The only way we can truly know someone is by giving of and being ourselves. My wife Nernie is the one single reason I’m on that journey. I know this sounds confusing. Let me explain please and also while I am explaining, not making this blog about me but about the amazing lady… who changed my life.

I met Nernie in a gym a long time ago. It was her beauty that got my attention but then her energy. She radiated this aura that pulled me toward her like a tractor beam. Of course my dysfunctional nature repelled her away. This is the part where I have to make this a little about me, it’s called back story. I have always been a way too sensitive, lonely insecure selfish desperate person trapped in scarcity. I’ve protected myself in this place and in my first meeting with Nernie she was a victim of it. I was anybody but myself when I met her, macho, loud, abrasive. I remember saying to her in my low goomba voice: “hey, the stepper you work out on is broken and um, yeah I wanted to tell you that and um, hey it’s leg day maybe you could give me a spot? ” I just remember thinking why am I being a jock, talk to her like I’m real, which was something I was incapable of.

Nernie exudes this healing energy, an empathy and compassion that kept pulling me closer to her. She was reading the same spiritual books I was reading when I met her and I had been on this metaphysical quest when we first met; I was on year 2 of a 4 year experience reading ‘A Course In Miracles.’ I was in this head space when I thought I knew what I was doing creatively and personally. I couldn’t have been more wrong. (years later we were watching an episode of Will and Grace and they did a joke about a Course in Miracles. Nernie laughed so hard she feel off the couch!)

Nernie is first and foremost beautiful but I mean inside as well also. She’s a person of action, her kind deeds to strangers, friends and any and all doggies, kitties, birds and bunnies is a never ending clinic on compassion. She’s just being who she is, herself.

This is where my challenge has always been. Here’s this incredible woman who has shown me every moment I’ve known her how to treat others and how to attract the life we dream, ‘GIVE.’ Yeah, really? Try live in a dysfunctional family of 8 and learn anything about giving. It’s not an excuse or maybe  it is. Dysfunction has taught me the freedom of blaming anything and everything on everyone else and not taking responsibility for anything. “Hey, why did you run naked through Walmart? I was raised in dysfunction. I take responsibility for nothing I do.”

Let me say, being insecure and terrified that I’ll never amount to anything has ingrained this bottomless scarcity in me, this infinite notion that I’ll never be or have enough and it’s really hard to wake from this habit. Nernie taught me that kindness to others and to myself was the place to start.  Since I met my wife over fifteen years ago we have bought a house, I’ve published a novel, recorded an hour comedy special on CTV and won a national award for teaching Stand Up.

I share these things not because I did them but because Nernie loved me enough to make me believe I could. Her love, kindness and heart melted my fears. She has taught me to feed the life we dream from my heart and to never quit.

We’ve been through a lot in the years we’ve been together, a lot of it heart breaking, the loss of her parents, my dad, changes in career. It was in these dark moments I really saw my wife’s strength, her undying faith in giving to those around her while her heart was breaking. She helps everyone around her first before she considers herself.

And now I realize how quickly life seeps past, days, weeks, months and years slip by like seconds until our last breath.  I will fight to create the life Nernie and I dream and use every ounce of my being to make that happen. I have more novels, classes and personal breakthroughs to reach with my spirit far beyond what my ego is screaming what I am.

Nernie had a dream a long time ago where I was pulling a rope out of me while I was on stage. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and all of them because I thought from scarcity and only of myself. Nernie has often told me she wasn’t sure what her purpose was and why she was here. I’m not my wife’s purpose but who I am are the results of her. Everything I am is a result of her love, tenderness and fire within.

Your purpose is to be exactly who you are right now my wife and nothing else. You have made an incredible difference in so many lives especially in the one of this reclamation. You saw so many years ago the man that I’m becoming through the woman you are. The rope I’m pulling out of me was always in your hands. Your’re the one pulling me from me closer to you. It was never about me. It was about that second so many years ago, a lost broken man had the incredible fortune of meeting his mirror, his love of his life you my wife… my soulmate.

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter. . . don’t mind.

Pauly loves Nernie, always.