizing the importance of sisterhood and community that I have come into my own as a woman, expander, teacher, mentor, business owner, boss, and leader. I am so much better at and more connected to these roles because of the sisterhood that I have surrounded myself with, in the last few years. In connection with these women, I have experienced the truth that one of the most powerful ways for us as humans to find ourselves is through the witnessing of others.
I have to tell you, it has been through recognizing the importance of sisterhood and community that I have come into my own as a woman, expander, teacher, mentor, business owner, boss, and leader. I am so much better at and more connected to these roles because of the sisterhood that I have surrounded myself with, in the last few years. In connection with these women, I have experienced the truth that one of the most powerful ways for us as humans to find ourselves is through the witnessing of others.
