The energies are intense the last week and will continue to be throughout most of July. We have eclipses, full moons, and several planets in retrograde. It is a time to consider what is holding us back and where we are ready to commit to change.

I've had a lot of "itchy" words show up in my universe lately like DISCIPLINE and STRUCTURE and ROUTINE. Why these bother me so much I'm not sure - but I am aware if I play with them in a new way and get rid of some old points of view (POV) then my entire reality and joy will change to something greater.

As I prepare to head back to Chicago after visiting my husband in Europe, I am ready for whatever is coming. Ready to shed the old and create the new. Ready to be more of who I truly be.

My invitation to you this week: Look at what's holding you back in your life. What words or energies keep showing up that are prickly and feel yucky or you have great resistance to. Spend some time exploring WHY this is and let that go. I wonder then how...

It has been a while since I posted here or made a new video. Life in Europe was much more intense and rough this trip. I was here a week and my husband went into the hospital not once but three times over the month. I spent half my time here in the hospital or doctor's offices or procedure rooms. 

This has been a cycle - a loop we can't escape - or can we? What I realize now is really I have zero control over any of this. I am aware of a lot of things that my husband can choose to stop this loop - but I can't make him do any of that. 

To watch someone you love choose something that is not going to make them healthier or feel better on a consistent basis is difficult for me. Is it for you? Knowing all I know and being aware even in my body of what is wrong with him and knowing what would be a contribution - I can only suggest anymore he do it and watch. 

This is a big lesson for me to learn - truly detach and let him handle his own stuff. We all do things that serve us...

Jennifer Holik chose a new path in June 2012 when she moved out with her boys and filed for divorce. She did not expect that six months later, when she acknowledged her spiritual gifts, her entire life would transform. Several dead guys, primarily World War I and World War II service members, had already shown up in Jennifer’s world. Many others entered her life at the exact moment they were required. Listening to their whispers, Jennifer followed the energy and created a life and business no one she knew had dared to create.

Travel through time and space, across the ocean, and through Europe, where love knows no boundaries. On...

What do you mean I cannot travel anymore?!

Spring is in the air here in the Netherlands and each day the trees bud out more, the small bushes are greener or leaves are fully open. The daffodils and crocuses are blooming everywhere. I even saw a roundabout in Arnhem filled with purple crocuses. It was gorgeous!

As spring arrives, people start thinking about their summer or holiday travel. Well, most people. Caregivers and their patients may be avoiding that topic all together due to many walls that stand in their way.

I've read a lot of comments in caregiving groups about avoiding travel, or not thinking about it ,and having only a few friends on FB who do not travel so they do not have to look at photos all day long on their feed.

Does it REALLY have to be this way or is there another possibility?

When I began traveling in Europe in 2015, I knew it would be something I would do for the rest of my life. I HAD to travel. So many of my past lives were bound up in the earth here that to...

Today I have been preparing marketing pieces for a new webinar I will give, Walking In Their Footsteps, Travel Planning for your World War II Trip to Europe. As I prepare the webinar slides and marketing pieces, I have had the opportunity to look at photos I took while on several Europe trips. You could say I did a little time traveling today.

Looking at photos I have not looked at in a long time, I was reminded of special moments, spiritual experiences, love, loss, and lessons learned. Isn't this something we all do when we go through old photos? Consider the past and how we got from there to here? If you have followed me here or on my WWII Research & Writing Center website for any length of time, you know I am a spiritual person, always seeking to release the past and create more for my future.

Today was no different as I looked at my past through European travel. That travel has taught me many lessons.

1. I am never alone. Even when I think I'm alone, I'm really not. There...

Johan and I traveled to the Dutch/German border near Aachen and spent a few days exploring WWII history and contemplating family history. I did a lot of writing on this trip. Musings. Questions. Concerns. Joyful things. All of this was captured in my journal.

One thing that keeps showing up the longer I am in Europe on this trip is that history keeps repeating itself. We are not doing enough to stop this.

Distraction

War is a distraction. Conflict is a distraction. These things keep us from the more important things in this life and reality. Yet, we continue to create them on a daily basis.

Every. Single. One. Of. Us.

I'm guilty of this. Sometimes when things are going really well there is a part of me waiting for the other shoe to drop. I might unconsciously find one thing to nag my husband about and create a conflict - small or large. Over the last year I try to be more aware of this and clear whatever is causing it. Yet there are times when I fail.

What would change in our lives,...

In October, Johan and I visited Vogelsang, a former Nazi Training Facility and Tourist hot spot/wedding venue during the 1930s and early 1940s. Standing in this place now, looking out over the beautiful fall Eifel National Park, and knowing the history of this place, was hard to wrap my head around.

The National Socialist Documentation Center, which we visited and saw the exhibit, "The Master Race", offers these questions on their website:

• What was the attraction of a place like Vogelsang during the National Socialist period?
• What did the party leadership promise young men coming here regarding their future?
• What motivated their hopes and their desire for social advancement?
  Were they, through drill and formation, predestined to participate in crimes, or could they have also said no?
• Did they see themselves as members of a supposed master race and act upon this?

After we viewed the exhibit and walked most of the complex, I had no answers to those questions. I only had more...

Saturday, 29 September 2018, I attended the unveiling of a new monument in the Netherlands honoring the crew of the Mission Belle B-17 bomber. I wrote two articles about the day's events, which you can read.

The Mission Belle - Freedom Demands Responsibility

The Mission Belle - Unveiling the Monument

In this article I would like to share more of the healing and closure side of the day's events.

We often hear of people walking in their soldier's footsteps. That is a phrase I have used a lot since I walked in my cousin James Privoznik's footsteps in 2015. Colonel Fischer of the U.S. Air Force, who spoke at the commemoration of the Mission Belle, thanked the families for following the flight path of their family member. I love that phrase.

I attended the unveiling of the Mission Belle monument for several reasons.

• I like to attend commemorations in Europe when possible to be a part of the remembrance and also share this with others.
• My husband was going to translate the Dutch speeches...

In Germany the summer of 2018, I spent a day traveling with Doug Mitchell, who showed Johan and I the West Wall, Dragon's Teeth, bunkers, and memorials. We absorbed a lot of history that day.

We visited many WWII sites, some in which I could still feel the trauma, hear the whispers, feel the pain. And others, like the one in this video, where there was a sense of peace.

That peace was a bit in conflict with my head which knew a battle had raged in those woods and blood soaked the land. Sometimes standing in these sacred spaces is difficult for us to reconcile energy and mind.

Where have you stood in a military family member's footsteps that caused this reaction in you? How did you reconcile the energy and knowledge?

© 2018 Jennifer Holik

For more than a decade I have been researching all branches of the military in WWII. In 2015 I finally went to Europe to walk in the footsteps of my cousin James Privoznik, fly his final burial flag over the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) Luxembourg Cemetery where he sleeps, and then walk in the woods here he was killed.

Earlier on that trip I visited my first ABMC cemetery at Normandy. Having extensively researched and read hundreds of Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF)s and the work of the Graves Registration Service, I thought I was prepared to stand in that sacred space.

All the research in the world, all the reading of books in the world, is not the same as standing where your family member fought, was wounded, or died. Nothing can compare or completely prepare you for that moment.

Have you traveled in Europe after doing the military research for your family? It isn't enough to look at your father's discharge paper and say, 'Oh he was in that unit.' Usually...