Thanksgiving Stories & Conscious Parenting December 4, 2013 • 6 Comments I dropped off my son at the Park-N-Ride Sunday morning so he could travel back up to college for finals, and then I headed out for my morning walk. All along the streets, parents were engaged in similar endeavors: getting kids into their cars, hugging and slinging suitcases into the trunk. As I walked along, I was overwhelmed with gratitude…
Holiday Stress: Cause Beauty Instead on Black Friday November 29, 2013 • 1 Comment I am sending Black Friday blessings to those of you out there braving the crowds. You won’t find me anywhere near a store or a mall for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I value my peace of mind more than any consumer good, half price or not. And another, after you are forced to offload most of your…
Conscious Healing Through Mind Mapping November 27, 2013 • 5 Comments Although healing is an organic process, it requires a pro-active mindset. And, making the choice to heal is the only way for it to begin. Let’s face it, being a victim is powerful stuff and you can get a lot of mileage out of it. But, it limits your range because you will be driving the same stretch of highway…
Hybrid Holidays: Finding Peace Amidst the Season November 25, 2013 • 1 Comment I wonder if you are experiencing this hybrid-holiday conundrum. Here it is a few days before Thanksgiving and I have already (I hate to admit this) broken my Christmas décor out of the boxes. This is new for me. I have always been a strict adherer to the one-holiday-at-a-time rule, however, I now have a blended holiday going on in…
JFK 50th Anniversary: Memories of John F. Kennedy November 22, 2013 • 1 Comment I was born just four months before the fateful day of JFK’s assassination and grew up surrounded by his story through my school years. I vividly recall the grainy images of him and his family in the history books, which made them seem an otherworldly fairy tale to me. Today, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death at the age…
A Writer’s Retreat with Jennifer Louden November 18, 2013 • 0 Comments I originally posted this a year ago, and as I was reviewing the last twelve months as a blogger, this retreat stands out as one of the hallmark experiences in my healing and writing process. The week spent under Jen’s tender guidance gave me the permission I needed to start exploring what I wanted in life, and write it down…
Traversing and Embracing Uncertainty November 15, 2013 • 3 Comments I don’t know about you, but when I became a parent I was somewhat clueless. Right next to my desire to be a mother sat a rather large field of dreams, but not a whole lotta solid thought about what it might mean ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road. I am reminded of this phenomenon as I work on…
Healing & the Power of Receiving November 13, 2013 • 11 Comments “Receiving is much harder than giving. It can be emotionally risky: it requires opening up to a possibility or desire that may not be fulfilled. Giving is easy. Not only do you get to showcase your more saintly qualities but also your ego enjoys the reward – the payoff of giving.” Amanda Owen I was never taught much about receiving…
Repurposing Jewelry That Contains Painful Energy from the Past November 11, 2013 • 4 Comments I envision the aftermath of loss as akin to the miraculous phenomenon of the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. For period of time, while the caterpillar body disintegrates within the chrysalis, it becomes a mixture of imaginal cells, a cocktail of possibility, old and new combining to become something entirely different. It is nature at her best: raw, messy and…
Healing Tools: Inviting Awareness In November 8, 2013 • 2 Comments “Awareness builds its own momentum.” Stephen Covey My mother was famous for saying, “This is the way I am. I can’t change.” And, by dint of osmosis and observation, I too believed that I was the way I was and couldn’t change. It’s a rather dangerous and dead-end way to conduct a life and I am living proof of the tragic…