wright-now-wellnesswright-now-wellness
For Dori Orr, A coin to mark our travels
Personal Wellness

Amanda & Dori’s Adventure, Part 2

2 weeks after I picked up her ashes – I found the perfect wooden box for her. It came from Hawaii fit my hand. I had to look up the protocol for bringing ashes on planes, through customs in foreign countries. I’m still a little unclear, but so far I haven’t been detained. So begins the adventure of Amanda and Dori Orr.

Our first trip she went with me while I volunteered in Namibia, building walls around water tanks to keep the peace between farmers and elephants. She went on official game counts for the government of Namibia to assist in census of their animals. We then went to South Africa to spend days watching elephants and other incredible creatures roam. I left some of her ashes off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean. An ocean she knew well. I told her I would race her back to the East Coast of America to see if her ashes or I made it there first.

It was a full moon and I was in a town called Swakopmund. I couldn’t have planned a more clear and beautiful night to release her ashes. I learned something that night. Ashes off the shore line don’t actually blow easily into the water. The wind and the water spray don’t make it as easy as it looks in the movies. I think I ended up with more of Dori’s ashes in my nose and eyes than in the water. That’s about right for her and I. We weren’t ever called graceful for sure.

Dori loved studying places and people and animals.

In this life she would have been saddened by the issues Africa faces. She also fought and protested for what was right.

She would have been excited to see elephants and giraffes and hippos and lions and snakes all in the wild. Conservation and nature is what she taught her children to respect.

She would have loved sleeping under the stars and seeing all that Africa offered firsthand. I’m grateful she is still with me.

This was the first adventure of many this year.

I wrote about them all. Alaska, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, and England. I didn’t get much better at getting the ashes in the water, but I hear her laugh every time I mess it up.

I do know she would have been without carrying her ashes with me. There is just something healing and therapeutic about physically having a part of her on my journeys. There will always be a piece that grieves for Dori in this life. This just reminds me to celebrate her.

I hope for those that grieve that you can find the things that give you a little peace.

NOTE: As a Certified Life Coach of over 15 years, I’ve helped people with grief recovery. Please contact me if you’re dealing with grief of any kind – it would be my honor to work with you. Or check my events calendar for upcoming wellness events by Wright Now Wellness.

Read More
1 Comment
Another travel coin for Dori Orr
Personal Wellness

“I will keep you with me on all my adventures”… for Dori Orr, Part 1

My beautiful friend Dori Orr  unexpectedly passed away in May 2015. I got the call while landing in Salt Lake City, my layover for my trip to California for a family celebration. As any of you who have experienced loss of a friend or loved one knows,  your world becomes shaky and blurry for a while. I vaguely remember turning right around to fly home, the memorial we put together or the encouraging words I said or heard from mutual friends and loved ones.

I do remember panicking about what the correct feeling or response her young children should or shouldn’t be having. I do remember yelling and screaming and then realizing I don’t actually know an adults “correct” response and that I had no idea how children should feel. I wanted to be there for her husband yet every time I saw him the pain seemed to intensify. I was a rough first year. I missed her so much.

2 years later on Her Month – the month of her birth, her anniversary and her death – I decided to start a lifetime of adventures with Dori. I wanted her to see the world with me. I awkwardly asked her husband for some of her ashes. He immediately agreed and so started my healing.

She loved travel. She LOVED water; I think she was actually a mermaid. In her life we didn’t travel as much together as we wanted. She was a home school teacher, raised chickens, and did massage from home…and anything creative or artistic you could think of.

So a few great beach trips, a few mountain trips, a few concerts and lots of nights at her house, that was our short decade together.

I was excited and nervous and surprisingly comfortable to go pick up her ashes and start our travels together. It’s what we always talked about.

I picked her up on her birthday and made this promise:

I will let your toes touch every magical body of water around the world I can get to. I will release a few ashes in each of them. I will keep you with me on all my adventures. I will think of you at every amazing place and event I experience. I love you in all your forms-life, spirit and ashes.

So my next post, I would love to share the adventures of Dori and I of 2017. We have been around the world and had some amazing adventures, just as she always wanted. I cannot express the healing that has come from all of this.

Read More
No Comments
Wright Now Wellness, Ultimate Retreat
Personal Wellness

Women’s Healing & Growth Advocate, Activist and Volunteer

As an Army veteran and an Integrated Wellness Coach, I believe wisdom comes from the intersection of knowledge and experience. As an impassioned advocate for women’s healing, growth, empowerment, and transformation, I am honored to share her wisdom through private teaching and as an international wellness speaker. My work in the wellness field is based on women’s healing – and I am always seeking new ways to learn and grow.

As women we are called upon to play countless roles.

We may be a wife, a mother, a daughter, a provider, a protector, soldier, a confidant, and so many more. Answering those calls often leaves us with little time or energy to know who we are or what we need. I have made it a priority in my profession to work with all women.

I know firsthand the different struggles we, as women, can face in our lives. My desire is to teach and lessen the impact these struggles have on us. 

Through volunteer work with a local domestic abuse organization that recently opened its doors to house victims of sex trafficking, I see the many ways people need to heal and the impact we make by support our communities.

The healing modalities that I’ve acquired aren’t just theoretical for me. Each healing certification has fueled my personal transformation, allowing me to create a life of confidence, joy, abundance and ease. I am inspired in my own journey to show women how easily they can have the life they want.

I felt the call to travel to Standing Rock twice in 2016. Both were life altering experiences. The first time was as a massage therapist to offer reprieve to those that had been protecting water and land for months beforehand. There I learned community and a matriarchal way of life.

The second time as a veteran was a different experience. It showed me the true strength of what people can accomplish with just numbers, peace, and the desire to assist those who need support. It allowed me to have faith that a community, not a government body, could lead and accomplish intended actions.

Most recently, I joined the thousands of people from around the globe in Women’s March 2017 to take action as an advocate for healing, community and strength for women everywhere.  

Read More
No Comments
Amanda Wright, Wright Now Wellness at the Women's March
Relationship Wellness

The Year Of Women | The Year of #metoo

The Year of Women. The Year of Speaking Truth. The Year of #metoo. It’s the end of 2017 and what a year for women!

On January 17th, I walked in DC with roughly 500,000 people at The Women’s March. It was the first time I’ve seen so many women (and people of all genders)  gathered in one place with one voice. They came from all over the world – from different communities – from different economic backgrounds – and from different ages. They came together to support, empower and take a stand for hope, and desire for change. That is the tone that launched 2017 and set the stage for the #metoo movement.

When we are supported and empowered, we are strong.

It was as though, one by one, people from all backgrounds who haven’t had a voice finally felt compelled speak up. With one voice encouraging the next, abuse of power in every profession is being exposed and abusers are falling like dominos. People who have suffered or put up with things in a patriarchal society, feel safe to say ENOUGH. Some of those people who have come forward have held in those experiences for decades. Many of them didn’t realize what they went through wasn’t normal or ok. They never believed anyone would listen or care. Once there was a national shift in consciousness, people started to claim their voice for the first time. We, as a society, have made it a supportive place to stand up to those injustices.

This isn’t just a win for women – it’s a win for all genders and non-gender individuals who have been survivors of bad behavior. The truth is – it’s also a big win for men. They say the first step to RECOVERY is acceptance so here goes. As a society, we have some talking and growing to do right now. Women will need to learn to keep saying NO and speaking their truths. No one needs to be shamed, victimized or abused. Men will learn to practice equality and will learn that abuse of power has consequences. 

 We all need to support and protect each other and use power with good intention.

I’m looking forward to a year of continued truth and growth in 2018.

NOTE: Check-in occasionally with the Wright Now Wellness Upcoming Events page to see where we’ll be next with wellness programs or workshops.

Read More
No Comments
Sexual Health Coaching, Richmond VA
Personal Wellness

What Are Your Grateful For Today | Purpose & Identity Coaching

What are you grateful for today?

I saw the movie Elysium last week. Matt Damon in badass mode is usually a good bet, especially if he happens to tragically lose his shirt somewhere along the way. The movie wasn’t bad. It boomeranged on me however and became more thought provoking than I anticipated.

More Than Just Eye Candy

The movie’s premise is that Earth has become depleted of resources. Those who still live there are poverty stricken, living on top of each other. Robots, with a conspicuous lack of humanity or compassion, police the people.

The privileged live in the sky, just beyond the planet. From Earth this place, Elysium looks magnificent and being able to see it is nearly a form of torture. Elysium and Earth are separated by only a brief, 20-minute space ship ride but it may as well be a billion miles away from the suffering masses on Earth. It might as well be a billion miles away.

Elysium is a place of abundance. There, you get all the food you can imagine, free healthcare, and great air to breath. Of course, none of that luxury is available to the people below.

Upon leaving the theater, I thought, “Yep, after we use all our resources on Earth we will just exploit somewhere else, instead of working harder to conserve Earth for future generations. Well that’s a good lesson to wake people up…and what a shame that Matt Damon once again lost his shirt on the big screen.”

I haven’t thought about the movie since, until now.

So Close, Yet So Far

I’m working in Mexico this week.

During a cab ride, I was talking about travel with my driver. I asked him where he wants to go. He said he wants to see New York or Yellowstone National Park. He watches National Geographic on television and the parks look, “Muy beuno!”

He’s not optimistic, however, that he will ever see this places in person. He doesn’t believe he would ever get permission to go to America. He doesn’t have family in the states so it’s very hard to get there.

I Once Lived in Elysium

The cab driver’s story made me think about the time I lived in El Paso, Texas. It sits just across the river from its sister city is Juarez, Mexico. I remember what little distance separated the two and thought about how from my apartment I could see their houses across the border. I lived in a neighborhood that was cut in half by an international border.

I recall sitting in my air-conditioned kitchen, eating my breakfast. From my seat, I saw houses seemingly piled on top of each other. Some of them lacked flooring. Nearly all of them lacked electricity.

From that same seat, I saw children on the streets, emaciated and starving. That is an uncomfortable image on television as Sally Struthers implores you to help for merely pennies a day. In person its downright frightening and haunting.

From that same seat, I saw mothers who dreamed of getting their dying kids across to our city – hoping that what they heard was right, that we don’t turn anyone away at our hospitals.

Even though we could look over and see each other, we were really a billion miles apart.

Greater Perspective

It is hard to accept the defining role that geography plays in so much of our lives. Yes, I have worked hard to get here, as many of you know. The truth is that I had a head start. I am keenly aware of just how much more opportunity I can access simply because of where I was born. I can’t see the fairness in that.

With all the privileges I was born into, it’s nearly impossible to justify complaining about anything in my personal life.

I have an amazing family.

I have perfect health.

I have abundance in countless forms.

So let me ask: What are you grateful for today? If you want to tap into your purpose & abundance – contact me for a Complimentary Discovery Call to learn more about life coaching at Wright Now Wellness. Check our programs & events page for upcoming Richmond Wellness events

 

Read More
No Comments
Tantra, Richmond VA, Connect with Desire
Relationship Wellness

Love, Tantra and Transformation

Tantra literally means – to expand. With Tantra Therapy, I can teach you to connect with much more love, desire than you can imagine.

I WANT TO SHOW YOU...that with a glance, you can send ripples of pleasure through the person closest to you. As a Tantra Therapist, I want to show you how much more desire you can stir up in each other, even if you’ve been together for a long time.I want you to feel how you felt the first time their hands touches your bare skin. Remember that feeling? That spark may be forgotten but it’s still there. Want to feel it again and again?

I want partners to know that there is so much depth in each other it would take lifetimes to explore. You haven’t even scratched the surface.I want to show you how to turn off the rest of the world and get lost in each other for days (even if its only for 5 min). Time will stand still.

There’s so Much to Learn With A Tantra Coach. Why Settle?

  • I want you to know this will give you energy not deplete your energy.
  • I want you to know how easily you can reconnect with your lover, even if its been months, years, or even decades.
  • I want you to know that no words are needed. You can heal the wounds that keep your hearts apart.
  • I want you to know that your bodies, hearts and souls can find their way back to each other, even if they have settled for years for feeling just like roommates or best friends.
  • I want you to know that there may be things outside your framework of what you have ever thought sexual connection was, that I can teach you.

It Begins with Trust

Can you trust me?

I want you to know that just this week, with Tantric Massage I have taught couples – including some who believed that great love, connection and sex was something only other people could feel – that they can have this. They are beginning to make up for a decade of doing only what they thought was possible. They are beginning to know that the love, desire, and connection they have experienced is but a tiny fraction of what they CAN feel. Yet, they are speechless at this moment at how much more love, desire and connection they are already feeling.

I want you to know YOU are capable of this. Everyone is. Your cells vibrate with love – it’s the current running through you both, connecting you to each other and connecting you to a much greater, and endless, vibration of energy and love.

I want you to know that if you and your partner are ready for more, it’s possible. Contact me to schedule a Complimentary Discovery Call.  I’d be honored to be your Tantra Coach and show you the way with Tantra Therapy & Tantra Massage.

Read More
4 Comments
Schedule Now
Powered by Vagaro Salon Software, Spa Software & Fitness Software