The Beauty of The Process
Name: Jennifer Siddens
Are you currently a Pathway Member?: Yes
What was on your manifestation list?: I may be a bit different in that I came to TBM (when it was still Free & Native) not for any particular THING, but to grow my self-worth, which was subterranean at the time. I had been disappearing by inches for years - despite being in talk therapy for roughly forever - and finally bought How To Manifest when I realized that the only person that was going to change my narrative was me.
So now my list, at the ripe age of 44 (so *almost* in the wise group) and a mother of two, is as such:
To keep growing my self-worth. Honestly, I have everything a person could possibly need on the physical plane. I mean, I'd love to fuck off to Paris with Henry Cavill for a long weekend, however, my husband might object. But I often think about all I've wanted from life but never had the courage to ask for in my earlier years, and I never want to find myself in that small space again.
To write, be published, and have free-lancing be one of my financial portals (I know I'll always have a few open …it's just how I like to roll). Writing has always been the way I've made sense of my life and the world around me. It was the dream I had for myself when I was small and was told it was silly to pursue. I'm just doing the work in the here and now to let the universe know that I'm serious about it.
Financial freedom. I'm coming out of a long season of intense mothering (my oldest son is on the autism spectrum and my second has severe ADHD) and had to put aside everything to care for my eldest and bring him to a place of more autonomy. While my husband makes a very decent income, I want to contribute financially and am looking for clarity on what portals to open and close.
Finding a use for my energetic gifts to help others, specifically in my age group. Much like Lacy (who is my expander in this regard), I am able to read and see the path a person will//could/should take and then different outcomes based on past programming and their own blocks. It's easy, past 35, to feel as though we are stuck with our factory settings, and I'd love to share the freedom I have found in this work. TBM is an incredible resource for those of us who have found therapy to start the wheels of self-realization but need an extra push to really make this last half of life as beautiful as we can imagine it to be. Especially since manifesting with children, a partner, and all of the trappings of middle age can look a bit different (see above: not being able to fuck off with Henry Cavill).
What workshops did you use and what blocks did you discover during the DIs & workshops?: I think the ONLY thing I haven't done to completion is Unblocked No (which I plan on doing next month). I spent an entire year working through Unblocked Inner Child. I went through it once in its entirety, did the other workshops, and then realized that I needed to go back and reprogram almost every aspect of my childhood and early adolescence. Despite years of therapy, I had cement-like blocks around almost everything that I was working towards. I had come out of college (where I was a very magnetic version of myself - away from my family), and once I moved back to California, I was exposed to the same programming. I became smaller and smaller and smaller until I was surprised I had a reflection any more. I had blocks around love, around sex, around money, around the possibilities of what I could do with my life. I always tell people when discussing this work that Inner Child is likely what saved me from just existing as a shell of a person for the rest of my days.
One of the primary blocks I had to reprogram was around Christianity. I was raised in a very fundamental home which shaped every breath... to find freedom from that intense bondage was a journey, and I still feel the old rhetoric snapping about my heels. I had been raging against it since childhood, but every attempt to break free had been laden with anger from my parents and my own fear. Inner Child and Authentic Code really helped me move towards a place of peace around my own version of faith - which is ever-evolving.
What expanders did you find?: I've had to look everywhere for expanders - it's like a treasure hunt! Honestly, I'm so fortunate to have many fragment expanders in real life and some fully formed ones I've met via Instagram. I completely overhauled my life, had to build very strong boundaries with my family (including my siblings), shed some friends, and really invest in others. I was so fortunate in that the universe provided me with an angel of a husband who has continued to love every version of me through this evolution, but it's been a few years of burning everything down to the ground and rebuilding from the ashes.
When I'm working with my magnetic family, I use two younger parents that I follow on Instagram. They live on a farm, have six children, and she or her husband is always wearing one of the babies. She is a badass entrepreneur who is instilling the idea in her daughters that she can do everything that they want to in this world. In contrast, I was told that I could do almost nothing. So when I'm down in a DI, both of them show up for me in ways my parents never could.
My teenage/adult magnetic family is this amazing author with an impeccable taste that lives in Denmark. She and her husband have been together for over 20 years; they have one child and live a very cosmopolitan city life. She had a similar childhood but bootstrapped her way to success and has such incredible self-worth. She is so comfortable with herself as a creative, as a wife, as a mother, as a sexual being. The idea of her helped me reprogram my relationship with myself. I've reached out to her, and she is just as amazing in real life.
Career-wise, I have so many fragment expanders. I've found that in the creative space, it's harder to find people who are exactly ALL THE THINGS that you need, but the joy of being older is that I'm also aware that not one person fulfills all of your needs. So it's been fun engaging with the writing world and finding those people who have paved the way prior who are willing to help someone who is a few steps behind them.
And lastly, Lacy has been a massive expander for me. I grew up being told I was the black sheep of my family (at the tender age of 4), mostly because I could read the energy of a situation and know almost immediately how things were going to play out. I think this terrified my parents - kids are unfiltered, and having someone under three feet tall tell you about yourself is likely jarring, so in retrospect, I don't blame them for trying to control every aspect of who I was becoming. I learned to suppress that as time went on but have been leaning into it more in my adult life. There's so much freedom in accepting who you are, even if it means coming to it later in life and having to forgive yourself for the wasted years.
What tests did you face? Which did you pass? Not pass?: The majority of my tests have been around boundaries with my family. I grew up in an emotionally abusive household - I was the result of an accidental pregnancy, and my mother ignored me until my oldest sister got married and moved out when I was five - she had been my primary caretaker up until then. Not a day went by when I wasn't made aware that my existence was an inconvenience. My younger brother arrived a few years later, and the attention went to him. He's an addict, and the problems started early - we were all forced to orbit around his requirements, and I grew up understanding that he was and always would be the priority.
So I've learned to say no. To speak up when I felt verbally abused. To require more. My oldest sister and I are still close, but my other two siblings have a cornucopia of issues, and learning how to pull out of that vortex has been my biggest work. I've had to learn to confront both of them (for someone who despises conflict, I've had to risk being unliked) and make space between us where the truth now lives. It's been painful, but mostly liberating.
In work, the theme was again, boundaries. I have an old boyfriend who is a screenwriter, and for YEARS, I would edit his work for him. I was devaluing myself in that he rarely did the same for me (we bonded over both being writers, but his writing was always more important than my own - again, old patterning). A year ago, I told him that I couldn't work with him anymore until I had a body of work in front of me that I was proud of. I was published shortly thereafter. Sometimes we just need that spiritual high five to know we're on the right track, you know?
Did you experience a magic dark period? If so, tell us about it.: I believe I'm in a magic dark right now. I just recently passed a test with my brother. I put up an appropriate boundary and walked away, feeling a little bruised, but immediately did the Trigger DI and then let go of any hurt feelings I had surrounding the event. I've since been in this gloriously quiet state where small things are just gently clicking into place and lessons are coming in with a lot of clarity: I'm getting to look into all of the cold, quiet corners and shine a little light on things I've meant to address. My mediations are quiet, my husband has told me that he's never seen me so strong and stable, and I just feel happy to be in this place where I know things will come (even if it's months from now), and I can just unblock, unblock, unblock.
How did your manifestation come through?: I've had many smaller manifestations come through. Some unexpected that just show me that I'm operating from a place of worth, that I'm magnetic even if I'm not going out that morning with the attitude of "I'm fucking on FIRE today!" I'll tell you about two fun ones that weren't even on a particular list but came out of a sense of play with the universe. I'm non-specific, so normally things pop into my head and will appear or not based on where I am worth-wise.
A friend told me about a writing magazine that accepts submissions for a monthly writing contest. It's just a small essay on a subject of their choosing, but having something published is one of those things that makes you feel like you might have a shot at people thinking you're legit. I've never had anything published before and - without telling anyone - sent in an essay as I had just written a small piece that was centered on the topic that was due that month - "Fences". I was in print a few months later.
I LOOOOOOOVE fashion. But I also have two sons that are currently eating everything which cuts into my clothes spending, and I spend most of my days in jeans and t-shirts because kids are gross. I really love sustainable brands and will often purchase things on Poshmark for environmental reasons. I was browsing there a few weeks ago and saw this purse that I had coveted a while back. The designer made a very small run of them, and you can't find the bag anywhere. The price was a lot to swallow, but I bookmarked it and would visit the photos every few days.
I'm a person who will wear something for 20 years and had visions of rocking this thing well into my 60's. I woke up a few weeks back and heard a very clear voice say, "Offer $xxx for the purse." I never get voice commands, so I was like "What." But I was willing to flex whatever psychic muscle was working, and so I thought, "Let's perhaps play here and see if that really just happened." So I made an offer BELOW what the voice had told me. The woman came back with a counteroffer, which was above the number. So I went, "Here goes," and made the offer the universe had shouted at me. Guess what's sitting in my closet right now?
But more than anything it's been, grain by grain, a reclamation of sorts. Of asking myself the question "How alive do I want to be?" and then peeling away those layers to get to the best stuff. I like to think that my job here is to understand as much as I can about life and then pass it on, maybe making it easier for someone else along the way. This work gives so much beauty to the struggle, and for that, I'll always be thankful.
If you'd like, please include your IG handle: @jenniferksiddens
