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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

Many of us started out on our path in life ill-equipped completely unaware of the problems in life we would encounter, let alone how to navigate them when they arose. We did the best we could with what we had and experienced it may very well have not been enough.

Now we might be stuck in the looping pattern of rehashing the past, recriminating ourselves with a barrage of what we SHOULD have done, but didn’t. So, we hang our heads in shame from the heaping mounds of evidence we hold against ourselves. Or, we feel resentment building in our hearts and get angry how unfair life has been becoming more and more cynical how impossible it is to have the power to have life be different.

We find ourselves living our life from the energies of anger, guilt, shame and depression, oscillating between these states feels impotent.

Personally, I started out my young adult life very ill-equipped. I was a very young wife and mother, at the age of 18. I remember my mom saying something about,...

This morning when I woke up, I recognized a familiar pattern, of wanting to roll back over and go to sleep. There is an ongoing list in my head of all the things I need to attend to. It felt like the list was growing and getting larger and more difficult. I noticed that familiar time-crunch. The time-crunch, when it happens, can feel painful. It’s as if there is not enough time to attend to everything I want to attend to.

As I’m noticing that, and taking the time to breath into that, and notice what happens in my body when I tell myself that. When I say that there’s not enough time to get everything done. There is a tightening that happens, a constriction.

Then, I thought about my herd, I haven’t even gotten to spend as much time with them as I would like to. So, I’m out here to spend time with my herd now. I love the way they support me and stand beside me; they have done that for years. Taking time to be, right where I am, with acceptance and grace.

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