“[Creole] wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for deep water. He was Sonny’s witness that deep water and drowning are not the same thing — he had been there, and he knew.” ~ from “Sonny’s Blues,” a short story by James Baldwin Deep water and drowning are not the same thing. That …
Once upon a time, you were a baby inside a womb. Inside that womb, you were in love with yourself because you did not know there was any other alternative. Your only job was to float inside the womb loving yourself, and you did it well. You and your host body were One. That was …
Nike’s tagline of Just Do It has entered our everyday language for a good reason. We can never accomplish anything by only thinking about, by only learning more and more about how to do it. If we don’t put that thinking and learning into action, they become stagnant. And bloated. They begin to fester. At …
The Muses have been full of contrarian perspectives lately, but maybe that’s what muses do – shake up our complacency to reveal things hidden in plain sight. Like our ideas about baggage. That baggage is something “bad” that we need to get rid of, be relieved of, get unstuck from. The question that has been …
Fear has been a constant companion for much of my life. It started in childhood with parents caught up in their own struggles. There was a reprieve of sorts in early adulthood, blithely believing the conventional choices would keep me safe. It resurged like a tsunami in my 40s after realizing that the safe choices …
There’s a gap between who we want to be and what we want to do. Inside that gap is a thousand versions of ourselves that don’t quite fit. We experience that gap as Imposter Syndrome, and bridging it, sometimes moment by moment, is vital to our ongoing process of connecting with the true self we …
All the Versions of You that Have Not Fit – Embracing Imposter Syndrome Read More »
“All too often our so-called strength comes from fear, not love; instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence.” ~ Roshi Joan Hallifax This is where it gets real. In …
Self Care and Belonging – Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart Read More »
It’s easy to hate people when we depersonalize them and keep them at arm’s length. But when we get to know them, when their troubles and struggles become real, when we feel their pain as human beings, it becomes much harder to hate. Why do we hate in the first place? Because hate is a …
When we are in crisis… when we are feeling utterly lost and tested… when life feels like it’s crashing all around us… we still have a lifeline – the knowingness that we are somehow connected to something good, something greater than ourselves that’s rooted in love and compassion. But what happens when our belief even …
According to Carl Jung, paradox is essential for understanding. How would we know hot without cold? How would we know up without down? How would we know truth without lies? Ahhhh…that’s a big one. In our current social atmosphere, of “us” and “them, “it feels like we are constantly being lied to and it’s almost …
Is your sense of belonging dependent upon feeling in control? When her husband offered her the trip she had longed for, instead of getting excited, Cynthia Occelli freaked out and realized: All of this was code for: I don’t like it when I’m not in control. Which is code for: I’m afraid of …
True belonging. Those words conjure up a very specific picture for me as a recovering fitting-in person. Striving to fit in had only created a false sense of belonging that was both weak and conditional. It’s the emotional equivalent of constantly walking a wobbly tightrope with no safety net. The only person you’re faking out …
Most of my career was spent in a world dominated by men, tough men, primarily engineering types. I’m a smallish woman who danced ballet, played the piano, read everything, and loved all things arts. We were all strangers together in this land. I didn’t set out with a goal in mind of becoming a consultant …
In Braving the Wilderness, Brené Brown speaks candidly and transparently about using self-destructive behaviors to soothe the lack of belonging she so keenly felt. She quotes Anne Lamott to describe how weary that running away was leaving her – “By the end, I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards.” And then …
What does “belonging” mean to you? The dictionary defines it as being a member or part of a particular group, organization, or class. As children, our first desire is to feel a sense of belonging within our families, yet years of coaching reveals this is often not the case. According to Brené Brown in Braving the Wilderness, …
I’ve been reading Braving the Wilderness – The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, the newest book from social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, and want to share it with you. But there’s a problem… For the last 15 minutes or so, I’ve been sitting in front of my computer searching …
Braving the Wilderness – The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone Read More »
