Balancing Celebration and Mourning

Nov 13, 2020

Today as I’ve been sitting with others, accompanying them on their journey, there was a light rain that came through. The air is much warmer, as spring is arriving here, and it smelled fresh outside. It feels like new life is ready to bloom. This new life preparing to bloom is happening for a lot of us as we have been experiencing life much different than it used to be. 

There is a sense of stabilizing. Many of us in positions of leadership have needed to work diligently in order to maintain our capacity to monitor our environment, and that of our team members and those that we are responsible for taking care of. As well as being more expansive reaching outside of our inner circle to be a resource for the extended communities in our world, creating places where there are safe zones. There are finally beginning to be places where we can trust it is safe. It’s just beginning. 

I want to acknowledge that for many of us, when we are younger, there is an inner...

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Experiencing A Loss of Freedom?

Nov 06, 2020

What’s it been like for you  with all the changes taking place in our world? Some of us are experiencing a loss of our sense of freedom. Others, even though there are restrictions placed upon them, they live in a place that allows them to experience more freedom of movement. 

Maybe you have new learning curves because you need to work from home, if you still have a job. If you don’t have a job, then you are learning how to be at home without your normal routine. There are new learning curves for all of us in many different ways. 

Maybe you are finding that there is not enough support when you need it. It could be as simple as something went wrong with your computer and you’re at home without an IT person to help you, and you have to sort it out on your own. Or maybe you have a partner at work who got scared, locked themselves down at home and refuse to help at all, out of fear. 

Maybe it feels like there is a lot of weight on your shoulders...

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An Invisible Danger Floats Around

Oct 30, 2020

I bet you have been noticing there are a lot of changes that are happening. For many of us this can feel very alarming and scary. Maybe you walked into the grocery store and everything was gone. There was no meat, there were no noodles, all the soups were gone, and it was scary because it’s not predictable. It’s not every day you walk into the store and most everything is gone. This signals an alarm that alerts your whole self that danger is here. 

The other thing that can be scary is this danger is not something you can see with your eyes. It’s an invisible danger that floats around landing on things and you might unknowingly touch it – and that is scary. 

Then you start to notice, when you go out, there are not many people out and about. I had one client say that when they walked into town to go to work, because their business is an essential business to stay open, that it was like walking into a ghost town. There is an uneasiness that comes with...

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Beyond Moaning and Complaining

Oct 23, 2020

Today I was thinking about those times in my life when I have just wanted to be griping about something. Or I’m moaning and I’m complaining. I notice what that’s like for me, inside of my system, inside of my thought life, when I’m doing that. What are the behaviors that show up when I’m in that mood? 

Because I also notice, when I’m observing others and they are wanting to grip about things happening in their life; they are not happy, they are moaning and complaining, I know what that is like for me! Sometimes I might guess, “Do you need a little shared reality around what it’s like when people go there? That is like this wild horse got loose and it’s galloping around through the space and no one is even acknowledging it? Or, is it as if you are in this room and a big elephant came in and plopped right down in the center and everyone is pretending it’s not there? But it’s so obvious that it’s...

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When We Are Worried We Don't Matter

Oct 16, 2020

Today I’ve been spending some time thinking about how some of us might have the experience of being worried whether or not we matter. Maybe we’ve been close to other people in our lives and they go away for a while and we lose that connection that we’ve grown to count on. Then, when they start to come back, there’s an irritation that comes up inside.

You just get angry; you’ve missed them really bad and now they are coming back and you are worried. You are worried that since they’ve been gone so long, they are going to be tired, or maybe their schedule will fill up and there won’t be enough time for you.

Even thinking there’s going to be time for others, but there won’t be time for me. Maybe it’s that you believe you don’t matter enough. If you could just matter enough, then there would be time for you. 

When this kind of a spiraling loop starts happening within us, that is unconscious, we can hear inner voices...

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It’s Too Late

Oct 09, 2020

Have you ever had the experience of feeling it’s just too late? Maybe right before you got there you were really looking forward to something. You might have been filled with anticipation, delight, hope, and possibility, and then something unexpected comes up instead of what you were anticipating. It’s just like the shutters come down. There is no conversation around it, there’s no nothing, it’s just like a big wall comes up. It’s too late. 

Maybe you run the mindset that, “It really doesn’t matter anyway.” Or, “I don’t matter anyway. This always happens. It’s just the way it is.” And, there is just no conversation. Instead, there is a complete and utter shutdown. 

It would be painful if you could feel it, but in those moments, it feels so disappointing, that your system blesses you with the neurochemicals to numb you out. You go blank. It’s like there is an invisible field between you and life....

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Inspired To Take Action

Oct 02, 2020

Have you ever felt really inspired by an idea or felt called to speak up about something in community, or in the world? Just when you are about ready to speak up or step out, fear or doubt comes in and starts to have this conversation in the background of your mind. 

It might sound something like, “What if someone gets upset by what I say?” or it could be, “What if somebody comes right out and disagrees with me? That would be really uncomfortable.” 

Or maybe it’s a pattern you have in your life, you’ve just always looked outside of yourself for the answers, so you need permission to speak up. Permission from outside of you. 

This is a familiar path that I’ve taken, more than once in my life. At different stages and different ages, it shows up slightly differently. Yet, the pattern really is not really knowing your own truth. Not really having the conviction deep inside that gives you solid ground to stand on. Regardless of...

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Unpacking Embarrassment & Discovering Self-Acceptance

Sep 25, 2020

I was watching some of these videos that I’ve made, and I caught myself pausing… just like that. Only when I saw it, I wasn’t very nice to myself. I felt some embarrassment, and I realized underneath that embarrassment there was a fear of being judged by my viewers. So, I unpacked that a little bit more and recognized how I sabotage myself, I was judging myself thinking I look dumb, or that I was dumb.

As I slowed down to be with that part of me, that really did believe I was dumb, I was the youngest of 4 kids and to my older siblings I seemed pretty simple. That’s pretty normal for kids. When I could hear that voice was still coming around inside, pretty subtly, I could be grateful that I could notice it. That I could actually hear it and hear what the need is underneath that. The need for self-acceptance.

When I am able to accept myself with grace and give myself the freedom to show up how I show up. It means I let myself pause when I pause, because...

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We Live in a Culture That Is Fast-Paced with High Expectations

Sep 18, 2020

I’ve been thinking about our culture; it tends to be very fast-paced and there’s a high bar on expectations for doing well and being successful. What that can look like for some of us is we can be confused, not understanding how to meet expectations because there’s an underlying perfectionism that seems unreachable.

Plus, there is just so much information to keep up with, there is always something new to learn, to implement, or to apply in our job or in our life. Then we being to feel stretched too thin, become hard on myself and critical of others and then the relationships suffer.

On top of all that, because it’s so fast-paced and there is so much to keep up with, and we’re getting cranky on top of that, now we don’t have time to nurture our relationships. Or to feel nurtured.

Let me tell you a story, it was a few years back and I was a medical office manager for a different physician. Of all of the jobs I’ve had working for others, this...

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Passionate About Attachment

Sep 11, 2020

Today I got fired up about something, I got fired up about attachment. Secure attachment. Some of you may not be aware that there are several different types of ways that us human beings attach.

When we are fortunate and blessed to have attentive and caring parents that monitor our sounds and our cries of distress when we were little, and they attend to us as best they can. And, they make repairs with us when they are late, or they miss a cue. We develop what is known as secure attachment.

When we aren’t so fortunate, we can develop avoidant attachment, or ambivalent attachment. Avoidant attachment is when our caregivers looked at us if we were specimens or objects, they look at us to see if they need to do something to fix us, to clean us, to tend to us. We were more of a task, rather than a person. This attachment adaptation is more left-hemisphere dominate.

In attachment there is a wide spectrum, at the top is where we are secure. Imagine an inverted U, my dear friend and...

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