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Please don’t turn your back on someone who has done you no harm and would never harm you.   

Please don’t alienate the people who want to be in your circle of love. 

We need to embrace each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and be the gate keeper of each other’s hearts.  

When you hurt me, you hurt yourself because together we could be stronger.  

When you turn you back on someone who is opening their heart and being vulnerable… You are blocking a piece of your heart also.

We need connection.  
We need safety.  

We need to know we are always welcome, loved and protected.  

We need to be a safe place to land.  

We get super caught up in the mud and muck.

Too many details, opinions, and fear makes everything hard and confusing.

When you are stuck in the mud and don’t know what to do ask yourself, “what’s the most important thing?”

And make yourself find an answer.

You might be surprised to find that all of the muddy details really don’t matter when it comes down to it.

This question helps you align your priorities so that you can move forward. You might have to rock the boat, but it’s not as scary when you already know what the most important thing is and you are honouring it.

PS. You’ve got mail! If you are subscribed to my private email list you received an email this morning. If you aren’t but would like to receive emails from me. Sign up below.

I’ve always loved being a mom, and I’ve always loved my little family.

I consider myself lucky because for years, it was all I had.

In the middle of chaos, and in the middle of everything else going wrong, there were moments I could sit in my living room with my heart overflowing because of something someone said, or did…or sometimes it was just because we were all together.

Not everyone gets that gift.

I still hold the memories sacred.

I had to give those precious moments up in order to rearrange my life.

But I will never forget them.

Sometimes when we move on, we have to leave some of the good things behind too.
Life is a matter of balance and finding your way.

When you make the choice to start a new job, a new life, or a new path there will always be pieces you don’t want to give up.

These pieces are the ones that hold you there long after your time has expired.

“A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it’s the most painful thing you’ll ever have to do and that you’ve ever done. But what’s yours is yours. Whether it’s up in the sky or here in your hands. And one day, it’ll fall from the sky and hit you in the head real hard and that time, you won’t have to put it back in the sky again.” 

― C. JoyBell C.

The only way to let go is to trust that when it comes back together on the other side, it’s going to somehow be even better than it was before.

And the truth is, my family will never be the same as it was.

But it was going to change anyway as the kids grew up and moved on.

Now I’m present and whole hearted and at peace inside myself all of the time and I’m showing my kids how to live a whole hearted life. 

And when it comes down to it, that’s the kind of life I want them to have… not stolen moments in a living room.

PS. I’m building a course to teach big hearted people how to live more whole heartedly.  If you would like me to drop you a line as more details become available, please sign up for my private email list below.

If you don’t see your worth…

If you settle for less because it seems easier…

If you compromise more than you are willing….

If you let others tell you who you are…

If you stay in a place that stifles you…

If you don’t say no…

You are selling yourself short.

And then you know what happens?

You will get frustrated, and then you will become apathetic, and then you will shut down.

Slowly your light will start to fade, and depression will begin to set in.

But…

If you believe in yourself.

If you advocate for yourself.

If you stand up for what is right.

And if you know you are contributing in ways that are important,

Then you will learn, and grow, and get closer to aligning your outside life with your inside life.

Do not sell yourself short, you are not on sale.

You can get where you want to go, but you’ll have to stand up to do it.

“It takes courage to choose to dream rather than simply to continue down th same path.”- Sherry Salata

We as humans do not give enough credit to the incredible amount of courage it takes to choose to dream.

And we certainly don’t give the dreamers credit for being courageous.

Dreaming is hard work because of this.

Acting on and implementing those dreams takes it to a whole new level until….

If you want to surround yourself with the doers and the dreamers as Oprah suggests, then you need to become one.

If you don’t know where to start, start with bravery.

Dream, raise your hand, offer your opinion, dig deep into your determination, find your grit to get through what’s hard, believe in possibilities, and be brave enough to love.

You will be humbled, you might not get there; your dreams may not work out the way you planned, but it won’t matter because living in the land of hope and possibility is so much brighter than living in a rut and feeling trapped.

Dare to dream… you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

We have our differences.

We are male or female.  

We have different skin colours, hair colours and eye colours.  

We have cultural differences.  

We have different religious beliefs and families of origin.

We have different skill sets, and life experiences.  

But I think deep down at the core of our being, where our true self lives, we are all the same.  

We all have darkness we don’t want to admit to, whether it be shame over things we have done, hurts we can’t bear to feel, or parts of ourselves we aren’t proud of.   Things we have been told about ourselves that we are afraid of being true and are fighting to prove wrong.  

We all want to know we matter, we are loved, and that we belong.   We want freedom of choice and opportunity, faith and trust in the big picture, and to know we are connected and not alone.   

Just as much as you feel this way, so does the person sitting next to you.  

We get to feel unique and special because we are different and at the same time we can know we are not alone and we are all in this together.  

I think that’s a pretty neat thing.  

I was lucky to grow up on the back of a horse.  

Because animals communicate through energy, I had developed a second language that I didn’t even realize.  

I remember the first time someone started talking about energy with the horses, and finally put into words how it felt to me to ride.  

Tapping into my intuition was easy for me once I knew that what it was.  

Intuition is listening to how something outside of you makes you feel inside.  

Move toward the things that feel good to you.   Move away from things that feel bad. 

This part was easy for me.   Staying conscious enough to do it was another story.   Sometimes I get so caught up in the facts, I forget to stop and feel. 

I have noticed the more I feel, the better I do and as long as what I’m doing feels right to me on a deep level… the more right my life becomes.  

There’s no such thing as a perfect life… but we might as well feel as good as we can while we are living it.  

I saw someone the other day I hadn’t seen for a while, and he smirked at me.
Our recent history has been anything but good.

For the first time in my life,  I felt like I had someone out to get me.  He was constantly scheming up ways to mess with my sense of safety.

When I saw his smirk, the immediate question that popped into my mind was “what is he up to now?”

I love the power question asking has, but I find we have to be very careful with it sometimes.

The wrong questions can give you bad answers, the right questions can change an entire situation because our brains are wired to find answers no matter what.

I just love it when someone says, “maybe we are asking the wrong question.”

As my mind raced to find the answer to “what is he up to?”, my anxiety began to rise as I was anticipating the worst.

I began to notice the change in how I was feeling over the next several minutes of mind racing, which prompted me to come up with a new question, “do I really want to make up an answer about what he is up to?”

That answer was a definite no.   He is not someone I want to tap into and fully understand, or outguess, and I stopped assuming I could guess the answer.

And with that, my mind stopped racing and my anxiety began to settle.

This might be the first time I have consciously caught myself asking the wrong questions, coming up with bad answers…and then changing my question.

One year at the awards banquet in 4-H I was awarded Miss WhoWhatWhenWhereWhy.
It seems I have always loved asking questions, now I know for sure the difference a question can make, I’m going to be more careful.

And guess what?  He hasn’t done anything… yet.   Maybe that was his new ‘friendly smile’ instead of a smirk.

I went to the Jonathan Field symposium in Calgary with Mom. It was a one time event where a few horse trainers from different disciplines got together and showcased their skills.

During the event, they had a horse whispering challenge. They took wild and unbroke young horses and tamed them and got on and rode them over the span of two or three hours. If you haven’t seen something like this before, it’s worth your time to seek it out.

The wild horses were on a long lead rope. They completely ignore the trainer and have no respect for him at first. The trainer keeps them on the rope and pushes them forward into a trot allowing them the space to circle around him on the end of the rope. Every so often the trainer will do something to interrupt the horse, by having him switch directions in the circle, to remind the horse he’s there.

For some horses this goes on for a long time, they keep circling the trainer and virtually ignoring him. Other horses almost immediately stop, look at the trainer and do what’s called “ask the question”.

Once the horse is asking the question, he becomes teachable and learns quickly. He is humble, vulnerable, and searching for the answer.

It took me a long time to figure out what it looks like when a horse is asking a question. One of the trainers at the symposium had a tough horse who was happy to ignore him for a very long time. For almost an hour he let the horse run circles around him, completely ignoring him. He just kept reminding the horse he was there.

Finally the horse stopped for a second and looked at him as if to say, “why are you doing this and why do you keep interrupting me?”

The horse asked the first question and the relationship between horse and human changed.

The horse gets progressively more interested in the human. The horse stops asking ‘why are you interrupting me’, and moves into ‘what are you trying tell me’.

The relationship has now changed and the horse starts his learning and personal growth journey.

This is exactly what life looks like for us.

We run around in circles completely oblivious to our path and our purpose. Life gets in the way and interrupts us but we ignore it and keep running in circles.

No matter what we try we get the same result and we start to ask why. Eventually we get tired of being interrupted.

Maybe the interruptions come in the form of lost relationships. Friendships, romantic relationships, family relationships, or business relationships. You begin to see a pattern amongst all of the ones you’ve lost and start to ask why.

Maybe our health starts to fade, and we start to ask why.

Maybe our life changes in an instant with a bad accident or loss of a loved one and we ask why.

Maybe we are just tired of feeling lonely, sad, or trapped, and we start to ask why.

There is a certain amount of vulnerability that comes with asking these ‘why’ questions at first. We fight with our ego because we think we should have all of the answers. It’s hard to admit we don’t have the answers, but I’m learning the moment we realize we don’t have the answer is precisely the same moment life starts to get interesting.

It all starts with asking open hearted and vulnerable questions. From there our personal growth journey begins over and over and over again.

Shortly after my husband and I separated, my son had his annual hockey tournament that we had always attended as a family and made into a little holiday.

This time I was taking the kids by myself, we were flying there and taking a rental vehicle to the resort where the team stayed.

I was a nervous wreck. We hadn’t been able to afford many holidays outside of hockey, so this was only the second time the kids had even been on a plane. Even though I was a stay at home Mom who looked after the kids, venturing out into the world with them was daunting and I was so afraid of everything that could go wrong.  I can very clearly remember the pit in the bottom of my stomach and my shaky legs for most of the trip.

I was so not ok, but I knew the only way through it was through it.

One morning the boys had hockey fairly early.  We loaded up the rental vehicle in the underground parkade and as I backed out I turned the wheel and scraped and damaged the whole side of the vehicle down a support pole that was at the back corner of my parking stall.

It was one of those moments where you are barely able to do life as it is…and one more thing goes very wrong. On top of that, I opted out of insurance when I took the rental (there is no good explanation for why I did that).

Oprah calls these God whispers.  You get a little nudge here that you didn’t listen to, and a little nudge there that you don’t pay attention to, and it happens over and over until finally something big enough happens, some sort of ‘accident’ that gets your attention.

I missed all of the little nudges because I was barely functioning… that in itself was a sign I should have been doing some inner excavating.  But I didn’t know how to feel ok then.  I had lived in turmoil, fear and anxiety for so long by that point that I had completely lost my sense of connection with myself and feeling at peace in my own skin…my North Star.

I look back at the person I was 5 years ago, barely functioning, always on high alert, constantly on damage control and in an acute state of stress and I’m so glad I chose her.  I’m so glad someone finally told me life isn’t supposed to be lived like that. I’m so glad I believed happiness was out there.  I’m so glad I finally decided my life was important enough to create one that feels right for me.

Being brave and showing up for life, and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone is possible and fun when you are coming from a place of peace and calm inside. When you know your North Star and can always find your way back, then growth and adventure is terrifyingly exciting, instead of horribly terrifying.

If you don’t know where your North Star is anymore, I promise you it still exists and it’s worth seeking out and staying aligned with it.  The cleaner and clearer you live, the easier it is to align.

If you are lucky enough to know it and are aligned with it, then now is the time to experiment.  Try new things, do what scares you, live a life that’s larger than you, work on your legacy, share your voice, meet new people, learn something new, take a class and let yourself be changed.

Once you know your way back to your North Star you know that you can always find connection, inner peace, and okayness inside yourself no matter what happens.  It will always guide you.  There is no greater power than that.  You will be unstoppable and can begin to create the life you have always dreamed of.

Riding horses is my meditation.  While I’m up there, everything else fades away and I’m connected.

We all need these mindfulness moments in order to fully live.

These moments where all you do is feel.

These moments that take us away from the demands life, and move us into a place where everything is always okay.

A place to just be.

What is your meditation?

It’s January and all of the talk is about goal setting. Social media talks about it, all of the people I follow talk about it. Goal setting is everywhere.

I find that there is a fine line between seeing an idea and thinking it’s relevant, and having something pop up in my awareness so many times that I start to ignore it.

Goal setting can go either way. I gap out when people start pushing the action side of goal setting, so I’m trying not to slip into the “yada, yada, yada” part of my brain when it shows up. I’m not going to lie, I’ve tuned out a lot of it this year so far.

I’m still thinking about goals and results and the next thing for me. I’m still working on where I want to be when I turn 50 and what I want my life to look like, and I’m trying not to wear myself out.

We all have a vision of where we want to go and what we are working on.

The most important “action” you can take when goal setting is to gain more clarity on the goal. Keep asking yourself questions until you have defined what you truly are working towards.

This is the difference between I want to be rich, and defining what rich means to you and what it looks like. For some it’s millionaire status, for others it’s being free of debt, and for others it’s being able to pay the bills on time.

It’s the difference between I want better relationships and defining what a great relationship is in your mind. For some people this might mean one close friend, for others it might mean building a community, and for others it could mean closer connections with the people you already have.

See how many variations there are?

Defining exactly what you want to achieve, is half the battle. Once you can see it, it’s a whole lot easier to find your way to it.

Just for today let’s choose how we want to feel.

In any situation, in any movement, or in any conflict we have total control over how we feel. And how we feel is directly related to the story we are telling ourselves.

Just for today let’s be diligent with our inside world. Let’s choose thoughts that make us stronger, let’s reframe our story in a way that makes us feel better, and let’s be intentional with how we feel.

You can choose to feel what you want to feel, but we are our best selves when we feel good.

I have written several times about how I thought it was important to be independent and strong.

I told myself for years it wasn’t ok to depend on anyone or be needy. I didn’t want to impose on others and I thought I was totally capable of doing it all.

And I was usually fairly competent and capable.

I didn’t think it was ego making those decisions at the time. I didn’t understand how much ego infiltrates every area of our lives, and I didn’t know that nobody ever fully escapes it…including myself. Learning how my ego shows up has been a journey all in itself.

The problem with this strong and independent attitude is that it blocks connection… and I wanted connection.

Slowly I started testing the waters of connection.

I would leave my heart open instead of closing it off. That is not nearly as easy as it sounds because my knee jerk reaction is to close it and push away and over and over again I have to force myself to stay and lean in.

I’ve been working on it, and the rewards have been great.

The more I admit that I need others and allow myself to be loved, the more they help to lift me back up by filling my heart with love.

And I whole heartedly appreciate my friends and the people who want to support me and wonder why I ever blocked this kind of love in the past.

Life has become so much sweeter now that I don’t have to be strong.

And I feel so blessed to have all of this wind beneath my wings.

Some people enjoy conflict, or a good debate.

I enjoy harmony.

So I believed that if you “don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything.”

And I bit my tongue and stuffed my feelings all of the time.

In hindsight I can see this didn’t work. It didn’t bring harmony. I was unconsciously giving others permission to treat me poorly and I never felt valued.

Since I’ve learned how important it is to speak up, and i have seen some really great results in mg life from doing so, I’ve also had to deal with more conflict.

I still don’t love conflict, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil.

How someone feels is not my responsibility. If the conflict happens because of their emotional reaction, it’s not up to me to fix it.

Knowing this has allowed me to have a lot more difficult conversations. Which are important.

Tim Ferris said, “a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”

You can have a difficult conversation and still follow the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” rule.

Sometimes the most difficult part of a conversation is saying what you need to say with empathy, tact, and grace.

Sitting silent and stuffing your feelings is not the solution.

Change will never happen if we don’t speak up, advocate for what we believe in, and start talking.

We can be classy about it, but we must not be silent.

I was a mess.   Life was hard and things weren’t going the way I wanted them to.  Day after day I would wake up and go to sleep upset.  I was trying to be fair and play nice, but things were happening that were unfair to me.

I couldn’t get over it.  I didn’t even know how to get over it.

Until one morning months later, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and I read something that said, “eat diamonds for breakfast and sparkle all day long”.

For that day I decided I was going to sparkle.

It was hard and I certainly didn’t sparkle ALL day …but I realized I had built a really strong emotional habit about feeling bad that kept trying to suck me back in.  People I talked to would ask questions and the answers I had been repeating for months had no sparkle in them.

But that day I remembered we have a choice about how we want to feel.

Sometimes we have to keep rechoosing it at every moment.

But the more you choose to sparkle, the better you feel… and at the end of the day that’s all we have ultimate control over anyway.

I started writing my blog over because I knew I needed to stop hiding, and that morphed into a new journey of being brave.

I had a whole world inside of me that only a couple of close friends even knew existed.

Writing this blog was the first step in my journey to start showing up for life and being brave became my theme for the following year and a half.

I have struggled with putting words to the theme that has followed brave, but I might be starting to figure it out.

I had begun to stand up for what I believed is right. I had never done that before and it was messy. I shy away from conflict and I used to shrink in the face of it. I would work overtime to wrap my head around the way things were evolving because I always let others decide how it was going to look.

There have been several times my knees were shaking, my breath was shallow, or my delivery was less than desirable but I managed to get my point across… and almost unbelievable to me, the things I was speaking up against would change.

This has been the new theme. Stand up for what you believe in and speak up even when your knees are shaking. I’ve been working on refining my new skills as they are quite rough around the edges.

I was listening to Debbie Millmans podcast. She was interviewing Priya Parker who wrote the book, The Art Of Gathering. Priya had studied power and talked about it for a brief couple of minutes.

When defining power, Priya spoke about Paul Tillich a theologian who paired power with love. Tillich defined power as “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity”. Priya called this self actualization.

She also quoted Martin Luther King who said, “power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic”.

I’m not even close to reckless and abusive, but I have spent my life being sentimental and anemic. Just the other day my dad pointed out my overuse of the word love. Apparently not everyone uses it in every sentence.

Carl Jung doubted that one person could inhabit both love and power and he said, “where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.”

Sounds like a challenge to me.

After thinking about all of this for a couple of days I would say my theme has been learning to balance power and love. Right now that looks like standing in my own power and coming from love.

Setting boundaries, learning compassion, being brave, figuring out we can make change happen, learning about ego, standing up for what I believe in, speaking up, and embracing everyone’s humanity have been part of this journey.

Having a theme helps you to learn new skills and practice better ways of showing up in the world. If you had to name a theme to the lessons you are learning and the skills you are developing, what would it be?