The Story Isn't Over

In my experience, grief asks us to do something that may feel a bit paradoxical.

It asks us to reckon with the pain + finality of loss without making it mean that the story is over.

Grief is about endings + losses.

It’s about grappling with the finality of death, sitting in the shattered place of disappointment, confronting pain, and feeling the impossible emptiness that follows loss.

But sometimes this part convinces us that the hardest moments of grief are our new reality forever.

That the story is over.

But the deepest + realest things are never over.

Love. Aliveness. Connection. Meaning. Creativity. Dreaming.

This doesn’t minimize the depth of the loss.

And an important part of the grief process is being in those depths of uncertainty + sorrow.

But another part of grief work is connecting with the deeper thing that’s still alive.

Remembering connection, receiving love, embodying aliveness, making meaning, and participating in an unfolding story that still belongs to us.

To make room for the realness of grief *and* the truth of love.

The presence of pain *and* the power of aliveness.

The finality of loss *and* the hope that the story is still unfolding.

So this is what I want to offer, even if it feels not-so-easy to believe right now:

Your journey isn’t over.

The story of love in your life will continue to deepen in ways you can’t imagine, even as you mourn the loss of this irreplaceable person, dream, community, or identity you loved.

You will continue to grow + become, step into new adventures, create beautiful things, and make meaning along the way.

Life + love + possibility are still moving.

Your dreams still matter.

And the story is far from over.

welcoming the both/and of our feelings

I sometimes notice myself pushing away hard feelings because I’m afraid of losing the happy ones.

This usually happens when I’m feeling good.

In the moments of hope + possibility after I’ve worked through a hard thing,

In the expansiveness that follows a creative breakthrough,

In the grounded presence of feeling connected to myself + the world,

And I notice the beginnings of some unpleasant feeling starting to creep in.

A wave of sadness, a flash of shame, a rumbling of anxiety.

And I shut the door + run back toward whatever good feeling I’m terrified of losing.

Because I’m forgetting that feelings can co-exist.

And even deeper than that,

that feeling the delight + joy + contentment,

and feeling the fear, grief, and rage --

*are the same thing.*

Both are a process of allowing aliveness, feeling what’s real, and welcoming truth.

And when I push the hard emotions away, I’m siloing off bits of that aliveness and creating a polarized, all-or-nothing experience of life.

I’m deciding that there’s no room for rage alongside my joy, no room for delight alongside my grief, no room for anxiety alongside my hope.

Which means, in essence, there’s no room to be a fully alive, dynamic, and complex human.

There’s no room for a rich + layered emotional landscape.

There’s no room for the wild currents of aliveness that give me so much in terms of vitality, power, and creativity.

So I’m trying to create that space.

To feel it all,

Explore what that opens,

And embrace the magic + power + weirdness of whatever I find.

stepping out of "should" into desire

I’ve been on an ongoing quest to liberate myself from “should”.

From the voice in my head that’s super loud + insistent about what I *should* do (or not).

I can think of lots of times when “should” was driving the bus + making my decisions for me.

Times when I felt uneasy about the path I was choosing or the direction I was walking.

Times when everything in me was asking me to slow down, look inside, and sort through what I was feeling + wanting + needing.

Times when, despite all of this, I ignored those feelings.

Because I already knew what I “should” do, so why look closer or ask questions?

This has led to some not-so-great outcomes, but even more than that, it’s undermined the relationship I have with myself by shutting down the conversation.

So I’ve been practicing turning toward desire instead.

Because on a practical level alone, the energy of desire, of wanting, is more powerful than the energy of “should.”

It’s fueled by love, not fear.

Which means it anchors me to my reasons,

Gives me power to keep going even when things get hard,

Enlivens my quest,

Gets all of me (including my body) on board,

And reminds me of my agency.

Desire also asks me to get honest + let go of what I don’t want.

Which sometimes means disappointing others.

In many ways, “should” is simpler.

It gives my authority to something outside of me (a rule, an expert, a vision of life or self that someone else gave me), which means I don’t have to do the work of deciding + owning what’s mine.

But desire demands more from me.

It asks me to tune in + take responsibility for what’s alive inside of me.

It asks me to know, love, and believe ME.

To cultivate a relationship with my dreams, my aliveness, and my heart.

Which is a much truer + more empowered + more satisfying way to live.

So when the voice of “should” tries to control the process or shut down the conversation, I try to remember to take a deep breath + plug into desire instead.

Into the deeper thing.

Into love + wanting + creativity + goodness.

And into another possibility.

What might it look like to do the same?

the magic of your too-muchness

When I first began sharing my art, I felt lots of doubt + fear.

And as I’ve been sharing more about my grief work, I’ve noticed similar feelings.

In both cases, I noticed myself thinking thoughts like:

- No one wants this (the weirdness of my art or the intensity of my grief work).

- People are going to get tired of hearing what I have to say about grief or seeing my art and leave.

- The energy + intensity I bring are too much + probably deeply annoying to everyone I know.

Until I remember that:

The biggest + truest + most magical parts of us are often the parts we assume no one wants.

Still, it's scary to show the world our deepest magic.

Because magic is, by definition, bigger than what the world typically sees or makes room for.

So there’s an inherent edge-pushing, world-expanding, soul-deepening quality to our magic.

And that’s not always easy to bring forward in a world where there are forces at work protecting the status quo.

But I promise you there are people yearning for your magic.

People who will come alive + be transformed by the particular quality of the magic you bring.

People who will find their way to their own magic by encountering yours.

And if you’re not sure where to begin, start by exploring the parts of you that you believe are “too much.”

That too-muchness is your deep magic.

Let it scare + shake you a little.

Let it be alive, excessive, and relentless.

Let it bless + dazzle the world (+ you) with its beauty, power, and ferocity.

when grief follows our best decisions

One the best decisions I ever made also prompted some of the deepest grief I’ve ever felt.

At the time, I'd just graduated with my master’s degree in theology and was about halfway through my PhD applications.

But I was starting to feel some doubt about the whole thing.

So I started taking walks to think + sort through the jumbled mess of anxieties, questions, and what-if's.

One day as I walked, I noticed a feeling that felt so foreign to me I didn't recognize it at first.

It was the feeling of something missing.

The incessant anxiety that usually hummed in the background had stilled, and I felt something like calm instead.

And I knew in that moment I wanted this feeling of space, relief, and liberation more than I wanted a PhD.

I knew it just barely.

But I knew.

And there was no unknowing it.

So I emailed my professors to let them know I no longer needed their letters of recommendation, and that was that.

The months that followed were filled with some of the deepest relief I’ve ever felt.

And some of the deepest grief.

Although I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time.

I just knew I felt terrible.

I was sure I had thrown away everything I ever was + would be.

My whole life up to that point had been about excelling in school, and I didn’t know who I was without that.

I felt like I had no identity, vocation, or purpose.

Part of me was fine with that and knew my task going forward was to find a way to be okay just being human.

But it still really hurt, and I didn't see much of a path forward through the haze of disorientation + lostness.

I thought about death a lot during that time.

Not because I wanted to die, but because I felt like I had.

Years later, I now recognize this as grief -- a process of loss, catalytic change, and death/rebirth that shattered my sense of self + ultimately transformed some of the deepest foundations of my identity.

Which opened space for a whole world of new possibility I couldn't imagine at the time.

I share this story to say that grief often follows some of our best decisions + most identity-expanding steps forward.

Our truest + boldest choices -- the ones our souls are asking us to make + the ones that move our life forward in beautiful ways -- often stir up our stuff and catalyze big changes that feel shattering + devastating for a time.

Nothing has gone wrong when this happens.

This kind of grief is a normal + to-be-expected thing.

It's something to honor, learn from, and make room for.

So when it comes up for you (or if it's present in your life now), I hope you give it space to move and give yourself care through this part of living a big + brave life full of change + creation.

the magic of deep questions

I first met Jonathan when he sent me a message that was mostly a series of deep questions about spirituality, creativity, and the meaning of life.

He said he was sorry if he was jumping in too quickly but that he hated small talk.

It was a solid move.

Because deep questions are my favorite.

They open spaces for realness.

They’re hard to fake (because once you ask, you have to be prepared to hold the space + receive the answers).

They say: I want to know the real you. I care about what matters to you. I’m here for the real shit, and I want the real truth.

Done well + asked sincerely, deep questions are loving invitations + acts of hospitality that welcome the other + receive them with care.

I realized at some point that I could create more realness, depth, and magic in my own life by asking deep questions -- by opening space for people to show me who they really are + what really matters to them.

And I’ve found that when I ask (+ hold the space for real answers), most people accept the invitation.

Most people have something to say.

Most people crave realness, connection, and a deeper thing.

I know I do.

Deep questions are among the best gifts I’ve ever received.

I can think of questions that have opened my world, changed my life, and made me feel loved in ways that took my breath away.

(And years after that first message from Jonathan, deep questions remain a core foundation of our relationship).

So I try to always bring my deep questions to the world + to my own life.

Because there’s so much magic to uncover if we’re willing to invite it forward.

If we're willing to ask.

what you actually need to be creative

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned on the creative journey is this:

I don’t need to feel any certain way to create.

I can make something beautiful + alive even if I feel sad, uninspired, anxious, or apathetic.

And I believe the same is true for all of us.

Because art is more about being alive than feeling good.

It’s less about feeling inspired and more about deciding to make something with the energy happening inside of us right now.

Any feeling can be a doorway into this energy (because our feelings are simply energies moving through our bodies in a particular way).

So if I let myself feel sadness when it shows up -- when I give it room in my experience -- I have access to the energy that animates + enlivens that sadness.

I have access to what’s alive inside the feeling.

Because my sadness (or any feeling), at its core, is just aliveness happening inside of me.

And it’s the aliveness I want.

It’s the aliveness that supports me in making things that are also alive.

So the core creative task, as I see it, is to be available for our aliveness, however it’s showing up for us that day (even when it’s showing up in ways we don’t like).

From there, we can access its power + pour it into anything we want, including our art.

So my creativity doesn’t ask me to feel good.

It just asks me to make room for my feelings.

It’s not particularly easy to create through grief, apathy, or anxiety.

But it’s easier than trying to summon a feeling I don’t have.

And realness is always more resonant, nourishing, and magical than fakeness anyway (even when the real thing is harder than we would have preferred).

I don’t need my art to be happy, beautiful, or inspired.

I just need it to be real + alive.

I need it to be the product of whatever alive realness I was able to pull out of me that day.

Which means I can make art from anywhere, with any feeling.

And that my creativity is resilient, gritty, and powerful.

What might it mean to believe that yours is too?

making room for intensity

Earlier today, I felt a wave of gripping anxiety.

My first instinct was to pull back, turn away, and push it down.

But then I stopped, took a breath, and chose to allow it instead -- to feel the nausea + constriction + heaviness.

And remember that there’s room for all of it.

This is something I’ve been trying to practice more as I’ve noticed my patterns of pushing down + locking away my intensity.

That intensity shows up in all sorts of ways: feelings to be felt, creativity to invite, aliveness + vitality to allow.

However it shows up, my first thought is often: “this is too much.”

This anger is too overwhelming to make room for.

This creative energy is too big to work with.

This anxiety is too uncomfortable to look at.

These currents of aliveness are moving too fast to control.

When I notice this happening, my practice has been to try opening to the intensity rather than constricting around it.

Rather than trying to force the feelings to move in a certain way, control the intensity, or express the energy perfectly, I try to remember that good things come not through control + perfection but through presence + curiosity.

I ask myself: what might it look like to be open + available to what comes, trusting that I can receive + flow with the intensity and remember my deep capacity for it.

All of this helps my emotional groundedness + wellbeing.

It also supports my art.

Because I need access to my intensity + power to create.

And if I’m avoiding my fear, trying to control my energy, or pushing away my feelings, I’m shutting down what’s alive inside me.

And what do I most need to create?

Access to whatever's alive inside me.

Making art (whatever form it takes) is simply a practice of bringing that aliveness forward.

And all of my intense feelings + energies are expressions of that aliveness taking on different forms + unique configurations like waves rising up from the ocean.

And if I can make room for all my intensity, energy, and power, I have deeper + truer access to the vast ocean of magic + possibility that is my intensity at its core.

So this is my guiding question for this work, and I’d encourage you to try it on to see what it brings for you:

What might it mean to work with rather than against what’s alive inside of me today? All of the feelings + energies? Especially those that feel like "too much"?

thanking your past-self

I sometimes judge myself for past mistakes.

I think:

If only I'd known,

If only I’d made a different choice,

If only I’d been able to sit a bit longer with my feelings,

If only I had the perspective I have now.

But judging my past-self is a perfectionist fantasy that assumes there’s a pathway to a meaningful life + actualized self that doesn’t involve making mistakes + learning the hard way.

It’s a fantasy where I’m imagining that I would be better off if I had just known what I needed to know before I could possibly know it.

When I’m blaming my past-self, I’m forgetting that so much of what’s good + meaningful about being human (like learning, growing, and creating) requires me (+ all of us) to step forward, be bold, make brave (+ sometimes regrettable) decisions, *and then evaluate + learn from there*.

And when I can remember this, gratitude eclipses judgement.

Gratitude that my past-self didn’t wait to take action until she knew more, had it all figured out, or reached some non-existent state of perfection.

Gratitude that she took brave steps forward + failed spectacularly so that I could learn the lessons + integrate the wisdom.

Because if she hadn’t, I’d still be in the same place, stuck + waiting.

I owe her everything, really.

And when I hold this awareness, it’s so much easier to walk into the future, trusting myself + knowing that the mistakes I make now will support the future I'm creating + the self I'm becoming.

holding the hard stuff + the hope together

When I worked with folks as a domestic violence advocate, I was essentially doing two things:

Holding space for the hard stuff + holding space for the hope.

I was having hard + honest conversations about safety, risk, and what it takes to heal.

I was supporting people as they reckoned with the violence + trauma.

I was doing homicide prevention work (which is what DV advocacy is at its grittiest).

I quickly learned that when it comes to DV work, you really just have to go there.

You have to say the hard + true thing, be honest about what’s at stake, tell the truth about the limits + failings of the systems that will decide things about their future, and be with people unflinchingly as they’re processing what happened, sometimes for the first time.

You don’t shy away from any of it.

But you also don’t leave people there.

You go to the hardest parts while still holding hope.

While still believing that pathways + possibilities exist.

While still knowing that healing is a thing that happens -- and that it’s available + possible for the person sitting across from you.

In my work, that looked like making plans + taking things one step at time.

It looked like envisioning healing, creating safety, holding vision, and naming possibility.

It looked like me reminding them, again + again, that they’re not alone + have what it takes.

And this is the approach I carry with me as I move through the world, do my grief coaching work, and care for myself through the ups + downs of life:

Do the stark assessment, process the gritty emotion, show up for the hard questions, and hold unflinching spaces for what feels impossible to move through...

...while also holding the vision that healing is possible + hope is warranted -- that our dreams matter and that there are pathways we can step into *today* to begin walking toward them, even through the hard stuff.

Because life asks us to make room for this both/and -- to practice holding the fullness of what’s real while continuing to journey into deeper + deeper layers of possibility along the way.

seeing possibility

When I encounter a problem that seems unsolvable or an obstacle that feels immovable, I try to remember to take 5 minutes to think + look hard for a solution.

Because I know that just because my brain doesn’t see a way doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

Often, I just need to take one more step. Or sit for a minute in the possibility that a solution might be available.

I don’t always find one, but often, I do.

Here are a couple of small examples:

- I recently had a 30-second task I needed to do at a location 15 minutes away, and I really didn't want to make the drive for something so small. When I thought about it, I realized I had a connection in that office, so I called to ask them if they could do the thing for me, and they said, yeah, no problem.

- And then a few weeks ago, I learned my swim club was hosting a meet. I really wanted to go, but it was scheduled for the day I was returning from vacation, and I didn’t want to compete if I was going to miss a whole week in the pool right before. But then I realized I could probably find a pool in my vacation spot + that making time to swim a few days that week would be a totally doable thing, which it was.

In both instances, there was about 5 minutes when I was certain I was going to have to make that 30-minute drive and pass on that swim meet -- when I was missing an obvious solution because of an assumption, a gap in my awareness, and a lack of imagination.

And if I’d stopped there, I would have missed it: the solution to my problem + that delicious feeling of my brain finding the answer + creating a way.

So often, I take my brain’s objections at face value + make them my final answer.

But possibility is more fluid + dynamic than that.

And things aren’t as fixed as I often think at first glance.

This practice of believing there are solutions, ideas, and possibilities, even if I can't see them yet, opens so much space for creativity to flow.

It helps me get into a mindset of creative problem-solving, open to the world in a more expansive way, and not shut down possibility ahead of time.

Which is a glorious way to move through the world.

So I'm continuing to practice thinking this thought + making it real in my mind:

There are so many solutions, possibilities, and paths forward to uncover + create that will make all the difference.

embracing transition

I’m not the best traveler.

When it comes to transitions + interruptions to my daily routine, I’m basically a toddler.

For me, that liminal space between time-zones, schedules, and realities asks a lot -- it feels disorienting + brings up feelings.

Still, I know transitions, interruptions, and travels are necessary.

Having adventures, making journeys, changing + growing, moving through grief, and stepping into our dreams all ask us to step into transition (+ all its inconvenient discomforts).

So here's some of what I do to make it through:

1. Give myself permission to feel all the feelings.

This is the first step for me always.

But I sometimes forget + do the opposite.

I beat myself up for feeling anxious about traveling (like why can't I just be grateful for the freedom + opportunity like a normal person?)

Or I freak out when I hit a rough patch of change (working toward a goal or processing grief) + think it will feel this way forever.

But nothing has gone wrong when transition is hard -- when we feel the chaos + mayhem of change.

It's normal to feel all kinds of feelings, and letting ourselves have + feel these emotions goes a long way toward creating more spaciousness + peace for the journey.

2. Use the interruption.

One of the things I hate most about transition is the interruption.

It can feel like I'm going along just fine in life -- and then all of the sudden, I have to stop.

An adventure, a happening, or the plans I made months in advance, interrupt me + ask me to stop what I'm doing + change course.

And I feel thwarted + frustrated.

But maybe there's another way to look at interruption.

Maybe I could see it instead as an invitation to step back, check in, and reset -- a tiny space to look deeper, get grounded, and take a breath.

When I see it this way, I spend less time resisting the interruption and more time being curious about what's available for me in the tiny space of possibility it opens.

What might these interruptions make room for + illuminate + open for you?

3. Tend to imagination

When I'm struggling with a transition, what's often happening is that I'm imagining some negative outcome.

I'm thinking: Now I'll never get this creative project finished. I'll lose all my good habits + have to start from zero. I won't be able to get any of my needs met on this journey.

But this is just what happens in anxiety mode -- our imaginations tend to go into catastrophe autopilot.

But happily, we can choose to pick up the controls + manually steer our minds in another direction.

A lot of my own self-coaching work is simply about this: directing my imagination toward possibility instead of catastrophe.

It's a practice of asking myself: what if goodness were both possible + available? What then?

This isn't about forcing myself to believe that all the circumstances of the journey will be perfect.

It's simply a matter of not closing down possibility ahead of time -- and remembering my own abilities to direct attention, feel + process my feelings, create experience for myself, and manage my mind in the moment.

What might it look like to guide your own imagination toward possibility? To remember the power + skill you bring with you on any journey, through any transition?

no one right way, just infinite possibility

One of the ways perfectionism shows up in my life is as the “one right thing” fantasy -- the idea that there’s only ever one right decision, solution, or next step.

And that I need to keep searching until I find it.

Which means that life becomes a process of looking for the right answer, for the thing I’m missing that will make everything perfect, rather than an adventure in experimenting, creating, and living.

Because there’s some predetermined right answer that I have to figure out before I can take my next step forward.

But what if there are a million “right” answers (or none at all)?

What if our one right next step is the one right next step just because we decide it is?

What if we could trust our own powers of resourcefulness + ingenuity to work with the data, resources, and materials we have to make our best guess -- and then simply try again if we miss the mark, having learned along the way?

In perfectionism mode, I’ve not only abandoned possibility; I’m also discounting my own abilities to create solutions + pathways for myself through play, failure, grit, and creativity.

So this is the thought I’m working to internalize instead:

There’s no one right way, just infinite possibility.

Because life isn’t a tightrope where we fall into the abyss if we take one step off the linear line of perfection.

It’s a winding journey with countless portals + passageways into new worlds and infinite doors + windows that open to another possibility.

And in such a world, there's plenty of space to find our way + create our path, one step at a time, one moment at a time, one failure or success at a time.

What changes when you see it this way?

Feeling the Hard Emotions

These days, my morning routine includes two essentials: meditation + morning pages (a few pages of freewriting).

I prioritize these practices because they help me see + feel what’s really going on inside: the real (+ sometimes hard) emotions.

Which means I often start my day feeling bad.

Which may seem less than ideal, but it works wonders.

Here’s why:

1) It feels like a luxury to have plenty of room for all of my feelings -- for all of me. This space is a gift, even when some of what fills it feels hard.

2) Avoiding negative feelings often means not feeling at all.

When I push away the negative emotions (which I often do on default), I feel less alive because I’m resisting energy that wants to flow through me.

If I shut down my anxiety or leave my grief in a shadowy corner, there’s less flow overall, which also chokes out experiences of awe, delight, and joy.

3) Feeling the hard stuff is part of how I move + process energy. And once the energy is moving, it becomes raw aliveness + powerful creativity.

4) This practice of feeling bad on purpose reminds me that feeling (+ life in general) is complex + paradoxical.

I might wake up feeling optimistic about life + excited for the day but also find some anxiety + grief below the surface. (Like a day on a recent vacation when I discovered some grief during my meditation + writing time and had a hard cry before moving on with my wonderful day).

This is all normal + okay + just how feelings work, and there's room for all of it.

5) Making space to feel bad makes me less afraid of the hard feelings + more confident in my ability to hold them.

Which makes me less afraid of life + more willing to do the hard things that matter to me, even when they spark negative emotions.

So here’s to feeling bad!

May your own negative feelings invite flow, illuminate your strength, and remind you of your power to step into what matters, even when it's hard.

And if you want support in creating this space for yourself + uncovering the magic of your hard emotions, get in touch! I help folks with this is my coaching work, and I'd love to support you too.

Up the Mountain

A couple weeks ago, I took an 11-mile hike (with 2,500 feet of elevation gain) to a mountain lake with my sweetheart.

As I was limping back to the trailhead at the end, 7 hours later, I felt completely exhausted but also totally exhilarated.

It reminded me why we do hard things.

In this case, it wasn’t because there was anything particularly special about this specific destination. (There were lots of beautiful mountain lakes we could have seen that required a much shorter hike).

It was more about the desire to push the edges, have an adventure, and feel a sense of actualization in having done a hard thing.

Ease + comfort are wonderful. I want a lot of both in my life.

But I’m also aware that we’re here to climb mountains.

We’re here to reach for the impossible, do the gritty work of healing, push the edges of possibility, and become the person we want to be along the way.

Which asks us to work through the hard stuff that comes up along the way.

Like the creek crossings on our hike, we sometimes encounter obstacles -- moments when we’re not sure we can make it to the other side -- or if it’s even worth it to try.

Going after what matters often brings up all of our self-doubt, insecurity, and fear of failure -- but working through these moments of freak-out help us get to the breakthroughs that open a way forward.

Meeting obstacles on a rough road isn’t necessarily a sign we’re doing it wrong or that taking the journey was a mistake.

It's often just a sign that we’re living into the edges + depths of what life offers -- and digging for the treasures that are available within + around us.

So what's your next step up the moutain? And what might it look like to embrace that journey in an even deeper way?

Why We Need Space for Grief

When I tell people I work in domestic violence advocacy, the response is rarely neutral.

Folks sometimes pause awkwardly + change the subject, but more often than not, they dive in with questions or stories of their own.

Just bringing up the topic opens so much space + permission to talk about what the world often doesn’t make room for:

The deep + unanswerable questions, the hard stuff (like pain, grief, and trauma), and the hope of healing + making meaning through devastation.

I’m finding the same to be true as I share more about my grief coaching work.

More + more, I’m finding that people are drawn to spaces where it’s safe to explore + engage the deep + raw realness of the human experience -- and all the questions + feelings + spaces that opens in us.

And this is why I think that is:

1) We long for truth-telling + realness.

When we engage what’s hard -- our grief, our pain, our trauma, our doubt -- there’s no hiding.

Doing that work requires us to tell the truth.

And there’s a deep relief in that.

The truth may not be easy. It may ask things of us we're not ready to give.

But it also offers deep realness + a grounding exhale that opens a way for healing, possibility, and meaning-making.

2) We sense that we're meant to participate in the full spectrum of our human experience.

Deep down, we know there's no escaping pain, adversity, and challenge.

Grief + hurt happen.

So it feels right when we make room for *all* of our human experience.

Because that’s real.

And when there's space for the fullness of life (hard stuff included), there's also space for healing + opportunity to deepen our capacity for all that life brings.

3) We want to experience + witness healing:

There's so much power + beauty in healing -- in finding a way forward + making meaning through the hardest parts.

There have been plenty of hard + heavy moments in my domestic violence + grief work alike, but there have also been so many moments of witnessing folks access the power, resilience, and magic that rises to the surface to meet us when we engage this deep processs + do the gritty work of healing.

And that's the beauty.

Doing grief work of any kind will likely ask us to dig deeper than we ever have before, but in return, it takes us to the most awe-inspiring richness + deepest possibility that’s alive in us always.

What might it mean to step toward that richness + possibility today?

Making Room for Negative Emotion

A few days ago, I was sitting on an airplane feeling restless + crabby.

(And feeling bad about feeling restless + crabby, which made me feel even more restless + crabby).

As I was ruminating, blaming myself, and trying to find a way out of my misery, I thought: wait, what if it was okay to just feel bad right now?

What if it was totally okay + allowed + not a problem to feel restless + crabby?

So often, my bad days are less about feeling unpleasant emotions and more about beating myself up for having them.

But what if the crabbiness wasn’t a sign that I’d done something wrong (by either creating it or failing to push it away)?

What if negative emotion is just a thing that happens sometimes (like when I wake up at 3 a.m. to catch an early flight + then sit for hours in a confined space) and not an indication that I’ve failed in some way?

This question was enough to shift me away from blaming myself + pushing my feelings away — into a space of just showing up for myself where I was, not feeling great.

It was a good reminder that it’s possible to bring a spirit of grounded neutrality + self-love to circumstances + feelings I don’t love.

So if you’re feeling crabby, restless, frustrated, sad, or anxious today, I hope you give yourself grace, space, and permission to be human.

Because un-fun emotions are just part of our experience that we can expect to happen sometimes.

What might it look like to make room for all of your feelings — for all of you — even through the hard emotions?

The Magic of Showing Up

More + more, I’m convinced that the deepest tool for supporting our growth is simply showing up.

Being visible + vulnerable.

I re-learned this (for the millionth or so time) a few weeks ago when I launched the Kickstarter.

I was feeling ready + positive + excited, and then I pressed publish + proceeded to absolutely lose my mind.

I felt terrible, suddenly panicked that I wasn’t actually ready, that it wasn’t going to work, that I’d missed something essential, that I hadn't done enough to prepare. And why wasn’t the campaign fully funded by hour 3!? Surely this was an ominous sign of impending disaster.

But I’ve been through this enough to know my next steps: take a breath, check in, and do the work to remember that this is exactly what I can expect when I’m visible in the world doing things that matter to me.

Freakout is a normal response when we show up for our dreams.

Which isn’t always so pleasant or comfortable, but the magic of the freakout is that it brings all of those feelings + patterns of thinking to the surface. It reveals the anxieties + insecurities + doubts.

Which offers an opportunity to work through them + move forward anyway.

To notice the patterns + feel the feelings + identify the stories -- and then show ourselves that these don’t have to stop us.

And *this* is what propels learning + growth + identity shifts more than just about anything else I’ve encountered.

So this is my plug for showing up + feeling terrible + continuing on anyway.

Because our work + our vision + our art + our dreams + our voices matter.

And what we create + who we become in the process of claiming all of it is something truly remarkable, life-affirming, and worth showing up for.

The Other Side

A few years ago, I was at the airport when I felt a tap on the shoulder.

I turned around and saw it was someone I’d worked with in my domestic violence advocacy role.

When she first came to see me months earlier, she knew she needed help + support but didn’t know where to start. She’d been married for years, felt trapped, and couldn’t see a path forward.

And as in often the case in situations like these, years of abusive behavior, gaslighting, and trauma had left her feeling ungrounded + disconnected from her knowing, power, and intuition.

I worked with her on sorting through the logistics, creating a plan to leave safely, and connecting her with legal resources + trauma therapy.

And here she was a few months since we'd last spoken, beaming at me, looking radiant, happy, and confident, working for the airline I was flying that day.

Working at a job that gave her access to freedom + literal flight.

Her whole being radiated the liberation she found + fought for + created for herself.

I’ve had some hard moments + seen some really horrific stuff in my DV work, but then there are moments like this -- when I'm able to witness firsthand the healing on the other side -- moments when I’m reminded that healing + freedom are possible for all of us.

Moments when I'm reminded that humans are capable of extraordinary things.

And that there’s so much possibility in the world -- and so much power + magic inside each one of us.

Stepping Back into Magic

Earlier this year, I decided to start swimming again after a 7-year hiatus.

It’s been about two and a half months now, and it’s been a glorious avenue into deeper power, embodiment, flow, and aliveness.

(Fun bonus: it’s also done wonders for my upper body strength.)

And it’s felt like being reunited with a friend I haven’t seen in years, just picking up the conversation right where we left off.

After I wrapped up my college swimming career, I thought this part of my story was over.

I wasn’t particularly sad about this. I felt complete + ready to give my energy to other things.

But I assumed the magic I felt in the water would no longer be accessible to me.

So this feeling of reemergence + reconnection has felt a little like a miracle -- surprising + really beautiful.

And in a bigger sense, there’s something remarkable about the experience of believing a doorway is sealed shut only to find I am able to easily open it + walk through.

It was simple. One day, I just woke up from a vivid dream with swimming on my mind, knew I wanted to get back into water, did about 15 minutes of internet research to figure out how I could do that, signed up, and showed up at the pool the next day.

It was that easy + ordinary.

And it left me feeling kind of awe-struck about how simple it was to just step back into a current of magic + power I assumed was no longer available to me -- how sometimes, we can just decide to do the thing we feel inspired to do, and then life is different.

It’s reminded me that sometimes things are more possible than they seem.

Sometimes, the magic we believe has passed is just dormant, waiting for us to be ready to welcome it back in another form.

And this gives me a lot of hope. I hope it does for you too