The Blog
Here’s where I share thoughts on the work of moving toward our biggest lives and baddest selves.
Our Side, Their Side, and Where We Come Together
A handful of years ago, back when I lived in wee rural Floyd, VA, a fairly stout number of people (given it's a town of 500 in a county of 13,000) gathered on the courthouse steps one evening to demonstrate for legalized gay marriage. I was a mighty proud aunt...
You’ve got voices in your head.
You've got voices in your head. I'm pretty sure, at least. Of the hundreds of people I've talked to and worked with over the last five years of coaching, I have yet to meet the person who doesn't. The one we notice most easily is that nasty voice of exaggerated fear...
Red lemonade and boundless community for Juneteenth
Tomorrow, I will wear red and drink lemonade made red and extra tangy by hibiscus flowers in celebration of Juneteenth. I've never celebrated Juneteenth before. Truthfully, I've only vaguely been aware of it until the last couple of years and then uncertain, frankly,...
This is my flashy title to get you to read about suicide
"...sometimes, all we have to do is shift our attention and shift the light and allow for these people with powerful, strong voices and stories and solutions to speak for themselves." America Ferrera, actress, producer, activist, said this during a recent On Being...
The squiggly lines of goal setting and a dog named Happy Jacks
Twenty years ago this month, I went on a month-long cross-country roadtrip with my then-girlfriend. Somewhere in New Mexico, we set our sights on Four Corners, the national monument where New Mexico meets up with Arizona, Colorado, and Utah in a neat little point. We...
Five years of meditation and my teeth have never been cleaner
Five years ago this Thursday, I sat down to start my meditation journey in earnest. Up until that point, I had played with the idea some in both group settings and by myself but there was a fear bubbling there, something that made the very simple act of sitting...
An 11-Story Descent from Fear to Possibility
If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves. - Thomas Edison This past Saturday morning at 11am, I was leaning backwards off the ledge circling the roof of the Patrick Henry Hotel in downtown Roanoke, Virginia, throwing horns...
The Otherness of Mother’s Day
I spent Mother's Day being mothered rather than honoring my mother thanks to what we think was a touch of food poisoning. Not ideal but we were together nonetheless and that was good. I did spent a little bit of my couch time surfing Instagram (though only a little...
Obey Your Exhaustion
I had a cold or something last week. As my mom pointed out, you know I'm not feeling well when I take a two-hour nap on a Thursday morning. Yeah, not normally a thing. As sicks go, it was a pretty great one. While my sweetie had full-blown flu nastiness, I had a...
The Ordinariness of Extraordinary
One of the many things I loved about the movie Selma was a scene, no more than five minutes long, maybe only a couple of minutes, that alluded to Dr. King's infidelities. He cheated on Coretta. Does that make his accomplishments less valuable? Less astonishing? Less...