What's Love Got to Do With It? Choosing Love in the Good, Bad, and the OMG! of Our Relationships

Women have long been considered responsible for relationships and while this can feel a bit like responsibility assigned without consent at times, even science is validating women’s innate biology for skills and prowess in relationship. (Check out this article!)  Soooo, if we are the masters of relationship, then it would follow we are all experiencing only happiness in our relationships...not!
Biology alone does not determine how we experience life.  Our beliefs, choices, and our interpretations factor into how we respond to life and people. Believing people are either good when they behave as we want or wrong when they do not, is choosing control as our premium value at the cost of our relationships.
Measuring life-and people-with the yardstick of control leaves little room for the treasures offered by the unexpected in life. Being human is a sacred process,  passion, and purpose, not a product, perfection, nor power over others. “Either-or” thinking may keep our limbic brain happy about not being eaten, but it will not honor our power to choose compassion, to heal history, and to learn more about ourselves and “the other”.
 So the next time you find yourself reacting to the unexpected in someone, consider:

•  Taking a few deep breaths in and out before saying or doing anything. Deep breathing brings us into our more neutral core and gives time for the less reactive parts of our brain to come on-line in our processing of what is up.
• Remembering we always have a choice to immediately react or to pause and then respond when people do the unexpected or undesired. Choosing to respond is taking responsibility for our emotions and fears as we are being triggered by another.
• Being inquisitive about what is being triggered within brings gifts in ways unexpected. While we may believe we know what we need in life, life’s gift of messing with our knowns, shows us the love and beauty the unknown in conflict offers us.
• Self-love is the foundation of love we offer others and a lack of self-love shows up in judging, blaming, and shaming others. Taking time and care to love our imperfect selves is crucial to being able to love others when imperfect.

Contemporary relationship invites us into a deeper and richer experience of relationship than simply meeting needs and control. Contemporary relationship chooses healing our family and history, tending to our emotional wounds, and happiness over being right.  Tending our heart and honoring the heart of others is the foundation of contemporary relationship...a choice for peace, joy, and happiness for ourselves and our world.

The Contemporary Power of Women....Are You Exercising Yours?

Women have been given valuable social approval and currency for using their power to care for others first and tending to themselves second. This dynamic is partly innate and partly through generations of learning how being “nice” and "good" was preferred by others.  Changes initiated by increased access to birth control and financial created more choices and opportunities for contemporary women....and often our deepest integrity as women was absent in our choices and changes.
One of the challenging truths my clients-men and women-hear me offer is how avoiding exercising our power often derives from a case of the “pleaser first, me seconds”.  And while we may truly believe a lack of conflict equals safety for ourself or a relationship, avoiding conflict is avoiding exercising power.  Not knowing how to exercise our power constructively we often choose instead to suppress expressing ourselves with integrity.  And we all know how well THAT works as a strategy! Conflict is natural, necessary, and an invitation for our power (expression of ourselves) for informing, illuminating, and uplifting ourselves and the other.
So how do you know if you are challenged with exercising your power?

1. You tell yourself it’s not a big deal when a friend or family member puts you down in front of others-again!-and you don't speak up (for yourself) for that would not be nice. Instead, you spend the rest of the day silently seething and fantasizing about moving to where nobody in your family will ever find you!
2. You long for more intimacy with your lover than watching TV together every night and tell yourself to be satisfied and not "rock the boat" as you pour yourself yet another glass (how many is that tonight?) of wine.
3. You find yourself drawn to tending those at the end of their life, but finding a training program for hospice care that doesn’t interfere with the soccer carpool has been impossible.I mean, how can you ask others to put themselves out with helping you? What calls to you (heart and soul) will just have to wait until the kids are grown up and people don’t need you (never!).
4. You grew up learning how important making others happy was for making those around you happy in life, so pleasing others is easy. But as you sit in a yet another meeting at a job you truly dislike, you wonder is this really as good as your life gets?.

There is not a woman alive who does not experience insecurity at times with exercising her power.....when to speak up, where to show up, when to stand up.  What creates security and certainly in our expressions of power is new (really old) learning, practice, and the courage to honor power inside as well as outside. Exercising power as contemporary women requires our time and care for listening, trusting, and taking action from wisdom of the silence within ourselves. This is not the power we learned of control over others ....this is the power of the clarity of our wisdom, the courage we commit to living our convictions, and the compassion we offer ourselves and WITH the others in our life.

We live in a time of rapid evolution, our gift of a lifetime for our souls to evolve the sacred marriage of life as human. Whether we live in fear or live in faith and trust depends on our choices of beliefs, skills, and integrity we engage as we navigate our days.....days calling for living our grace in ways practical and for honoring the grit of life as sacred.

"Release and Renew" Ritual for a Year New

Happy New Year!  It's the first week of new year 2012, a time we are invited to let go of our disappointments, our regrets, our sorrows from year past to create room in ourselves for our dreams and visions for a year new.  Unlike New Year's goals that can fizzle once we go back our days and usual habits, ritual calls upon not only our mind, but the earth elements and the sacred as well for making it so.  And at the end of 2012, when you look at the seeds you wrote down and what that then created in 2012, it will blow you away!  So take 10 minutes to begin your new year anew with the ritual I call  "Release and Renew".

"Release and Renew" Ritual

1. Write down on separate slips of paper your resentments, your grudges, your anger and rages, the unforgiven, the wrong-doings of others to you, your sorrows, your depressions, the ones you despise....you get the idea.  Make certain each one gets written down on it's own slip of paper.
2. Bury the slips of paper in the ground with sage or cedar if you have some, or if not, with some evergreen needles.  (If where you live does not allow you to bury the slips of paper, then burn the slips of paper and bury the ashes).
3. Write down on separate pieces of paper the seeds of what you will cultivate through this year....commiting to your compassion more than your judgment, commiting to transformations effortless through calling on grace vs believing it takes hard work and luck to create, commiting to being open to more questions and curiosity and needing to control less, etc.  Place your commitment seeds on your altar if you have one and if you do not have an altar, it's time to create one!
4.  Pray for the next moon (30 days) on what your heart frowns upon as well as what lifts up your heart and soul.  In the realm of Sacred and Earth, all is energy and simply, our clarity is needed for what is released and what is renewed in our hearts and world.

Our human minds are powerful-and-placing our mind as the driver of our life was never meant to be it's role.  As we move into our future,  our challenges will need us to meet them with our full capacity as human beings-the wisdom of our heart, the depth of our soul, and the infinite power and reach of our spirit.  As women, our innate caliber and capacity makes us leaders in living more of our depth and dimension as humans for creating the fabric of our daily life, containing the well-being of all in our communities, and allowing nothing save peace and harmony on this Earth.

Make your dreams really really big for 2012, plant your seeds through commitment to your humanity and your divinity, and call upon the sacred to do the heavy lifting.  We are so blessed by our gift of a human life....simply, sometimes we forget we are powerful gods and goddesses walking this sacred ground of Earth.

Choosing Drama Less and Your Power More

"Where is confusion about yourself as "a woman first" holding you back from exercising your power, purpose, and passion in your relationships, roles, and relishing of your life?"  I love working with women who decide to pick up their courage, exercise their clarity, and commit to action for creating more happiness, satisfaction, and impact in their life.  The "ah-ha" moment when a client real.izes how truly powerful she is can be a humbling (not humiliating) moment of reclaiming herself, her happiness, and her satisfaction in her relationships, roles, and relishing her life.


Woman are the sacred portal for human life and serve as teachers, healers, and leaders with life. Where woman are confused about their depth and dimension as women is where we confuse our history for our truth, our roles for our identity, and believe our grace as women is negotiable.  It is also where how we create problems, extend the lifetime of our challenges, and create drama vs engaging our power. A woman may begin working with me for easing a troubled relationship,  guidance for respect in her roles, or to feel happy again in her life.....and,  she soon realizes her problem/s as symptoms of forgetting to choose her power as "a woman first". 


Contemporary woman remember, reclaim, and renew themselves more through honoring themselves as "a woman first" and the "to-do's" of rules, roles, and relationships less.  Being "a woman first" is taking action on inner wisdom, embodying compassion in relationships, and living with clarity, courage, and certainty our dreams.   Being "a woman first" is knowing confusion is our invitation for inner clarity, self-criticism as our opportunity for compassion for ourselves, and conflict with others offers itself as a container for creative and deeper connection with the other. And contemporary times call for us to show up, stand up, and speak up....as women first.  We live in times scary and sacred, times calling for living times calling for living more of our power, purpose, and passion as a woman.

The "Contemporary" Leadership of Women

Much has been written, talked about, and even merchandised about the new power and contemporary leadership of women.  As a woman, I initially received this buzz about contemporary women’s place with a “hallelujah”, and now sigh, concluding how like the truism of memos serving the illusion of action, talking often serves the illusion of change.

One of the messages I challenge those I work with is “how are you taking action on your new awareness/desire/choice/commitment in your daily life?  While words are powerful, using words only for talk diminishes the power and clarity the authentic (root) meaning the word offers us for committing to action.

The root (Latin) meaning of the word “contemporary” is “together with” and I smiled to have found a word so accurate in describing the history of women’s leadership. While the word “contemporary” may currently mean “new/current/fashionable”, women’s leadership throughout history has been “together with”.  

Women for ages have been “together with” the birthing and nurturing of new life, “together with” healing, tending and caring for members of their community, “together with” those in old age and in death.  The leadership of women is not new, ever unfashionable, nor simply the leadership of men with a skirt and lipstick on it. 

So the next time you hear talk about the new and contemporary leadership of women, smile at knowing just how contemporary women’s leadership is and commit more to taking action “together with” your deepest values and what is sacred in the life you lead as a woman.

"In honor of John the farmer in heart, airline captain by day"

It is a glorious late summer morning not unlike the morning 10 years ago when an act of hate changed the lives of thousands, millions all over the world.  Even now I remember as though yesterday watching in horror on television the second plane go into the World Trade Center tower, a place iconic to New Yorkers and visitors alike.  I remember calling my children-my son in college, my daughter at high school-simply to feel their presence, and only began to cry when word came by phone that John was the captain of the American Airlines Flight #11 airplane.

We knew John Ogonowski first as the farmer who brought his hay to the horse barn where my older daughter worked and rode and for whom I brought coffee and donuts to those early cold Saturday am mornings as she and John unloaded the month’s hay. We talked about how loving the land and nature made up for much of what was crazy in the human world and how happy stewarding land made us.  We knew John secondly as an American Airlines captain committed to working a few more years until he could retire and tend his beloved farm full-time.

9/11 changed not only John’s dream and the dreams of so many people, it challenged all of us in how we respond to hate, violence, destruction when it’s personal.  “Being poor does not take away poverty, being angry does not take away anger, choosing revenge does not diminish violence” offers Wayne Dwyer.  Human brains are hard-wired to initially return aggression with aggression, and as the research and authors of the book “How God Changes Your Brain” illustrate,  choosing to meditate and other spiritual practices literally activate the capacity our brains contain for compassion and seeking to understand“the other”. 

John’s farm continues through his brother Jim who still delivers hay for the horse barn. John lives on in the many ways he touched others as well as served through his farm’s commitment to helping Cambodian refuges farmers and those he flew as an American Airlines captain. New life came through John when his brother Jim married the owner of the horse barn who he met while stepping into farmer John’s shoes the first weeks after 9/11.  Life honors life by continuing forward, it is ours to choose how we honor the gift of our life so precious and so fragile.

"The Value of Being Uncomfortable in Life"

Conscious relationship with our creativity as human beings requires we have times when we are uncomfortable, we are not in control, we do not know. And what are these times other than opportunities to welcome the magic, power, and wisdom of new experiences being offered to us?  Whenever life now throws a curveball into my plans, I take out the index cards I have written "welcome the discomfort, life has a better idea!" on and post them in places I spend my day. Besides quotes on index cards for inspiration in responding to being uncomfortable in life, here are other suggestions for valuing "uncomfortable": Make a list of things in your past that made you inititally uncomfortable and how now, you can not imagine living without them....swimming, driving, traveling, saying no, etc.  Acknowledge consciously how hanging in with uncomfortable long enough to learn something new changed your life for the better. Ask yourself if your life is overflowing with joy, love, satisfaction and if you did not answer with a shout and  "YES!",  choose more to invite the discomfort of change for creating more of that good stuff sooner than later!  Maybe keeping things safe and status quo ain't what it's cracked up to be! Western science has confirmed what Eastern wisdom has long offered-how every 7 years,  every cell in our body is replaced.  This has revolutionized how we treat brain and spinal cord injuries-once thought to be untreatable-as well as underlined the important of challenge for the health of our brains, muscles, and habits as we age.  It may be uncomfortable to place ourselves outside our comfort zone, and, it is essential for our happiness and health in life. Unless we are willing to be uncomfortable in life,  we will not engage the conflicts that lead to invaluable clarity, understanding, and intimacy in our relationships.  Relationships thrive when people are willing to be (uncomfortable) vulnerable and wither when the illusion of control is chosen.  Relationships are the training ground for choosing love more than fear, intuition more than facts, intimacy more than a false sense of control. Consider that when you are most uncomfortable, it may simply be the sensations of yourself expanding, not unlike how it may feel to a snake when it has outgrown it's skin.  When I am feeling uncomfortable in my life, I now remind myself to breathe more, relax more, and allow more the sensations of transition for an easier and faster delivery of change to emerge within myself!  Life and people are messy and both require a willingness to take risks, to be vulnerable, to be uncomfortable for real.izing their depth, dimension, and delight. Choosing not to confuse being uncomfortable with "something's wrong/someone's wrong offers us a richer, wider palette of experiences from life. When we are willing to be uncomfortable and engage life's offer of a better idea, we live more the magic, and merry, and miraclulous of our life!