A Mystery to be Loved

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“So the darkness shall be the light,
And the stillness the dance.”

~ T.S. Eliot
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Tonight I danced.
We began in darkness, and ended with light.
We began with flow, and ended in stillness.
Life is cyclical.
Life is rhythmic.
Life is mysterious.
Perhaps the unknown can be opened to as a mystery to be loved,
not a problem to be solved or a demon to be feared.
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Happy Solstice!

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And Then It Is Gone

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What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time; it is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~ Crowfoot, chief of the Siksika First Nation (1830-1890)

I read this and I hear the words, “and then it is gone.”.

I feel the beauty inherent in each of these ephemeral experiences. I catch a glimpse of the times in my life when I haven’t tried to hang on and I notice the freedom I felt when that happened.

I love to take photographs and what captures my eye, more often than not, are these fleeting images of life as it splays itself out – the rose in sumptuous blossom, the full moon at its peak, a whole-body smile flashing through my grandson.

And then I notice how many times in my life, which would be most of them, that I try to hang on to this beauty.

Life is fleeting, ephemeral. I know this. And, dang it if I don’t try to hang on to the ephemeral…seeing that written in words makes it so clearly painful to do so.

flash…

breath…

fleeting…

all words that show us clearly that life isn’t anything solid or real.

and, yet…

Hanging on to the fleeting is impossible…it falls through our grasp.

And this is where suffering happens…

Life doesn’t need to be fixed or saved.

Life is sacred. Perhaps it only needs to be seen, witnessed, loved.

Perhaps instead of taking, holding on, grasping, I can learn to give back, to appreciate, to honor, to acknowledge, to witness…

What might it take for us to remember the sacredness of this life, to witness it as such, to bow down to its fleeting nature?

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Holy Is All There Is

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Buttering the Sky

Slipping
On my shoes,
Boiling water,

Toasting bread,

Buttering the sky:
That should be enough contact
With God in one day
To make anyone
Crazy.

~Hafiz

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This morning, a foggy easy Sunday morning here in the city, Rachelle Mee-Chapman asked this question of her friends:

What feels like prayer to you today?

Such a rich and provocative question…

On Sundays…

While prayer is for each day and every day, today is Sunday.

On Sundays, dance is my usual form of prayer, the dance floor my church. There is no dance on Labor Day Sunday, though, as the big Sausalito art fair takes over the town.

So, today I write. The empty page is also my church, and writing another form of prayer.

Today, I sit in this warm and inviting cafe writing, and I consider her question.

Voices

I listen to voices sprinkling words through the air, trying to communicate as best they can what wants to be said.

I hear laughter.

I hear English and French.

I hear people who are hungry and thirsty, ordering nourishment for their bodies.

I hear people hungry and thirsty for more than food, perhaps communicating with each other to feed more than their bodies…to feed their souls.

Noticing

I’ve been noticing, just this week, how much I ‘think’ my life.

When I think my life, my body feels tight, constricted and stressed.

When I ‘think’ my life, I push and strive.

When I ‘think’ my life, it is just me by myself trying to carry the heavy load that I learned to carry. The load is indicative of something I have to do, somewhere I have to get, someone I have to be. It’s all some kind of illusion my mind keeps creating.

Life as Prayer

Rachelle’s question and Hafiz’s words bring me back to reality, the reality of Life simply unfolding…Life as Prayer.

I posted Rachelle’s question on my Facebook page, and Emily Silbert answered with this:

Today it was the mundane act of grocery shopping and stopping the automatic list-driven purchasing to get myself an orchid. i stopped and looked into it and it was holy, i was holy, the whole grocery store was holy.

Holy is right here, right now.

What if holy is all there is?

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Changed Through Her Softly

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Life is standing at the edge of an abyss of forgetfulness waiting for the light of the world to be born. This birth needs the wisdom of the feminine, and women must take their place in this time of great potential. ~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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My dear friend Megan shared this video with me today. It is a stunning combination of eloquent words of wisdom and evocative pieces of sacred art. Created by Sandy Wolk, it will move you at the cellular level.

Sit back, watch, listen and take it all in. Deeply.

She nurtures in silence, loves with such a love, that the world is changed through her softly, in a way that seems invisible, yet shakes life in the world to its very core. ~ Sandy Wolk

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Nothing is Wasted; Everything is in Order; It’s All Sacred

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Reverb10 Day 29
Prompt: Defining moment. Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.

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I had a couple of very strong  realizations just a few weeks ago that have shifted how I see myself and my work in the world.

The End of a Chapter

I am done with a period in my life that’s been very internal.

Since 2002, I’ve been engaged with learning my new line of work: that as coach, teacher and writer. I spent many years as a systems analyst for a financial institution. Then I went back to school. I studied many things, and focused on designing experiences, mostly of the interactive digital kind.

When I left school, I knew that what I had just been educated to do, was not my calling. In other words, the tools I gained are directly useful in my new work, but being an interaction designer was not how I was to share my gift.

I spent some time after school grieving a lot of things I hadn’t yet grieved. Like dirty dishes, grief doesn’t go away on its own. It wants to be invited in to sit a spell until it has been fully integrated.

Then, I began to train in my new chosen field: that of teacher of creativity and personal coaching. I wanted to really know the coaching profession, to become well qualified to do this work. When people entrusted me to walk with them as they turned to look within, to unearth their deepest longings and to move through the painful ways they keep themselves stuck, I wanted to be able to be of service to the unfolding of their true self and the gift they are here to give. Fully. I’ve followed this desire as it took me through years of training and education and my own deep work.

Suddenly, after a great deal of training this year, I could feel that I am done. I know my work.

And, I am done with a more internal focus. It had not yet felt right to be moving into the world in a more visible way. And now it does.

The moment when I came to see this was so clear.

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There is No Separation

I am a very lucky woman to have two daughters and three grandchildren, with one more on the way. As I was working to deepen my coaching and teaching abilities, I kept feeling pulled between my personal and professional worlds.

I am blessed to have both my daughters and their families close by. Completely blessed. And, I am the one grandparent here, which means much of the grandparent duties fall on me. I’ve loved this and I’ve felt torn between these two parts of my life.

In another moment of clear seeing, I finally could see, in a very real and palpable way, that these are not two separate things, but rather than one infuses the other. My work with women is enriched by my deep love for my children and grandchildren, and the time I spend with them informs my work. My work with women enriches my time with my children and grandchildren.

And, finally, my writing has been infused with much wisdom I have gained from my experiences with my family.

Of course they are all intertwined. How could I not have seen this? Sometimes these insights are so simple, yet so very profound.

Now, I feel integrated and ready for what life has in store for me, for where life will call me to go, for who life wants me to be with.

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There is a truth at the heart of the way life moves. As Kahlil Gibran wrote:

‎“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only before the truth.” ~ Khalil Gibran

This is my life in all its intricate complexity; yet at the heart of it, it’s all quite simple.

I used to think there was a way life should look and that I would see that way out there, reflected back to me through how the culture shows it.

These two realizations in these past weeks have deepened my faith in my own aibility to trust when to shift, when to move and where to flow to next. Somehwere inside, I knew it wasn’t yet time; and now it is time and life is showing me the way.

Life asks us to flow with it, to follow its lead, to trust in life’s nature.

Everything that has happened in my life has been rich fodder for this gift I’m to give. Nothing was for naught. Everything has informed.

Nothing is wasted, everything is in order, and it’s all sacred.

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2010 in Five Mintues

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One Moment in Ireland
One Moment in Ireland

Reverb10 Day 15
Prompt: 5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010. (by Patti Digh)

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Okay. Timer set. Ready. Set. Go!

Rockin’ trip to Ireland where I fell in love with the land and the people, and felt something new wake up inside me.

Hearing live Irish music.

Going deep into the womb of NewGrange in Ireland.

My grandchildren’s birthday parties: Jamison – 1; Aveline, 2; Lucas, 9 (and many other simple moments with them)

Finding out my daughter is expecting again.

Powerful and beautiful calls with coaching clients..

New look for Unabashedly Female (shout-out to Amanda Farough!).

The amazing experience of being photographed by Siddiqi Ray.

Many, many rocking Sweats on Sunday Mornings.

Moving my father into his new home where he seems to be happy and settled. Peace.

Moments of tenderness and playfullness with Jeff.

Danielle LaPorte Lighting a megafire under my fanny.

Mark Silver teaching me that my business is an expression of my love for the One.

Mastermind moments with Emma and Mandy.

Blogging for the GirlEffect with Tara Sophia Mohr.

Voice Dialogue training.

Awakening Coaching training.

Giants winning the World Series. How did this not come up sooner?

Watching Buster Posey make his debut at the park.

Moving into our new house, and getting organized and cozy in my new office.

Rewarding time teaching Stanford CS, Creativity and Leadership.

Filibernie.

So many little moments of complete and utter peace and joy.

So many little moments of angst, fear, feeling unsettled.

Deciding to be the President of SF Coaches for 2011.

::

yes, yes, I did skip days 12-14. I may do them, I may not. We’ll see.

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Behind The Eyes

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Beauty appears when something is completely and absolutely and openly itself. ~Deena Metzger

Reverb10 Day 08 – Beautifully Different.
Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

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I tend to not like to compare myself to others. I used to do it often. I found it never brought me much peace of mind – in fact, it brought me the opposite.

So, today’s prompt stirred something up inside me about being different and how that ties into being beautiful. I prefer to look at being beautiful from the quote I shared by Deena Metzger – that beauty appears when we are being completely and absolutely self.

We are all different from each other, yet I can’t tell you how I’m different from you. I can be different in the things I do, the places I’ve gone, the life I’ve lived. These are measurable things we can see from the outside. They tell me nothing about who and how and what you really are, nor do they tell you about me.

I only know how I am. Any comparison would simply be either comparing myself to what I think the ‘norm’ is, or what I think makes you You. And, again, I don’t think conjecture helps me to know what makes me beautiful.

Yesterday, I had a beautiful twitter love fest with some of my favorite tweeps. What they shared with me shed some light on how they see me and what it is I do that lights them up. So, I do know others see me in a certain way.

I also know it doesn’t serve anyone to hide our light, our brilliance, our heart. When we don’t try to hide ourselves, when we are simply what we are, our beauty appears.

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What I love.

When I am really being me, I can range from being totally silly to totally serious. I do like to wax on about serious things.

I love the esoteric. I love math. I love touch.

I love devotion, and being devotional to the Source of Life. When I am, I’m filled with a love so radiant, I feel totally and completely full. Nothing is needed or wanted.

I love to dance. Hard and long. I dance the 5Rhythms. Two hours with 150 people dancing at our max…in silence. Heaven.

I love beauty, and creating beauty.

I love working out really hard, where my body gets completely heated up. I can feel the toxins releasing, the muscles relaxing, the sweat cleaning me out from within.

I love to love people, you know, the kind of love where you find you appreciate everything about them because it is who and what they are.

::

Somewhat of a rebel.

My life has been pretty unusual, far from the ‘norm’ of this culture.

I attended Stanford as a non-traditional transfer student. I was 42 when I entered as a Junior. I stayed three years, so I could go to Florence to study. While I was in school, my first grandchild was born. I was the first grandmother to graduate with an undergraduate degree from my department.

While I was there, I was involved with other transfer students. We put on orientations for others in the same situation. One day I was speaking to a young woman, another student. She was all of 23. She was asking me all about my life, and I was sharing. I mentioned something about my life being really different. I think she could sense my reticence about that, and she said something to me that I’ve never forgotten.

She said, “There’s more than one way to do life.”

What a brilliant statement. Somehow, the words she shared allowed me to settle into the differences between my life and those of the majority of the undergrads there. Her words invited me to drop the feeling of being so different simply because my life had taken a different trajectory than most.

Her statement also points to doing vs. being. We can see things about people from what they do and how they live their lives. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to really know someone, especially if they’re reluctant to be real, to be truly themselves. Most of us try to be something other than what we are, because we learned at a young age what we were wasn’t enough.

When one is willing to allow their radiance to shine, to be wholly themselves, we begin to catch a glimpse of the brilliance, the luminosity that lies behind their eyes.

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It’s Serious Love.

I have a story to share with you about coming to know my beautiful self.

A few weeks ago, I had a photo shoot with one hot photographer, Siddiqi Ray. I mean, look at her art. Really.

Siddiqi loves your pictures right out of you. It’s serious love.

According to her site, I’m one of her perfect clients because I hate(d) having my picture taken. I can now add the ‘d’ because with Siddiqi, I loved having my picture taken. For anyone who really knows me, they know what a transformation that is.

Siddiqi came up to San Francisco for an afternoon for client shoots. She brought the most amazing make-up and hair artist with her. This woman made me up and did my hair in a way that I felt adorned and adored, rather than being made up to hide my flaws. Big difference.

Then, after I had been adorned and adored, Siddiqi began to take pictures. After a few shots, she sat down across from me and proceeded to do a soul reading. This was not your average reading, because where she took me, as she spoke softly and clearly about what she saw, was straight to that which is clearly and deeply me.

by Siddiqi Ray
by Siddiqi Ray

Straight to my soul.

Bammo.

I dropped right down into this place of complete knowingness and serenity.

She spoke of what I am her to do, and it was directly in line with what I know.

THEN, she took my picture. And she captured me, from deep within my eyes.

Bam.

Boom.

Dropped down in.

The eyes don’t lie. To me, this is beauty. Not in how we’ve been taught to see it, but rather because it captures me, so completely, so totally. I don’t have to tell you things about me, you can see into me, into a place where we know each other completely and utterly.

For being someone who hate(d) having her picture taken, I didn’t even have to really stretch to take this in, because they did it with such integrity and truth.

One thing I know about me is that I have a vision. When she took this picture, Siddiqi was sharing how she saw me and I was clearly standing in the vision I’ve been shown.

We can try to tell each other about who we are, but words can never really capture the depth of what can be seen behind the eyes.

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I Bow Down to Love

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I bow down in complete awe to the immense depth and breadth of what is possible to experience as a human being.


To know the full range of being human is to know the capacity for great joy and great sorrow. To feel so alive that nothing is pushed away. Nothing is deemed too difficult to feel, too shallow to experience, too risky to allow out into the world.

Yesterday, I was feeling playful and light. Totally free. Smiling from my belly.

This morning, I woke up a little groggy. Had some tea. Sat down to email, twitter and facebook. I found a tweet from Yoko Ono, followed the thread and wound my way to this video that Yoko created to celebrate what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.

I watched the footage from the seventies, and listened intently to the brilliance of John’s genius. I listened to his wisdom, how he was willing to do things no one else dared. How he spoke of Ghandi and Martin Luther King embodying non-violence as a way to peace, and how he spoke of them being shot for it. I thought of how amazing it is that John was sharing his vision for love and peace, and he, too, was shot for it.

And then I began to cry. A deep cry, a cry of grief. A feeling of grief so deep that it found its way back to love. I cried for the beauty of John Lennon’s vision. I cried for his vision that still has not come to pass thirty years after his death. I discovered unexpected grief. Perhaps mine. Perhaps the collective. It doesn’t really matter. I cried.

Grief is the doorway to love, and to life. It is by way of grief, we begin to know death.

Grief teaches us about what we’ve killed within ourselves, and therefore it teaches us what we’ve killed in others, and in the world itself. What we’ve pushed down into the dark because we couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t allow ourselves to feel the immensity of its pain.

Bindu Wiles writes, “If you run from the sorrow, you live a half life.”

Some of us avoid pain and sorrow. Some of us avoid play and joy. Some of us avoid anger and rage. Some of us avoid vulnerability and softness.Whatever we avoid is in the other half of life that we aren’t living.

I ask myself, “What’s in that other half that I am not living?”

I have found the more I am willing to be with the grief that is always present when we’re living a half life, the more it teaches me what it is I’ve been avoiding.

Grief is a loving companion. It takes our hand and walks with us. It wakes us up to the power and vulnerability inherent in a heart that is willing to open to the mystery of life.


Love and grief are deeply intertwined.

When my late husband died, I feared being obliterated by the grief. I discovered I couldn’t feel the grief fully until I allowed myself to feel the love I had for him fully.

When my mother died and I sat with her body, and sat with the grief that was raging through me, I was mysteriously given the opportunity to experience a profound love for her I had never  known.

How can I be a whole human being, if I’m living a half life?

Isn’t it our humanity that’s needed right now, our very real and vulnerable humanness? Isn’t it an embodied spirit that’s needed, a playful, joyful humanity that doesn’t shy away from another’s suffering?

I know many people who don’t travel to ‘difficult places’ because they fear seeing the suffering that is very real. I, too, feared traveling to India because I didn’t know if I could handle seeing the poverty. That fear was keeping me from a whole life. That fear was keeping me in the half life Bindu speaks of. What I discovered was a delightful playfulness in the children that were begging on the Ghats of Varanasi. Yes, they experience a great amount of difficulty. And, in seeing the difficulty up close, I realized that everything I think they are experiencing is only what I imagine in my mind. When I am not willing to be with something in another, it is my own fear of being with that in myself. It stems from living a half life.

When I am stuck in the land of ‘there is no mystery’, I think I know what this world needs to heal. I think I know how to save it, or even that it needs to be saved. Maybe it’s humans that need to be saved, and I don’t mean saved as in born again. I mean saved as in waking up to what we believe we have killed within ourselves. Maybe it’s as simple as waking up to what I believe I have killed within me, waking up to the love that is waiting in the half of my heart I don’t dare open, the half of my heart I don’t dare share.

I do know that we humans have imposed ourselves on this world for far too long. We’ve become great at dominating and not so good at coming into rhythm with Life. Sometimes doing is too much. Sometimes it is good to stop and listen, to feel, to open and receive that which might cause us to remember humility and awe for life itself, for the sheer wonder and delight that we are breathing at all, that something is breathing us.

When I am in fix-it mode, I think my powers as a human being are far greater than the intelligence of the creative mystery that breathes us, that smiles us, that can heal us. The old way of doing things was to impose our ideas of what was wrong with the situation so that we could fix it, and in turn feel better about not feeling that place in ourselves that was being mirrored out there. I know this way well. I’ve wanted to fix the things that I see are broken. I’ve wanted to fix the things that cause ME pain.

As I write this, I see how I (over and over again) react to what causes me pain by attempting to impose what I believe to be a better way to be. It’s painful to see it, and I’m not all that proud of it. And, what I also know from experience, is that when I choose to feel the pain I am fleeing by my attempts to ‘fix it’, what emerges is love, a love so bright and clean and full because it came out of the cauldron of grief. And in this love, is a different way, a new way that is about coming together, collaboration, creativity, sharing, living simply, honoring, respecting. This love isn’t about not doing, but rather it is about moving from a deeper, wiser place.

I know deep in my bones that grieving, and the healing and love it brings, is a natural, intelligent process. And, it takes being open to that process, which is a deep mystery. Whether we want to know it or not, we are bathed in that mystery. We are that mystery.

That mystery is trying to get our attention. It is whispering to us, giving voice to a different way to be. I know I hear that voice from within, a voice that scares the crap out of me, because it asks that I surrender to it. I would be lying to you if I told you it no longer scared me. Yet, I’ve come to a place where the voice that wants to ‘fix it all’ scares me more. I see where trying to fix it all has gotten us. I see where trying to fix it all has gotten me.

This quiet, yet insistent voice within doesn’t bargain with me. There is no bargaining with it. It only shares one step at a time. It asks us to trust in something greater than ourselves. It asks us to trust in love.

I bow down in complete awe to the immense depth and breadth of what is possible to experience as a human being. I bow down to love.

Love, by John Lennon

Love is real, real is love
Love is feeling, feeling love
Love is wanting to be loved

Love is touch, touch is love
Love is reaching, reaching love
Love is asking to be loved

Love is you
You and me
Love is knowing
we can be

Love is free, free is love
Love is living, living love
Love is needed to be loved

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Magic, Music and a Woman’s Heart

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The two weeks I spent in Ireland were magical. It’s a magical land.

Sunset at Strandhill
Sunset at Strandhill

This picture was taken on the beach of Strandhill, a small area near the city of Sligo, and very close to Queen Medb’s (Maeve) cairn (tomb) on the top of Knocknarea Mountain. Maeve was the warrior Queen of Connacht in Celtic mythology.

On Knocknarea, at the foot of Medb's Cairn
On Knocknarea, at the foot of Medb's Cairn

We climbed to the top of the mountain to see the cairn. The feeling at the top at the foot of this tomb is ancient, powerful and quite mystical.

One of the things I most enjoyed was hearing live traditional Irish music. My paternal grandfather, Thomas McDonnell Sr. was Irish-American. His two grandfathers came from Ireland in the mid-1860’s. One, Bryan McDonnell, embarked from Dublin and the other, Timothy Driscoll, from Cobh.

My grandfather and grandmother raised a musical family. I remember one time we visited them when I was very young. My father’s brothers and sister were there, too, and the whole family came together to sing and play a variety of instruments: guitar, ukelele, banjo, piano. I loved it. It’s one of my strongest and fondest memories of that side of my family.

So when I was in Ireland, I was particularly taken with the live traditional music in places like Dublin, Dingle, Cobh and Glendalouch. In Dingle, we just happened into a pub on a Sunday afternoon as this group of musicians were playing the kind of music I hoped I would hear in Ireland. Listening to this music brought back the wonderful memories of my father’s family, the ‘Irish side’.

The next day, we ducked into a Dingle music shop to find some good Irish music to take home with us. We found the most recent CD by Lumiere, a musical group consisting of two women, Pauline Scanlon and Eilis Kennedy. One song in particular, Fair and Tender Ladies, is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Lo and behold, that night Pauline Scanlon was performing in a Dingle pub. We were lucky to sit and listen to her ethereal voice just fifteen feet away from her.

When I returned home, I found this video of Pauline and Eilis singing Fair and Tender Ladies. Please stop, become still, drop into your heart and listen with your whole being.

I love hearing these two women harmonize and sing of women taking care of their hearts.

The inner realm of a woman’s heart is sacred and wise. I have come to know just how tender and vulnerable this woman’s heart is. I know the pain of trampling through this heart, allowing the dictates of the mind to override the heart’s needs.

During my time in Ireland, over and over again, my heart opened to the beauty, magic and music of this place. Something woke up in my cells. Something ancient. Something earthly. Something I’ve known, yet pushed away. Over time, this new awareness is deepening within. When the time is right, I’ll share what I can put into words, here with you.

And, you?

What might it take to sit down with your heart, to hear what it’s needing, to tenderly begin to inquire?

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Celebrating Firsts

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Wow. I’ve been blogging, now, for over six years. During much of that time, my posts were sporadic. I remember feeling like I was doing something very cutting edge in 2004. I remember feeling so vulnerable putting my thoughts and experiences out there for everyone to see.

My first blog was a typepad blog that I started on April 29, 2004. In fits and starts, I posted every now and then about the work I was doing with women and creativity. I then used it to chronicle my trip in 2006 and 2007 in India, where I was so very lucky to tour with Amma, spend four days soaking up the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, travel through the Indian countryside, and spend a week in Varanasi, the oldest continually inhabited city in the world.

Then life happened, as life is always doing. But this life was full, so full that things like blogging seemed to take a back seat to what was important. I couldn’t blog about my mother’s journey with cancer. It was too personal, too much her story. But, as she moved toward the final months of her life, I could feel myself moving into a new phase of my life, so I birthed Unabashedly Female in February of 2008.

I’m not much of an early-adopter. No, that’s not entirely true. But in the case of video, it’s entirely true. I haven’t wanted to vlog, for whatever reason. I see I’m not alone. With a push from Mark Silver , and watching how deeply he dove in, I decided to give it a whirl (sans the Fearless Karaoke ala Natalie Peluso.

For me, it’s about noticing the places where I want to leap, AND where my feet feel cemented to the ground.

So here goes. Here’s my first vlog. It’s not wild and crazy. It’s not gonna shake up the world. Yet, something is freed up inside me by being seen this way. Something is set free by doing something for the first time.

Let me know what you think. Now that I’ve posted this, maybe I’ll even post some of my videos of Ireland… Who knows what my next first will be?!

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