Roxanne Elaine Smith- 2017 Photo

Hello Everyone!  Hello to all of you highly sensitive souls who resonate with the topics of emotional healing on my blog. Hugs to all of you!!!  I look at this blog and it is a marvel to me that I am so proud of–and now with over 250,000 views!   When I was writing with a pen name in 2010 at the start of this blog (with my middle name Elaine), I was uninhibited to talk openly about my emotional healing journey and help others in the process–this blog helped me find my true voice!  Then some things changed, some health problems, especially those in my throat chakra, that made me realize and listen to my heart and inner guidance that I needed to be singing–that my music and songs needed my best energy. Suddenly I was feeling spread too thin to keep up with the blog,  In 2014, I was going to open mic nights to overcome my fear of singing in public, and I was making an album of my original songs which was a dream come true.

Now jump ahead to now–This week is the 1 year anniversary of my first paid gig on September 23, 2017!  So now, as of September of 2018, I’ve had 19 performances in the last year at about 7 different locations. I’ve performed mostly as a duo with the help of several amazing guitarists to accompany me at some wonderful supportive venues for new musicians (mostly wineries and some food and beer chains 😊). In August, I was invited to perform my original songs at a local folk festival due to my success which was a big exciting breakthrough for my career and then I exhaustedly took a break for the month of September.  😃 🎉Phew!

I’m still on that break right now as I regroup and decide how I want to move forward.  I’m so grateful to these venues and the angels above for helping me land these gigs. Performing is such a thrill!–but it is also draining afterwards because, yes, I’m still an introvert, empath, and highly sensitive soul who has just figured out how to balance life and recharge in order to do it. Now I’m ready for the next level–reaching out to some higher paying venues to play even more original songs with new-found confidence and experience!

With this break which required some rest and regrouping, I feel stronger than ever before in so many way and so I am naturally examining what is important to me and following my heart. I’m happy to say that I have newfound excitement, renewed energy, and gleeful interest in reconnecting with this blog and it’s followers. Yay! This community is very important to me and has always been, but as many of you highly sensitive souls can relate to spreading yourself too thin, unfortunately keeping up with this blog had to take a back burner.

But now I’ll be sharing more of my healing journey on this blog, in part because I have recently made the realization that my own emotional healing journey is an important part of the musical journey too. Most of my 60+ original songs that I continue to write were born out of this need to dive deep and make sense of the painful feelings that come up as we navigate life–a determination innate in me to see the sun–the silver lining in every painful cloud. They are all heartfelt, soulful, positive, and empowering (but some are raw, vulnerable, and about inner child healing and those songs will be best shared here only on this blog …for now😌).

Now that I’m over the hardest hump of tackling the stresses of performing, I now realize it’s important that I’m transparent and honest and vulnerable as an artist.  So this is me.  It hasn’t been easy.  I’ve had emotional pain and shame come up to the surface with each big success. I’ve been shocked that there’s still more to heal when I thought I had healed all there was to heal.  No it seems there will always more to face and release as we get stronger.  New relationships and changing relationships still cause triggers and even ptsd reactions. I’ve been awakened to a spirituality that has raised my perspective higher than I ever imagined. I am grateful that I have tools to cope and to share to help others.  And here on this blog I can relax and be myself.  So I’ll be sharing more of my self here including my songs, my healing journey, my life.  Looks like New Beginnings again! (–wow that’s the name of my album–how serendipitous!) Have a wonderful end of September and I’ll be back again next week with part 2 of this update of …transparent emotional growth.  Wishing you a week of extreme self care and tender loving comfort for your wounded inner child.

With Tons of Love and Light ✨💖✨,

Roxanne 😊🎶✌️🙏💖✨

For highly sensitive souls, life can be especially complex. Whether you believe you may be a lightworker, an empath, an earth angel, etc. or just a regular human being trying your best to shine some love and light and compassion to show the bright side of every situation, you are complex.  I know I am. I believe this is a good thing. But just when I think I have things figured out, more new layers of emotional healing come out of left field to surprise me and tell me, there’s more challenges ahead–more self-growth to make me stronger. Jeesh!  I find a great deal of comfort talking to energy healers, reading about other HSPs’ journeys, and listening to videos of those who channel spirit for guidance.  I’ve learned to channel uplifting spiritual messages for myself in the last few years as well and it is a great comfort that is hard to describe. I like to spread my “everything is gonna be alright” messages to help others who are feeling lost or stuck. I do this through my songs, my blog, my facebook pages, and in my daily life with my family and friends. I feel it’s my true purpose in life and it took me a long time to find this inner peace and inner knowing and have confidence to believe it and share it.

I also find comfort coming here to this blog community. When I’m feeling unsupported in my personal life and childhood wounds rise to the surface, I find comfort in being in the company of other like-minded souls who feel the same way. I believe I have a higher self who has in some way orchestrated the challenges that come up for me to make me stronger.  I also believe I have free will to choose different paths as I go and I also believe I attract certain things based on my beliefs and the energy I am emitting. Often this energy is invisible to us–we all have blind-spots.  These blind-spots served us well for a time but now when we are stronger, things happen in life to make us “see” what we couldn’t before.  The illusions are lifted.

I had a long run of good fortune while I was away from this blog for awhile and those things I built and accomplished are solid things that I can count on–things I know about myself that no one person or event in life can take away. Now more growth and challenges are  happening and I realize I have very solid ground to fall back on.  This makes all the difference!  So when things happen and you are feeling like, “What the heck is going on! I don’t deserve this!”,  know that you are growing into becoming your true self and your false self is falling away.  It’s like when a wall is coming down which is a good thing but you accidentally get hit by one of the falling bricks on your head!  It hurts!  But the truth is the wall IS coming down, Yay! Don’t focus on the bruise on your head–see past it! It wasn’t meant to stop you or punish you at all, it’s a by-product of movement in the right direction!  If you are “seeing stars from the calamity”, you are actually on your way to clarity of mind and attracting a life more suited to your true self! You are strong enough to handle it or it wouldn’t be happening to you!  You’ve got this!!

Please comment if you are experiencing a “brick on the head” at the moment or just to say hello–it will help support other highly sensitive souls who haven’t yet found their voice.

P.S.–I’m excited to announce I’m going to be coaching again with a very flexible schedule of openings available all throughout the week.  I’ll be adding face-to-face coaching for clients in the Indianapolis area at an exciting new office location on Wednesdays only.  I’ll be adding Intuitive sessions with access to the Akashic Records, and Reiki Energy Healing services as well.  Email me at truevoicelifecoach@ymail.com if you are interested or just for more info.  I’m also updating this blog and my coaching website so there will be lots of good changes happening. Yay!  😀

Let’s embrace change together! We are a community of comfort, compassion, and encouragement for the emotional healing of our highly sensitive souls! Join us! Please Follow this blog for more uplifting, personal posts that will be coming!

With love and light,

Roxanne

Take Me Down

By Roxanne Elaine Smith

Woke up feeling all the pain of all injustice

Of those accused but did nothing wrong

It’s as if those who shine their lights the brightest

Bear the brunt of changing darkness into song

=====================

Chorus: Take me down to the river

And I’ll wash away my tears

Take me down with the givers

And we’ll wash away the years

Let the water wash the darkness

From the hearts of all those souls

Who do not know that the river holds the gold.

===========================

Hidden from the consciousness illusions do arise

And a subtle roll of thunder underneath the cloud survives

Beware the dark billowing of shadows that roll in

And the light of those entangled must be strong and grow within

==========================

Chorus: Take me down to the river

And I’ll wash away my tears

Take me down with the givers

And we’ll wash away the years

Let the water wash the darkness

From the hearts of all those souls

Who do not know that the river holds the gold.

================================

Bridge: That’s the beauty of believing in a higher love

I can comfort all injustice in my life

Take me down with your words and I get help from up above

Bring on the pain it just makes me feel alive

Take me down, take me down, take me down,

take me down,

Take me down, take me down, take me down

=============================

Chorus: Take me down to the river

And I’ll wash away my tears

Take me down with the givers

And we’ll wash away the years

Let the water wash the darkness

From the hearts of all those souls

Who do not know that the river holds the gold.

2x, slow to end.

Original song © Roxanne Smith

Hello everyone.  Highly Sensitive People often have highly sensitive bodies and food sensitivities.  Perhaps you are realizing this about yourself and frustrated about what to eat.  I know I was for a long time and it has been a journey of trial and error finding what worked for me.  I finally found it in 1995 and it changed my life and gave me so much more energy and hope. Now people comment that I look younger than my age (my children are grown up and on their own).  Here is a recent photo of me.

I attribute this solely to the fact that I have been on (for the most part) this very healthy diet called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet that I discovered in September of 1995. (I wrote a longer post about this diet previously on this blog and it has gotten over 5,000 views–you can read about it here.)

Due to being sick and tired of being sick and tired, I am happy to say that this diet cured me of my chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple food allergies that plagued me in my late 20s through my 30s. Since then I always come back to it to regain my health when I wander off of it from time to time. Now I’ve been sticking to it! It is an anti-inflammatory diet which explains why I have no aches and pains or arthritis like many people my age do. By reducing the allowed nuts I find I can keep my desired weight in check too (in other words, when I eat too many nuts and nut butters on this diet, I tend to gain weight if I’m not exercising much–it took me some time to figure this out! :D)

But all diets need adjustments to the individual needs of the person. This past year, in my attempts to be even more balanced,  I unknowingly was actually hurting my health! I had stopped eating red meat a year ago for ethical reasons and I do not like seafood AND at the same time I stopped eating raisins and dried fruits because of a recent final surge of ridding myself of candidiasis (yes, my lifelong struggle with candidiasis is now finally under control–I could write another whole post on this subject… 🙂 ). I believe it was all of these things that lead up to my body being low on IRON for months without realizing it! No wonder I was dragging! I waited too long to get a blood test to find out why I wasn’t bouncing back after a recent move to a new house.

Now I heard it may even take as much as 90 days to get my body absorbing iron supplements properly. But I’m so grateful it wasn’t anything more serious and all I have to do is take some supplements.  The big lesson learned is:  we can’t always intuitively know what our bodies are needing!  Sometimes we need a blood test now and then!  My wonderful, compassionate, alternative doctor is an MD of Integrative Medicine. He had only heard a little about the SCD diet but he has supported me completely when I told him of my results with it.  In addition to increasing my iron he is also having me get B12 shots now twice a week as well as some adrenal support as well to get my energy levels back to normal.  He had wanted me to have a blood test 7 months before I finally did (but I was stressed and too busy with all that is entailed with getting ready to move to a new home). Now that I’m settled in my new home, I’m determined to get back to performing again and writing more songs of hope and healing and now, with a doctor’s help, I’m back on my way again. Yay!

(It took me a long time to find a doctor who was sensitive to my needs.  If you’d like to try a new doctor, pray for guidance and listen to your intuition, and keep searching until you find the right one for you.  Insurance may not cover the one you find but the extra expense may be worth it if you think of your body as an investment that is worth the extra cost.)

Yes, we highly sensitive souls often have highly sensitive bodies that need extreme self care! And healthy diets are the fuel to help us reach the goals of our true purpose on the planet.

Here is a website which supports my diet (now a lifestyle that I adhere to):  http://scdlifestyle.com/about-the-scd-diet/.  I am not a medical professional–please always check with your doctor or a licensed medical professional before changing your diet.

It’s not easy to give up unhealthy comfort foods but it is so worth it when you finally have the energy to carry out your passions and gifts!!  In my case, with this particular diet, it takes about 2 weeks to get over the sugar and complex carb cravings and then it gets easier.  And if you are sensitive to gluten you may feel the energy increase immediately.

Remember, sensitive souls, you are sensitive for a reason, so please take care of yourself so you finally take off and soar!!  As you grow in compassion for your inner child’s wounds, grow in inner strength to rise above negative messages that arise to heal, the next step is to increase your energy levels so that you can become a creative partner with your higher self!!  You can do it!!

With love,

Roxanne

Hello everyone.  So many people are still continuing to visit and follow this blog even though I stopped writing on it a while back!  This community is indeed a special one!  I realize the common bond we all have of sharing the journey of awakening to becoming our true selves by acknowledging the depths of our childhood wounds. We HSPs innately have the inner strength and determination to voice and transmute our painful truths, grow in self-compassion, and ultimately learn to comfort ourselves in order to become whole and ultimately Shine Strong!! ✨ 😍 ✨   I’ve decided to reconnect with you all again and share some more personal posts knowing this is a place where I can share my most authentic self!  What’s more important than that?!!  haha Nothing, right?!!  💃 💝

To refresh your memory, “Hope and Healing with Elaine” was changed to “Hope and Healing Haven” as I revealed my real name was Roxanne Elaine Smith. It was wonderfully empowering to step into being myself and no longer use a pen name.  Many changes have happened to me since I’ve been away.  Mostly I have stepped fully into my realizing I am a singer/songwriter at heart and that I was born to do it!!  I’ve been evolving as a performer and it is my top career priority.  I am also still a life coach (on hiatus) and feel comfortable now calling myself a Spiritual Counselor as I have been drawn more and more to understanding “the big picture” of why I am here “as a soul”.   I have an unquenchable desire to connect with my higher self at all times now and also learn to balance and understand the challenge of being a highly sensitive person on the planet.  Let me know if you can relate to my journey and I will continue to share on this blog all that I am discovering.

To get right to it, here is a post that I shared on the newer blog Higher Ground Haven (which has less personal stories) that I felt really belonged here on this blog:

Are you a highly creative, sensitive soul struggling with feelings of inadequacy?  Take heart because it is not easy to take the road less traveled when you are trying to fit in with what appears to be going on in the world.  Take a step back and go inward.  This is the direction to go to find inner peace and satisfaction in your life.

You have gifts beyond measure that are invisible to most people you encounter on a daily basis out in the world.  Loneliness is a sign that you are separated from your true self.  The more you reach outward to the masses to fill this loneliness, the lonelier you may feel.  A rich, inner life exists inside of you when you connect with your true self, your passions, desires, and gifts with compassion for all you’ve been through to get to here. Be kind to yourself about your separation from knowing and loving yourself.  Often it is as small children that this separation began so it takes Inner Child Healing to find ourselves again.

Journaling out (for your eyes only) the painful truths of events from childhood can help us tell our story to ourselves.  By accessing the right side of our brain through writing we also access the compassionate part of our brain that comforts and soothes and say “wow, no wonder you feel sad…” or mad, hopeless, fearful, or whatever feeling is dormant, blocked, and keeping us from feeling whole and vital and joyful.

Inner Child Grief Work can take a long time, years in fact, as you work through the layers of emotion that come up to the surface to be validated, comforted, and ultimately released by YOU!  Yes, you can be your own compassionate therapist, your own enlightened witness if you embrace this process and trust that your heart will guide you to the next layer to be released.

This is “the road less traveled” but it does not have to be a lonely road.  Yes, it is a solitary road though and it will lead you to much joy and inner peace when you work through the layers of untruths you believed down to your core as a child.  As you shine light and love on your wounded inner child, she/he will begin trusting herself and this new process of healing– the child inside will feel lighter and lighter as the negative beliefs reveal themselves as just illusions meant to protect you at that time and then these beliefs will gradually fall away.

What remains is a strong desire not to suffer any longer and an ability to rise above negativity when you get triggered by something coming from someone else.  You will finally know “you” and you will stop beating yourself up mentally.  You will recognize when you start to spiral negatively and you will learn to stop yourself and be kind.  Positive affirmations like “I love and approve of myself”, and “I am safe” are essential in this core rebuilding process.

As you go forth in this healing process, emotional pain that arises will be looked on as a healing opportunity to get to the more joyful truth underneath. Because you know that the essence of you is a compassionate, loving, kind-hearted soul who is here on the planet to help and never harm others and that is so special and rare.  You then will love being alone to recharge your soul so you can lift others up to see the beauty that exists that others do not notice.  Your gift to the planet is your sensitivity and what a blessing it is to be different than other people and have this wisdom to heal deeply, recharge, and spread love and light to others.  It takes time to heal and rest from the trauma of being misunderstood and separated from our true gifted nature as children.  Be kind to yourself about it and let the healing take as long as it takes.

For myself, after years of inner grief work journaling and finding my voice starting in 2003, by 2011 I had healed most of the inner wounds and finally felt a wonderful feeling of “wholeness”.  This was a feeling I couldn’t foresee or imagine during the process.  Once you master this process of finding your inner strength through writing, you will use it often to get clarity of the lesson of each new experience the universe offers up to you. I got away from blogging here in the last couple of years as I pursued my music but I’ve continued with the journaling whenever needed. I’ll be sharing my continued journey more now on this blog as HSPs have continued to reach out to me and I am at a new place incorporating the music as a healing source for others as well.

I have discovered that social media outlets like facebook can be an addictive and unhealthy distraction much like too much television dulls our motivation and steals our joy–especially if you look to it as a companion of sorts or as a source of validation for your personal daily life.  I have found it to be best utilized as a platform to shine and help others and to share creative works to inspire.  A personal facebook page is supportive when you lose a pet or family member or need support when you are occasionally ill or have some bad luck …but for deeper daily struggles it can drag you down further–it’s best to unplug from it and go inward and not compare ourselves to what others are doing and saying or expect the masses to understand our complex lives.

We HSPs have all the answers to our own neediness inside ourselves.  Self-compassion and loving, soothing attention to the child inside who feels a sense of unbelonging is the answer to all discontent in my opinion.  When you begin to love and protect your hurt inner child, you recharge and create helpful work that keeps on giving.  The sense of accomplishment snowballs to living a creative life of exciting possibilities.  You trust that whatever is around the corner, it will be a wonderful adventure as you discover more of what you are capable of.

Being your own best friend is not a corny cliche`–it is a real and essential tool for highly sensitive people to navigate our world inhabited by lots of lesser evolved souls who can’t relate to our emotional journey.  We have a higher purpose, a higher vibration of light to shine as “lightworkers” if you will, and our inner child needs our own tender loving self-care in order to be able to turn the light switch back up from the dimming that may have occurred in childhood or from an unsupportive culture or environment.

Shine on yourself first when you are not feeling the least bit shiny. Let me explain.  Highly sensitive people have a gift of believing in lofty ideals and “light” and that really is a highly spiritual concept.  Deep inside we “know” that unconditional love exists for all and we can tap into that love whenever we want. If you struggle with this concept consider that you may be blocking yourself from receiving this loving feeling from the universe because of a childhood belief that you don’t deserve it.  You may have to actively “decide” to be open to allowing love in from Heaven/God/ Source/Universe/ All That Is/ Mother Nature or whatever you’d like to call it.

Believing I deserve love and letting it in made all the difference in my life.  It changed me from looking to others for outside validation to knowing I could heal myself and shine my gifts on the planet to make a difference.  Now this is no longer daily work for me but I still need to journal to reconnect to my inner wisdom from time to time when I need to recharge from the world.

Being an HSP, highly intuitive person, highly evolved, compassionate, or introspective soul is only difficult when you compare yourself to the masses. Consider that you came here to make a difference!–to shine a new path, a new way of thinking about the earth.  You are a pioneer here to show others how to appreciate nature, how to see beauty in unlikely places, how music or poetry can lift them up, how a healthy diet can change your mood, or how building a strong body can help you have more energy to accomplish goals you never imagined before, etc.  There are so many ways that HSPs are essential to our planet thriving.  It all starts with loving the little child inside of you who is still comparing herself to others instead of seeing the spectacular yet fragile gift she/he has always been and always will be!

After all my inner work now my inner child is very strong.  She is the playful creative force behind all my creative works.  This poem flowed out of me from beginning to end in one fell swoop one day recently when I was in my car–I always have pen and paper handy for when a song or poem comes to me.  I just stop everything and write it down. I’m glad to share it with you now:

Wise Inner Child and Wings and Things

By Roxanne E. Smith

==================

Painful layers coming up

Anger, grief and other stuff

I thought all of this was healed

No there’s more! It is revealed!

Inner child inside can now

Tell the truth—feels safe somehow

I will comfort her brave heart

Out of hiding, let her start

To spread her fragile angel wings

Never used before it seems…

Whoa!! She’s ready! Knows they’re real!

Says, “Yeah, I’ve got wings! It’s no big deal!”

No more hiding them from sight

Imagining her very first flight

I’m the one who kept her down

Protecting her from scorn or frown

She tells me to open the door

“Look” she says, “what wings are for!”

Flying easy as the breeze,

she hovers anywhere she please

Surprised that I am still afraid

She takes MY hand and says, “Let’s trade!

“You be me and I’ll be you.”

“Did you know you have wings too!?”

I look behind and see them there

Tucked away with so much care

Hidden just beneath my sight

I didn’t know I had the right!

“I’ve been busy protecting you

and now I see I’ve got wings too!

I am scared to try them out.

It’s been so long I’ve gone without

How to switch to this new change

It feels so shameful and I feel strange!”

Wise child says,

“You know where that’s from?

Others shamed you because they had none.

No wings to fly wherever they want

So they put you down to stay up front.

But now you know the truth down deep

You learned from all the lessons reaped

Deep inside you know your soul

Has learned more love through the life school

Many lives you’ve lived and learned

About compassion and now’s your turn

You’re here to be a beacon light

Fly and shine on others bright

You know you do this anyway

But you’ve got wings so fly and play

Fly and play don’t toil and fret!

You’re sensitive but the strongest yet!

Now you get to do your thing!

Love and shine and fly and sing!

That’s all that’s it and now you know!”

The little child then hugged me so

And said,

“I love you and I’m always here

I’m your inner strength—no longer fear

You protected me ‘til I was strong

Now I help you to get along

Just like with the Butterfly

The caterpillar is gone goodbye!

Brave new woman with golden wings

Stand your ground and fly and sing

Tell about your growth to show

Others who also do not know

That they have hidden wings as well

They earned them too but they can’t tell

Not until they are really SEEN

For the first time since they were teens

They tried to fly but soon were stopped

And painfully their wings were cropped

But they grew back and have been ready

Until the self was loved and steady

Grounded in peace—no longer fear

You’re free to fly away my dears!

So lighten your house and ease your load

Because the next chapter’s seeds are sowed

Freedom is what will grow

and life will have a different flow

Peace and love will soothe your soul

So you can sing some rock’n’roll

Giving hope to others through

Sharing what you love to do

Then they’ll believe in their own soul

And all the world will heal to whole!”

The child then smiled and said, “Okay?!”

Then held my hand and we flew away!!

Original Poem © Roxanne Elaine Smith

I wish all of you all the most glorious blessings that life has to offer!  Whether you are alone or with loved ones, remember you are loved from above and you are never alone.  As well as having a higher true self that is your creative source, I believe we all have a spirit guide who is our best soul friend and guardian angel looking out for us from heaven and giving us those Aha moments and pride in ourselves for rising up to higher heights to fly!

With warm wishes of love, light, and inner peace,

Roxanne

Hi everyone!  It’s wonderful to be back here to talk to all of you again!  It’s been 6 months since I have written here and that was not my intention, and I apologize to anyone who has been waiting for more posts. The last 6 months have been an amazing ride and life has taken me through lots of amazing new opportunities!

I discovered my True Voice by writing this blog and although I still have a lot to say,  I find that now it’s time for a fresh, new, HIGHER perspective as I use what was learned from writing this blog as a solid foundation of emotional healing for moving upwards to Higher Ground.  “Higher Ground Haven” is the name of the new blog I started writing in my legal name while I was still using my pen name Elaine to write this one.  It was an exciting experiment to see if I could have a successful blog and coaching business just being myself with no pen name, and Uplifting others, and encouraging Highly compassionate souls to embrace their uniqueness and shine their lights to Higher Heights!

Well, this new blog turned out to be a wonderfully, successful venture and the facebook community associated with it (also called Higher Ground Haven) grew out of it’s success–it continues to thrive and blossom as many Highly sensitive, (AKA Highly intuitive) and Highly compassionate, creative souls find it to be a safe refuge for understanding the painful journey of overcoming childhood emotional wounds while also gaining inner strength and positive energy to go for their dreams!

My own dreams to share my original songs of hope and healing with the world were an example of a journey to overcome painful insecurities about my creative gifts.  After sharing on this blog how I was able to over-ride my inner critic and empower myself up and over many fears and feelings of shame that were deeply-rooted from childhood wounds, I began having the courage to pursue my music as a lucrative career!  I have shared on this blog the exciting steps through some health challenges to being able to record an album of my original songs and have them distributed worldwide and available on iTunes, Amazon, and CDBaby.com to mention a few.  It has been exciting to follow my heart and see what new opportunities manifested in front of me with the intention of helping people with my healing songs. You can refresh your memory (or read anew) about my New Beginning Journey here.

The next step to tell you about was how I began performing and overcame my deep performance anxiety after meeting another amazing local musician (Jeff) and his band one night last summer (2014) and having him invite me to his open mic nights at a local establishment in my city.  Soon I was friends with many other musicians who also were performing at these open mic nights and they were cheering me on.  Jeff and his wonderful family held my hand with encouraging words as I got over my deeply rooted irrational fear of performing alone in front of an audience.  It was terrifying the first time, but I was determined to do it anyway because I believed that these new people in my life were meant to help me and that meant this was all supposed to happen in some kind of a spiritual way!  I felt God was with me and angels were cheering me on each step of the way!  Sure enough getting the first time over with was the biggest, hardest hurdle–after that each week’s performances got easier and easier until I was easily singing alone and with Jeff and other amazing guitarists every week throughout the summer.  Meanwhile, that summer, I was also recording my songs and was finally ready to release my first 10 songs as my debut album entitled A New Beginning on September 30, 2014.  On October 1, 2014, I had an album release celebration where I performed about 12 songs including lots of my original songs.  With the support of my husband and children and my new musician friends in the audience, it was a thrilling, sort of out-of-body experience as I performed that night and I realized I had accomplished overcoming my fears in such a short time and now had an album released to boot! It was another “new beginning” for me–the name of the album I was releasing!

In order for me to have this success, there were some health challenges I had to go through to get there.  I want to share with you that part of what helped me succeed in overcoming my fear of singing was the amazing effects of new strength I felt in my diaphragm due to going to an Osteopath who specialized in cranial sacral and especially myofascial work.  This amazing woman (who was recommended by my amazing new doctor of integrative medicine), who had been been trained in energy work, , could tell by looking at me that my diaphragm was locked up in fear probably since childhood.  She explained that myofascial work could help to get my energy in my body flowing properly again. She told me that she has to refer many people to get emotional support while doing this process but that she could tell I had already done the inner work and that I was “ready”.   It took some time and a few treatments before I went to her excitedly and told her I felt the difference–I had woken up in the middle of the night a few days after my last treatment with her and I felt this fear sensation rise up to my consciousness and leave my body.  I know it sounds very woo-woo but I woke up with this feeling of fear and also with the clarity that I no longer have to be afraid of it and I am strong enough to let it go! And it went! I had an exhilaration in my heart and a new found ability to breath deeply and had more strength in my diaphragm to sing with more strength and passion. (I tested out my new lungs by singing in the shower that morning haha)  My singing was better and that helped so much with my confidence!  I also felt taller!–opening up my diaphragm helped me to stand taller and I could feel the difference with more confidence to stand with better posture much easier than before.  My chiropractor noticed the difference in my neck adjustments so much that she started referring some of her clients to this amazing woman.  I feel so lucky to have found her at exactly the right time in my life when I needed her and right before she is going to be retiring.  All this happening confirmed my belief that the universe will rise up to help you and bring the right people into your life when you get in alignment with your true self, express your true voice, and follow your true desires to shine your light to help others.

My new doctor also encouraged me to have the Endovenous Laser Therapy treatment (by a different Dr. ) for my varicose veins that I had been putting off for 10 years.  So on October 10, 2014 I had the first of 4 weekly surgeries where they inserted a laser into my main vein in my legs to fix the varicose veins that were hurting my circulation and causing some other problems.  Anyway, long story short, they used large doses of epinephrine and numbing agent in these surgical treatments (in order to call it outpatient)–and being highly sensitive and still having a fragile adrenal system evidently, this caused me to have exhaustion and low immune function for months following these procedures with a very slow recovery from more painful injections, brain fog, fatigue, and all resulting with an increase in adrenal problems.  After a lovely Christmas with my family and performing with my son and making a youtube video with him of a Christmas song I wrote, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3bRbWUQUyA  I ended up with a virus and struggled again to recover and get back to performing.  I was up and down struggling to get back to my pre-surgery energy with frustration and swollen glands that just kept coming back.  Now it is March and I have performed 2 times since Christmas due to this virus that effects the quality of my voice and overall stamina.  I am being patient, as I undergo I.V. therapies to rebuild the strength of my endocrine system and adrenal due to the large doses of epinephrine that wreaked havoc on my adrenal glands.  In spite of all the unexpected set backs to my health, I am still glad I had this procedure done!  My legs look and feel great now and I feel it will be worth it all in the end! I am sure I am going to recover fully and with more energy than ever to do all the things I want to do!

By the end of the 6 months away from blogging, and finally recovering with more energy and vitality, it became clear that moving to the newer blog that represents a new higher vision and moving on from where I shared some of my past inner grief work (and a lot of personal stories to help others) is the best new direction for me to express my True Voice.  It reflects my new higher creative energy and success:  I did it!–and you can do it too!  In addition to being a Life Coach for emotional healing, I am now a Singer-Songwriter and Performer!  I overcame my biggest fear and my most important desire in my heart–to be able to confidently sing my original songs which reflect my True Voice in front of an audience!

The road to true wholeness is an amazing one–just when you feel you are whole you realize there is more you can do, more you have to offer, more of yourself to heal yet more fun and satisfaction than you ever even dreamed for yourself–you find yourself moving HIGHER as a new staircase unfolds in front of you. I have learned to trust and flow with the moment and KNOW that I am a shining light of God’s love that is grounded in the earth (as we all are) and I am here to give hope and emotional healing to all who are open to it. I hope you will join me as I continue to blog at Higher Ground Haven.  If you followed me here please follow me there!  I look forward to seeing you at our new community of love and light and higher heights!

With warm welcoming wishes and gratefulness to all of you,

Roxanne

Hi everyone,

So much has been happening, I have been very busy finishing my first album and I have also been performing my songs and overcoming my performance anxiety with great success!  This is an exciting time for me and I wanted to share it with all of you so here is my announcement that I just put on my personal facebook page:

“I just announced the ITUNES release date of my debut album on my website and I am hoping you will check it out… For those of you who don’t know the story of how it came to be, here is a brief summary:

In 2004 I started writing songs and I called them my songs of hope and healing because the process of writing them was empowering me, expressing the hope I felt in my soul, and helping me to heal and find my “voice”. By 2010 I had written over 30 songs and shared the lyrics and my personal journey of healing in a blog that became successful because it struck a chord with many people. I started a life coaching business due to the success of this blog and people asking for my guidance in helping them find their inner strength and true voice as well.

People began telling me that my lyrics and songs were helping them–I kept writing songs and now have written over 50. Last summer I collaborated with local musician Wendell Ray to record them. He played the guitar on 28 of my songs that we recorded including some with him on harmonica and other added backing tracks. He produced my first 6 songs and then showed me how to record and produce the rest!

Also, with the encouragement of Wendell and my family, I started performing at his gigs—this was the beginning of me gaining confidence to perform alone and share my songs with the world. Overcoming the performance anxiety has been a thrilling and exciting part of this musical journey I am on and at one time I couldn’t imagine overcoming this deeply ingrained irrational fear. But with inner determination, God, and encouragement from others, I am now on the other side of it having fun performing: singing my songs, cover songs, and harmony with others; improving on the guitar every week; and writing and recording more songs!

So now with this first album, I feel I have found my true voice in yet another profound way and helping others is the most wonderful and important part of it all. The release of this album is symbolic of the achievement of a lifetime of hopes and dreams and that we can always create “new beginnings” for ourselves as we change and grow. These first 10 songs are about personal empowerment, believing in yourself and the inner spirit we all have inside, and overcoming doubts and fears we all face in life–you can do it!!

Thank you all for all of your support along the way and for sharing in this exciting time with me!! The release date is finally here! It is being first announced today on the home page of my music website–www.RoxanneSmithMusic.com. For more information about my musical story you can read my Bio that is on the home page as well.

With love, gratefulness, and warmest wishes to you all,

Roxanne”

A special note to all of my blog followers, you are the reason that all of this was able to happen.  I started sharing my story with you back in January 2010 and you all responded with your full support which gave me the encouragement to continue finding and expressing my true voice.  The are no words to express my gratefulness for your courage to follow my journey and to say “me too!” and I want to hear more!  I will be keeping you posted at each milestone in this process of the worldwide distribution of my songs of hope and healing and I hope to be writing more blog posts about emotional healing in the future.

Just remember, those of us with sensitive souls, we are “the lucky ones”–highly evolved souls here to learn to shine our light through the negativity around us and say to ourselves and others–You can do it!!  You are strong enough!!  You can have “A New Beginning” and follow your heart and soul that knows “everything is going to be all right!”

And so to all of you, I want to share the lyrics to this song that I wrote most recently this year:

“The Lucky One”

by Roxanne Elaine Smith

The lucky one is the only one who cries

The lucky one is the only one who sees

The lucky one is the only one who feels the truth

The lucky one is the only one who cries

What’s the reason for the bad dream

To watch a child fall?

It was a long way down

Such a long way down

Noone else could see the damage

The reason for the tears

The loss was so profound

The love made no sound

CHORUS: The lucky one is the only one who cries

The lucky one is the only one who sees

The lucky one is the only one who feels the truth

The lucky one is the only one who cries

Somehow coming through it all

The answer comes with joy

There is no end

Only lessons learned

To realize the love in every

Unmistaken fall

Is to trust that all

Hold onto what we earned

CHORUS: The lucky one is the only one who cries

The lucky one is the only one who sees

The lucky one is the only one who feels the truth

The lucky one is the only one who cries

BRIDGE:

Alone is this vision

To see the hope in the despair

Alone in this valley

While everyone’s in the air.

To be still and feel the beauty

In a painful plunge

Is to be real in this world

Where our flight has just begun

CHORUS:  The lucky one is the only one who cries

The lucky one is the only one who sees

The lucky one is the only one who feels the truth

The lucky one is the only one who cries

The lucky one is the only one who cries….

With love and light to you all and gratefulness from the depths of my soul,

Roxanne