People sometimes ask where ideas for this blog come from.
I tell them that they arrive in a moment.
It’s like a blustery eastern wind is tossing a pile of leaves, and once they quiet, a single stunning thing lands in front. A word or image shows up on this canvas of life, accompanied by a feeling that says, “This is important.”
It could be someone says a phrase that I love.
Read MoreI met my Dharma this summer.
Three days of asanas, mindfulness meditation, thoughtful lectures, and fresh organic food, all in the idyllic setting of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Healing in western MA.
A few days of being there for a workshop, The Dharma of Engaged Yoga, was most definitely my Dharma.
Read MoreMy son always loved trains.
Seriously loved them.
For a while I thought he might become a real-life engineer.
I had images of him shoveling coal into a firebox, fueling steam locomotives. But then I reminded myself that we don’t power trains by coal anymore.
Read MoreEver wish you had said something, but didn’t?
And those perfect words don’t come to you until later?
I don’t mean a comeback or retort that escaped you. I mean words that could have been helpful, or reassuring.
Sometimes, the thought stays with you afterwards. The unfulfilled potential of those words hangs in the air, and can follow you for days.
Read MoreAfter my mother died, my dad lived alone in their giant house for a year.
One February day, he fell on ice in the driveway going to get the newspaper. He hit his head and ended up with a subdural hematoma. Thanks to brain surgery, he survived, but he was in a wheelchair in a nursing home for the rest of his life.
It’s a story about grace, actually.
Read MoreThis week, my son’s computer got hacked.
Really hacked.
Mother&*%ers.
Okay, that may seem a little strong, especially from me. I am generally not a swear-er. But this made me really angry. Right in the middle of him moving to a new state, signing up for a class, locating a new job, and taking care of some things before he moves, his computer and phone were slowly being infiltrated by who knows who.
Read MoreI like to point out to my son every time he procrastinates.
It’s my job as a parent, right?
The helpful practice started back when he was in school: “Have you finished Catcher in the Rye Yet?” Or “How’s your science experiment coming along?” Or “How’s studying for the SAT going?”
It was excellent parenting.
Except that it didn’t work.
My son likes to live on the edge. He likes to live in the moment. He’s a free spirit.
Read MoreWhat is one question your life centers around?
Mark Nepo asked this in a recent article in Spirituality and Health. What is one question your life has centered around? The minute I read this, I knew my answer.
Will I have enough time?
That’s my life-centering question.
Read MoreI heard some great wisdom from the instructor in a yin yoga class this week.
Stay friendly with what’s happening.
Stay friendly. What exactly does that mean?
Be pleasant when a thin-staffed restaurant has poor customer service?
Be kind to the person trying to help you after a 60-minute wait on that 1-800 number?
Read MoreI went to see a puppet show with my son this weekend.
My son is 24.
So, it was a puppet comedian. Randy Feltface. A fuzzy, egg-headed purple puppet with a quick wit and a bit of a mouth.
The person who holds Randy’s strings and heart, Heath McIvor, is a bit of a mystery—but we know from his stories and his accent that he is from Australia. He's on a North American tour at the moment, and was in Boston, so after watching him only on YouTube, we had to go.
Randy has already been to all four corners of the country, and said he loves the U.S.A. But he also said, “You’re a bit of a cluster#$*& at the moment, eh?”
The audience laughed hysterically at that one.
Read MoreEver get to visit a truly magical place?
Maybe even the same magical place twice in your life?
I did just this, visited the land of northern lights and geysers. The land of Vikings and druids. Iceland! And more specifically, Gullfoss Waterfall in Haukadalu.
But this second time I went there, I thought it was my first.
This is what being human does to us. This is what having a fragile memory does. We can have life-changing experiences decades apart and not even remember them.
Read MoreWhat spins around in your brain at night as you try to fall asleep?
My swirling brain is a giant cesspool of thoughts.
A sludgy, unmoving, and dark pool of messiness. One thread of an idea births another, churning another idea, and another, and suddenly I’m spinning off into an imaginary, anxious world of things that I don’t want.
Read MoreI remember the day that my mother gave up.
She was exhausted.
She had weird rashes on her hands from chemo. She would get so sick to her stomach that she couldn’t eat for days. She was tired all the time.
The stage IV uterine cancer was not what did her in—it was the bladder cancer which had come later. For some reason, this second cancer that was supposed to stay in one place spread. It was supposed to be treatable.
But in the end, it wasn’t.
Read MoreMy brother is 18 months older than me.
I was the irritating little sister. I have a graphite mark on my stomach to this day from fighting over a pencil and a crossword puzzle with him when I was 6.
But I experienced some generous older brother moments for sure, such as when he took me fishing. I wanted to learn how to fish, and he was willing to teach me.
We biked about three miles from our house to Powder Mill Pond and blew up a yellow two-person inflatable boat with a hand pump. And then we clumsily crawled into the boat, sticking plastic blue oars into the holders, and launched out onto the water.
He showed me how to use lures, how to put a worm on a hook, how to cast. I loved the sweet sound of the nylon line releasing from the spincaster reel.
And we fished.
Read MoreSo. Much. Suffering.
Any human spirit could be feeling lost right about now. Uvalde was the 27th mass shooting at a U.S. school this year.
Violence amplifying violence. Loss of life, pain, and grief. Powerlessness. And more grief.
As much as I and others may want to distance ourselves from these events, we must take it in.
I am as guilty of avoiding the news as anyone. Spending time reading about violence, hate, divisiveness, and systemic injustice makes it challenging to follow good. It's darn challenging to be a light being. But it’s also too easy to float above it all—as if it’s not happening—to focus on the insignificant events of our lives as if nothing odd is happening around us.
Hurt people hurt people. This is a reinforcing loop that needs to be broken. More people suffering means even more people suffering. And more. And more.
Read MoreWhat is the deepest silence you have ever known?
On a podcast I was listening to recently, the host asked this question as they discussed navigating the noise of the modern world.
The deepest silence I have ever known? Several come to mind.
Listening to my own inhale and exhale when scuba diving in a granite quarry once. The water was muddy brown, just a few feet of visibility. I was getting certified, so I was terrified. But the silence of my own breath was meditative. Soothing.
Or sitting with poets in a writing workshop in Provincetown, listening to the a dozen pens scratching across paper. That silent moment when the Muse comes to life.
I also was once on a massive cruise ship, gliding through Milford Sound in New Zealand, and dolphins were leaping in and out of the gentle wake behind us. It was soundless. And beautiful.
The deepest silence is not always a lack of noise.
Read MoreMy dad used to cheerfully wake me up Saturday mornings collecting garbage from my room. He’d say, rustling the wastebasket by my desk, “Wake up, sleepyhead! It’s 8:00 am!”
He was a morning person.
It was annoying.
But decades later, I would be the one waking my father up when I visited him at his nursing home. He would open his deep brown eyes, and then I would see that familiar crooked grin.
Dad was there because of a head injury he had after falling on ice in his driveway. He was borderline diabetic and had high blood pressure, but also so strong that it seemed like he’d go on forever.
When we learned that he was dying after six years at the nursing home, a doctor said to him, “Norman, do you understand that you are going to die?” And then the doctor added, “I am going to repeat myself because Daughter #1 tells me that you don’t always remember everything.”
Read MoreWords cast a spell.
Hocus pocus. Here's how you spell bivouac.
I was Hillsboro County spelling bee champion once.
For the big win, I wore a maroon plaid skirt and matching vest and spelled my little heart out at the Elk's Lodge in Nashua. My mother had helped me study, using the small white booklet they gave us with ridiculous long lists of potential words. She would mark the pages with circles and check marks as she helped me study.
I gave about half of my heart to this intense pursuit.
It was so hard to learn all those crazy words. I still remember the words I got wrong other years: chary, hoyle. And I remember learning how to spell bivouac. I thought it was a cool word. It starts out sounding slightly dangerous, b-i-v, but then goes into a beautiful circle and lands in a surprising place.
I came across a thought-provoking meme this week: “The mistake we made was that we thought we had more time.”
I read it again: The mistake we made was that we thought we had more time.
Don’t we always think that if nothing else, we have more time?
I thought I had more time with my mom, but she died at 67.
I thought I had more with my dad, but he fell on ice in his driveway and ended up in a wheelchair, never quite himself again.
Clients sometimes say to me, “I thought I would be further along by now. I have wasted so much time.”
As coaches, we always talk about how we mysteriously attract clients who are facing some of the same challenges that we are. They show up serendipitously asking you to help them find their way, and at the same time, they help you find yours.
I have no idea what you are talking about, client.
Life is long, with many miles to go.
Read MoreAt my team tennis practice this week, about an hour in, our coach told us to warm up some serves.
“Aim for the pie,” she said, referring to the slice close to T of the service box.
After a few minutes, someone asked, “How many should we take?”
“End on a good one,” the coach said. “When you feel good about yourself.”
“Hmmm,” I responded. “I just had a good one. But I don’t know about the feeling good about myself!”
I brought a few balls back to the basket, and one of my teammates said, “You should! You’re a coach!”
Ha!
Just because I’m a coach doesn’t mean I feel good about myself.
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