When times get rough and life seems to be taking another course than we intended it to, it is our sacred duty to manifest consciously and take control of our lives. This is what professional storyteller, actress and energy worker, Kristin Ace learned from a life full of zigs and zags. Acting has been Kristin’s singular focus until the birth of her first child, which unceremoniously put an end to it. It was a blessing in disguise though, as it led her to the world of storytelling and spiritual healing, where she makes a massive positive impact to other people, especially other women. In this powerful conversation with Tesa Baum, Kristin shares her most impactful zigzag stories and her enlightening insights on conscious manifestation, women empowerment and spiritual wellbeing.
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The Zigzag Of Life And The Power Of Conscious Manifestation With Kristin Ace
In this episode, I am excited to introduce you to Kristin Ace. She is a Professional Storyteller and Energy Healer. Her gift of personal inspirational storytelling and her professional acting skills combined to create a powerful, positive experience for her audiences. I am excited for you to learn about her most impactful zig-zag story.
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Kristin, how are you?
I’m great. Thank you for having me. I’m beyond honored and thrilled to be here with you.
I’m honored to be here with you and I appreciate you coming on. I know there’s so much going on in the world and to take the time out. I appreciate it. Where are you?
I’m in our family room. I’m looking at an incredible fireplace. All around me are windows. I can see beautiful trees. Behind me is a third of an acre of gardens I’ve spent years creating with incredibly talented people. I’m in the place where we all hang out as a family and watch movies and have a fire in the winter and toast marshmallows. It’s a warm place.
I want to start off the conversation by asking you what your most impactful zig-zag story is. Any idea about how you feel about the idea of a zig-zag story?
I have been thinking a great deal about the zig-zag because my whole life has been one zig-zag after another. To get down to the biggest one, as many as I’ve had, this was easily the one for me to go. That’s the one. I always called myself a hard-charging career woman. I was pursuing a career as an actress and I was pursuing it with great power. It was my singular focus. I had gone to school for acting. I then went out to Chicago and lived there for six years and did training with institutes and did some independent films and did lots of theater and then moved to Boston, then moved to New York.
I did the whole circuit. It was in New York where I managed an incredible film studio with a woman who was my mentor and then became a good friend. My life was on that track. I was going to auditions for agents. I was auditioning for soap operas. I was auditioning for national commercials. I was doing theater off-off-Broadway and produced an off-off-Broadway show for women, ten-minute pieces. It was incredible. That was my focus. I got married. My husband and I knew we wanted kids, but I had thought, “I’m going to have this thing, drop it, send it out to daycare and get on with my life.”
I also have to say that I did not have a lot of experience with children at all. When I was young, I wasn’t attracted to hanging out with kids. When I was older, I had a younger sister and she had to tag along and that was all I could do. All long I’m pregnant, I worked. I auditioned up until basically two weeks before I gave birth and my whole thing was have the baby take and two weeks, literally. My other plan was when the baby isn’t in daycare, if I get a call for an audition, I’ll certainly strap the baby on my back and I’ll go. The baby will be super-duper quiet during the audition. Maybe they’ll call us in together. We’ll do a mommy and baby.
I tell you, because I’m a firm believer in manifesting, and I tell you that it didn’t happen that way. I manifest powerfully. I had my baby, my first child, my son. I had a difficult labor. They took him away. There were some complications when he arrived. My husband went in. It was extremely frightening. It was 23 hours of labor. I was exhausted. They come back in with my baby and I’m like, “Okay, it’s a baby.” They put them in my arms. He was beautiful, a little fragile and so little. I thought, “What was I thinking?” Literally at that moment I’m like, “I’m going to be an at-home mother.”
[bctt tweet=”Women need to rise from under-appreciation in whatever dream they choose – even if they choose to stay home.” via=”no”]
There’s no possible way you’re going to be able to do anything else.
If I had the ability to not have to work, how could I take this incredibly fragile, new being and hand it off? I wasn’t prepared to stay home. I was unprepared on every level.
If we’re going to stay in our conversation with the theme of this, you were zigging through life. You have other things in your life, but in terms of your career and your marriage, everything was great. You were zigging. The zig was going to be the kids. Part of the zig is in that direction, life happened and you had a wake-up call like, “Now I have to reevaluate everything.”
On top of that, Landon was 9 or 10 months old when I auditioned for a show. I signed on for a small part and it was going to get me my equity card that as an actor or actress, that’s such a big deal. I got a stupid small part, which is fine with me because that’s all I could handle. I had a baby at home and I didn’t have any help. Jeff was at that time coming back and forth between New Jersey because we were then moving. There was a whole bunch of stuff happening, but I thought, “I can still live the dream that I said I was going to live. It might look a little different, but I can still do this.” The dress rehearsal, which was a ten-hour rehearsal and my babysitter didn’t come and take care of my child and my husband was traveling.
Jeff’s mother, who was a lawyer and a partner in the firm, she had stuff going on that she was trying cases or whatever. My parents couldn’t help. It was tough. I went to the stage manager and I said, “All I’m doing in the next ten hours for you is sitting in a chair, pretending to be asleep as a nurse. That doesn’t take any acting experience to do.” All my training, all the thousands of dollars, all the agents and all that, I’m sitting on stage in the dark. Also, I feel like it was part of the zag, to bring the zag in. I said to him, “I can’t get a babysitter. Could you have one of the stagehands step in for me for that part of the dress rehearsal?” “Sure. We can do that. If you don’t show up, don’t bother to come back.”
They were not working with you at all.
You’re either a professional actress or you’re not. I don’t want to hear about your baby problems.
That’s the way the world worked at that point. It was tough. We had these decisions and there was no support to balance.
My mother changed all her plans around and came in sat up for me. I did that ten-hour rehearsal. When the show was over, I quit acting. My zag that started with the birth of my first child was completely cemented into place for me.
It’s unbelievable because now we have so much around us in terms of wanting women to break through these limiting thoughts, but in terms of generational and how society was, it was impossible for us at that point. We did not have a support system.
Even if you did, which I did, I had my mother, a mother-in-law and a baby sitter. I always feel that it was a moment that my higher self said, “Kristin, your zag is more important than zigging.”
Looking back now, would you do it differently? Are you happy that life brought you to that? Do you feel now if the stagehand would have helped you and if they were supportive to have a balance, would you have wanted to do both? Are you glad that you had that span of time at home without doing the acting at that time?
I’m grateful for that time for many reasons. I had a second child, my daughter. These two incredible beings became these massive gifts to my life, these Earth angels as what I call them. What happened through the timeframe between when I quit acting and my second child was born is I started to develop my storytelling skills. I have had twenty years of acting experience and professional life that didn’t go away. Its shapeshifted. I did the zig and the zag with the kids and then zigged over to storytelling. I would go to a party and I would tell these stories about my pregnancy and tell a story about how things happened. People would either be crying because I tell something sad or they’d be laughing. Jeff said to me, “You got to write this stuff down and start doing your own work.” Talk about mind-blowing to me. In my life, I had been trained to take another person’s words and create another person around that. Now all of a sudden, I was going to take my own words and be me.
I’m loving hearing these gems that you discovered, but it brings it in into such a fuller viewpoint because of your little creations, your treasure children. You had them, you were able to blend your background and then create more because of them. A lot of people feel resentful that they have to put their careers aside or go in another direction because they were loving the zig so much. They are annoyed that they have to switch gears. You welcomed it.
I do want to be honest that I have struggled with my self-esteem and my self-worth during that time because I had always made my own money. I had a career path. I was always independent and self-sufficient. Now all of a sudden, I’m not working. I’m taking care of two little children. I’m up to my elbows in poop and dirty clothes and all of that stuff and wondering all of those dreams, what happened to them? I made a conscious decision that I want to be there for my children and give them a different life than I had because of what I came from. Holding my children in my arms made it clear to me, someone needs to be, if possible, home to give the base.
For many women, that’s not possible. I knew that it was a blessing, but I also struggled with who am I? The storytelling started to develop. I wrote my first one-woman show and I did it to 50 friends and neighbors. I charged $7. I said, “I’ve never done this before. Would you come and be my audience?” Everybody came. I got a standing ovation. To this day, the people in my audience, we’re talking. It’s many years later since my first show. We still talk about that one thing. It’s always different for everybody.
Even when you say the word storytelling energetically because we have that understanding. I took a huge inhale. I was like, “I feel more open even hearing that.” We tell our stories, we learn such a catalyst for you to tell the story and then for those to receive the story. You created such a movement for many people and that is exciting. It isn’t a big point because many women that don’t have children feel they had a lost dream. Women that are having children in those earlier years, it’s such a hard struggle as well. It’s tough regardless of what path you take.
I think women are not supported in either decision. There are many shifts and changes and paradigms that are breaking down now that must. For women, when we rise, I want us to rise in utter appreciation for whichever dream you choose instead of, “You did it that way. You’re not working so it’s easy for you,” or, “Lucky you, you got to go out in the world and don’t have to have a baby talk for ten hours.” There’s a trade-off for all of us.
It’s letting go of that judgment if we can and the self-judgment. I had a similar experience. I was working. My mother passed away. I struggled to get pregnant at first. I had a couple of miscarriages and far into it, I had miscarriages. I wanted to have children. My mother also lost her parents at an early age. My mother was a stay-at-home mother. Her mother was the breadwinner of the family. It’s interesting what we look up to. My mom didn’t want to kill herself working, so I think that was ingrained in my mind when I had children, I don’t want to kill myself working. When I had the miscarriage, I did believe it was because I was working hard. I had this belief in me that during this period of my life, I need to take it easy on my body and my emotions because my job now is to raise my children. Like you, this is my job. I didn’t have support at all. I found many different sitters, but I didn’t necessarily trust that they would be available 24/7.
I always had lots of friends, but that’s difficult to be beholden with other people. My sisters are far away and my mother-in-law isn’t capable. She has MS. There are many ways why we make decisions, but I agree with you in terms of rising up and how we can support each other. I think it’s also supporting each other so we don’t have that self-judgment because many women are feeling worthless when they’re staying at home. It’s difficult unless you are okay with being with other women and being with the babies. Many women do love that. There is a big portion of women that are bored to death doing that. I was in the camp being bored to death. I needed deeper conversations. I was not the woman that wants to talk about my children all the time.
[bctt tweet=”Everybody gets to move with their consciousness in a way that best serves their soul.” via=”no”]
It felt lonely during those years. The other part of that is because of the loneliness, judgment, and lack of support for women, I started talking to other people about it and I realized, “No one’s talking about this. No one’s talking about postpartum depression. What do I do now? Who am I now? My body has changed. I used to be this hot, sexy little firecracker. Not that I’m not beautiful, but the firecracker part is a little different because when you carry a 9-pound, 11-ounce baby in your body, you have to move. That was also part of my storytelling. My first show was all about that. That was many years ago and only in the past few years that you started seeing shows about mothers and staying at home and the decisions they had to make. It was many years ahead of my time.
You are because you saw this and you’re dynamic and people are enjoying it when you tell the story. It could be told in a monotonous way, but you bring life to it. You saw the gems in it. There’s so much here.
I also had tremendous support from my husband and it was his idea. He was like, “You’re going to do this. Go out there and fly.” Because it was me, my words and my story, I could go anywhere when I had time. I could book something and stay with the kids all day on a Saturday and drive out three hours, do a show, and come home. I was able to work it into my stay-at-home mother schedule.
Now your kids are older. You’re a little further along than me. Hopefully, I’m going to be there soon. It is not funny, but that’s the way I’m looking at it now. I love having my children in the stage where they are still young. I’m in that place now where they’re becoming teenagers and it’s full of experiences. You’re in a different place now. You’re able to get back on track and expand yourself. It’s an exciting time for you now.
It’s zigzagged all over the place from the very one-woman show then I moved to a podcast. I went to take all the pieces of what I do well together. Plus, I became an energy alignment healer. I was zigging and zagging where I am now is good vibrations of Kristin. It’s all of that combined. Both kids will be in college. I have way more freedom to travel with the show. It’s a fifteen-minute story and then conversations with the audience about the topic, like what you and I are doing.
I’ve seen bits of it, but I’m excited to see it live also.
Zigging and zagging, it’s such an incredible topic. I have to say how brilliant you are to bring it to the forefront of our consciousness. That is what life is. I may have been a straight arrow. I may have been a famous actress all the way until I held my baby and went, “Uh-oh.”
That’s how nature works. The contours and we keep on moving. I think it energizes us when we realize it because people become self-fearful or apathetic that they lose their steam. They lose their energy when they’re in that step. If you take a step back, we have such a clear vision of everything, but it’s like, “Can we have that clear vision moving forward versus only seeing it when it’s behind us?” It’s understanding that it is the way life goes. I think personally during this COVID-19 pandemic, I have been welcoming this more still time. I’ve been excited about it. I’m like, “This is an important time.” It’s the first time that people begin to get antsy and we all want movement. Everything is turning into another direction out in the world. Energy is literally building up. My hope for everyone is for the energy to build up and I would love it to be in a positive and enlightened high vibe way because I think that a lot of turbulence happens when the energy goes up. For me, I like to avoid that angry energy.
That’s an important part of the zigzagging though. In my experience is I can’t move through levels of emotion. I can jump from when I was feeling that I didn’t have any value now that I wasn’t in the working world, making my own money and pursuing my dream doggedly. All of a sudden, I didn’t have value. I couldn’t jump from that to where I am now, which is a self-made entrepreneur who loves what I do and takes all the bits of my life and create something beautiful. I had to move through disappointment at myself, disappointment in the acting world, anger at the acting world, then to tell the story at parties.
Thank you for that wisdom because I think that is key. If you are in that fearful place and you’re in that apathetic place, the next level of energy could be the anger. It’s like a spectrum of energy. All of us can’t be at 600 when Mother Teresa left the planet. We have to move. Many times, if someone is in such a high level of energy where there’s no form anymore, we are very much in our human bodies. If we’re only in that love and light and if there are levels that we can hop into, but then we lose the embodiment of the experience, so it is important to go into each level of energy. I think some people have a range where they may hover. As lightworkers, I think sometimes we want to pull everyone out into the ethers and make them go to the 600 to 1,000, but that’s not realistic. We do have to move into these different levels of energy.
We are also talking about mass consciousness. When Buddha or Christ became self-actualized and 100% conscious, they were one entity. They’re trying to pull a whole civilization along with them. In order for the civilization to shift and move up in their consciousness and move up the levels like the numbers that you’re talking about, you have to go through the levels. You can’t skip them. It’s not how the human experience is created. It happened, the Christ and the Buddhas who’ve had that 40 days and then you’ve awakened thing.
It’s like the pure consciousness that we attune to and we feel those vibrations.
I think it’s possible that we will eventually evolve as a species to have way more Christ and Buddha experience. That will be the norm, but we’re not there yet as a species.
A lot of people talk about 3D and 5D and the seven dimensions, the different dimensions. Now, we are in this physical place, a little denser as a whole. There’s a density to us. I think that a lot of people want to move out of that. Even more, the idea that we’re all interconnected. The idea that we’re working together and we are in a more harmonious place together and move out of that conflicted place of good and bad. I think we are moving more into that and maybe looking at it more as heavy and light versus good and bad. I think all of that helps move us as a society but some people do pop into these different levels of energy and that’s great, but understanding that some people aren’t there and that’s okay too.
Everybody gets to have their experience. Everybody gets to move through their consciousness in the way that best serves their soul. It’s like you and I get to have the gift of staying home with our children. Some other women may not have that luxury or that gift, but just because they go to work doesn’t mean that their experience is less than or ours is less than. It’s the experience we’re having separately to evolve as a soul attached to this particular species.
Our intuition or our focus, we all choose these paths. You definitely felt that your higher self was bringing you into this path. Honor that, but I do feel we can shift and we can move if we want to and as you said manifesting. I do feel that we all are capable of creating and believing and moving into that, but you can’t do it overnight. It’s not going to happen or you’re not going to pop into a new reality right away.
You could if you were Christ at being. That experience should be expected someday. My personal journey, I couldn’t be where I am spiritually, emotionally, super connected to my higher self and all my psychic powers working at full tilt if I hadn’t gone through it playing around with psychic powers and reading some books. I decided to let go of my anger about the things that happened to me when I was young. That was a decision I had to go through. I did my therapy and I was angry. I worked through that and I decided I don’t want to be this anymore. This thing is ruling my life and I’m not even there. I might as well go back there. I had to go through all of that.
The other part of it is you can tell people, “You’re manifesting this awful thing.” If someone had said that to me at the time when I was so struggling as a young woman after leaving my teen world, which was bad, if someone said, “Start thinking happy thoughts,” I’d be like, I don’t have that. That’s the thing.” I had to read the books and have a couple of good experiences and find a friend and build a good relationship and start to feel that there was something shifting me upward. I couldn’t have done that without the guide.
The anger or letting it out is an important step. You are correct because I think that we have to acknowledge that. Often many people may think, “We’ll get over the anger and move on,” but we have to experience it at our own pace. I do think we are evolving faster now. Things are happening faster. When I started getting into this in the mid-‘90s and I was talking to another practitioner about this. It took us longer to visualize things. It took us longer to get it. Now people are getting into miraculous moments and it’s happening. People are built differently. I love following the Human Design. I don’t know if you follow that. It’s similar to astrology.
[bctt tweet=”Manifest consciously and take control of your life’s course.” via=”no”]
Yes, I do know who they are.
I can always connect you to the right person who started this, but it’s a beautiful way to look at your life. We all tick differently. We all work differently. There’s no one package fits all. If you get an idea of how you tick and how you work, it’s interesting because sometimes when we’re in a high place, a positive place, we may want to say yes to everything. When we’re in a low place, we’ll say no to everything. It’s understanding how you work.
You were talking about things speeding up as we’re moving out of 3D density into a 4D, 5D, faster-manifesting mode because we are starting to evolve as a species. Part of the things that we’re seeing in the world is forcing our evolvement. We can’t sit back and go, “My life’s great.” If we are connected and if we are a part of the whole, we want to support the whole. If there’s a part of our apple that’s rotten, we need to work on that.
It’s hard to accept because if you’re happy in your own life and you are content, or even if your child is angry and you’re not, we want the anger to go away. If a friend is angry or a friend is worried, you want them to heal fast. Everyone goes through it throughout their own way and their own time. We have to create space and allow healing.
You said the perfect words, create space. For me, I believe in holding space. If we’re at a higher level of consciousness where we are manifesting regularly, because we’re manifesting all the time, it’s unconscious about how I’m going to go through my day and who I’m talking to you and why I’m responding. Am I reacting or responding? All of that, that’s consciousness. When I sit down at night and I have the opportunity to quiet everything that’s Kristin and sit with the divine, at that time is when I hold the world in a place of peace and love, and the Earth is healthy and we are honoring each other. That is what my job is. I’m not going to do that when I’m angry about something, but when I’m calm and I’m centered and I’m in perfect connection with my divine self, that’s where you hold the space for our species to evolve into this incredibly beautiful, spiritual and loving species. We’re not there yet. We can hold space for it when we are in that place of divine connection.
This is such an important conversation because what came to me was spiritual bypassing. That’s why this story is relating so much to love and light. As you explained, if someone is hurting and trying to figure out their life, and you’re standing there and saying, “Have love and light.” It’s like the old Flower Child. It has a bad rep.
It doesn’t honor where the person is starting from. Also, that person has to come to a place of deciding, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” That’s how it was for me. It didn’t matter how much therapy I did and all the self-help books. I finally got to a point where I said, “I want to be happy.” Part of that meant cutting people out of my life, cutting behaviors out of my life and I had to get more conscious. I wouldn’t blow through my world, whipping people off, screaming over here, crying over that. That’s manifesting unconsciously. I want to get up in my morning and feel grateful that I’m healthy and I’m going to go make myself a beautiful breakfast. I’m going to help my kids. People take that and they go, “That’s normal every day,” then this COVID-19 hit. We went, “That everyday stuff is special.” That’s consciousness, not blowing through your day. It’s not bringing all your bags of garbage that you grew up with or acquired along the way. You’ve got to go, “I don’t need that. That’s not good for me. This relationship isn’t good. This job isn’t good for me. I’m not following my dreams. I’m unfulfilled.”
Clearing it all out and being in that neutral place to start the day. If we woke up every morning in this beautiful place and then being open, it doesn’t always have to go positive. The lessons are when we feel the zag. When we feel the heavier moments, we have to clear out. As you know, I love studying a lot about the indigenous cultures in Peru. There are whole conversations about the polarity in this world, that it is heavy and light and regularly, they clean out the heavy. They don’t have the same issues that we have here. Most of them are living on a mountain. They’re connected to the Earth in a huge way. That’s part of their culture, knowing that it’s reciprocal energy with nature.
That is something that is lacking in our world. Those people are richer and more conscious than the person who goes and sits on a yoga mat for an hour.
Talking to a tree and waiting to hear what the tree has to say. This is beautiful. I love talking to you. I think that you moved me with a lot of these conversations. I feel more uplifted. The thing is we don’t always have to be uplifted. We want to raise the vibe. My takeaway is when it gets rough and where we are in our life now, wherever we are, as far as we’ve evolved as a mass consciousness, we’re going to have the zags.
I learned an important thing when I was doing my LaHo-Chi training. It was right around 2012. That was when people were predicting the end of the world. There’s always a prediction of the end of the world. I always say those people aren’t parents because when your child messes up the playroom, you don’t kill them. You say, “Go clean up your mess.” The human species has made a bit of a mess. We don’t get to get out scot-free and get removed from the planet.
We’re not going to turn off the program. We’re not going out.
I was in this training and this guy was telling us all about this vision he had about 2012 and the mayhem. What’s happening in the world is what he envisioned in 2012, which never happened. I was in a vulnerable place because I was new to my healing energies. I’m an empath and I was completely overwhelmed by it. I started crying and I left the room and I went into another room and I was sitting by some chips immersed in fear. My teacher came in and he said, “What’s wrong, Kristin?” I was like, “So and so’s out there. He’s telling this vision he had.” He said, “Look around the room. What do you see?” I said, “I see a beautiful table set for twelve people. I see massage beds up for us to do our training afterward. I see wonderful food on our table. I see birds and trees outside.” He said, “There’s no mayhem here. There’s no death and destruction. That might be his experience, Kristin, but it doesn’t have to be yours. What are you focusing on and what are you looking at?” While it is happening around us, and it is, and it’s valid. Our responsibility as lightworkers at the end of the day or in the middle of the day or in the morning or wherever you’re most highly connected to divinity, your job is to hold space for that higher vibration for people to reach for because you have the power to hold it.
Throughout this whole conversation, I’m breathing. I feel the openness of what you’re saying. It’s also putting it in perspective because I think that when we become overwhelmed, we think everything is happening. When everyone is affected, there’s mass chaos. When we bring it into a smaller way and look at exactly what you’re looking at, it helps put it in perspective. The other thing I wanted to point out, because when you were talking, what came to my mind was our intentions throughout the day are also wrapped up in our beliefs and our desires. It’s all one world. Understand that and I think that’s also a big part of it. That is like when every step of the way, you made decisions on how you wanted your life to be. Those were big pivots in your life when you said, “This is my intention of how I want to handle my life. These are my beliefs and my desires,” and then things started to transform.
Over time with the zigging and zagging, I’ve changed my beliefs because I’ve realized I don’t even know where that belief came from, but it’s not coming from my heart. I might need to set that down. That was passed on through generations. I don’t want that stuff. I have to come up with my own belief system that rings true to myself connected to the divine.
It’s important to make sure that you’re aligned with that because I think that we could be having these strong beliefs. I think that’s what we’re all re-evaluating now during this time. We’re being forced to re-evaluate our beliefs and say, “Why do I look at life this way? Why is this my perspective?” Make sure that it’s aligned with your higher self with your pure source and your divinity. I feel this so much in this conversation, so thank you. I feel like I had a healing session. Wouldn’t that be wonderful if we could fly together now? Let’s go meet up. Thank you, Kristin. I’m going to let you have any last comment that may pop in. If you’re complete, then that’s good too.
I am complete. This has been an absolute delight. I feel that my intention to raise the vibration happened at least for the two of us.
I received so much.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for being on. I love you. I miss you. I can’t wait to see you soon.
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About Kristin Ace
After graduating with an BFA in acting, I trained and performed professionally for the next 15 years in regional theatre, off-off Broadway and independent films. I am very proud to have produced and acted in the off~off Broadway gem, Four Aces – four one act plays written by women, and directed by the esteemed Kelly Kimball of Kimball Studios (NYC).
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