Tag Archives: healing

The Patron Saint of “Both/And”

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There’s a hidden creek in the Cascades west of Bend that we call “Fairy Moss Creek.” I spent an hour there a couple of days ago, in the company of an American Dipper. (Dippers, also called Water Ouzels, are North America’s only aquatic songbird.)

This dipper’s right leg appears to be useless. She drags it along behind her over moss-covered rocks and through the water as she goes about her dipper business.

The rills aggregating to form Fairy Moss Creek appear out of bare rock just a little way upstream from the downed log on which I’m sitting. An additional creeklet appears to erupt from the top of the ridge across from me, then bubbles down the ridge to join the main stem. It’s up this branch that our dipper moves, hopping from rock to rock, sticking her head into pools and under tiny waterfalls, evidently finding plenty to eat. She’s in no hurry, moving steadily up and up and up, dragging that useless leg behind her. No drama. No angst. Just whole-hearted dipper.

I hear her say that injured things can thrive. Hurt beings can be strong. Imperfect creatures have every right to nutrient-rich habitat. She tells me she’s whole, in spite of her injury. She tells me I’m whole, too.  

Fairy Moss Creek is magical. This dipper is a shaman. And I am a mystic.

The world talks to me on the regular, as it does to all nature mystics.

September 17th is the feast of Hildegard of Bingen, hands down my favorite saint. Hildegard, who lived in the 12th century, was the Queen of Both/And. She was an abbess of a monastery in Bingen in the German Rhineland. She was a healer and theologian. She was an herbalist, a painter, and a writer. She instructed popes while writing music. And that’s just for starters. Hildegard was many things, some of them seemingly contradictory.

I think I admire Hildegard because I have seemingly contradictory parts, too. There’s the left-brained analytical biologist who geeks out on geology, botany, ornithology, and the intricacies of watersheds. And there’s the right-brained intuitive who loves art and poetry and healing, and who receives dipper messages.

For the longest time, I’ve believed I needed to choose between these two worlds. As a kid, I was told that the intuitive me who knew stuff about people, loved narrative and color, and talked to the trees wasn’t practical. That I needed to give her up in order to make my way in the world. That the part of me that would be useful to others and would make my living is the orderly, fact-based part. That we’d all be happier if I would just get over myself, accept the loss of my kaleidoscope life, and settle for black and white.

I’ve found a little “both/and” air to breathe occasionally, while mostly drowning in my inability to choose. My master’s degree is a Both/And: Conservation Biology and Communication. My coach training is Both/And: scientifically rigorous and firmly rooted in the mystical. (Martha Beck, who developed Wayfinder Life Coach Training, is sociologist with a doctorate from Harvard and one of the most mystical women you’ll ever meet.

Like Hildegard, I’m a biologist and a poet, a science nerd and an intuitive, a healer and a theologian. I contain multitudes. And I refuse to accept the culture’s message that I need to choose.

I know there’s more to this world than meets the eye. I believe in that deep womb-heart I felt on the Camino. I get messages all the damn time from rivers and rocks and birds. That I can also tell you the story of the basalt rock we’re sitting on at the time, identify the bird you’re hearing in the trees (and the trees), regale you with interesting facts about that bird, and tell you where the river’s headwaters are, only adds to my joy. I hope it adds to yours, too.

I’m claiming my both/and life. I’m choosing my integrity and wholeness, and to hell with the culture that says I can’t have both.  

PS. Interested in more about Hildegard? The Abbey of the Arts is offering a retreat on Hildegard’s feast day. Here’s more information.

How to swim in a sea of ambiguity.

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Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

I’m awash in questions these days. Who am I if I let myself be healed? Who am I if I expand? Who am I if I let go of my stories about myself? Who am I if I anchor down into something deeper, bigger, and truer for me?

Martha, the hero of my Camino novels, is asking herself these questions, too. (Download Lost and Found for free here, and see this newsletter for an excerpt from the in-process sequel.)

We’re both, Martha and I, in the middle of an identity crisis. I don’t want to be. If you relate, you probably don’t want to be, either. Swimming in a sea of ambiguity isn’t fun.

Will there be a “me” left when I step out of the boxes that define me? Maybe not. Maybe there’ll only be flow and movement and connection with the One Deep Heart, the Immensity Underlying All That Is, the Holy Aquifer.

The woman calling to me from my core, the Wise Self inviting me to leave my self-imposed limitations behind, is a deeply joyful woman. I don’t yet know her well, this profoundly joyful woman who’s in love with her life.

Where will I go? Who will I become? What will I learn? What pain am I opening myself to as I soften my front? These are the questions that continue to bubble up from the scared part of me who desperately wants to feel safe.

I’m trusting there’s good news here. That this identity crisis is also an identity opportunity. Ambiguity means there are many possible outcomes. And I get to choose. Just as I have created my current life with my past choices, I create my future life with my current choices.

This evolution is not about looking for direction from outside. This evolution is not about getting it right. This evolution is not about waiting for permission.

This evolution, this turn of the wheel, is about being who I am, knowing what I know, and making choices from who I want to be. This turn of the wheel is about listening to wise future me. She’s who I already am, and who I’ve always been, and also who I’m not yet. Sounds crazy. Feels true.  

I am the one who chooses. I am the one who intends. I am the one who acts, and by acting, creates.

So how to swim in a sea of ambiguity? The best way I know to hold space for yourself and your becoming when you don’t know where the ground is or if there even is any ground, to get in touch with your wise future self who is also your inner wise child and wise woman, is to meditate.

How does meditation help? Here’s how it works for me. When I sit in silence, I see those false identities and untrue stories I’ve carried around for decades for the lies they are. I get in touch with an achingly sweet inner spaciousness. I fall back in love with myself as I am.

Nothing is more powerful than loving ourselves as we are.

Let me say that again. Nothing is more powerful than loving ourselves as we are.

You are love. Anything you find in yourself that isn’t love also isn’t true.  

Let the limiting lies you believe about yourself fall away, one by one, for as long as it takes, which is probably a lifetime.  

 Trust love. Trust yourself. Trust your wise inner knowing.

I don’t yet know well the deeply joyful woman who’s inviting me to grow into her. I don’t know her well, yet I trust her. I trust her with my life.

Who is calling you to swim in the sea of ambiguity? Remember, life evolves in the sea. Wade in. Swim. See what happens.   

If you’d like companionship as you find and listen to your wise self, I offer a free, no-strings-attached Clarity Call. Follow the link to schedule.

Here’s a link to subscribe to my weekly newsletter for current coaching openings, offerings, and events.

Photo credit: 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.

My newsletter is where I share my latest news: coaching offerings, pop-up workshops, guest posts, etc. You can subscribe here.

Photo credit: Barb Morris, 16 April 2021.

Four healing shifts and a simple awareness practice.

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Sun shining through fingers

I’m convinced that healing happens as we make four simple shifts. These shifts aren’t rules. They’re more like touchstones. Truths. Signposts along the way of integrity. They’re not linear, but rather a spiral unfurling. They’re my attempt to “systematize Mystery.” 

  1. More soul, less façade. To orient ourselves more and more to the truths of our hearts and souls, and less to others’ expectations. 
  2. More acceptance, less resistance. To accept and celebrate the ever-changing nature of being embodied on this earth more and more often, and resist life’s inevitable changes less often.
  3. More intention, less reaction. To choose our thoughts with intention more often, and become caught in our emotions less often. 
  4. More creation, less victimhood. To actively create our lives more often, and less often behave as passive victims of other people, circumstances, or “fate.” 

Supporting my clients as they make these four shifts is the core of my coaching. These shifts are simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. And we have to know where we’re starting from to get where we want to go.

Moving the dial on these shifts requires awareness of what’s happening in our bodies and our brains.

Powerful, lasting change begins with clearly seeing, acknowledging, and being with our current reality, and loving ourselves no matter what we find when we tune into ourselves.

My clients and I begin every session with a few minutes of tuning in. We stop, we feel our bodies, we breathe. This tuning in is non-negotiable. 

Here’s a simple two-minute awareness practice. You can do it anywhere, and you won’t need any special equipment. Don’t complicate it, or try to excel. Just do it.

1. Stop what you’re doing. Take three breaths, Feel your feet.
2. Scan your body for sensations.
3. Whatever you feel, simply allow it. Let the sensations be what they are.
4. Sit with yourself for two minutes. 

Do this practice as often as you remember. Set a reminder on your phone, if you want to. Journal just a few words about what you find, if you want to. Pay attention to any patterns you see, if you want to.

That’s it. That’s all. This simple awareness practice, just coming home to your body for a couple of minutes, is such a powerful place to start making important shifts. Your body is your life. Your body is a gift. Your body tells you what’s true and real and alive. 

Your body is your connection to your soul. Your soul is your connection to meaning, purpose, and deep joy. Everything starts with your body.

You might find as you do this practice regularly that you become aware of emotions and thoughts. If you do, you can jot them down if you want to.

All change, for conscious humans, begins with awareness.

I go a little deeper into one of the four shifts mentioned above in each newsletter, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further. I value your feedback. 

I’m collecting everything I’ve written about these four touchstones into a short e-book. Your responses and questions will help me make that book clearer and more useful. Contact me here or leave a comment with your thoughts. Thank you! 

PS. I’m transitioning from a blog subscription to a newsletter, in order to serve my readers better. Please visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter to continue to receive posts. Thank you!

Photo credit: Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

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 were in church, the minister would 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 printables of this post are downloadable here.

Photo: Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash

“I need to repair my leaks.”

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Woman holding a string of Christmas lights
You’re here to make a conscious, intentional, reverent offering of your energy to the world.

True confession: I sometimes hear voices. To be precisely accurate, I hear a voice. This voice seems to come from both within me and from outside of me. I know that makes no rational sense.

Martha, the heroine of my new novel Lost and Found: A Magical Journey on the Camino de Santiago (now available for free download here), also hears a voice. This voice comes to her, completely unexpectedly, as she’s walking the Camino. To her intense surprise, Martha’s healing is the voice’s aim and highest priority. Martha doesn’t know she needs to be healed, so she’s unprepared for what happens when she listens to the voice.

I got longer missives from the voice on the Camino in 2014, just as Martha does. At home, in real life, the voice isn’t as verbose.

I only hear the voice when I’m quiet, and usually just a phrase or a sentence. Short and to the point. The voice doesn’t mince words. I’m always surprised by what it says.

Here are a few examples. About twenty years ago, while doing yoga, the voice told me my job is “to understand and share.” Two summers ago, while sitting on a rock in the sun, feet in a high mountain lake, obsessing over something or over, the voice told me to relax and trust. “Stay connected and flow,” it said. I hear the voice in my coaching work with clients. It says things like, “Ask her about her connection to trees,” when I have no conscious reason to think a woman’s connection to trees is important.

Maybe it’s intuition. Maybe it’s God. Maybe I’m crazy. All I know is the voice has my healing as its aim and highest priority, and it’s always a good idea to listen.

This morning, feet in the Deschutes River, pondering my new inability to prioritize other people’s priorities over my own, I heard, loud and clear from out of nowhere, “I need to repair my leaks.”

What does this mean? Here’s what I think it means, for me and possibly for you:

I have a tendency to be diffuse, to let my energy leak. Like a porous canal or a pipe with a hole in it, my energy goes places I don’t necessarily want it to go. This is how women are trained in a patriarchal culture.

What’s actually true is that I am in charge of my energy, and I want to notice where my energy goes. I want to decide if it’s going where I want it to go, or if I’m prioritizing someone else’s priorities.

  • Are things plugged into me that I don’t necessarily want to power?
  • Am I trying to manage others’ reactions to me?
  • Am I maintaining a façade? A fake front?
  • Am I pretending to care about something I don’t actually care about?
  • Am I attempting to control the uncontrollable?
  • What incompletions and open loops are draining my energy?

You are in charge of your energy. Your energy is your life. Your energy is all you have.

You might be asking, “But won’t being selfish about where my energy goes make me a heartless monster??”

No. Here’s why: Being who we are, being connected to and flowing with the holy in our unique way in our unique life, is why we’re here. We’re not here to power other people. We’re not here to power institutions we don’t believe in. We’re not here to be colonized. We’re here to be free.

Ask yourself what you’re NOT here to do. What’s on your “To Don’t” list? Repairing those leaks directs your energy to your soul’s purpose. This is why you’re here – to make a conscious, intentional, reverent offering of your energy to the world.  

Photo by Natalya Letunova on Unsplash

Let your messy light shine.

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Woman holding light: Our cracks and broken places are where our light shines into the dark.

Last week I wrote an intensely personal note to you which included two pieces of information I rarely share: my dad’s skiing death and my stepfather’s abuse.  I put them out there for all the world to see. Why?

Mostly, it’s because I’m tired of keeping these secrets. I’m seeing more and more clearly that I’ve been making both events mean that I’m bad, broken, and unlovable. If you know them about me, you won’t like me. Or you’ll feel sorry for me. I don’t want to believe that anymore. That belief has caused me to lead a diminished life, and I’m tired of it.

Here’s what’s truly true: bad things happen to everyone. As do good things. It’s all part of the human experience. What hurts us is the story we tell ourselves about the bad things. And the good things, too. What hurts us is our thoughts about ourselves, others, and the nature of the universe. What hurts us is thinking we deserve these events, bad or good.

The brilliant Kara Loewentheil’s Unf*ck Your Brain podcast on December 17th was about vulnerability. Kara dropped this bombshell that exploded in my brain: “The only person we’re vulnerable to as adults is ourselves.” Kara elaborated that when we’re afraid of someone else’s negative judgment when we tell them something personal, it’s because we secretly believe they’re right. If we’re okay with the information, we’re okay with their reaction, positive or negative. So I dug into why I resist telling people about my dad’s deadly accident and my stepfather’s sexual abuse. I thought it was because hearing about these events makes others uncomfortable, so I was just being considerate. And they do make others uncomfortable, but that’s only part of the story. Mostly they make me uncomfortable.

It turns out I’ve spent fifty years believing bad things happen to bad people, and I thought I needed to keep my badness a secret. But of course the truth is I didn’t cause either event. My dad hit a tree so hard he died. My mom’s need to have this man take care of her was stronger than her desire to protect me. That’s all. I didn’t cause my parents’ divorce, my family’s disintegration, or my dad’s alcoholism and three remarriages, either. I was a just child trying to make sense of bad situations created by the adults in my life who were dealing with their own shit as well as they could. Sometimes they dealt very badly. And gravity happens, even to the best of skiers.

I’m learning to think of the decade that undid me as a testament to my strength and resilience, and the mysterious power of grace. As I’ve come to see myself differently – as a tender, strong woman who deserves joy – I’ve also come to see my parents differently. This is forgiveness. As I open myself to deeper and deeper healing, I’m letting my parents off the hook. I’m forgiving my dad for dying young and my mom for inviting someone into our lives who hurt me. I’m pretty sure, as I continue to heal, I’ll find that I’ve forgiven my stepfather, too.

Those events broke me, and it’s okay. I’m okay. I think Leonard Cohen was right: the broken places are where the light gets in.  

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

And light doesn’t only come into us. Light goes out, too. Our cracks and broken places are where our light shines through most brightly in the dark. Our imperfections can be channels of grace and healing for our world. We can flow with this light.

Sharing my broken places with you, dear reader, has been healing for me. Thank you for allowing space for them.  

An invitation: If the time is right, gently and with immense kindness, ask yourself what about yourself you keep sequestered from other people. What secrets do you carry? Why are you choosing to carry them? What are these secrets costing you in energy and intimacy?

Answering these questions will help you discover if you, like me, believe untruths that are causing you to suffer. Contact me here if you’d like to investigate together.

Photo by Josh Boot on Unsplash