Words for Hard Times
As you all know, I do a lot of work helping women quiet that vicious, critical voice we each carry around. The one that says, “You are going to screw this up.” “If that was a worthy idea, someone would have done it already.” The one that asks that pernicious question, “Who do you [...]
In my work with women who want to play bigger in their lives and work, I often hear this: “I want to make x change, (start a business, get in great shape, get my artwork out there in the world) but I have no self-discipline! I start working on it and just don’t stick with [...]
You can learn to keep yourself company, but only by keeping yourself company — Do you ask “how are you?” and listen like a deer deciphering a rustling in the leaves? Do you say “take a walk with me, and let me show you the woods?” Do you sing yourself a song? [...]
I’m always looking for new ways to wake up to the life in front of me. This week I started playing with the idea of “five beautiful things.” In any moment, particularly if I’m feeling stressed or out of sorts, I look for five beautiful things in my midst. I really look at them. I [...]
There was a moment last Tuesday when I was watching the twitter stream about The Real Life: Poems for Wise Living, and the tears started rolling. I was reading tweets about the poems, and it was clear they were making an impact. Why the tears? Because that was a moment of homecoming, a [...]
Art by Shelley Kommers In any creative feat (by which I mean your work, your art, your life) there will be downtimes. Or so it seems. Just as the earth is busy before the harvest and a baby grows before its birth, there is no silence in you. There is no time [...]
Step back and watch your body, being a body. Watch an arm move through space, watch an ankle turn. Watch your body, as it likes things or doesn’t, as it gets scrapes and bruises as the skin darkens and falls into folds. Step back to the perimeter of the theater and watch your [...]
I wrote a long post about belonging and loneliness – about our desire to belong and how it shows up in healthy and unhealthy ways. I like you so, I’m sparing you. The writing went circles. It was stilted, messy, in conflict with itself. But at the end of my long struggle with [...]
I don’t know why the thought occurred to me, but it did. It showed up suddenly, fully formed, like a telegram delivered. I was sitting in my office at home, feeling disappointed about something that hadn’t worked out the way I’d hoped. And suddenly popped up the thought: “Instead of thinking about your [...]
Even in the struggle, you are loved. You are being loved not in spite of the hardship, but through it. The thing you see as wrenching, intolerable, life’s attack on you, is an expression of love. There is the part of us that fears and protects and defends and expects, and has a [...]
