Category: newsletter intro

A couple of months ago, I read a collection of essays called Erosion, by Terry Tempest Williams. An image from the book still haunts me–a statue of the goddess Kwan Yin that Williams visited at a shrine to the Divine Feminine in Yunnan Province, China. Here’s how she described it: “Kwan Yin’s right hand was raised upward with palm closed at shoulder height; her left hand protected a bowl resting on her lap. I raised my heels to look inside the bowl–it held her heart. I wept over what every woman knows. We give away our hearts daily. What remains is […]

I host a women’s new moon circle on Zoom every month and at our last meeting, we had a gratitude ceremony. As we traveled around our virtual circle each naming what we were grateful for, one woman noted that she was thankful for breath. Breath, I thought…so simple, yet so profound. That was last Monday, and I’m still sitting with this notion. Interestingly, just before I was to open our Zoom circle, my daughter had a mini crisis. She was leaving for the airport to fly back to college when she realized she had lost her driver’s license, most likely […]

I was born at full moon time on Día de Los Muertos, Day of the Dead, two days after Halloween. So, this time of year generally has me thinking about both birth and death.  Día de Los Muertos is a holiday celebrated in Mexico (and other places) to honor departed loved ones. It is said to have originated some 3,000 years ago from practices of the Aztecs. Back then, people had a more cyclical view of the universe and saw death as a fundamental part of life to be celebrated rather than mourned. Therefore, contemporary Day of the Dead gatherings are […]

A friend forwarded a humorous article this week about the extreme measures a woman took to “detail” her house in preparation for a weekend visit from seven of her college sorority sisters. The woman was nervous because she is a home-design expert, and she felt her home needed to reflect that fact. She admitted her frantic cleaning and organizing were “totally about looking good.” The group who received the article had some fun with it via text, then afterward I wondered, “What face do I try to show to the world, and is it authentic?”  I’d like to think I […]

Last Saturday I participated in a dream group where we discussed the intuitive messages contained in our dreams. A scene in one person’s dream involved a red plaid skirt, which led to a conversation about letting go of old ways of being that no longer work for us.  I like to think of these as rules that don’t make sense anymore, which can often be boiled down to shoulds (or shouldn’ts) and goods. The shoulds make me feel resentful. Especially when I am doing something because I think I ought to and not because I want to. We all have […]

I was outdoors gathering some items for a gratitude ceremony I’ll be leading in a couple of weeks when I noticed a certain stillness. Fewer birds were chirping, and the squirrels seemed to have stopped their manic shredding of pinecones on my deck. The ground was blanketed in aspen leaves in some spots. Nature is entering a period of rest. I’m beginning to feel it in my body as well, craving warm beverages and more sleep. I’m getting Divine messages about rest, too. An old injury has flared up. I received a couple of social invitations that I really wanted […]

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love to dance. Pre-elementary school, I used to affix a towel to my head with a headband to create long hair, grab a hairbrush, and then jump up to see myself in the bathroom mirror dancing and singing like a star. In the third grade, I slipped on the bathroom rug and broke my finger because I was joyfully putting on a dance show for one of my little friends. Now, I play music while I’m getting ready in the morning and often at night before bed, and I must confess, I […]

Ever since I visited my brother and sister-in-law just before Labor Day weekend, I have been clearing out clutter, attempting to better organize my home space. Their Southern California patio home is “living space goals” for me. My sister-in-law, a fine artist, is a master of efficiently using space and my brother is a natural neatnik. I am neither of those things, but I aspire, and I’m inspired! I’m also slightly overwhelmed by a decade’s worth of junk that I swore I’d never accumulate when I moved into my house. Although I’m not a hoarder by any stretch, letting go is […]

Last weekend, I offered intuitive healings at my first-ever holistic fair in Loveland with Cleo Dunsmore Buchanan, my friend and fellow healer. It was both energizing and exhausting to hold space for so many people. Monday found me filling myself back up at the base of this beauty, my Crone tree. She is a massive creature who has lived on my property much longer than I have, up a trail, through the brush, over a rock outcropping, and in a grove of evergreens where she holds court. A Maiden and Mother tree stand on either side of her. I don’t really know […]

I won the battle over my apprehension last week and took this handsome guy on a long trail ride across the road from my house. I was uneasy because when my horse gets uncomfortable, he takes off. We had to cross a busy street and then enter a new-to-us park, potentially sharing the trail with mountain bikers who don’t always realize they terrify most horses. But I was tired of being worried, and it was what my dad would have described as a “bluebird day”–sunny and the perfect temperature–so off we went. The day turned out to be quite blue-birdy […]