I hope that by sharing my honest experiences as I heal, that others will find help and hope. Start at the About My Quest tab.

I thought that depression and suicidal thoughts wouldn’t come back since I have been doing so well, but I think maybe I just have a weakness and I may always battle it.  I can definitely not slip back for too long since I have so much knowledge now as to how to combat it.  But it rears its’ ugly head still, and I don’t like it.  I wonder if I’ll every be completely free of it?  Maybe some of it has to do with my Energy Type (Carol Tuttle’s Energy Profiling), and since I am sensitive to many things (including food, negative energy, people’s criticism, pollen, etc.) I have a hard time dealing with them.  If things are not comfortable for me, in many ways, I struggle, and then if there is too much going on at once for me to deal with, depression sets in.  It is nice, however, that I am noticing these patterns in me so that I don’t need to judge it (I wish others wouldn’t as well) and try to do better.  But do I really need to change my sensitivity and need for comfort?  Do I need to change because people don’t understand me and because they aren’t the same as me?  Carol Tuttle says it is a gift.  Others don’t see it that way.  Sometimes I don’t see it that way.  But maybe others judge it because I still judge it.  Law of Attraction – if I can stop judging myself, then others will stop also.  And if I am afraid of criticism (I am), then I am bringing that criticism right to me.  So I am adding a note onto my Angel Wall, “Thank you for helping me to understand, love, and accept myself just the way I am, which will allow others to as well.”

One of the ways My Quest  has changed a bit, is I have been really focusing on food lately, basically.  Learning about the food industry (see “Chew On This” book, and “Food Incorporated” movie), specific foods and health, gardening and other home food production.  (it’s late and I’m tired, so I might not be making a whole lot of sense)  I’ve learned about alot of this stuff years ago, but it’s come up for me again and I’m grasping onto it more than ever – it feels amazing and right.  I have gone 100% Raw (eating) a couple of times in the past, but was frustrated with it for one reason or another.  But Carol Tuttle introduced me to www.greensmoothiegirl.com and she is what has gotten me going again (not 100%).  Love it.  My husband and I have been so busy the last few months with all of this, including re-doing our yard so we can be as self-sufficient as possible (we added bees to our yard this year and harvested our first batch of honey last week!!) which I’m sure will take another year or so.  Our backyard might look like a mini-farm, right in Bountiful Utah! (I’ve started calling it the Flanagan Family Farm )  Hope we’re not going to be in trouble.  So the plans so far are: bees (adding another colony), chickens (mostly for winter food and food storage since we’re not eating much meat or animal products these days), adding at least 6 fruit trees, grapes, raspberries, and a huge vegetable garden – we only have 1/4 acre.  Hopefully we can keep enough grass for our boys to play!!  Fortunately I manifested my family giving me a Blendtec blender for Mother’s Day this year (it’s a cool story, remind me to share it sometime – I’ll probably forget) which was basically the start of all of this – this year at least.

I’m thinking of changing the look of the blog, it’s boring and sterile, and isn’t fun for me to write on or look at!  Maybe that’s part of my “writer’s block”  Also, I loved going to the Facebook Group page and seeing a few more Members – awesome!  But I just added a Page as well, it seems easier than a Group.  The reason I made (make) this blog is to help people.  I hope it’s working.  So if you’d like to Like this blog, you can visit Facebook or just click on the Like button at the right of the blog.  You can also now “Share on Facebook” each post, click on the F below each post.

On my Vision Wall I have started adding cards for my Angels to help me manifest things.  Listen to Carol Tuttle’s radio show “Create Your Own Angel Wall!” from 7/19/2010 on iTunes or Blog Talk Radio, and Carol explains more about Angels helping us in her Petitioning Your Angels cd.  It makes so much sense to me, that God can’t do everything himself, he has the Angels to help him help us.  I’m looking forward to reporting on this process as it unfolds.

The Universe keeps bringing Agency to my attention the last few days, so I guess there is something I need to pay attention to and learn from!

Last night, Chris gave our family a lesson for our Family Home Evening on Agency and choices.  And on Sunday, one of the lessons that was taught in church was about Agency!  The teacher asked the attendees to give examples of how we have made a choice and then noticed the consequences of those choices (she only wanted good examples).  I immediately thought of a choice that I made with Nicholas being born, but I felt stupid sharing it in the class.  But I will share it here.  When I was 7 months along with my oldest child, I was 21 years old, we were told that he had a hole in his heart which would need open-heart surgery, plus he had a “coarctation” (a narrowing of an arch in his heart, which would need to be fixed a few days after his birth), and on top of that there is a 50% chance that he could have Down syndrome which will bring a whole slew of problems on its’ own.  Our world was shattered – or so we thought.  We decided to have an amniocentesis just to be sure so that we were prepared at his birth.  We met with the Geneticist and we were told that he does have Down syndrome and that abortion is an option if we choose it.  I have never believed in abortion, and although at the time I felt like my life was basically over and would be miserable from then on,  it was a very easy decision to keep him.  As I look back on the last 13-1/2 years since Nicholas’ birth, I am so amazed that even though it has been a hard road with him I have learned so much and wouldn’t trade him for anything!  He has brought things into my life that I never could have learned or experienced otherwise.  I know that Chris feels the same way.  So my point is that not all of our choices that we make in life are going to be easy or fun, but if they are right then the pay-offs will be well-worth it and amazing!

Today this was on Carol Tuttle’s Remembering Wholeness Facebook Group Page:  “In every moment, during every day of your life, you have choices. The choice to create more struggle or the choice to create more freedom and joy.” “Choose thoughts that support you in feeling good more and more each day.”

And to end, this story was forwarded to me through email this morning.  I love it…

John is the kind of guy you love to hate.   He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say.  When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, ‘If I were any better, I would be twins!’  He was a natural motivator.  If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.  Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, ‘I don’t get it!  You can’t be a positive person all of the time.  How do you do it?’

He replied, ‘Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today.  You can choose to be in a good mood or…you can choose to be in a bad mood.  I choose to be in a good mood.  Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or…I can choose to learn from it.  I choose to learn from it.  Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or…I can point out the positive side of life.  I choose the positive side of life.’

‘Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,’ I protested.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said.  ‘Life is all about choices.  When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice.  You choose how you react to situations.  You choose how people affect your mood.  You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood.  The bottom line:  It’s your choice how you live your life.’

I reflected on what he said.  Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business..  We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.  After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.  I saw him about six months after the accident.  When I asked him how he was, he replied, ‘If I were any better, I’d be twins…Wanna see my scars?’  I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.  ‘The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,’ he replied.  ‘Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices:  I could choose to live or…I could choose to die.  I chose to live.’

‘Weren’t you scared?  Did you lose consciousness?’  I asked..

He continued, ‘….the paramedics were great.  They kept telling me I was going to be fine.  But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared.  In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man’.  I knew I needed to take action.’

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,’ said John.  ‘She asked if I was allergic to anything ‘Yes, I replied.’  The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply.  I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Gravity’  Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live.  Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.’”

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude….I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.  Attitude, after all, is everything.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.’

After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

A few months ago, I saw a few pictures that Carol Tuttle had posted of her backyard (and the mountain that is right by her house).  I thought about how I would love to actually see it and her house.  So without any real NEED to go there, I thought of myself actually there and seeing those places, and I did it with a “warm fuzzy” feeling in me.  I have thought of that several times since then and just felt that warm feeling, without feeling like “I just HAVE to get there!” because that doesn’t seem to manifest things happening for me.  At Christmas, I decided to give family and close friends any picture they wanted from Chris and my photography website, and I really wanted to give one to Carol Tuttle just as a token of my gratitude for all she has (unknowingly) done for me.  So I gave her a 16×20.  When we went down to her Center to deliver the picture she wanted, the night before actually, I had a dream that she asked me to be her photographer.  I thought of that all day, and was very nervous to meet her, in case she was going to be there at the Center when we dropped off the picture.  Luckily (maybe?) she wasn’t.  But I have thought of that dream since then and thought, “That would be really neat if that ever happened!”, but again, without any needy feelings.  Just noticed the thoughts and had good feelings attached.  Also, I have met Carol at the Center on a few occasions for a book signing, or while in there to do an energy draping with my sister, etc. and I have met Anne (her daughter) as well, but I really am just a “client” like all of the other thousands of people that they see and meet.  So I have no personal attachments to the Tuttle family, except that I gave Carol a photo for Christmas.  Ok, so I am finally getting to the real point of this post!  Two weeks ago, I received an email from Anne Tuttle Brown …. asking me if …. this is so HUGE!!! …. we would take pictures of the women in her family!!  She had seen the pictures that Chris and I took of my sisters all Dressing our Truth, and she thought that was a neat idea and wanted us to do that for her family (including Carol!)  Chris and I were blown away – we were so grateful and excited!!!  We are just starting out and haven’t had much experience yet, and for one of our first clients to be the Tuttles, that is just so ironic!  A few days after emailing back and forth with Anne, she said that they actually want us to do photos of: the girls, each family, the big family, etc.  So it is much more than just a few shots of the Tuttle girls.  We were so thrilled, and nervous, for days until the shoot last week.  So here are a few photos of that shoot (you can see more at our website www.chrisandheatherphotography.com):

I think it is just so perfect that I got to take pictures of the main person who has really helped me to heal, has given me an inexhaustible amount of information and help, and has been the one who has helped me turn around my fears & issues about money and prosperity!

My son came to me the other day with a problem that he didn’t know how to deal with.  It turned out to be a huge lesson in the Law of Attraction/Creation for him, and a few lightbulbs went on in my head as well as I was talking to him!  Since Carol Tuttle and her family are so knowledgeable at how to consciously create their lives, they have more positive energy and are at a higher vibratory level.  So naturally, they would draw to them those people and experiences that are also at a similar level as themselves.  If I would have been doing photography before I started healing, I have no doubt that I would not have gotten the email from Anne asking to take their pictures.  What a testimony to me at how far I have come!

We ALL are creators.  We create every thing we experience (at least those things we are aware of), even if we think we don’t.  But, I am finally in a place in my life where I am consciously creating my life.  Not to where I should be with it yet, but I am on the right track!  I used to think that being a conscious creator of my life meant that I had to drum up every scenario that I wanted to happen, and then it would.  I believe that can happen, but it is also that we have such positive energy that positive things are attracted to us even if we haven’t thought about what it is exactly that we want.  I have noticed a big shift in my life in the last month or a little more, and I can just feel that I am on the upward climb with it. I strongly feel that a big reason why I am doing so well and am improving so fast is that I give myself daily support.  Right now I am praying and reading my scriptures, as usual, but am listening to Carol Tuttle’s podcasts from her radio shows as much as I can in the day.  I know that this is so helpful, because I remember throughout the day things that she says and so I can practice it right away.  Daily support is HUGE.  So I will post more about some of the things I have created lately, but not yet. 

Before I understood about Energy Profiling, I assumed that: people are different in the way they do things, but, we all should pretty much do things the same way.  Since learning about Energy Profiling, I am grasping that everyone is different, and they are not made to do things the same way.  For instance, when I meditate or need to de-stress or do some tapping, I need to go to somewhere quiet and secluded, and it helps even more if I lie down.  I can feel the negative energy leaving rapidly when I do these things.  But the energy that my body has is more calm, subtle, flowing, and introverted (Type 2).  For someone who has an energy that is buoyant, light, random, and social (Type 1), they most likely can’t go somewhere secluded and sit there, they would probably need to do something with more people, or go do something fun as they meditate and tap.

Another thing about Energy Profiling that has helped me so much, is in my business.  When Chris and I (we’re both Type 2) were first starting out our photography last year, I thought I had to be the Type 3 (swift, get-it-done) that I had been for many years to get people attracted to us.  But right from the beginning, things haven’t happened that way – people have come to us first, and it has been uncomfortable and unhappy for me to act like a Type 3.  I had a huge “a-ha!” this morning as I listened to Carol (Type 3) and Jon (Type 2) talk about their relationship and how they naturally do things in life.  Jon said that things just flow to him, and he doesn’t have to try to be like those people who have the swift energy.  And I realized that I don’t have to do that either, and that things HAVE been flowing to us!!!

It is so beneficial to know about Carol Tuttle’s Energy Profiling – in every aspect of life!!!!

The last few weeks I have been doing the “Something exciting is about to happen!” process that Carol suggested to do.  And I can honestly say that WAY more great and exciting things have happened to me in the last few weeks than usual.  Every day there is something great that happens, and alot of days there have been big things.  And I always make sure that throughout my day I am grateful for what I have, the things that have already happened to me, and the things that are about to happen.  I have an almost constant feeling of gratitude and love with me.  I love this process!

Carol Tuttle’s radio show podcast (can get from Blog Talk Radio, or iTunes, or thecarolblog.com) from 1/25/09 titled “Energy Profiling Dates and Gets Married” is a great intro to Energy Profiling if you don’t know about it yet.  She explains about Energy Profiling and then she and her husband talk about how it has effected their marriage.  Energy Profiling is SO life changing and incredible!!!!  It daily helps in my relationships with myself, my family, friends, strangers.  My kids and husband are starting to understand the differences in each of us, and we’re having more harmony in our family.

I just listened to Carol Tuttle’s podcast from August 3, 2009 “Learning to Live True to ME…” and towards the end of the radio show she responds to a few callers.  These last few minutes were amazing for me and just what I needed to hear right now.  Carol told one caller to enjoy the journey and process of this life, and not give herself a timeline as to when she needs to get past an issue.  This life is about the process we are all on to improve, so we need to enjoy it and be happy while we’re experiencing it all.  Carol has been practicing the Law of Attraction stuff for 18 years, and she still practices it daily and is still dealing with issues.

Another thing she said which was awesome was that out of all of the information that she has out for people, she says that Energy Profiling should be learned first to get to know our true nature.  I thought that was so interesting that she thinks it is the number 1 thing that everyone should learn about first.  And as I think about that, I agree with her.  I was introduced to Remembering Wholeness years ago and I liked it.  I read her next book It’s Just My Nature! when it first came out in 2009 and it completely clicked with me and I haven’t been able to stop talking or thinking about it.  It has done wonders for me in learning about who I really am and honoring myself, and also honoring everyone else and not expecting others to be like me.  So click here for the Energy Profiling website – that is where to start.  You can buy the book “It’s Just My Nature!” from there, she has specials on there frequently where you get the book and the online course and something else for a good price.  I’d suggest doing that.  Or you can just buy the book from Amazon.com or some other place.  The next step after you figure out what your energy type is.  You don’t determine it by how you act right now – because alot of us aren’t acting who we TRULY are.  I had acted completely different for 24 years.  This isn’t a personality test.  It is about your energy.  It might take a while to figure out your true Energy Type, but it is so worth it!  They have a few ways of helping us figure out what our true Energy Type is.  Then once you know that, then go to Dressing Your Truth to learn about how to dress the way that is honoring to your energy.  It really does make a difference.  Everyone who has gone through this system says it is life changing, and it really is!  It is amazing information and I am SO grateful for it!!!

So for the last week or two I have been trying to think many times a day, “Something exciting is about to happen!”, like Carol Tuttle suggests.  I want to write more about this, but haven’t gotten permission yet, but I really feel that I just have to write a bit.  I received the sweetest email today from someone I consider a little bit “famous” (at least they are more famous than me!) about my blog and giving some advice, and I am just feeling such gratitude for it.  I printed out the email and will add it to my “stack” of papers that I have printed out and look at daily.  So, something exciting totally happened to me today – and I hope that I can explain more about it soon!  This year is so awesome so far, I can’t wait for the rest of it to unfold, and now I am on to the next “exciting thing that is about to happen”!

This year has started out just fabulously.  Not to say I haven’t had issues – I absolutely have.  But, I am THRILLED that my issues are coming up for me so that I can clear them.  It feels so great to start a new year being happy and already starting to thrive.  I’ve never felt this before.  And in just the last few weeks, I feel like I’ve reached a new level to my healing or consciousness or … something.  I can’t think of what it would be called.  But I am more aware and conscious of creating my life, and am more able to remember the things that I have been learning, experiencing and practicing for this last year.  I just can’t say enough how grateful I am for the help I have received this last year and how well I am doing!  Life is amazing, when you’re conscious of it and are purposefully creating it!

I listened to two of Carol Tuttle’s blog talk radio shows this morning that I wanted to mention.  The first one is from 9/21/09 “2 important things to ask God that will completely change your life”.  This is a very short one, but I loved how she says that when we ask God for things it’s like saying, “If you have time to help poor little me”, or “if you ever get around to it”, and that is saying that we don’t really believe that He will help us or believe that we’re important enough for Him to help us.  So she says to say instead basically, “Thank you, God, for helping me with this thing” and in that way we are knowing that He is helping us and thanking Him for the help.  And then she gives 2 things to ask Him for specifically to help us get on with learning and fixing ourselves. (I’ll just let you go and listen to it instead of me writing it out.  It’s a really good podcast.  Well, they all are.)  The second podcast I have been listening to today is from the week before, 9/15/09 “Clearing the Issues that are Keeping You Fat”.  She talks for a few minutes at the beginning about how we need to make our emotional maintenance a daily practice, and likens it to our physical bodies.  We are pretty good at taking care of our bodies, brushing our teeth, showering daily, etc.  These things are daily practices, but if we were only to do them once in a while, we’d get tooth decay or get other physical illnesses.  Same with people who are a master at something, like Michael Phelps.  He doesn’t just get out in the pool and say, “Ok, I’m good with that time that I got, that’s all I need to do,” but he keeps practicing and working on maintaining that time and even getting it better.  So, with our emotional health, we can’t expect to just read or hear some great advice or knowledge and expect to be a master at it.  We have to practice at it every day.  Carol still practices these things daily, and she considers herself a “master”.  So if even the masters have to practice daily, then we definitely have to practice to get these things solidified in our brains!  Anyway, I just loved hearing that, because I am definitely guilty of saying in the past, “I have heard these things so many times, so why am I still not getting it”, or “…still not able to get to my issues quicker”, or “… stay happy” or whatever.  I am so grateful that I heard this podcast, and so grateful that Carol has these weekly shows as another way that she provides support and shows everyone that she cares so much!