I named “reciprocal authenticity” to one of my closest friends, Leona, on December 11, 2021. I’ve thought about and referenced it a lot since then, in a number of contexts. I knew a blog was percolating in my mind, body, and soul, but the Just Right start to it hadn’t arrived yet. Then I received these messages from another close friend: If I had to pick three words to describe you, they might include Wholesome Caring Genuine I have regularly described you as unabashed and I admire your commitment to the bit that is being yourself I give zero fucks, yet somehow I aspire to the level of unabash ..read more

"Ten is when we learn how to be good girls and real boys. Ten is when children begin to hide who they are in order to become what the world expects them to be. Right around ten is when we begin to internalize our formal taming. Ten is when the world sat me down, told me to be quiet, and pointed toward my cages." - Glennon Doyle, Untamed Someone shared this phrase with me in the last year or so, and I think of it several times a week now: Don't should on yourself. We often have a tendency to operate from internalized beliefs about what, how, who we should be, and when and how much we should be ..read more

There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work. - adrienne maree brown I struggled to decide what to blog about this week. I read the above quote I had marked in Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown, and confirmed what my gut told me that I wanted to write about: self-advocacy. This was prompted by the self-advocacy I am presently engaging in for myself and others to have a ..read more

"The amount of hopes and dreams a person has should not predict the amount of smiles they receive." - Melissa McPheeters I opted to be homeschooled for high school. For me, in the small desert town I grew up in, homeschooling meant that I would do my work self-paced and check in with a teacher once a month. I would go grocery shopping with my mom every week, enjoying that people suspected I should be in school at those hours. There was a man who played guitar outside of WalMart. My mom would let me sit with him and chat while she got groceries. I learned that his daughter had bought him his ce ..read more

"Change is the end result of all true learning." - Leo Buscaglia I first learned of the triune, or three-part, model of the brain when researching Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resilience which became the original Rise to Resilience presentation. Since then, I encountered the triune brain model regularly: Conscious Discipline uses it as a foundational concept. Dr. Dan Siegel's Hand Model of the Brain and the "flipping your lid" analogy. And in Community Resilience Initiative's training series, it was also a core component. About two years ago, someone on a Facebook post attempted to correc ..read more

My bio indicates that I was in the Christian church for over 30 years. The US, patriarchal, evangelical, Republican, anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-etc church. I am really unclear how I got out of that place, but now that I have, I’m extremely aware of the rampant emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse that is accepted and promoted in the church. Promoted as god’s will, of course, and supported by cherry-picked scripture. I ran up against some spiritual abuse this week from a non-Christian source and I was going to write on that, but when I did a search for the definition of spiritual ab ..read more

"While we are wired for self-protection and survival, we are also wired for connection and love." - Iris Chen, Untigering I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for friendships in my life. I won't name names for fear of accidentally forgetting someone, but chances are - if you know, you know. It has been in friendship and from the love of my friends that I have learned to love myself. That cliché "you have to love yourself before you can love someone else" is bullshit. You can absolutely love others without knowing how to extend that same love to yourself - and you can certainly receive love ..read more

My impetus to begin writing here (see bio) was that way too late in life I became aware of what abuse actually looked like, felt like, acted like, and how it affected me. I have spent a lot of years "wasted" in abusive relationships, and had I known how to identify abusive behavior at a young age, perhaps I could have avoided that. "Wasted" in quotes because nothing has to be wasted if we learn and grow and help others/ourselves with the knowledge and experience. So, when someone read one of my posts and asked "well, are you going to talk about what you can do once you realize you are being a ..read more

"We're ready to believe you" ~The Ghostbusters This week I encountered a situation where my gut told me something was amiss, but I wasn’t sure of how far to respond to the feeling. Was this something I could sort of keep an eye on? Did it need strong decisive action? Should I run like hell? I couldn’t tell. I knew someone in business wasn’t 100% ethical or 100% willing to do the right thing by me, but I didn’t know exactly how badly that could affect me. If I dissolved the business relationship, I would potentially lose out on something wonderful. Who ya gonna call when you’re just not sure o ..read more

I am not nice but I am kind. I say this gently as a correction when someone says to me that I am nice. Niceness to me implies that I should™ have a sense of obligation to modify my emotions, my behavior, my self to maintain someone else’s comfort. Whereas kindness is a choice I can make to extend inward towards myself or outward towards others. Not a choice that is made out of obligation but out of love, care, and thoughtfulness. Kindness is not always nice. Kindness can be asserting boundaries. Kindness can be motivated by anger or sadness, joy or peace. Kindness serves a greater purpose than ..read more