Category Archives: Women at Midlife

Blessed are the nice, for they shall be liked.

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Girl sitting in a field of flowers with the sun shining on her

The problem with living from your soul is that other people don’t like it.

Last week I wrote to you about the first healing shift I teach my clients: more soul, less façade. I gave you lots of high-falutin’ reasons why soul-based living is better than going through the façade-based motions of living.

But it’s hard at first, isn’t it? Making this shift can be hard because we’re afraid of our loved ones’ reactions. And even strangers’ reactions, to be honest. And we’re all about honesty around here.

If you’re worried about what other people will think or how other people will react when you start living from your soul and telling the truth, you’re not alone. You’re just human, with a human brain.

Culture, a web of constructed social systems, depends on its members caring what other people think. We’re taught to be nice from the cradle. Especially women living in a patriarchy.

Not only are we trained into scoping outward for approval, we’re also hard-wired internally for belonging. Our brains have evolved to fear disapproval and disconnection, because to be cast out of the group back in hunter-gatherer days was almost certainly to die. Our ancestors who cared deeply about belonging to the group lived to reproduce, while those who flouted the group norms were left to die lonely, hungry deaths on the savannah.

Hence our brains that go batshit crazy when they think we’re going to be disapproved of. Disapproval = death, at least to that part of our brains. And that part of our brain screams like a banshee.

Here’s how that shift and its accompanying fear are playing out in my own life right now. I know some of you will relate.

I’ve quit church. This goes deeper than COVID-related church attendance restrictions. I’ve begun checking the “none” box on surveys that ask about religious affiliation, because the “Christian” box no longer fits.

Leaving church has been easier during the pandemic, but the jig is about to be up. Come this fall, when it’s safe to do so, those who want to will be able to attend church in person again. I will not be among them. If history is any guide, this will be “a thing.”

I don’t know why it’s so important to members of my husband’s parish that I attend church. All I know is that when I’ve taken sabbaticals in the past, folks get worked up. I think sometimes this is just affection and concern for my welfare. But when someone I don’t even know asks Jed’s parish administrator, “Is Barb sick? I haven’t seen her lately,” something else is going on. They ask Jed where I am and if I’m okay. Parishioners see me out and about and say how much they’ve missed me. It’s a thing. Maybe it’s more of a thing in my brain than in real life. The result is the same.

My fear of others’ reaction has kept me silently complicit and out of my integrity for years now. My truth: I will no longer sit silently in the pew while God is referred to as “He,” texts are read that perpetuate violence against women, and our holy Earth is denigrated.

My husband does his heroic best to mitigate these messages with his preaching and his presence. He does as much as he can, within the constraints of his ordination. It’s no longer enough for me. Patriarchal, misogynist, dualistic language and doctrines are built into the structure of the institutional church. The institution seems unwilling to look seriously at the damage it’s done and continues to do.

I’m over it. When I imagine sitting inside a church on Sunday morning, my body feels icky – tense, hunched over, closed down. And when I imagine mountain church or river church, I feel strong, free, and peaceful. I feel happy.

Because my happiness matters to me, I choose myself and my priorities over being nice and propping up this harmful system with my presence. By the way, this is the same choice Jesus made – to speak his truth and live his integrity. His choice led him to the cross. Mine only leads to braving my own discomfort and judgment of others.

So, my friends. This shift from façade to soul with regard to church is scary for me. Jed and I have had some uncomfortable conversations. He supports my decision while also feeling the loss of my presence on Sunday mornings. More uncomfortable conversations are probably heading my way as we emerge from our Covid cocoons. And that’s okay. I can handle them, because I’m confident in my decision. My body is telling me the truth, and I believe her.

These are the trials and the rewards of integrity, of living more from my soul and less from my façade. I feel more scared, while also feeling more powerful, whole, and free. That’s how this goes.

When you make this shift and people don’t like it, that just means you’re doing it right.

PS. Want to talk more about the four healing shifts and coaching together? I offer a free, no-strings-attached clarity call. Contact me here to schedule. I’d love to connect!

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Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Safety is a feeling, not a fact.

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Bare feet overlooking the Grand Canyon

This week’s newsletter is the “to be continued” from last week’s story about my dad’s accidental death, my grief, and our Grand Canyon pilgrimage. (You can read last week’s newsletter here. Thank you for your many responses and well-wishes!)

Friends, I did not get to sit with my brother where he deposited my dad’s ashes 41 years ago. Here’s why. The road out to South Bass trailhead goes through the Havasupai Indian Reservation. The Havasu, like many Tribes, have been decimated by COVID and have closed all access. When we arrived at the boundary between the Park and the Reservation, we found a locked gate. My brother, who’s not in the best of health, and my sister-in-law stayed behind while Jed and I resorted to Plan B – a short hike down the Grandview trail, a trail I hiked many times in my youth with my dad.

I thought I was going to the Canyon to be with my dad and say good-bye. It turns out the Canyon was calling me home to myself.

I hiked in the Canyon (no one native to northern Arizona calls it the “Grand Canyon”) with my dad at least two or three times a year throughout my teens.  As I remember, those hikes were long, hot, dusty, and beautiful, but not hard.

Outside the Canyon, my teenage years were hard. My parents divorced when I was twelve, which meant the loss of more than a family. My mom then married a man who consistently and intentionally violated my body’s boundaries and was emotionally abusive to me. My alcoholic dad also remarried, three more times.

But I was still okay. I handled the bad shit by putting it in a bubble and ignoring it. I was resilient. I had good friends. I was simply waiting out the crazy around me, waiting for my chance to live my own life. I still mostly knew who I was and what I wanted.

My dad’s sudden, random death changed that. It was the final straw. I finally lost track of myself that day. I see, in retrospect, that his death destroyed my childish faith in a benevolent Universe.

I began to seek safety above all else.

I’m not alone in seeking safety. Many of my clients strive for safety. They yearn for something different and deeper in their lives. For new countries and old dreams. But they’re smart. They know that renewing their commitment to their lives and their priorities, reclaiming the fierceness and passion they felt as girls and young women, requires change. And change isn’t safe. Telling the truth to themselves and their partners, asking for what they want, will potentially blow their current lives up.

Here’s what I comprehended sitting 1000 feet below the South Rim of the Grand Canyon: I am still that girl who knew who she was. I am still the strong, capable, smart, resilient girl who loved the rocks and the trees and the birds. That’s true.

And two of the ways I’ve defined myself, as the victim of both sexual abuse and cosmic father robbery, are lies. They’re NOT true, and believing them causes suffering.

Yes, those things happened. They happened to me. I did not choose them. I did not control them. And, although I didn’t know it, what I’ve made them mean all these decades was actually within my control and power. What I choose to make them mean going forward is my decision and mine alone.

It turns out this trip was about facing and deconstructing wispy identities that aren’t solid enough to sustain me, and that obscure my integrity.

The Grand Canyon is solid. I was solid. I’m still solid. There’s bedrock in me, as solid and reliable as the Vishnu Schist, the Redwall, the Coconino Sandstone.

But my never-ending search for safety dammed my flow as surely as Glen Canyon Dam has turned the roiling, muddy, floody Colorado into a placid, useful river.

We’re taught to look for safety outside ourselves. Especially as women living in a patriarchy, we’re taught that following the rules and submitting to masculine culture’s expectations will keep us safe.

And then there’s religion. I think traditional religion’s biggest promise is the promise of safety: God has a plan, and It’s all in His hands. Here are the rules that will keep you safe. If you follow the rules, you’ll go to heaven when you die. Etc., etc., etc. (If that’s working for you, rock on!)

But here’s the thing: looking for safety outside ourselves will never work. The world is not safe. We live in time-limited flesh and blood bodies that hit trees, get cancer, or die in a myriad of other ways. If we’re lucky, we finally just wear out. Bad shit happens. All the damn time.

Safety is a feeling, not a fact. Feelings are created by our thoughts. So the only way to feel safe is to think thoughts that create that feeling.

I’m not talking about denial or positive thinking. I’m talking about healing your foundational worldview and seeing the world and yourself differently. I’m talking about Intentionally choosing thoughts that create an authentic feeling of safety. Thoughts rooted in a worldview that makes sense to you, that you actually believe in.

As I sat in my body on a rock below the rim of the Canyon, the same body that last traveled this trail forty-two years ago, I remembered what I used to know: I am strong. I am resilient. I am creative. I can fucking handle anything.

These thoughts are rooted in my deep belief that the world is holy. My body is made of this incredibly beautiful world and will return to it when I die, therefore I’m holy, too.

These thoughts are rooted in my grown-up understanding that to be alive is to change, and change is holy, too.

These thoughts are rooted in my experience. I have handled so much pain, been swaddled in so much joy, and reveled in so much beauty in these sixty plus years. I’ve loved and been loved so deeply. I’ll bet you have, too.

I have grown-up faith in this sustaining, incredibly generous universe.

Want to explore your bedrock, your dams, and your dreams? Reach out here to schedule a free no-obligation conversation. I’d love to connect.

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Photo credit: Barb Morris, 16 April 2021.

Grieve your deaths. Scatter your flowers. Walk away.

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Getting ready to hike the Sierra

As you read this, I’m on a road trip to the Grand Canyon with my husband. I’m going to say goodbye to my dad who was killed in a skiing accident in 1979, when he was 50 years old. I was 21.

My big brother, 25 years old at the time, was with him on that Colorado mountain. My dad, an expert skier, must have crossed his tips while going fast enough that he died from brain trauma when he hit a tree. (Nobody wore helmets back then.)

I never saw his body, which would have been awful, as injured as it was. My mom, from whom he was divorced, wanted to save my sister and me that pain.

No body at his memorial, just an urn of ashes covered by a brocade cloth.

And then my traumatized brother and his friends took my dad’s ashes to the Grand Canyon, where they scattered them on his favorite trail.

My dad was here, and then he wasn’t anymore. My dad was alive, and then he was simply gone. No real goodbye. No closure.

For several years following his death I would catch a glimpse of him – driving a car going the other way, usually.

His death didn’t seem real. It still doesn’t, in some ways. Even now, more than 41 years later, I’m crying as I write this.

This week’s road trip is to close that open loop, finally. Five days on the road for one day on that trail, so I can sit with my sweet brother, for a little while, where he scattered my dad’s ashes.

My family learned from this experience of aborted grief. My mom realized pretty quickly that she’d made a mistake. When my grandpa died a few years later, our first stop after the airport was the funeral home, where my mom watched as we said goodbye to her father’s embalmed body.

And when Mom died a premature death from cancer at 63, my brother and sister and I insisted on an open-casket visitation before the funeral.

Saving someone else from pain, saving yourself from pain, doesn’t work. Open loops are energy drains. Pain avoided inevitably turns into unnecessary suffering. Ungrieved dead loves are burdens you don’t need to carry.

Face your deaths. If it’s a dead person, grieve them. If it’s a dead dream, grieve it. Then cross it off your list.

Grieving what’s dead makes room for resurrection. Holding on to the dead things keeps your heart and hands closed. If your heart and hands are closed, you can’t catch the new thing that wants to be born.

Grieve what’s dead, and move on. As blessed Mary Oliver advises, “Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away. Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.”

To be continued.

Photo credit: An unknown backpacker in a parking lot on the Sierra Nevada Eastern Slope in August of 1972, probably.

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Stupid Fear or Wise Resistance?

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There’s a thing you want to do, or believe you should do, or are being told you need to do, and you just don’t get it done. What’s that about?

When you’ve had an item on your to-do list for weeks or months or even years, and it just gets heavier and heavier, saps more and more of your energy and confidence, what’s that about?

When you just aren’t getting the thing done, is it possible you’re not just a lazy dumb slacker? Is it possible that you’re being wise, rather than just stupidly afraid?

There are plenty of wise reasons for not doing a thing.

Maybe this is a thing you shouldn’t do. Maybe it isn’t yours to do. Maybe you’re not ready yet. Maybe you really do need more information. Maybe you decided to do this thing when you were a different person – a naïve person, a more easily influenced person, a person who didn’t yet know what she wanted.

Maybe you’re just not ready to accept the changes this dream entails.

Maybe you have other priorities just now, and this thing isn’t as important. Maybe you’re not afraid of doing the actual thing, but of the overwhelm you’ll feel if you take it on.

I think we judge ourselves for not doing the thing we say we want to do. We jump to beating ourselves up for feeling afraid, or being lazy, or just not having what it takes to reach our goals.

But what if the reluctance you’re feeling isn’t stupid fear, but wise resistance?

How do you tell the difference? Here’s one way that works for me and my clients.

1. Bring to mind that thing that’s nagging you. That thing you’ve had on your list for so long. That dream you’ve been yearning to make real.

Really inhabit this possible future. Let yourself, in your imagination, live into the reality of doing the thing. Give yourself time to fully be there.  

2. Notice what’s going on in your body. (Yes, there’s the body again!)

There you are, having run the marathon, written the book, gotten the divorce, cleaned the basement. Whatever your thing is, you’ve done it.

3. How do you feel? What’s going on with your breath? What’s going on with your belly? What’s going on with your neck and your shoulders? What’s your expression?

Do you feel light or heavy? Do you feel warm or cold? Do you feel relaxed or stressed? Do you feel open or closed?  

What we’re looking for here, when you’re in your body imagining having done the thing that’s calling you, is whether you feel fundamentally expanded or contracted.

4. If you feel mostly expanded, opened up, lighter and warmer, these are signs that you really do want to do this thing. To create this thing. To make this dream into reality. Your reluctance is mostly stupid fear. And you probably want to move beyond your fear-based obstacles.

On the other hand, if you feel mostly contracted, colder, tighter, and heavier when you’re imaginatively inhabiting the future where you’ve gotten your thing done, these are signs that this thing you’ve got on your list should be crossed off, if possible. Your reluctance is mostly wise resistance.

Your body is telling you the truth.

Now you know if your reluctance is mostly wise resistance or stupid fear, and you can make an informed choice.

You have three options: do the thing now, commit to doing it later, or let it go.

So what will you choose? Will you intentionally put that thing in a “parking lot” and come back to it later? Will you let go of it for good? (I suggest ritualizing your letting go, so the thing feels well and truly done.)

Or will you choose to work with your fear, go beyond it, and finally do your thing?

If you’ve concluded that you really want to do the thing now, keep reading.

I’m developing a four-session coaching package devoted to getting your thing done. This package is focused on doing just one thing. It comes with pre-session focus and alignment questions, between-session check-ins, science- and soul-based tools and exercises for every step of the journey, and lots of private time with me.

If you’ve ever wondered if coaching is right for you, this is a perfect way to find out. Because this package is under construction and so tightly focused, I’m offering it at a super low rate for a limited time.

Imagine how good it would feel to get your thing done. Then go here for more information and to schedule a free, no-obligation clarity call. I look forward to connecting with you!

And if you’d just like companionship for 30 minutes or so to work through the process above, I’m here for that, too. Contact me here to schedule.

Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash





The Espaliered Woman

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Espaliered apple tree
An espaliered apple tree at the Chicago Botanic Garden

You’ve probably seen them. They’re often apple or pear trees, planted right up against a wall, limbs twined onto wires so they’re flat against the wall. The trees still bear fruit, but they take up much less space.

These trees are espaliered.

I used to admire them. Such pretty trees splayed out against brick walls. Now I feel sorry for them.

What would that feel like – to want to grow, to bud and fruit, but instead to be trained and pruned, wired and flattened, so you didn’t take up so much space and you look beautiful? How handy for the gardener – for his tree to be small and orderly, but still produce fruit.

The tree herself is still wild, yearning to grow, to stretch her strong branches up to the sky in search of sun. To be nourished from her deep, wild roots. To feel her leaves unfurl and buds form, and to feel the power of forming fruit.

And along comes a gardener (all the gardeners shown espaliering apple trees in my web search appear to be male) who thinks, I’m gonna make me a tree that still gives me fruit but that is well-behaved, by golly.

So the tree is pruned and wired and trained for maximum fruit production and minimum encroachment into the gardener’s territory.

An espaliered tree is an apt metaphor for the contrast between our social, culturally-constructed selves and our true wild nature.

The wild tree is our true nature – our essential, instinctual Self gifted to us at birth. Those wires and pruning and snipping off of anything that doesn’t fit the preference of the gardener, well, that’s the false, social self at work.

We all have false, social selves. Personas. They’re the costumes we wear to fit in, get along, stay safe, and make others happy. They’re part of being human. Our social selves are necessary. They keep us out of the street and out of jail. The trouble comes when we aren’t able to choose when to wear them anymore – when we forget that we’re wearing a disguise. Then these selves become rigid, too-small skins. Trapped inside them, we slowly suffocate.

We all wear masks in order to go along and get along and navigate the culture we’re in. And thankfully we all have, somewhere deep down inside, who we truly are: that elemental, essential, instinctual wild Self who carries our knowing, our purpose, and our passions.

For many of us, there comes a time when we realize we’ve lost touch with who we really are, at root. We realize we’ve let ourselves be espaliered – pruned, flattened, trained in straight lines. Beautiful to the eye of the gardener, for whom we’ve produced abundant fruit. We exist for him, and not for ourselves.

At this point, unlike the tree, we human women have a choice. Choosing to remain espaliered has its rewards: shelter, warmth, less risk of damage to those precious limbs. Many women will choose to remain safe within the castle walls.

Others of us will come to understand that to remain espaliered is equivalent to choosing death. We will pull ourselves free from the wires and away from the wall. We will return to our wild root stock. We will become feral, unsafe, free-ranging and open to the elements. We probably won’t produce as many apples, but other rewards will take their place. Wild birds will make their nests in our newly-craggy branches. Fierce badgers will den in our roots.

We will be who we are, again. We will be becoming who we’re meant to be, again. 

Here’s one way to feel the difference between your social self and your essential self. (This is a riff on the Body Compass, a foundational tool for Wayfinder Life Coaches and their clients.)

Imagine yourself as an espaliered tree. Become the tree. Feel the wall at your back. Feel your limbs tied to the wires running in straight lines. Feel the urge to send out unruly shoots. Feel them snipped off by the gardener. Feel him admiring your rule-following prettiness and fertility. What do you notice in your body? Choose three words to describe this feeling of being espaliered.

Now take three deep breaths and shake your body. Move the energy of espalier through your body and let that shit go.

Finally, imagine yourself as a wild tree. Become the tree. Feel your wild roots deep in the soil. Feel your sturdy trunk. Feel your strong limbs spread and stretch for the sun. Feel new shoots sprout all along your limbs. Feel your leaves unfurl and your buds form. Feel the buds solidify and become fruit. Feel the fruit become heavier and heavier. Feel the birds build nests in your limbs, and the badger make a home in the space between your deep, sheltering roots. There is space for all. What do you notice in your body now? Choose three words to describe this feeling.

Which tree feels stronger? Which tree feels more powerful? Which tree would you rather be?  

When you’re living and making choices from your social, culturally-constrained self, your body will tell you. You will feel more like the espaliered tree. And when you live and make choices rooted in your wild, essential Self, your body will feel more like the wild tree.


Did you try this exercise? I’d love to hear about it. Contact me here or leave a comment below. Thank you! 

PS. I’m transitioning to sending email newsletters rather than blog posts. If you’d like to receive fresh content as well as information about my latest offerings, please subscribe. You can subscribe on the form in the sidebar here. In my newsletter, I go a little deeper into one of the four touchstones I use in my work with clients, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further.

(Photo credit: Chicago Botanic Garden)





How do you create a new life when you’re still living in the old one?

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House being demolished

How do you create a new life when you’re still living in the old one?

How do you change your life and live from your heart without destroying the things you love about the life you’ve already created?  

How do you stand tall and strong, when the structure you’ve built up till now wants you to stay crooked and small?

Three things:

1. Courage. Heart-based radical trust in your inner wisdom and goodness. Trust your unhappiness, boredom, frustrations, longings, desires.

2. Clarity. Get just a little clearer on the next thing. Maybe the next two things if you’re an overachiever. You don’t have to have the whole vision. Ask yourself: What tugs? What delights? You know what’s next.

3. Conflict. It’s gonna happen. Learn to manage the inevitable conflict that arises when you change how you live your life.

It’s tempting to just move out of the house. And sometimes that’s necessary and it’s what you know you want to do. You could be the woman who seemingly out of the blue divorces her husband and moves to (Santa Fe, Seattle, New York City, a farm in Iowa, fill in the blank) to follow her passion for (ceramics, whales, the theatre, organic fiber, fill in the blank) and no one saw it coming.

We’re so afraid of causing conflict. Making trouble. Rocking the boat. We’re so convinced the life we’ve built is real – immutable, rigid, solid – and if we wiggle and stretch it’ll all come crashing down. Maybe it will.

If the life you’ve built is that fragile – if all that’s holding the structure of your life together is your precious energy and power, then it might need to collapse. If you’re holding the foundation up like the Incredible Hulk while your people upstairs walk around oblivious, then you might want to stop doing that.

Over and over I hear in my clients a deep fear of talking honestly about their frustrations, anger, and yearning with their husbands.

Sometimes they’re fearful because they made a commitment x number of years ago to this man. I hear these women say, “He hasn’t changed, so why do I have the right to be unhappy? I just need to get over myself and wait out this frustration. My kids would be devastated if I left him.”

Sometimes they’re fearful because their husbands are fine with things as they are. I hear these women say, “He’s perfectly happy. I must be wrong. I must be the one who needs to be fixed. I’m being crazy and hysterical.”

Sometimes they’re fearful because they’re afraid of being dismissed by their husbands. I hear these women say, “What if he doesn’t listen? What if he blows me off? What if I’ve opened this can of worms and nothing changes?”

All of these reasons are a variation of the belief that they need permission from someone else to know what they know, feel what they feel, say what they mean, and do what they want. (Words lifted from Martha Beck’s forthcoming book, The Way of Integrity.)

We’re so well-trained by this patriarchal culture in which we live, move, and have our being, that, as women, we need to look outside ourselves for authority. That we’re irrational and we can’t trust our inner wisdom. That the only things that matter are the things we can measure.

My friends, this is bullshit. I don’t know why it is that women seem to need to to grow and change more than men. Maybe it’s because we live in cycles. We embody change. We are rooted in a deeper reality than patriarchal culture.

Why ultimately doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you trust your courageous heart’s voice, you take the next step that delights you even if it’s scary, and you learn to manage the inevitable conflict. Let me know if I can help.

Photo by Haley Hamilton on Unsplash