Republished from a few years ago, due to problem with web-site admin:
Later this week, after years of being on a journey of awakening, I will travel to my favorite island in the world, Eleuthera, a place that has become my home away from home. During my upcoming trip, I will witness one of the most powerful solar eclipses of our lifetime, a life transforming event for those who believe in its power.
When the eclipse occurs on August 21st, I will complete a huge milestone in my life, having come full circle in my journey of awakening and quest to become my authentic self. The journey has been a long and arduous one, beginning March of 1999, when I first visited Harbour Island in the Bahamas, an out island of a larger island known as Eleuthera.
Eleuthera takes its name from the Greek word “eleutheria” meaning “freedom”. When I first visited Harbour Island in 1999, I was anything but free. I was a prisoner of life, trapped by societal conditioning as well as other people’s wants, needs, and expectations of who I should be.
Karis Is Drawn to Eleuthera, the Island of Freedom, for Her Awakening
It was thus fitting I would be drawn to Eleuthera to seek the freedom I craved, yet did not know how to find. My first trip to Harbour Island occurred just six weeks prior to the first of many life changing decisions, to leave my law partnership and venture into practice on my own.
For years, I went to Harbour Island and later the main island of Eleuthera in search of something or someone to fill an enormous void existing within me. The void first developed when I was bullied in fifth grade by a group of girls who made a crown of thorns to persecute me like Christ. In eighth grade, another major incident of bullying occurred when three hundred girls wore “I Hate Nikki” pins to school one day.
These incidents, along with numerous other ones occurring up into my professional career as a lawyer, left a formidable scar on my self-esteem. For decades, I struggled with self-esteem issues: hating the way I looked; striving to be perfect, hoping others would like me; doing things for others at the sacrifice of myself; looking for love in all the wrong places; and performing other self-defeating acts which only served to further deflate my self-esteem and deepen the void existing within me.
