I was diagnosed with PTSD in the Fall of 2016... just 3 years ago. Here's what happened next.

I sought every healer from every modality possible - from tantra, to dance, to meditation, to neuroscience-based trauma recovery. I reconnected to my faith and took the name Sara as a symbol of my commitment to my spiritual development, self-healing and self-love.

After my diagnosis I left my full-time job. I started a business as a fashion entrepreneur. Life felt too precious not to follow my dreams.

But what you don't know is that I repeated the ugly patterns of my past and turned my business into the same toxic life that I had had prior to my illness and recovery.

Bob Proctor talks about paradigms. A paradigm is the deep shift in perspective that takes many, many, many attempts and failures to achieve.

And so it was with me. I felt completely demoralized. Here I was, doing all this spiritual work, and I had ended up in what I thought at the time was the exact same place I was trying to heal. Out of options, I closed my first business, the Brazen Beauty Movement. I had tried to change my life and center art, love, joy and effortlessness in my life-- and didn't.

That was in January of this part year. The following four months were the darkest of my life. I honestly didn't know if I would make it back into the light.

And then I met Craig.

Craig was leading a spiritual workshop on time and money. I came in expecting meditation and budgeting skills. I left with the final key to unlocking the pain I had been in since I was a small child.

Craig took a single, long look at me (or so it felt. I think we actually chatted for a while) and said, "Paint for an hour a day."

You see, I had grown up in a family of painters, gone to art school -- and never picked up a paintbrush. I hung out in the painters' studios and modeled for them. I lacked the guts to commit to art in any real way.

I had no other solutions. Nothing I had thought up worked. Plus, I was broke.

I did it. I painted every day and slowly by slowly, my life transformed. After finishing a painting at 2am one night I burst into tears. "I am whole," I said. Aloud. "I am whole."

The last piece of the puzzle dropped into place.

And that is -- when we do the luxurious things first, when we commit to beauty with the same passion that we may be committing to pain, disease, annoyance.... we are whole and everything follows.

Ps. That's the painting I painted for Craig, above. It's called "Alive."

How committing to beauty changed my life forever.