Magical Rome parte tre. The world premiere of our film La Strega di Portobello.

As I stood at the beginning of the red carpet getting ready to walk it for the first time after thirteen years in Los Angeles all I could do was smile at this BEAUTIFUL moment. Beautiful for the not so obvious reasons. Beautiful because I believed in me and never lost me and that had led me there. Beautiful because when some didn’t believe I could do this film I trusted I could even if it was my first film. Beautiful because for every one person who tried to discourage me ten showed up asking how they could be of service. BEAUTIFUL because I never stop seeing the magic in life, no matter what I live or where it takes me, it still is always magical!!!

As I glanced at Paulo giving interviews on the red carpet
, look for the silver dress, I smiled thinking WOW here we are. The man whose book the Devil and Miss Prym helped me endure the challenging three months between being selected a finalist and winner for the GLAMOUR/Toyota Moving Forward Award because everything she was living I was living at the precise moment I read it. Particularly this paragraph. Paragraph two, from page thirty four.

"She clutched the gold to her, got to her feet, feeling weak and desperate, then crouched again, replaced it in the hole and covered it with earth. She couldn't go through with it; this inability, however, had nothing to do with honesty or dishonesty, but with the sheer terror she was feeling. She had just realized two things that prevent us from achieving our dreams: believing them to be impossible or SEEING THOSE DREAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY SOME SUDDEN TURN OF THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECTED IT. For at that moment, all our fears suddenly surface: the fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of a life full of new challenges, THE FEAR OF LOSING FOREVER EVERYTHING THAT IS FAMILIAR."

Even if you had lived those three months with me back in 2006 you still wouldn't comprehend fully what this paragraph meant to me in that moment. I will say that at that time it felt like seventy five percent of people around me didn't believe in me and twenty five did but here's the catch. I above all believed in what the universe was showing me and God was whispering. It was time and that wheel of fortune was spinning in my favor and all those fears were surfacing for when your dream starts to become a reality it is then that you truly realize how powerful you are and how much of it has to do with believing in yourself and what you know you know that ONLY YOU are being told.

Back then I would tell everyone that God had told me I was going to win because I was being guided to this and of course you can imagine I was labeled everything under the sun and most of all I remember people saying, "what is going to happen when she doesn't win?" At the end of the day I had God, my close friends to turn to, page thirty four and of course the universe guiding me allowing me to grow. Because most of all I had taken all my lessons of the past and was applying them. I had come to a place where I knew it was time and that time in my life propelled me into the unknown and the unknown has led me to being able to type this today. So as you can imagine standing on that red carpet with him made me look up at the skies and all around and acknowledge with my smile all that had led me there. Words can not be found to express the amount of gratitude I felt or what that moment was truly like for me.

Other books of his like Eleven Minutes have allowed me to hold on to my belief in unconditional requited love. The Alchemist helped me understand what it was that I was doing when at the time what seemed to be "coincidences" appeared. I was 21 when I read that book. Eleven years ago! Then of course pages 50-51 in the English version of By the River Piedra I sat and wept have stayed with me till this day. I made copies and give them to friends when they were struggling to follow their dreams. Of course if you've been reading my blogs you know what The Witch of Portobello/ La Strega di Portobello/ La Bruja de Portobello
means to me and where it lead me. I could go on forever but most of all Paulo is the man who through his talent and work allowed this witch to feel not so alone while she endured a heart ache because of who she is. The woman who now and forever will proudly call herself The Witch of Portobello.

That my dear friends is magic and I will not hide my excitement over what I live ever! The moment I do I will know I stopped believing in the beauty of life’s surprises. I was fully present in the moment and trust me nothing was going through my mind other than putting one foot in front of the other and living in the present life was gifting me. I turned to Jessica as we posed for the press at the end of the long red carpet's walk and said, "if there was ever a surreal moment this is it!" and we smiled at eachother.


Any picture you find online of me from that night no matter what site bought it or what they did with it one thing is the same in all of them, my smile is from ear to ear. I was smiling with God and the universe, I truly was! Take a look at a few.

From Brasilian magazine Caras

From LIFE magazine

Not sure were this one came from ;-)

More pictures from the film festival


These are the moments that make everything we endure worth while. The moments you realize how much influence you have on where you go in life. The key to this in my humble opinion and experience has been to surrender control. I am honest so I will say I always saw myself on the red carpet. ;-) However I never knew I would walk it at thirty two, thirteen years after being in Los Angeles fighting for my dreams or that the man whose books helped me be a warrior and stay in the game would be standing there with me. I can't make you see the magic but I sure hope you do!

I do want to mention that there was a time when all I did was read and lie dormant in my dreams only living them through books thinking of the someday, the someday I'd do it. Luckily for me life kicked me around enough to open my eyes to how active we have to be in the pursuit of our dreams and just how important it is too to know when to let go. For me it's a balance between the both. I call doing my part the footwork and the outcome I call God's will. I know I can't make anything happen that is not meant to but I also know that NO ONE can stop anything from happening that is meant to as long as you believe. ;-) Learning to accept God's will has been key for me. So now as I am coming off the high and back to my day to day life I soldier on with God as fears, of others, want to come in and be a part of my life. I will continue to stand by that which only makes sense to me and I will continue to believe in the beauty and miracles of the unexpected and the magic that lies in the unknown because Emerson taught me well a few years back when I "stumbled" upon his thought that "everything I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen." Open your eyes, listen to yourself, and you too will discover the magic of life and where it can lead you!

This is my portion of the film at the festival with Italian subtitles. Take a look at us on the big screen. I am not showing you anything you couldn't have seen online so no, no shots of the film in its entirety. ;-) You also get to see us, filmmakers, being acknowledged prior to screening. My name is last and my excitement shows!!! You can take the girl out of Texas but you can't take the Texas/dork outta me ya'll!! Oh and the credits stayed the same so my shout out to God for giving me the courage to follow the signs stayed in!