The Blog
Here’s where I share thoughts on the work of moving toward our biggest lives and baddest selves.
The Stoned Writer: When Fear Inhibits Creation
I have a friend with a book idea he’s been noodling on for the last few years. It’s a memoir of sorts, focused on his journey from being raised in the church in the way many people are – with a sense of belonging without a whole lot of intentionality – and how he came...
How to Survive a (Gremlin) Rip Tide
Rip tides. Though there’s some debate about how to best extract yourself from the pull of these currents that whisk swimmers away from shore, the generally agreed-upon method is to first stay calm: Take a deep breath and remind yourself that the current does, indeed,...
Never Work Another Day in Your Life
Do work you love and you’ll never work another day in your life. I don’t remember where I heard it but stuck in my head is a factoid that among the people with the most job satisfaction are those who dispose of road kill. I guess I can see it: Lots of time outside,...
A Few Bears and a Few Thousand Stitches
I lived in rural Floyd County, Virginia, for nine years. Living rurally means frequent deer encounters, groundhogs living under outbuildings, and not-infrequent gifts of mice and moles left by the outdoor cats (and, yes, occasionally the indoor ones, too). In my first...
A Little New Year Foolishness
I’m a long-time year-end planner and I’ve gone about it a pile of ways. I’ll save you the gory details except to say that I’ve found that having a lot of those such details didn’t make me more productive or more capable of achieving anything. Instead, it mostly just...
Wishing you What Ifs this Holiday Season
For a year or so, I worked with a woman who is a medium and energy worker in Floyd, Virginia – Catherine Morningstar. I would drive to her house and we’d sit at her kitchen table where we would talk about whatever was on my mind. Her eyes would occasionally dart in...
The Smothering Blanket of Overgeneralization
In their book Conscious Loving, Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks wrote, “When deeply hurt, your body and mind will overgeneralize, in order to prevent you from hurting that way again.” Most of us have had an experience along the lines of eating chicken salad that sat out on...
Third Intention Healing of Our Hearts
I found my soul mate of a dog, Emmie, in 2000 at the pound. Four years later, she picked out her partner in life and crime, Cosmo, at an adoption fair. As in all wonderful, long-term relationships, Emmie and Cosmo formed their own routines and rituals; they chose one...
Coffee and the Art of Slowing Down
As I write this, I’m drinking English Breakfast tea out of a handmade mug. It’s my favorite tea mug, tall and lean with a tiny bit of a bulge just barely lower than halfway. The foot is black, the rest of the body is tan, and the design details are subtle and...
A Conspiracy of Excellence
Last week was one of those weeks that seemed to have a theme, one wove through a couple of conversations and one Instagram video, like so: Natalia Alvarez, an expert in storytelling to express brand (an anemic description of the magic she weaves) with her company The...