I finally understand my aversion to jumping on the yoga band wagon. I checked out yoga in my 20’s when I was reading self-help books and exploring all things new and mysterious. At that time, I drew what I needed from it, but it did not take in the long term, and I am not […]
I like the life I’ve created. I find pleasure in living. I’m blessed with rich relationships and am supported to do the things I love. Even so, I recently woke up in the middle of the night with an anxious sense of dread. There was no apparent reason for it. I knew it wasn’t real, […]
“I had fun,” one of the women in my dialogue circle said at the end of our monthly gathering. “Me too,” I nodded. “That’s just how weird I am. This is my kind of fun.” We all laughed, knowing that we had just shared some innermost thoughts and that much of our talk was emotional […]
Someone in the women’s dialogue I belong to made a suggestion of an exercise we could do in between our monthly meet-ups: make a list of 20 people that have loved you. Not necessarily the ones you know love you, but the ones you have felt loved by. I quickly, mentally ticked off the obvious […]
We got some baklava in our mailbox, homemade by our neighbor. I cooked the venison tenderloin that Joe hunted, while he and a friend were building a winterized coop for our chickens. Later, I baked cookies – the kind made with butter and with raspberry jam in the center – while listening to a Michael […]
We made it through the longest night of the year with a dusting of snow and a gusting wind that seemed to mirror the recent upheaval of violence in nature and culture. We marked the passage of the winter solstice with feasting and dancing with friends around the warm hearth of community. According to the […]
The elderly man that used to wave from his garden as I drove by on my trips to town has been gone now for several years. His house is for sale for a second time and the grass has grown over his vegetable plot, a long rectangle of plowed earth that was lined with pink […]
My husband Joe and I were lounging in the yard by a patch of creeping periwinkle flowers. We were enjoying a late breakfast in the unseasonably warm spring morning when the mailman drove up and hand-delivered a package. For a moment I had forgotten what I ordered from the new Sears Catalog, Amazon.com. I remembered […]
I recently picked up an old dog-eared book from 1990 called Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment because I needed some fresh insight on some challenging family dynamics. The book is just as good now as it was 20 years ago when Joe and I participated in a study group that was exploring its themes […]
The following originally appeared in Natural Awakenings of Southwest Virginia “Don’t leave before you go.” — Alan Forrest on the last morning of the iBme fall self-care retreat What could be sweeter than gently waking after plenty of sleep in your own room at a self-care retreat by the soft sound of a Tibetan bowl […]
I come from the tribe that says ‘anything worth saying is worth exaggerating.’ It’s up to you to sort out the truth. Fear is being carried by the ego; not the soul. Fear is telling you where to go. It’s trying to create motion, either motion towards or away from. What doesn’t get finished in […]
The story written on the walls of our soul is intended to be lived out as the great experiment of each life. ~ Michael Meade If I was the kind of person to have a guru, Michael Meade would be it. After spending three hours at his Maryland lecture on Fate and Destiny and eight […]
