Let’s face it, most of us avoid conflict at all costs. We stuff it, ignore it or try to nice our way out of it, and then go home and kick the dog.
But if conflict is a normal part of the human experience - and it is- why are most of us so afraid to face it?
The easy answer is, however your parents did conflict is typically how you do it unless you’ve learned otherwise. Here are two common approaches most of us learned:
Read MoreSo as I sit at my computer at an old roll-top desk in a cabin with spotty internet and literally thousands of miles of alpine trails behind me, I’m reminded there were 1000 points where we could have said no to all of this.
We could have made the easier choice and stayed right inside our sweaty comfort zone, but instead, we grabbed Wally, a few saddles, and drove 1900 miles, until we arrived somewhere back in 1900.
Read MoreToday is my 50th birthday and since I’m a person who believes in the power of milestones, I decided to make a list of 50 things I’ve learned in 50 years. Some are important, some silly, some dumb - just like life.
Here goes.
Read MoreBut happiness is a bit of a drug isn’t it? The more we try to create it or chase it, the more we have to create it and chase it. Plus, sometimes we’re not chasing happy as much as we’re running from sad.
Buddhists call this endless inner hunger, grasping, and if it worked, people with the most resources would be the happiest.
Come now.
Read MoreWhen I stop screaming, I remember every writer or artist has to write a sorry first draft. What separates pros from amateurs? Pros keep writing because they know you can't edit a blank page.
So please my loves, be a pro. Keep going - even if swim lessons suck. Whatever it is, push through all the judgment and the noise and just keep creating because if you don't, we'll never get the benefit of your work and you'll never see who you'll become in the process.
Did you know that forty percent of American adults say they don’t have a single friend outside their family they can confide in? That tenuous rootlessness, I believe, causes much of the anxiety and depression in our culture.
Plus, there’s shame around loneliness. When you ask people how they are, they’ll say “busy” when they really mean lonely, but they’re ashamed to admit it. So the problem festers and grows like any hidden wound.
Many cultures around the world wonder how Americans function being so isolated. We reach for our phones, don’t we? How’s that working? Look around the next time you’re in an airport. This is the real pandemic.
Read MoreSome 5,000 words have poured out since last Friday when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, but I haven’t posted a single one of them. Because really, who needs another opinion?
At the same time, a lot of you in this community know my story, so keeping quiet about it feels dishonest. I sense that someone needs to hear it, so here goes. (BTW - unsubscribe is at the bottom.)
The ruling makes me afraid for America, afraid for all women
AND
I’m sad for those who by watching this unfold, will decide that a life of faith is too hypocritical, ignorant, discriminatory irrelevant, regressive, and/or oppressive, and just walk away.
Read MoreThe working title of my new book (which will surely include material from the old one) is:
The Happiest Girl You Know:
A Beginners Guide to Midlife, Faith and Meaningful Work.
Designed to help women navigate midlife, teaching them how to build their second half on a foundation of joy, connection, and purposeful work, so they spend their last and best years impacting and inspiring people around them.
If that sounds like a title you might pick up, peruse, and maybe even buy, will you tell me so by clicking here? Thanks.
Read MoreAt SpaceX, they don’t call it a failure when a zillion-dollar rocket explodes. They call it a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Each time one of the Falcons blew up, they combed the wreckage for data and they LEARNED from it.
Failure happens when you quit too early or never start. Curriculum happens when you accept you don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re in school to learn it.
Read MoreAbout a month ago, I got the sense that God was saying that I must stop working like I was or He would stop me Himself.
I’d even said to a few trusted people, “If I can’t do this business of mine with joy and without all this physical overwhelm, burn-out, and exhaustion, I won’t do it. Something has to change.”
Unfortunately, I’ve been saying that for at least two years and doing nothing about it. My body has been screaming - migraines, sad thyroid, and that relentless bitch perimenopause - God could use any one of them to lay me out.
Wait…what? That doesn’t sound like a loving merciful God, you say.
Are you sure?
Read More
