A letter from God to her daughters who observe Lent.

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Woman with a cross of ashes on her forehead
Dear Daughter,

On Ash Wednesday, if you are in church, the minister will invite you to the observance of a “holy Lent” and mark your forehead with the ashes of repentance.

Let me be very clear about this: I love you so much. I delight in you. I cherish you. For ever.

Here are a few more things I want you to comprehend. Despite what you’ve been taught, “holy” does not mean pure and unearthly. “Sin” does not mean breaking my rules and making me mad. “Penitence” does not mean listing and wallowing in all the ways you’re wrong and bad. “Repentance” does not mean promising to do better to stay out of trouble.

Please think about these words a new way, on Ash Wednesday and every other day going forward.

What if you only sin when you refuse healing and cling to brokenness? When you use those sharp broken edges to hurt yourself and others?

What if holiness is when you choose to be whole, even though you’re terrified? When you embrace and enfold those pieces of yourself you’ve lopped off to fit into others’ molds?

What if penitence is when you see yourself clearly, and know, speak, and live from your heart?

What if repentance is returning to your true self in all her messy glory?

What if, this Lent, instead of focusing on the ways you’re not good enough and the ways you fall short, you commit to your own healing?

I was there at the Big Bang, enlivening every particle, atom and molecule. You are made of me, and through me you are connected to everything and everyone.

I am everywhere, my love. You live in me and I live in you. This means, my dear, when you let yourself be healed, your healing heals the world. And when you cling to your brokenness, the world stays a little more broken than it needs to be. Your healing is important and necessary.

You think your healing is selfish. That’s incorrect. On the contrary, your healing is crucial. I’m using that word deliberately, sweetheart. Your healing is the crux – where you and I come together.

This Lent, the only fasts I want from you are these: Fast from distractions that allow you to stay wounded and broken. Fast from believing you’re not good enough. Fast from making yourself small, and nice, and silent. Fast from all judgment, especially of yourself.

This Lent, make space for me to flow into you and through you. Befriend your fear, your anger, and your sadness. They are a deep source of nourishment and strength. Let your love go free. Let your joy be unconfined.

Sweetheart, healing isn’t complicated, and it’s always here for you. All you have to do is tap into it, like a springtime maple tree or an aquifer of living water. You know this. But it’s so easy to forget, isn’t it? All you have to do is let me clear out the dams and the trash, the resentments and identities and old, too-small skins that keep you stuck and stagnant.

Open your heart armor just a little. Let go, child. Breathe and soften. That’s all you have to do. I’ll do the rest.

This Ash Wednesday, let those ashes symbolize our unending connection, a connection so easy to forget and so simple to strengthen.

When the priest wipes those gritty ashes on your forehead and says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” celebrate your elemental oneness with this dear, dirty earth, and with me. I am in those ashes, in the dust, in the stars, and in you.

I need you, my daughter. You’re the only you I created. Please, let yourself be the creation I made you to be.

You don’t need someone outside yourself telling you how to live.

Trust yourself.

Trust your heart.

Trust me. I’ve got you.

All my Love,
God  

(A Lenten gift for you: two free PDF printables from this letter.)

Photo: Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash


   

 

Climbing a mountain in red stilettos.

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Imagine you’re at a trailhead in the wilderness. Sunrise is lightening the eastern sky, birds are singing their dawn song in the tops of the firs, and the creek beside your trail is burbling happily, full of fresh snowmelt, beckoning you upward.

You’re excited to climb to the top of the mountain on the horizon, with the last of the night’s stars fading away behind it. You’ve wanted to climb this mountain for years, and today is the day. You take one last drink of water, shoulder your pack, strap on your hiking poles, and embrace the journey ahead.
 
But then. A voice. It belongs to a young man emerging from the trees. He wears an official uniform and a badge, and he tells you to stop. “Hold up,” he says. “I’m going to give you some of these before you go.”

He gestures to a table laden with a strange assortment of objects: rocks in ten-pound bags, pairs of shiny red stilettos, rolls of Cling Wrap, and heavy mittens. He tells you to remove your sturdy trail shoes and replace them with the stilettos, puts two bags of rocks in your backpack, and wraps your head in Cling Wrap in which he’s poked tiny holes for your nose and your mouth.
 
You object, although it’s difficult through the plastic wrapped around your head.
 
He says, “Sorry, ma’am. This is how it is. I don’t make the rules. Oh. I almost forgot. You have to give me half your food.”
 
This seems strange to you. You wonder who’s making these rules, but you give the young man most of your lunch and start up the trail.
 
You’re beginning to wonder if you’ll make it up that mountain.
 
 
Thoughts create feelings which lead to actions that accumulate as results. Period.

That’s what I learned in Wayfinder coach training, and it’s what I’ve taught clients myself. The idea is that once we can catch a thought causing suffering, we can do the work to change the thought. Because, thankfully, thoughts, unlike feelings, are changeable. (Changing an action without changing the thought(s) motivating the action is white-knuckling ourselves into a desired state. This “change through brute force” takes lots of will power, a finite resource.)

This black and white, clear cut, linear formulation is the foundation of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and it’s been helpful for many.

Well. Turns out it’s not true, that feelings are always, 100%, no exceptions, caused by thoughts. Researchers are finding that what eases suffering isn’t changing the thought, but getting distance from it. Learning to detach from a thought causing suffering is one of the pillars of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

I now have a broader understanding and therefore a more nuanced perspective on thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Thoughtwork is great for thoughts causing suffering. We suffer when we take life’s inevitable pain personally. Thoughtwork used on pain, not suffering, is ineffective and potentially harmful.

That said, “unhelpful thoughts create unhelpful feelings that lead to unhelpful actions” is true often enough that it’s worth having some basic thoughtwork tools in your toolbox to ease your suffering. I’ve been playing around with a new one, and want to share it with you. It’s called “Cruel, Sadistic Operating Instructions.”
 


Cruel, Sadistic Operating Instructions

I found this one in Carolyn Elliott’s book Existential Kink. (The book has a lot of wacky stuff IMO, but this tool is priceless.) She calls it “How to Beat Yourself Up (the Fun Way).” In Carolyn’s words: “Make your cruel, sadistic ‘operating instructions’ radically explicit.”

Here’s how it goes.

Dig deep and see if you can uncover the real rules you live by—your cruel, sadistic operating instructions.

We find our cruel, sadistic operating instructions when we investigate where we’re suffering. You know what suffering feels like. It feels weighty, stuck, trapped, caged, stagnant, frustrating. Anger that never goes away. Despair that persists. Attempts to control the uncontrollable.

Pain, by contrast, moves through us. Pain ebbs and flows. Pain is alive.  

Look where you feel deadness, and you will find your suffering.

Here are some of my cruel, sadistic operating instructions:
I must never, ever, ever expand and grow bigger than my childhood roles and identity.
I must never, ever, ever, create something original—art, writing, a coaching process, a business—because it might be flawed or ugly and therefore unworthy of existence.
The only thoughts that matter are the ones others think or have thought.
I must always listen and never speak.
I must never, ever, ever decide anything for myself. I must never, ever, ever feel exuberant happiness.
I must never, ever, ever do anything I might not get perfect the first time. No mistakes, ever.
And so on.
 
Now, of course these aren’t true. They’re ridiculous—statements I would never, ever, ever say to my kids or to anyone else. I have managed to expand, create, think for myself, speak up, feel happy, and make decisions.

But doing those things has been harder than they needed to be, because of my buried operating instructions.

Articulating my actual cruel, sadistic operating instructions helps me see how they’re still controlling me.

I’ve been white-knuckling myself past my operating instructions, feeling anxious and guilty when I break them. They’re buried deep.

Like vampires, exposing these rules to the light takes away their power.

Uninstalling the operating instructions that no longer serve me is a skill. And that’s where thoughtwork comes in.
 

So, what’s going on with you, dear mountain climber?

Well, you’re doing your best to get up that trail with all those impediments. After all, you think, this is how he said it needed to be. I don’t understand, but I don’t have a choice. This must be how everyone does it.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, that this is so hard.

You walk and you walk and you walk, grinding out step after step in those god-awful shoes, sweat pooling under the Cling Wrap, trying to see through the layers of plastic film, carrying that heavy, heavy backpack.

Until you just can’t anymore. You teeter your way to the creek bank, heels catching on rocks, ankles twisting, and slide down onto the grass. You shrug off your backpack, kick off those ridiculous shoes, rip the Cling Wrap from your head, and put your feet in the water. Cold water flows over your blistered feet, fir-scented breezes cool your sweaty head, your shoulders relax and soften.

A Dipper flies downstream.

You’re tapped out. You’ve hit a wall. You know you can’t go any further, and you so badly wanted to get to the mountain top. You sit, trying to accept your disappointment. Then you notice that the Dipper is in the creek in front of you, watching you. She’s been there for some time, perched on top of a log in the water on the other side of the creek, singing and dipping as Dippers do.

The log is hollow, and inside the log is a box.

You wade toward the log. The Dipper watches your steady progress, bopping up and down encouragingly. You reach the log and pull out the box.

Behind the box, deep in the hollow log, is a pair of sturdy trail shoes, your size, in the color you always wanted but REI was always sold out of. Oh, hell no, you think. I am not wearing those ridiculous stilettos one more goddamn minute. You carry the shoes and the box back across the creek.

Sitting there with your feet in the water, the fir-scented breeze playing with your hair, the sound of the creek in your ears, you open the box. Inside is the food you left with the young man at the trailhead—your turkey sandwich, your bag of Fritos, and your oatmeal cookie.

You’re beginning to believe you can get to the top of the mountain after all.

Why would I keep carrying this stuff?, you think. You pull the bags of rocks out of your backpack and empty them into the creek. You stuff the empty bags, the wad of sweaty Cling Wrap, and your lunch into the backpack, dry your feet, and put on your beautiful new shoes. They feel so good. You return to the trail and resume your journey toward the mountain that is your goal: snow-capped, sturdy, shining in the morning sun. You’re strong. You’re brave. And you’re really looking forward to getting to the top of that mountain.

Those stilettos? They’re swinging jauntily off your backpack by their sparkly straps. You’re not sure yet what you’ll do with them, but you know it’ll be something good.



PS. If you’d like to share your Cruel, Sadistic Operating Instructions, hit reply.  Confidentiality guaranteed. You can also tell me what you’ll do with those damn stilettos. I’d love to know!

PPS. If you’d like to explore your operating instructions together, I offer a no-cost, no-obligation Clarity Call.   

PPPS. Thoughtwork is an integral component of Being Embodied, my intensive coaching program. I’ve offered Being Embodied in a private format for two years. I’m excited to announce that I’m offering it as a group program for the first time, starting on April 19th. More information will be coming next week!

My weekly-ish newsletter is where I share my latest writing, offerings, and news. You can subscribe here, and thank you! 

Photo credit: Amazon. 


   

 

Our integrity is our home. 

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Arrow tattoo on woman's wrist showing true north

Being alive blows me away. Every so often I’m gobsmacked anew by the miracle I am, and that you are. Animate, conscious meat sacks—bundles of aggregated Earth elements, able to sing and dance and tell stories. Able to learn. To remember.
 
Able to love. And to hate.
 
How crazy is this?!
 
This being alive thing is astounding! Awesome! Amazing! Wild!
 
I’m also able to know one day I’ll end. This self-aware, cohered dust that is me will return to the Earth from which I sprang. The miracle that is me will cease to exist in this form. This is, of course, true for every Earthling entity. I’m not special.
 
My friends in their 80s laugh at me—but I do fear aging and death. The other side of this amazing being alive thing is this amazing dying thing. I’ve already outlived both parents. I’ll be 80 myself in fifteen years.

I know how fast fifteen years goes. It’s not long. 
 
Jed’s impending retirement has made this life of mine feel all the more urgent. For 50 years, I’ve been thinking someday I’ll get around to that. And next time I’ll do it different. Better. Somedays and next times are dwindling fast. I don’t have many do-overs left.
 
I want to live MY life, the life I’m meant to live. The life I choose for myself, not the one I’ve been trained to live. The life where I follow others’ rules and measure myself by others’ standards is a safe life. Safe, easy, and painful.
 
Now I see. This is what Lent is for: to examine my choices and conform them more fully to my values. So I won’t have regrets on my death bed. I want the Earthlings I love to know without an iota of doubt that I love them, through and through.
 
This revelation is nothing new, it turns out. Tradition and Mary Oliver have gotten here first.
 
Of course Lent is about mortality, says my husband when I share my revelation. He tells me Frederick Buechner said that Lent is for the big questions. Seven weeks to take meaning and mortality seriously.
 
And, of course also Mary Oliver, who asked What does it mean that Earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?
 
Living my life my way requires both going rogue and returning home. Following the direction of my heart will create more external conflict, as I bump up against established patterns and others’ preferences and expectations. Following my heart’s direction also means more internal peace, as the gap between my values and my choices narrows.
 
That gap hurts. That gap sucks energy. That gap is where I lose myself.
 
I want to close that gap. I want to recommit to myself and my priorities. Living in integrity with myself is self-ish. It’s also necessary, despite all the training to the contrary.
 
My integrity is my birthright.

Your integrity is your birthright.

Our integrity is our home.

PS. My newsletter is where I share my latest writing, news, and offerings. If you want to subscribe, you can do that here, and thank you! 


[Photo: Natalie Rhea Rigg on Unsplash]

Ash Wednesday: Two meditations on being, dust to dust.

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Multiple small clay heads on a sidewalk

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, the cycle begins again, the ancient whisper of our own frailty, slipping the fine clothes from our shoulders, taking the crown from our heads, bringing us back to that humble place where it all began and where it will surely end. We are the children of the Earth. Earth born, common as the ground we share, raised up by grace to breathe the mystery, laid back down to sleep the mystery deeper still. Dust to dust, life to life, the great cycle spirals our souls, sends us sailors of time, until we come to rest in our own humility, source of our true dignity.

—Steven Charleston

Blessing the Dust
For Ash Wednesday

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.

—Jan Richardson

[Photo by Ovidiu Creanga on Unsplash]

This Lent, I will love the wildness in me.

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Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

Cleaning the irrigation ditches, “acequias,” is a tradition in Northern New Mexico. Farmers dig acequias to bring water to their fields. Every spring, at the beginning of the growing season, the community gathers to weed and dredge the ditches, so the water goes where farmers want it to go and waters what they want it to water. Acequias have deep roots and a holy place in Pueblo and Spanish New Mexican culture.

Cleaning the acequias has long been one of my favorite metaphors for Lent. This week, as I was listening for what wanted to be written to you, I realized that cleaning the acequias is a tame metaphor. It doesn’t work for me anymore.
 
What’s Lent?
Lent shares a root with the word “lengthen” and refers to the seven weeks before Easter, a time of lengthening daylight in the Northern Hemisphere. Lent is when many Christian religious folk prepare intentionally for Easter by taking on a Lenten discipline.
 
Lenten disciplines often involve giving something up—chocolate, alcohol, social media—or taking something on—Bible study, meditation, decluttering. The point of a Lenten discipline, traditionally, is to make room in one’s heart and life for the risen Jesus on Easter Sunday. A focus on sin—how we fall short—and penitence—how we can punish ourselves so we’ll do better—loom large in this traditional mindset. 
 
Many progressive clergy and church communities do their best to steer their Lenten focus toward spiritual growth and wholeness. Given the deep rootedness of sin and penitence in Lent, they’re fighting an uphill battle.
 
Back to acequias.
Irrigation, no matter how picturesque or historic, domesticates wild water. Copious, noisy, wild water, flowing downstream from snowy mountains, is diverted into smaller and smaller channels. Weeds are not allowed, only crops that meet the needs of farmers or landowners.
 
Four years ago, I wrote “A letter from God to her daughters who observe Lent.” It went a little viral in 2019 and has now been read over 60,000 times. I think that post resonates so deeply because those words refresh and renew like cold, clear water. They feel good in our bodies. They feel healing. They feel true. They feel like love.
 
Traditional religious ideas about sin and penitence can hurt. There is no healing in fear-based disciplines.
 
“The Cathedral and the Well” is the story of a pilgrim walking through the desert, searching for water. She’s checking old maps and sees that water is around somewhere, but she can’t find it. She’s desperately thirsty, and all she sees is a ruined building made of dry, dusty stones. Then, in the silence of the desert, she hears the faint sound of flowing water. She follows the sound and discovers that it’s coming from the building! She moves a loose stone aside and the sound gets louder. She continues to pull away stones until there’s a gap big enough to crawl through. Once within, she sees a spring of living water emerging from the dirt. She drinks deeply.
 
For centuries, pilgrims passing this way piled stones to mark the location of the spring. Over time, the stones had completely covered the life-giving water. (I’m renaming this story “The Cathedral and the Spring.”)
 
We can choose Love-based disciplines. We can choose wild disciplines. This Lent, I want to love the wildness in me. I want to love my internal wilderness—the inappropriate, unkempt, honey-sticky, dirty, weedy, weird parts—the parts I try to hide. The parts I haven’t quite gotten tamed so I keep them closeted and caged.
 
Peregrina Martha explores wildness through the lens of old-growth trees in this excerpt from Lost & Found, my Camino novel. (For more, you can download a free PDF here. The novel’s a bit of a mess in places, with occasional salty language.)
 
 

Going Wild
I watch my hand that holds the hammer that pounds me into a shape that fits the proper hole. I pound and pound myself, but I don’t quite fit. I squeeze a bulge in here, shave off a sharp edge there, and pound and pound and pound. I try to whittle myself down to nothing so I can disappear. Bang bang bang on my head hits the hammer. Square peg in round hole. Redwood into toothpick. I cut the inconvenient pieces off. I limb myself so I slide smoothly into the mill.

Limbs are where the wild things live – where birds make their nests.

Limbs are an impediment to masts and poles. I will wield the ax for you. Let me cut off my limbs to make myself suitable for industry. I will make myself straight and rigid and useful to you powers. Let me read your mind and do what you want before you ask it, so you are blameless.

Behold the limbless handmaid of the Lord.

I will stop pounding myself into a hole that will never ever fit. I will regrow my limbs and branches so wild things have a place to live. I will nourish my roots and reach for the roots of others.

I am no longer espaliered.

I am a Redwood. I am an old Ponderosa…

I am regrowing myself. I am undebecoming.
Deep kindness. Compassionate heart.
Put down the hammer and the axe.
Let go. Free fall. Trust.
Allow yourself to be who you are.
Completely here…

We are not a fiber farm. We are not a monocultured industrial forest. We are old growth. We are many- layered, and we harbor secrets. Sasquatch lives within us. We hold stories upon stories. Our usefulness is not immediately apparent. Tiny communities of uncommon organisms live only in us. We are interwoven and interdependent. We contain entire ecosystems in our crowns. Marbled Murrelets nest in our upper limbs, bathed in Pacific fog. A thousand feet above the ground, seedlings sprout from leaf duff six feet deep.

We are the old ones. The living ones…

You are deeply loved.
Growing is your job.
Be who you are.
Exform your Self into the world.

Prepare.

Good questions for Lent:
Old-growth Redwoods contain entire ecosystems on their branches and in their crowns. What chopped-off limbs will you regrow? How wild will you let your crown get? What axe will you put down?

Living Water flows in the Wild places. Who’s thirsty in your heart? What desiccated places within you yearn for wild water? What parts of you long to be rewilded? What stones will you dislodge so Living Water flows freely? What internal wilderness will you explore? 

These are, for me, good questions for a healing, holy Lent. I offer them to you with love.

P.S. If you’d like my latest writing, news, and coaching offerings delivered to your inbox, please subscribe to my weekly-ish newsletter here, and thank you! 


[Photo: Melissa Askew on Unsplash]

Are the Himalayas Far?

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Climber asking high-heeled woman in bar to go to the Himalayas. She responds, "Well, thank you, I'd love to. Are the Himalayas far?"

It’s 1983. I’m sitting behind our apartment in Tucson, the desert sunlight dappling down through pomegranates, creosote, and a grapefruit tree, doing homework from my University of Arizona post-bachelor’s teacher prep program. I’m 25 years old.
 
My husband joins me and says, “I’m thinking about starting the ordination process.”
 
“Oh. Okay,” I say. I remember feeling excited about a new adventure, and happy to go along for the ride.   
 
“Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”
 
Jed’s vocation has taken me places I never would have landed otherwise. Four years of seminary. Two babies. Six cities and five states—Massachusetts, New Mexico, Missouri, Illinois, and Oregon. Twelve houses. Nine jobs (for me).
 
I have friends all over the US, and a few in Europe. I’ve had a unique perspective on Church in action, both good and bad. I’ve enjoyed the benefits of Jed’s sabbaticals: England and Ireland, Iona, the Camino de Santiago.
 
This life has also been costly. 25-year-old Barb had no idea what she was saying yes to.
 
I’ve been doing this clergy spouse thing in one form or another for forty years, since the day Jed told me he wanted to pursue ordination as an Episcopal priest.
 
 “Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”
 
Jed recently announced that he’s retiring this summer. (Trinity, Bend readers: You’re awesome! I love you so much.)
 
We’ve been anticipating his retirement for years, imagining what it might be like and what we might do.
 
But now that it’s here, I’m noticing a part of me hanging on for dear life, resisting the upcoming seismic shift. As costly, painful, crazy-making, and occasionally lonely as these decades have been, this is the life and the marriage I know. This is the life I’ve conformed myself around. This is the life I’ve cut off pieces of myself to fit into.
 
Two primary threads weave this web of resistance, I think: my relationship to change, and the difference between soul and façade.

First, change.
We’ve all been doing this change thing since puberty, really. Followed by leaving home for the first time. Graduating from college. Committing to a life partner, and maybe deciding to become parents. These celebratory changes in the first half of life are then followed by a smorgasbord of the more complicated changes: Divorces. Serious Illness. Retirements. Big moves. Deaths.  
 
Just because we’ve been doing the “Change Cha-Cha” for our entire lives doesn’t mean we know how to do it well. 

Marriages, births, divorces, deaths, retirements, serious illnesses, big moves—they’re all Square One dissolution events. 
 
Wayfinder Life Coaches learn this mantra for Square One: “I don’t know what the hell is going to happen … and that’s okay.” I’m changing this to: “I don’t know what the hell is going to happen … and I’m okay.” 
 
To complicate matters, Jed and I have also got our feet in Square Two, as we begin to imagine concretely what these actual bodies of ours will do beginning in August. The Square Two mantra? “There are no rules … and that’s okay.” Modifying again: “There are no rules … and I’m okay.”
 
I’m also grappling with the loss that accompanies change. We’ll be leaving a community that is dear to us. Places that are dear to us. And people that are dear to us.
 
 
Underneath those obvious losses is a more subtle, sneaky thing poking my heart. I can’t tend to this sneaky thing until I see it. And to see it, I’ve had to sit still for a long time, look within, and listen to myself.
 
Which brings me to Soul and Façade:
That part of me that’s hanging on, asking for attention and poking me until I listen? It’s that social self I’ve constructed over more than six decades, buttressed by being “the rector’s wife” for so many years. It’s my façade, feeling itself in danger, clinging desperately for survival.
 
Social Self, False Self, Ego, Façade, Cultural Self—all are labels for the same necessary part of ourselves: the part we show to the world in order to get through our days. This façade, first formed in infancy and childhood, is continually refined throughout our first four or five decades. Finally, hopefully, we begin to let go of that false front in midlife, when it gets too damn heavy to carry around. If we do the work.
 
For so many years, it was just easier to be who I was expected to be than to seek for the pure strength of my Soul within me. And, of course, as kids we don’t have the option to say, “Screw you and your bullshit cultural rules. I’m gonna be ME!” We must figure out what behaviors will keep us alive, and those behaviors get wired in.
 
For the first time in our adult lives, Jed and I can let those roles drop away. We can be whoever we want to be, individually and together. Oh, the freedom of that! And the anxiety. We’re a little “deer in the headlights” right now. When those roles drop away, we’ll be vulnerable and naked. And new.
 
Who will I be?

Who will he be?

Who will we be?
 
“Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”

Here’s what’s helping me to stay over my feet right now, this minute:
 
1. I’m remembering that the Change Cycle is baked into our Earthling DNA. Death and rebirth, over and over and over, is what life on Earth is all about. Even rocks get into it. Resistance is futile. I have the tools to ride this wheel. I have understanding. I have my mantras. I’m okay.
 
2. I’m intentionally discerning who’s speaking, who’s running the show. Is it my Social Self/False Self/Façade? Or is it my Soul? The façade part of me is scared shitless, really worried about doing this right, and bracing herself against all the impending loss. My Soul, however, when I get down to her, is peaceful, connected, and not the least bit worried. So I’m spending a lot of time being quiet and listening.
 
3. I’m paying attention to what feels good in my body. My body came into this world knowing what’s true for me. She still does. I simply need to use my skills, pay attention, and trust her guidance. Staying present and connected feels good. Worrying does not. 
 
(These skills—Embodiment, Soul-based Living, and Skillful Change—are components of my Coaching Intensive program.)
 
What does this mean for my coaching practice? I feel comfortable committing to this work through June. After that, who knows? Not me. So if you’re feeling the nudge for private coaching, now is the time to connect for a Clarity Call.
 
I’m also creating a three-month Group Coaching Intensive to begin in March. Details to come! If you’d like more information about that, let me know.
 
Ooof! This is a long one. Thank you for hanging in with me!
 
Gratefully yours,
Barb

P.S. This is the blog version of my weekly-ish newsletter. That’s where I share my latest writing, news, and coaching offerings. You can subscribe here, and thank you! 

Image: New Yorker cartoon, by Robert Weber 

On Practicing Joy.

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Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

This post is for you if being told to practice gratitude pisses you off, even a little.
 
We’re prompted to be grateful. A lot. So many studies show that gratitude is good for us—body, mind, soul, and spirit. And self-help types aren’t shy about promoting gratitude practices.
 
Keep a gratitude journal. Keep a gratitude jar. Say prayers of gratitude. Daily is best, hourly if you can manage it.
 
This time of year, especially, it seems gratitude is all around.
 
I have a terrible secret, my friends. For me, gratitude feels like a death-dealing “should.” Gratitude feels preachy to me. Gratitude feels falsely sweet, a close cousin to denial and forced forgiveness. Gratitude makes my body tighten and harden, just a little, until I override that response because what kind of terrible person has a problem with gratitude, for god’s sake??
 
This is me. If you’re good with gratitude, rock on!
 
But if you, like me, find “gratitude” grating, I have a suggestion. Practice joy. Joy is still abstract, so let’s bring this concept down to the level of our bodies. What feels good to you? What brings you pleasure? In what do you delight?  
 
I keep a Pleasure and Delight journal, not a gratitude journal. Every night, I note what brought me pleasure that day. Sun on my face. The dinner my husband cooked. “White Lotus, Season 2.” A hot shower. The smell of our pine trees being rained on for the first time in months. A scruffy-tailed squirrel hoovering birdseed on the veranda. A conversation. A cat in my lap. That first cup of coffee. Swimming in a wilderness lake. Reading (or writing) a beautiful sentence. Snow on our mountains. Sitting on a rock with my feet in the river. The color red.
 
So many moments of joy, when I stop and pay attention.
 
Am I grateful for these things that bring joy? Of course. Does keeping this list help me pay attention to what brings pleasure and delight? Yes. I’m more apt to notice what feels good to me, and also what feels bad to me.
 
Life is complex. We are complex. We, and life, can be two things at once. Maybe more than two things at once. At heart, we are just fancy animals with bodies that relish pleasure and delight. We benefit when we don’t judge the soft animals of our bodies, but instead let them love what they love. Make your pleasure and delight a judgment-free zone.
 
This holiday season, may we notice our joy. May we let our lives be what they are, containers for both beauty and pain. May we stand with hands open, hearts present, simply being here now. May we say “Thank you!” when we notice our joy. May we say “Thank you!” when we feel our pleasure and delight.

May we savor these moments, sink our roots down into them, and grow ever more strong, resilient, and able to weather our storms: sturdy trees who joyfully shelter ourselves, our families and communities, and our world.
 
Notice what brings you joy, and do more of that. Intentionally create pleasure and delight for yourself. Savor these moments. Remember these moments. Gather these moments and feed on them.
 
My joy practice ritualizes and nourishes my connection with Earth and the Ground of Being—the Source who gives life to all things and who receives us back into herself when we die.  
 
To nourish and strengthen ourselves with pleasure and delight is a holy act.
 

I think this is
the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
~Mary Oliver, Kingfisher

A note on Thanksgiving Day: Millions of Indigenous people died in the genocide perpetrated by White European colonists. For their descendants who remain, Thanksgiving Day is a day to remember and mourn. May we descendants of those White European colonists take seriously and reckon with this legacy. 

I live and work on the original homelands of the Wasq’ú (Wasco), and the Tana’nma (Warm Springs) people. They ceded this land to the U.S. government in the Treaty of 1855. The Numu (Paiute) people were forcibly moved to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation starting in 1879. The Klamath Trail ran north through this region to the great Celilo Falls trading grounds and the Klamath Tribes claim it as their own. Descendants of these original people are thriving members of our communities today. I acknowledge and thank the original stewards of this land.

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Photo Credit: Melissa Askew on Unsplash