When I turned 21 on July 6, 1996 it was an especially meaningful year for me. Given that my birthday is so close to the Fourth of July, there is always a sense of celebration and independence in the air when my day arrives two days later. However, this particular year was markedly significant, and not at all because of my obvious age and suddenly being a legal drinker or deemed an official adult. It was significant because it was when my beloved grandmother Sylvia and I formally and ceremoniously declared my independence from the agony of my childhood and teenage years.

I was still living in Northern California at the time, still too close to where I had grown up, and with a lot of psychic, emotional, and college work yet to do. But I remember flying out to see her in Boston for that first week in July, and how deliberately we had planned my trip. We celebrated the Fourth on the garage roof of the Museum of Science, and nodded to each other in complicity as the fireworks burst out, knowing just how spectacular a declaration we were about to make together when the 6^th arrived.

Yes, that birthday kicked off my entry into the conscious, necessary, and healing transformation that occurs when any one of us becomes ready to excavate and ultimately release the pain and garbage from our past. My personal declaration of independence was indeed a momentous event. Especially now, when I look back the 16 years from when it all began, I see that what Sylvia and I did was a REALLY great thing.

This 2012, in honor of the Fourth, I entreat you to go inside, ask yourself honestly, and receive openly what you have yet to release from your history. I implore you to find out just what it is that still holds you back.

What do you seriously and intimately need to declare your independence from?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be anything so huge or explosive. It may just be about severing the last threads of some deep strand of your story that you’ve been working on seceding from for years. Only you know the answer, and only you have the power and the raw grit to go in there, and not only declare, but equally and actively awaken your independence.

Truth be told, I am still working on the independence project that I began so many years ago, though my understanding of ultimate freedom and independence has certainly evolved just as I have. The main thing is, especially if this is your first declaration, to commit fully to and live in alignment with your intention for a freer existence.

After all, the present—not the past—is really all we’ve got. In light of this, there’s no time like now, this very Fourth of July, to go out there and fire off your own declarative display!

The joy of profound independence is so totally right here. I can feel it. Can’t you?

In sweet freedom,