Recipe for Enlivenment:
To every day add
- A little listening
- A pinch of play
- Stir kindly with words
Listen
Saying Yes to “What Is,” Even When “What Is” Is Unacceptable
A poem about grief and love... “Say Yes! to life” It’s one of my highest aspirations But how do I say Yes to an 18-year-old shooter killing elementary school kids? How do I say Yes to heedless, needless death? How do I say Yes to polarization and righteous action? How...
How Rock Climbing Empowers me to Breathe, Focus, and Do Hard Things
One of the things I love about rock climbing is it proves to me, “I can do hard things.” I’m 60, and I am astounded that I’m still getting out there on the rock, climbing up vertical faces. Rock-climbing is so engaging and the community so supportive that I am...
Everything I Needed to Know, I Could Have Learned from Rock-Climbing
"You've got to flake the rope!" Meditation has played a key role in my life for more than twenty-five years. I appreciate that meditation is a gentle but disciplined training for the excitable puppy that is my brain — teaching me to focus, to concentrate on just one...
Play
The Light We Bring
I drove home from a hard day at the rock-climbing gym I felt discouraged that I wasn’t yet successful — still inadequate — Not yet strong enough to do my “project” Near home I caught an unusual sight There before me sat my Beloved Iconic Turtlehead Mountain Dark...
The Hanged Woman: In rock-climbing (as in life) you must be willing to climb, fall, then climb again
There I was hanging upside down, suspended from a 54-foot high ceiling, a searing pain traversing in a circular motion around my right knee, adrenalin surging through my body. Spectators gasped at my unexpected predicament. “You okay?” my belaying husband, Jay,...
Playing Scrabble: How changing the rules can enliven the game
Game-playing is supposed to be fun, right? And, part of the fun is adhering to a set of rules that everyone agrees to and then exploring what interactions happens within the bounds of those rules (a lot like life, if you think about it…) But what about changing...
Write
Writing to Reveal: How being a writer helps uncover the naked truth
The below is a piece I published in Illumination on Medium a couple years ago. Some of the references are out of date. (I no longer work as a program manager, for instance.) The theme, however, has come up a couple times in the last week and I thought I would...
Exposing the Poetry of Presence in Memoir: Naked writing as a juicy practice for getting present
Recently I led a workshop for the National Association of Memoir Writers, called "Exposing the Poetry of Presence in Memoir: Naked writing as a juicy practice for getting present." Despite technical difficulties at the start--my computer completely crashed two...
Memoirists: Get curious! What truths will your naked writing reveal?
A hundred of us were on a 3-day Outwild retreat for individuals looking to create more outdoor and value-driven lifestyles. On the afternoon of the second day, a large group of us sat at covered picnic tables at the Earth Trek retreat center nestled alongside the...
