A Favorite Practice for Challenging Times I have a new favorite game, a spiritual challenge that calls to me to be mastered. If I were to name it I would say it’s called “Falling in love with what is”. This game challenges me in so many ways, and yet there is an insistence that I play and learn to play well. I’m at a strange juncture where ‘new beginnings’ (also known as endings) mix and mingle with the season of rest, of pulling in, of stillness and quiet, and sometimes aloneness. I know that softening and soothing expectations is an essential part of finding any kind of serenity. To have compassion for the longings while allowing what is here now. Being in present-…

~Introducing Beauty School For beauty that goes deeper. A gorgeous membership community to clear and purify what no longer serves you, while refilling every area of your life with…beauty…of course! See details on membership further down. Annual memberships begin April 1~ beautiful advantages and pricing to match. …And 9 Ways That Beauty Becomes You Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself- Coco Chanel Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting – Ralph Waldo Emerson We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting – Kahlil Gibran When you saturate yourself in beauty lots of things shift. Some are subtle, some not at all. For the record, this is not therapy. …

This was going to be a very different article. But to be honest, something happened this morning and I felt like I had been energetically assaulted. It was a psychic hit.. and I felt it. In those moments, If you’re lucky a moment of clarity emerges.You remember who you are, without the fears and without the patterns you’ve been dragging around. And something fierce grabs hold and calls up the most powerful and pure part of you. And you choose. Fierceness insists you remember truth. It’s the feeling that simply doesn’t allow you to stay in the unworthiness or fear or uncertainty. It’s spiritual adrenaline that says “Thou shall not enter” (I think that’s from Lord of the Rings, …

I am writing in the moment, and that’s not always a good idea, and yet I find the only writing that interests me in both the writing and the reading has some immediacy to it. So…here you go…may it serve. In this moment I am very aware of my body. The slight ache in my solar plexus, the tender buzz in my heart, the barely perceptible but slightly sick feeling around the chest area. You just can’t fool the body…the body knows. One of my best friends was here visiting. A beloved friend. The kind you trust, that you’re grateful to with your whole heart for their loving presence. The kind that brings your favorite kind of Prosecco. And real candy. …

It’s Easter and I’m sitting at my desk after a pretty intense writing purge. Spring has always gifted me with new birth. I was born in the spring (april 25th) and the 3 major love relationships in my life all began at the end of March or early April. New projects regularly come in on a whoosh of inspiration in spring. Like all of nature that’s been dormant, I start to green up again too. Easter was not my holiday growing up…there were a few Easter eggs here and there…but not in any religious sense. But today the word “resurrection” has been in my mouth as I’ve processed some of the more intense aspects of the past year. Cycles of death …

Why creating beauty is so very personal for me. I realized after my last email to you about resurrection, that an important cycle was coming to a close for me, something painful and personal. My husband and I decided to separate and essentially end our marriage last April. And I allowed myself a full year to grieve this ending, to pause and do the deep work of releasing and feeling it all, to clean out the wound. Although Andy and I see each other regularly and are dear friends and family, it still really really hurt to end this marriage. More than I will say. And I realized today as I stood by the ocean releasing the actual ashes of the writing I’d burned as part …