This past week, I travelled to Asheville, North Carolina for the first meeting of a year-long program for business development and community. I made this year-long commitment of time, resources, and energy both to learn as well as to engage a community to benefit from vs continuing to work solo in the creative work of a business. And while my logical mind is always happy to deliver the "why nots" of a different choice in my life, much of the joy and satisfaction in my life has come through saying "yes!" to Life's invitations to engage the unknown and often "impractical".

I came back from Asheville reminded once again of both the need for adventure in our lives scheduled so full of roles and responsibilities, as well as our need for strong, healthy, and positive community.....community that gifts us with support as well as offering a loving mirror in which to view what we alone cannot see (and w/o seeing, cannot make different). The Greek and Latin meaning of the word "idiot" is "one who insists on only privacy and thus is ignorant" for even way back then, there was clarity on the need for community in a life healthy. Community, the Greeks believed, satisfied the need we have of each other for seeing both the angel and the devil that rests on each of our shoulders.

We all are part of community through relationships, roles, or work-and- belonging is not the same as engaging in healthy community in a pro-active and conscious manner. In this time of great change and human imperatives, it is critical we receive the benefits of healthy community. A community can be as small as two or as many as several; what is important is engaging each other for our goals and intentions through community. We alone cannot see what prevents our dreams and creating different choices; in a community of at least one other, and through calling upon the grace and power of the Unknown, there is nothing we can not transform or create!

Happy New Year! January is a month fresh and new, with possibilities endless and offerings a-plenty, along with some lingering of what is left over from the year past. Each month has it's unique energy and opportunity and one of January's is to honor the old and claim the new. And so I have come to a ritual I engage in the early weeks of January-to remember and honor the chapter of my story created the year before for clarity in engaging the year new.

“Those who do not know their history are bound to repeat it” is a saying cautioning us to not go through our days simply as a series of days spent checking things off our to-do lists.....our living is much more precious and powerful than that. Taking an hour or two to write about the last 12 months of your life will surprise you in ways important for living this gift of the next year of your life. It will offer you an opportunity to truly cherish your living and to recalibrate.... for how you meet what challenges you, what sorrows may be calling for more tending, and where renewed focus on what is precious to you will serve your happiness and fulfillment.

And so, this new year of your life, what do you choose to give your precious time and energy to? What dreams and desires will you pick up to grow with your innate creativity and which ones will you let go of....remaining seeds to plant another year or to be let go for becoming compost that enriches what is planted? Honor what you choose for your life, for your choices have impact beyond your knowing, your presence has the power to inspire and uplift, and expressing your love creates miracles.

Here in New England, we are beginning the seasonal descent into less sunlight and more darkness while also entering the busy season of holidays. Our bodies may want to curl up more on the couch in front of the fireplace while our social self pulls us in the opposite direction of more activity and interactions. How do we manage this seesaw of needs and invites? It is simple really....make love with your life.

We have all been taught to distrust the unknown, to be afraid of what we do not control, and to not give power to the unseen. And while we are biologically wired for physical survival, we are wired as well for exquisite partnership with the sacred.....the partnership at the foundation of art, of creativity, of thriving as a human being....the beauty that reveals itself when we choose to trust Life enough to make love with our life.

As with many matters simple, it may not be easy, but what delight we real.ize when we make love with our life, when we allow ourself to open up to what Life brings for our experience and awareness, our unique expression to be shared, our real.ization and our creation. Our life wants nothing more-and nothing less-from us than for us to make love with it and to realize the sacred partnership of the physical and the infinite, the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown...for this is how we create that which we do not even know is possible to create...and is this not the call of our times and world?

This weekend we are in Brooklyn, NY for a birthday celebration for my younger daughter with the family and friends who live here. We visit once a season or so, enjoying what residents love about living here, including awesome and inexpensive cuisine from around the world through simply a subway ride. Last night we chose dinner in Tibet courtesy of a restaurant the size of a large walk-in closet and sipping Tibetan hot buttered tea, I studied the autographed pictures of the Dalai Lama near our table.

Noticing my interest, the owner of the restaurant showed me another picture near the register and he proudly pointed out the words the Dalai Lama had written across the photo...."Don't give up your dream". He told me how he had spoken with the Dalai Lama at a recent meeting of Tibetan exiles living in New York City and how his despair at being exiled from his beloved home and culture had transformed into renewed tending his dream for peace instead.

Dreams are critical for our life human and without our dreams, humanity would not unfold. Our imagination plants the seeds of dreams and we tend to our dreams with our thoughts and the actions we engage on behalf of them. Dreams have their time and their way and need the courage of our heart and our deepest faith in both humans and life. When we despair of a dream ever becoming, embracing patience and commitment serves the dream while the "proof" that our eyes and minds demand does not.

So honor the dreams that come through you, trusting as you tend to them with faith, they will grow, and that they come to you in faith of your tending as well. The Dalai Lama had simply reminded this man exiled from all he had known that his dream to return through peace was impossible only when he give up on it. For while a dream's time to be is not be in our control, keeping up with our faith in our dreams is....

Choosing to Be Queen

As women, our roles often involve supporting and accomplishing things for others can leave us with an unease about whether our own life is being supported and accomplished as well. Symptoms that we are not doing so well in honoring our own life show up as feeling overwhelmed, a lack of time and energy to engage in what has meaning and value for ourselves, and crankiness towards those we are supporting and accomplishing for. In short, we have forgotten we are Queen; yes, with the tasks it takes to rule our kingdom..and, not as much through doing for others as through envisioning, empowering, and leading the way.

One of the challenges we will face at mid-life is deciding whether we want to honor being Queen of our life, or not. To be Queen means acknowledging that as women, we are the organizing energy around which relationship, family, and community constellate. When we choose to leave being a princess (daughter) to step into being Queen (a woman sovereign), we choose no longer expecting others to tell us what to do, what is important, and where to spend our precious time and energy. We decide for ourselves using the infinite vision and resources of our hearts and souls, as well as our present minds and conditions. To decide for ourselves means we let go of blaming others for the states of our affairs and instead, with courage and clarity, take up sorting through our life and choices as we do closets, determining what still has value and what now needs to be let go in gratitude for how it has served.

To honor (and act) on what is true for ourselves requires the vision of a Queen-broad and long, the vision of seven generations many traditional cultures remind us is necessary for making decisions that serve all well. No longer can we place our heart and soul's wisdom and guidance separate from what crafts our choices for our daily lives and the lives we guide and support as women. The sacred is meant to be part of our everyday life and the Queen-the visionaries and leaders in kingdoms intimate and common-illuminates and enjoys living this. Through her grace innate, her grit the inspiration of legends, and her gratitude active each day, a Queen uplifts and inspires those she serves with in the sacred temple of everyday life.

Your Sensory invitation

If you are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, fearful, or insecure these days, you are in very good company! Most of the people I know-both clients and peers-are experiencing sensations that reflect a measure of the turmoil of transition that is going on outside of themselves. And while we know that inside and outside are simply reflections of each other, in times of transition, the level of turmoil that comes with any transition-let alone one of the magnitude we are all in-can be a challenge to navigate while living everyday life.

Overwhelm, anxiety, insecurity, fear are simply mental states that invite us into remembering we have more than our minds with which to navigate and negotiate what life brings our way. We are transitioning from a time in which the mind reigned supreme and our body, spirit and soul, and heart relegated to second string in living our human life. Yet as many a wisdom tradition knows, our soul/spirit and body/heart-what I call our "sensory self"-are crucial to living the capacities and capabilities of our life human. As we move into a time based more on the energy of vibration, we need to no longer exclude these innate resources of transmitting and receiving energy our body contains.

We have been taught that we have but five senses in which to experience and engage life and this is simply not so. Wisdom traditions base their tools and techniques on the many ways we humans have for both sending and receiving information, resulting in a much richer palette from which to respond to life and it's challenges. Our soul/spirit and heart/body offer tangible and powerful guidance and support for the sacred journey of a human lifetime. The invitation-and imperative-of these times we all find ourselves in is to re-acquaint ourselves with our full range of sensory abilities for meeting our turmoil and transitions.

When we learn how to engage our full (and already installed) sensory self, no longer are we limited by what we know or what we seem to have as physical resources. Learning (remembering truthfully) how to tune into our spirit, soul, and heart using the sensory aspect of our body, channels the wisdom that lives in the timeless Universe, simply awaiting our sensory-not mental-call of invitation and download. Given the vast resources of what makes the Universe go around, is there truly any challenge we cannot meet when we engage our sensory self?

So the next time you feel overwhelmed, anxious, fearful, or insecure, smile to yourself and say "my mind is talking, let's see what my sensory self is saying" and use your breath to take yourself within your body for finding out what else is being said. Our (mother) earth is clearly in the turmoil of transition and with our physical bodies as her children, we too are feeling the effects of this turmoil of transition. Our bodies as women, with their capacities and capabilities of creations and transformation, invite women into leadership in remembering our sensory self is for our daily lives!

A Woman First

At my family reunion last weekend, one of my "outlaws"-as the spouses of my siblings have come to call themselves-asked me to explain to him the whole "divine feminine thing" he kept hearing about from the women he worked with in his job as a surgeon. It was a question sincere in his seeking and I smiled in appreciation at how women's evolution was impacting even this man who prided himself on being a man in charge of his kingdom.

Simply put, I said, the "divine feminine thing" was the invitation for women-and men-to evolve the definition of a woman as one based on the "to-do lists" of roles and relationships to the living expression of grace and the sacred in our life as human beings. The whole 'I am what I produce each day thing" I said was not so great a definition for anyone's life as a human being; for women, basing our value in life upon what we produce through the to-do lists of each day is especially inappropriate and devaluing.

To be born a woman is a grace and a destiny that comes with innate vision, strength, and creativity, a destiny that can be challenging in a world where one's value is often what we produce for others. To be born a woman is the capacity to deliver vision and leadership for the benefit of those in her community (although to be born a woman still means for far too many women abuse simply due to birth as a woman.). To be born a woman is a dignity, divinity, and nobility that is not old-fashioned and limited to times and ages gone by.

The "divine feminine thing" in it's most simple terms is a woman's commitment to living the grace, strengths, and abilities being born a woman granted her. The divine feminine is the choice to live first her integrity as a woman and second the to-do lists and expectations of the roles and relationships she is in. The divine feminine is the decision to live one's spirituality in the sacred temple of everyday life, not in compliance with authorities outside herself, but through living what is true for Herself within. The divine feminine is the honoring that she is the guardian for all of life and as such, it is her responsibility to speak up, show up, stand up as she heeds the call for sacred vision.

When I finished my rather impassioned words of what "the divine feminine thing" is for me, my brother-in-law looked at me and said "I would love nothing more than dignity, divinity, and destiny be the values my daughter lives her life by and that the men in her life support her in doing. God knows my wife is who I count on to keep me smart about what is important in life". I smiled and said that maybe he knew much more about the divine feminine thing than he was giving himself credit for and perhaps the nurses ribbing him was simply his invitation to share at work what he honored already in his home.

The "divine feminine thing" is not something outside ourselves; it is our choice to honor ourselves first as women, making our choices in daily life in alignment with the dignity, divinity, and destiny that is ours as women. When we honor ourselves as women first and to-do lists second, we deliver the vision, leadership, and creative grace within ourselves with ease and effort that simply flows. To honor the divine feminine is simply to live that being born a woman does make a difference.