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An Excerpt from Let it Be Easy by Susie Moore

What grows together, goes together.”

Oh, I thought. That’s a sweet little line. And what made it even more special was the fact that I was a bit in awe of the person who said it to me.

A chef who used to work at Per Se, Thomas Keller’s famous three-Michelin-star restaurant in New York, was giving us a cooking lesson. We’d never been to Per Se because the price tag scared us — the tasting menu costs more than $300 a person — but here my husband, Heath, and I were, hanging out with a top chef. We were spending the weekend at a luxury resort called Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, a trip we’d won as a prize.

Naturally, I expected this famous chef’s cooking to be difficult and sophisticated, packed with exotic ingredients and finicky steps that were hard to execute. Should I bring a notepad? I’d wondered.

Turns out, I didn’t need to.

“People overcomplicate what makes a good meal,” the chef told us. “The best thing you can do is to use fresh, in-season ingredients, and then just keep it simple with olive oil, lemon juice, a pinch of salt.”

He smiled as he whipped up a tomato, basil, and cucumber salad, which he piled high on a delicate bone-china plate.

“Make your salads tall, friends,” he chirped. “No depressing flat salads allowed!”

It’s true, right? Restaurants serve things vertically — tall salads, tartares, ice cream sundaes. It adds to the fancy.

Could that be it? Could cooking be that simple, especially given that you pay more than $20 for a salad like this in a fancy place? Is it enough to just use what you’re given — combined with the passion and inclination to create that comes from within?

Apparently so, because you’re given the right ingredients at the right time. All you have to do is roll up your sleeves and trust that fresh ingredients from the garden out back grow — and therefore go — together.

The chef went on to say that any onion can be used in a recipe to replace a particular type of onion listed as an ingredient. And honey and maple syrup can often be used in place of sugar. Nature is overflowing with ways to make our lives a little easier, it seems. The chef was joyful in the way he spoke as he sliced and sprinkled, using his hip to close the drawers, passing the basil around so we could all get a whiff of the summery scent. Fancy stuff can even be free-flowing and flexible.

Wow. I’d made cooking so hard by building it up to be complex. I’d grown up believing that you must sweat in the kitchen to get a good result (I mean, you gotta earn it, right?). And therefore I ended up not doing much in the kitchen at all — besides keeping my Pellegrino chilled and a bowl of pretzels topped off.

Is there an area of your life where you’re doing this? Overcomplicating something that wants to be easy? Waiting? Missing out before you’ve even begun?

As the chef spoke about five-star cuisine, it was like he was revealing some ancient truth about the universe at large: keep it simple. Nature’s creations and timing are perfect. Don’t make it hard when it can be fun. Let life be easy and good.

If ease and excellence coincide in the kitchen, where else can that be true? It turns out — everywhere.

Susie Moore is the author of Let It Be Easy and Stop Checking Your Likes. She is a former Silicon Valley executive turned celebrity life coach and advice columnist, and her work has been featured on the Today show, Good Morning America, Dr. Oz, Oprah, Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Cosmopolitan. Find out more about her work at www.Susie-Moore.com.

Excerpted from the book Let It Be Easy. Copyright ©2021 by Susie Moore. Printed with permission from New World Library.

I dreamed that I was at my wedding and about to marry my husband, but then I realized that he wasn't there. I looked for his family and they weren't there either, so I picked up a white rose, and through my mind, I was talking to my husband. Then someone from his family called, saying he was dead. I was in front of a coffin with my husband in it, crying in my wedding dress. Then I touched his hand and it was hot; my hands were cold compared to his. I told everyone he was actually alive and that I had talked to him. He opened his eyes and then rescheduled the wedding. He ended up not being there again! He had gone up North. I called him and he said he totally forgot the date. I was crying. I left the wedding and went somewhere where I looked in a mirror and my sister said that I was beautiful and if he didn't want to marry me, then someone else out there would. My husband came down looking for me but I was hiding from him. He found me and I told him, If you don't want to marry me, then someone else will. He embraced me and just kept on repeating, I'm sorry. I love you. Then I woke up and started crying because all I could think about was my husband in a coffin.

Adileny

Susyn:

There is a theme running through this dream that contains important messages for you. I believe the entire dream is about you and some hidden fears you are carrying.

Typically, when a person dreams about a loved one dying, it implies that a change is needed. This does not mean a physical change, but speaks to an emotional or intellectual adjustment that needs to be made. This dream is not prophesizing the death of your husband. This is clear because he was mistakenly identified as having died in the dream, then you were able to feel the heat and life in his body, after which he opened his eyes and rescheduled the wedding.

Here your husband is serving as a catalyst for the doubt and fear this dream evoked within you. There may be a part of you deep in your subconscious that tells you that you are not lovable and do not deserve your husband. These issues come to light when he does not show up for the wedding, when he forgets about it after having failed to be there the first time, and when your sister tells you that if he does not marry you someone else will. These elements suggest a lack of self-confidence and fear that your relationship is out of balance.

The fact that you were wearing a wedding dress and prepared to be married twice during the dream also suggests that you feel some distance or some misunderstanding. While you are totally committed to the relationship, these scenarios indicate a possibility that he may be pulling back or acting distant. Depending on what is going on between you and your husband, this dream could represent a block in communication or the need to be more expressive in how you feel about one another.

Dreams like this remind us to appreciate the people we hold dearest in our hearts. People become so busy with the outside world that they often forget to acknowledge their loved ones. You may want to journal about how things are going with you and your husband to discover if some changes need to be made; perhaps you need to spend more time together or have a heart-to-heart talk.

The white rose in your dream represents the spiritual aspects of your marriage. With the rose in your hand, you were able to speak to your husband on a spiritual level even though he appeared to be dead. Take this as a sign to build on the soul connection between the two of you and as a reminder that prayer and meditation can ease the upset this dream created and enlighten you to what you need to do to improve the relationship.

*****

Mata:

I don't feel this dream has anything to do with your husband dying. Since dreams are generally symbolic, it may not even have anything to do with your marriage, but instead be about some other huge desire and your fears that you won't be able to bring it together, perhaps because some other party involved will cause it to die before it really gets going. If you can pinpoint some undertaking you are considering that you fear you will be unable to bring to fruition, you have your answer.

However, if the wedding were a metaphor for something else, you would tend to have other dreams about the same issue that employ different scenarios. For example, you might first dream of this as a thwarted wedding, then dream that you were trying to get to the airport for an important trip but the taxi driver you hired didn't show up, and when you called another taxi, that driver kept going the wrong way. Since the wedding metaphor remained consistent, odds are good that this is about your marriage.

I would not at all be surprised if you've been feeling a bit unfulfilled in this area of your life and perhaps even considering giving up on your marriage fulfilling all your dreams for love. All marriages go through ups and downs. In fact, I have never met someone married for any significant length of time who didn't at some point feel pretty frustrated or dissatisfied.

I feel you are working through some relationship issues in this dream. Here the white rose you used to communicate with your husband is a symbol of pure love; it is the true love you carry for each other that keeps you together despite the many challenges of marriage, that keeps you communicating even when it seems impossible to understand each other.

It's probably safe to assume that the reason you've not been completely happy in your marriage is because you don't feel your husband is as passionately committed and devoted to your relationship as you are, for in this dream, we see him failing to step up and be there for you when you really need him to be. This dream suggests that whether you are conscious of it or not, you want him to pay more attention to you, show up in your marriage, and make you a higher priority in his life.

Your sister represents a part of you that loves and believes in yourself. This healthy party of you is telling you not to give up on your dreams even if it means you have to rock the boat to get your husband to stop taking you and your devotion for granted.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.