Would you like to receive the blog directly in your email inbox?
Sign up below!
Search the Blog:
Write Your Own Story
I was sitting in a restaurant last week surrounded by friends, and we were all laughing, eating, drinking, and toasting the guest of honor. The long table was filled with people from all over the world who I didn’t know just a few short months before moving to Italy.
As if art imitated life (or life imitated art?), I zoomed out from that table scene and thought of the film “Eat, Pray, Love.” While there are so many uncanny parallels to my own story, there is a scene where Elizabeth (who has come to Italy to start her new journey) finds herself sitting at a table with the new friends she’s made, and they are all eating, drinking wine, and laughing. I’d thought of that scene so often since first seeing the film, and I remember wishing one day to live my life just like that.
The Pause
This month, I started working with a new holistic coaching client. We’ll call her Jill. Like many of us, Jill is having some recurring issues and situations that are unpleasant and have plagued her most of her life. She knows she is ready to finally bring them to the surface and then purge them once and for all. Wanting to escape or circumvent the pain is a natural human reaction, so you can imagine her annoyance when I said that this would be our starting point. If we don’t look at our pain, we have no idea where we are wounded, and if we can’t identify our wounds, how can we ever know where to start the process of healing them?
The Open Palm
When I was a young child, I couldn’t wait until I was an old person (which I was sure all 40-year-olds were). I thought the years of working would be finished, and there would be financial security, a solid relationship with the person I would grow old with, and a house full of children and grandchildren. Naively, I thought that all of the trials and tribulations of life would be behind me. But as I have exceeded the doddering age of 40, I have come to see that the picture doesn’t always look the way it was envisioned in youth and that those lessons, and the pain that often accompanies them, do not stop.
Permission
I’ve been asked a lot lately about what possessed me to make the radical changes to my life I’ve made this past year and the even more radical ones I am embarking on in the next couple of months. What made me leave the comforts of the life I knew is a question I get from people (particularly women) excited to see me designing a whole new life but seemingly resigned to not daring to dream themselves.
Love Warriors
February is a very dreary month in many parts of the world, so it’s easy to forget that it is also the month when we celebrate the most powerful force on earth - love. It’s actually quite extraordinary that a species that can be unspeakably hateful, destructive, and evil to our fellow man and our planet home actually stops to acknowledge and celebrate love, albeit for one day. For most, Valentine's Day is a celebration of romantic love, which is a beautiful connector between two people lucky enough to find it. But if we take a look at love past the intimate relationship, chocolates, and greeting cards, we might start to wonder why we don’t celebrate this with the rest of humanity every single day.
The Stranger
I recently heard someone say that freedom wasn’t “nothing left to lose” but rather, “nothing left to be.” What a powerful statement on the peace that comes with finally finding and accepting one’s authentic self.
The Awakening
I write often about awakening and transformation and knowing when it is time for change. It is evident when it’s time for a transformation of our physical space, but few of us ever see when it’s time for spiritual transformation. So often the need for change in our lives starts with a feeling of dis-ease or discomfort. It’s usually subtle enough that we can ignore it or easily obscure it by distraction. But soon, the tap on the shoulder returns, and we’re given the choice to look at something or stuff it back down. Look at it, or stuff it back down. Look at it, or stuff it back down.