Strong editing is the unseen force behind good writing. The art and science of pruning superfluous words and sentences, replacing OK words with razor-sharp choices, fixing typos and realigning misplaced commas are vital to a good reading experience. It’s also necessary for the writing experience.  Cluttered writing will diffuse and dilute your intent as author. Back up a step, and a cluttered inner space – thoughts, beliefs, choices, for example – will strangle your words to the point that they emerge compressed, stripped of meaning or worse, not at all, stuck in the conduit and pushing back against everyone and everything seeking to move.

What clutters your inner space? That only you can answer. I can share a bit of what clutters mine, and what in this moment I am choosing to release.

Ah, childhood … on one end that glowing repository of rosy memories, on the other the shit show that was trying to navigate a crazy condemning world when you’re three feet tall.  Childhood memories are the deepest of the clutter, held dear in honour of our ancestors despite the effects on our mind and body. To be clear, I believe all parents give us what they can. In some cases, it may not look like much, but in all cases, they gave us life. As children, we were shaped by those who raised us and the world they were tasked to ‘prepare us for.’ As adults, we have choice, and we can choose what we carry and what we keep. As writers, that choice affects our words.

I love my parents deeply, and love my life with them in it.  My way of honouring them is to honour me, reclaiming and being fully mySelf. And I take a step today by clearing the clutter of words getting in the way.

Here, for your viewing and reflecting pleasure, are the five phrases from childhood I choose to release. Feel free to sing along if the tune is familiar.

1. “Don’t be selfish.”
   
   I heard this from everyone – parents, teachers, ministers … all about valuing service above self. Yes, we are called to community and it is healthy to connect, share, help others. But we were only given half the story – give give give but never receive receive receive. How can we keep giving if there is no nourishment or replenishment? How can we be present for others if we are not present to ourselves first? Generations past were too busy scraping for survival to heed inner health or spiritual, emotional and mental welfare. We know different now. Writers, in fact, have always known different. Time to live it for ourselves.
2. “Leave some for someone else.“To take the last sandwich, cookie, seat, whatever, was shameful especially to the parent of a child who dared give in to their own desire and feed themselves. It wasn’t about being hungry or in need: it was about choice, and about denying yourself when knowing in your body that choice is right for you because it is unpopular with others. Then it was the cookie, today it could be making time for your writing when there six other things seeking your attention. Don’t leave it for someone else to decide. Engage and choose.
3. “Don’t make a spectacle of yourself.”
   
   In my world, this meant don’t command attention. Don’t laugh too loudly or make the adults laugh, don’t ask so many questions, don’t plunge into a conversation, don’t ask for what you want … wait to be offered or invited. So I waited, and spent a large part of my life watching others have fun as I stood on the sidelines waiting for my invitation. I made a career as a writer for hire because the invitations are constant and clear – deadlines, specs and payment all presented for me to accept, step in and deliver. Writing for myself so far has been six years of silence, tantrums and diversions as I attempt to step in without someone else giving permission. In front of my own manuscript, my own life, I become both parent and child, keeping me locked in a pattern that, in my advancing years, serves absolutely no one, especially me. Writers write to be seen and heard. Good writers expand the worlds of others by connecting and sharing the expansive visions they themselves allow and create. That’s who I am, that’s who you are, if you choose the spectacle over silence.
4. “Stay in there until you know how to behave.”
   
   In my childhood, ‘there’ was my room. I was far luckier than children who faced much more dire punishment. My room was full of books and toys and a stunning view of the pine trees in the forest surrounding our home. It was easy for me to forget that I was there for punishment. The problem with this for me is that I knew how to behave. What I didn’t know was the invisible rule of how I was supposed to behave, in other words, don’t be myself. Decades later, I still send myself to my proverbial room when I fear being mySelf will be contrary to what I should do … and when I’m in my room, I do not write. I sit and wonder why I’m there, yet since I’m not supposed to ask too many questions, won’t allow myself the question or the answer.  See how the clutter builds up?
5.  “Think about what you’re doing/what you’ve done.”
   
   The last thing a writer needs to do is think. We are in a world created on intellectual control. Schools, governments, religions all feed our intellects with right and wrong, good and bad, all the while disconnecting us from our bodies and the emotional energy that feeds it. Our soul/spirit/Signal? Completely dismissed. Fat and entitled, our intellects come to believe they run the show, and thinking about anything keeps the bloated cycle going. We need to think less and rely on our instincts, our intuition, the innate knowledge with which we were born. Writers tap this with their streams of consciousness attached to words. Thinking turns off the tap.

In the course of writing this, my breathing has deepened and slowed, my ears have popped and my body feels lighter. Plus, outside my window, the sun has emerged, a gray morning now gold. Clearing the clutter allows joy to percolate the doubt that we writers carry like oversized baggage – mind and body aching but afraid to let go of something we might need. These phrases I’ve shared I no longer need.  I breathe into the space, allowing what else may come.

There will be more decluttering to come, that I know. There will also be reclamation, taking back some of these decluttered words and repurposing them with what’s meaningful to me today.  But like clearing out the closet, i need to unpack first before I can sort and mindfully choose.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Part 2.
Have an awesomely wordy day.

 

I started my week with a two-day retreat
and no, it wasn’t a poetry workshop 🙂

It was, however, poetry in motion as six women committed to reclaiming themselves spent two days in conversation and community, overlooking the frozen Northumberland Strait  with brief treks outdoors only to shiver in the promise of nearly-spring sunshine.  Hardly a tropical vacation, but more beautiful than any place on Earth.  Here’s why:

I have driven this road before.

I have driven this road before, dozens of times, early morning sun blinding in spurts through the trees. In late autumn the roadside is streaked with crimson and gold but today, on the fading edge of winter, the trees stand bare. I squint against the sunrise for a sign to a place I’ve never been while searching for the familiar hug of the Strait beside me, and am surprised. The water has vanished, replaced by a frozen tundra of chunky white. The ice came in last night, filling the shoreline and the water close to shore. Then along the horizon, a ribbon of sapphire, an openness further but visible, pushed away yet insistent, present, vibrating, beautiful in its stark surroundings, waiting for its time when heat transforms, blockages melt, energy flows. 

I have driven this road before, with joy in the familiar, aware as I stare at the frozen wonderland that the energy is in the surprise, is always present,  a ribbon on the horizon of my awareness and only I have the power to release, transform, flow.

I have driven this road before, but never the same way twice. The road and the driver evolve with every turn, every conversation, united on the journey, delighting in the change of seasons, awareness, ownership of every choice, movement, action. 

I have driven this road before to remember, to learn, to arrive in a new way to the same place.

Home.

Lifechanging, sharing words that matter in the company of women brave enough to dive into stories and memories darker and icier than the view outside. How lifechanging is it? I don’t know yet. I’m basking in the glow of not knowing. It is in the unknown where true magic lies.

Tomorrow is a new mystery unseen. Right now is magic unfolding in how I choose to see it.

A new story is just beginning.

It was a marvellous Christmas, which for me was four weeks of pure immersive joy. Home and table full of three generations together by choice, eating and cooking and shopping and wrapping, playing games and watching movies … in the constant flow of positive energy even doing the laundry and washing the dishes were together time rather than chores. Memories into gems, moment by moment.

Of course the crash would come. Folks return home. Children go back to school. Life moves forward into the fresh pages of a new year. I knew this, I was ready for this. My older daughter, being driven back to PEI by her dad. My younger daughter, off visiting her boyfriend. My son, packing his car to head back to university. As I watch his car back out of the driveway, I feel it. The silence, heavy like a leaden blanket, as for the first time in weeks I am in the house alone. I sit, feeling the loneliness like a blackened iron curtain pushing my mood into darkness and my body toward the ground.

And as always, it is in these darkened spaces that great awareness lie.

I have always dreaded the new year. At first, I swallowed it as the post-Christmas sag, the transition between a home full of candy, lights and greenery to the grey routine of the everyday. Then I dismissed it as the seasonal blahs, where lack of sunlight and frigid cold kept me captive in house and thoughts. Now, as I sat weighted in a silent house, I realized my sadness was not with the inevitable departures and progression from Christmas to ‘real life.’ My grief was with the knowledge that there was no longer any distractions, any reasons, anything between me and going back to work. My grief was at the continued dysfunctional relationship I have with what I define in my life as ‘work.’

It was time for me to deal with it.

I allowed myself to feel the weight, the darkness, the sadness, the sinking … and like tipping a world upside down, there came glimmers of light, of possibility, of vision. What I felt was an invitation, the breeze of wide open spaces to create and to shine, and was wrapping myself in darkness as a way to hide. What did I want to create for my life, and where was ‘work’, what was ‘work’ in all of it? I asked myself the question and relaxed into my chair, allowing the answer.

I want a job where I don’t have to go to work.

I laughed out loud, but it wasn’t my voice. It was the voice of my ancestors, of friends and colleagues bound to their physical worlds of scarcity and survival. You need to work, you have to work, or else you starve, you’re a bum, you aren’t doing anything with your life. I thanked them for their input, swept it away, and sat with the statement. I want a job where I don’t have to go to work  was not me wishing to sit in my chair every day doing nothing, but me wanting a job that flows with the rest of my life, a job I take pleasure in as I do with hanging with my kids, visiting friends, watching movies, trying a new recipe, or breathing deeply as I watch the sun set. I want a job I do not need to take a vacation from, a job that gives and takes with ease and joy, a job with which I have a healthy relationship.

Healthy relationships require clarity and honesty. Between work and myself, I have rarely allowed either. Tasks and accomplishments were defined by others. Invited to lead, I would defer to the safety of minion. What mattered was the client’s needs, vision, deliverable. I allowed none for myself, and when  overtired and frustrated from not being heard, would tune out or walk away. The problem is not my job, it is in the labels and stories I continue to attach to ‘work’.

I have a job that allows me to set my own hours, choose my offices, determine my work plans, and engage with some of the warmest and most enlightened people I have ever met, people who continue to support and challenge me on my journey. And for all of this, I am paid promptly every two weeks, with full benefits, an annual raise and even a Christmas bonus. It is a job that fully supports my life and invites my creativity. If I let it. And there was the greatest awareness, that I have everything I want in work and in life. I have everything I need to create new and different.  I need to let myself know and trust it.

Healing my relationship with work, allowing it to be a source of joy rather than a chore, allowing it to invite my creativity rather than trap me in tasks, will not only lighten my new year’s transition. This allowance will transform my performance anxiety into creation, and will heal my relationship with my writing. For writing had become ‘work’, used only for generation of income to pay bills, allowed to do or be nothing else but a chore, and with no direct income from it, a waste of time. I still feel those pathways in need of clearing. I sit writing now after two days of growing agitation, where I had meant to write, was going to write, but other things got in the way … now, the 30 minutes I have spent with myself in words will clear clouds from the rest of my day and the excitement glowing in my gut – rather than the churning angst of fear – is so energizing, I sit here toasty warm on a freezing cold day. I am allowing myself to feel each invitation from ‘work’: doing so allows me to mindfully choose, willing immerse, and feel when it’s done. No more story of losing myself to work, or of my work being pointless. The difference made is not in the wider world, but in my relationship with it, and with myself. And I have these words as a reminder for when I forget. For the anxiety is never far away. I can feel it nudging against my warmth as I prepare to end my writing and shift to the files on my desk. I choose this, I can do this … and I choose to trust what happens after that.

Thanks for your presence. What a year this will be.

New Year’s Eve was often a sad day for me. Christmas was over. Another year was over and here I was, despite the resolutions and best intentions of a year ago, unchanged – the same confused and awkward minion of the world surviving into another year of longing to rise while tethering myself to the ground. If only I could lose weight, make more money, have more time to write, go to the beach more often … they sounded like good intentions but came with a rotten centre of negativity and self-doubt. Make more money? Not likely with your questionable skills. Go to the beach more often? Who do you think you are. More time to write? What for? Who needs what you have to say?

Not this year. 2021 is being heralded as the worst year ever, a year of pandemic protocols and isolation and death, of cancelled trips and lost jobs and squashed dreams, of upheaval and uncertainty, leading many to sum up the past 365 days in two words: good riddance. But for me, 2021 has been the best year yet. There was misery and loss: I have lost dear family and friends to sudden deaths for which I could not gather to mourn. I have watched the world around me descend into chaos and bitterness, listened as dear friends on varying sides of the vaccine debate tear into each other, respect and empathy gone in a flood of frustration and fear.  But this was the year I learned to listen to who I really am, not the sack of flesh that carries me or the brain claiming to run my show, but me – the signal I am, the energy, the essence of my existence and within it, the talents, purposes and visions for life that I have carried since I was conceived. COVID has called us all to a new way of doing things as individuals, communities, governments and global entities, and the backlash against any form of evolution or personal ownership at first frightened me, then it angered me. Once I stopped, breathed, and started taking my anger back, using it as fire to light my own exploration, COVID became not an obstacle, not an enemy, not a conspiracy, but an invitation. Accepting that invitation has brought me closer to myself and brightened my life in ways I never thought possible. 2021 is the year that forced me to be with myself, and like a surly child in detention I lashed out at first, blamed protocols and governments for restricting my choices, and felt myself sinking into a fog of who cares and nothing matters. Then I let go. If nothing matters, why worry? If no one cares, what am I fighting for or against? Without the attitude of protectionism, without an enemy, there was only space – dark, quiet, mysterious, like a lost locked room of a house suddenly discovered and open. And within, once I dared to enter, was everything I need to create the life I want. It was unlimited capacity to imagine and manifest, courage to be, talents to do, it was everywhere and everything. It was home. I just needed to know it was there, trust in its power, learn to listen, and reconnect the pathways to lead it rom the locked room into the world.

I didn’t need to travel the world, take courses, or practice for hours to someone else’s standards. I needed to set my own course, trust my choices, and value myself enough to make my life worth the time and trust. I needed to stop, turn inward and heal. And 2021 was the perfect time to do it.

Trust your gut has never been more important in this ‘information’ era where facts blur with the fiction and accountability is smothered by the clamour for entertainment. A nightly Mana card has become part of my routine, something to ponder while drifting off to sleep that takes me to a corner I don’t want to visit so I can learn and choose differently, or something to celebrate the joy of living a life fed by internal awareness rather than external manipulation. Starting Christmas Day, I drew a triple crown of guides in my journey: Pele, Fire Goddess of Earth, heralder of upheaval; Laka, Goddess of Hula, sign of inspiration and Ho’oponopono, a ritual for restoring harmonious relationships, to set right.

Pele takes no prisoners; it’s tackling everything I believe, why I believe it, who I hold close and who and what I need to release. It is freeing, terrifying and exhausting to examine every memento and choice, reflect on it, feel its energy, and choose to keep or discard it.  It’s like plunging off a cliff deep into the cluttered closets and overworked brain cells fighting to maintain the only reality I remember, but there is no better way to create space.  Shirts and dreams, receipts and relationships, cluttered drawers and overworked brain cells … all can serve to fuel our passions, or can bury us in busy work that mirrors productivity. It continues to amaze me how much of my life I simply hand over to rote and oh, well, whatever rather than actively choose.

But, as I said, it’s exhausting. Laka reminds me to dream, to seek and soothe myself in those things and places and relationships that inspire me. My writing calls me to do that and to allow it, I’ve had to let go of the belief that writing is work, worth only the money it earns, worth time only when I produce a tangible commodity that someone else will buy. My relationship with my writing was dysfunctional, emotionally abusive, begging for divorce. I used it only to earn me money so I could travel and get away from it, take a vacation from it rather than with it. I gave it nothing and demanded everything and when it protested, I raged at it, starved it, pointed to the door and demanded it leave me alone.

And there is Ho’oponopono, a call to healing those dysfunctional relationships, intimate or casual, external or internal. My relationship with my writing was carried inside but the fury and dysfunction spilled out into other relationships, harming the most the one closest to us both, the one who sought to reunite us. But as in any relationship, healing can only come from within those directly involved. I alone could allow the desire to write, the gratitude to write, the space for writing in my life. To do that has been to touch fears long-buried of failure and being lost. Creation thrives in the unknown and is born from chaos. It’s unpredictable and messy, things I learned  were to be avoided at all cost. But that’s what lights me up inside – the thrill of the unknown, the grand experiments where you test by doing and embrace the journey of discovery regardless of the outcome, the doing something that frightens me just because I can. Yet I easily forget and spiral inward, feel my world grow dark and small. Until the next Mana card, the next conversation with a trusted fellow explorer, the next time I sit in front of my screen and invite the words to come.

So I await the new year this year with an enthusiastic hope, with a passion for making this a year of leaps and plunges, of clearing out and creating new, of learning even more about myself and my place in a world that is changing rapidly and fighting to stay the same.  I have myself to thank for awakening and allowing this journey. I have the many wise and wonderful people in my life to thank for their examples, their stories, their energy and truths. And I have the circumstances that beg for ‘good riddance’ to thank as well, for forcing my butt to stay home and my journey to spiral inward where it was needed. Now, it is time to spiral back outward. Look out 2022.

Wishing you a continued magnificent journey. See you again soon.

This is the season of Christmas in my home and heart, a time I plunge into and savour deeply – the scent of fresh evergreens, a kitchen overrun by children both adult and teen home from school, nights playing board games where we make up silly words or get to whack each other with inflatable sticks, followed by watching movies we can quote scene by scene, time with my mother, the taste of her shortbreads and fruit cake … the weeks before and after Christmas Day are laden with memories and joy, where the outside world disappears and every moment is like a vacation.  This year, like every year before, has felt like the best Christmas yet. But it also feels different, a vacation, yes, but also a hiding place, a dark realm where not only my external world disappears, but my internal connection as well. Beneath the full stomach and giddy head is my signal, again struggling to be heard but a mere whisper against the thunder of old stories: you’re too busy to write, on vacation so you shouldn’t write, here – have another shot of eggnog and lose yourself in this movie you’ve seen 27 times.  These are all worthy endeavours to celebrate Christmas, but when used to hide from yourself, well, the signal moves in mysterious ways. And this year, my signal quit taking my dismissal lying down and called in reinforcements. Drawing my nightly Mana card, just after midnight and Christmas Eve gave way to Christmas Day, I shuffled my cards, tugged one free, turned it over and in the flicker of candlelight there she was.

I drew Pele for Christmas.

Pele, the volcano goddess of life and Earth, powerful and passionate, famous (and infamous) for both destruction and creation.  Breaking down the old, birthing the new. It is believed that Pele is offended if we disrespect our passion, turning hearts starved of passionate fire into stone. She appears when paths are in need of a major upheaval, clearing the way for a new and better life.

Holy crap. I stare at the card. In the five years I have owned this deck, I have never drawn Pele. I stare at her image, flames in motion, and read the words. A spark of joy, followed by the familiar clenching of terror and as my stomach churned I was tempted to put the card back, drawn another. I didn’t want this one. It felt dangerous, wrong. What was I supposed to do with it?

And for a moment I’m back in Italy, a trip of my dreams, standing paralyzed on a platform, debating whether to board a train. Play with fire and you’ll get burned. I heard that over and over as a child. Flames fascinated me but would hurt me if I got too close. The teaching took root and came to govern my internal flames as well. Dare to dream and you’ll crash. Keep writing and you’ll get to know and own yourself, which means no more hiding, no more ducking choices or avoiding responsibility. Passion means heartbreak. Stay cool and stay quiet, and you’ll be safe.  And paralyzed in a train station, a step away from a dream and too terrified to move. Until something inside takes hold, takes control and pumps fuel into muscles, mind and heart to move forward, seize the moment and savour the journey.

I need to allow that I have everything I need, choose what I want, and give myself permission to go after it.

I am full of fire, every minute of every day, but over the years, I have trained myself carefully to avoid channelling that fire into passion. My fire was being diverted by traditions done automatically rather than mindfully, in projects designed for praise rather than growth, for maintenance rather than creation, for keeping me in place rather than inviting me to soar. And I have become mindful that in the eight days that I silenced my writing with promises of ‘later’ and either/or choices of ‘I want to celebrate today, I’ll write tomorrow’ (without allowing that writing is a form of celebration), my body is now screaming in protest. Back achy and joints stiff, legs swollen and head heavy, tired beyond what sleep will touch – all symptoms of inflammation and yes, the excess sugar and Christmas dinners play a part but the greatest contributor are the words I carry, trapped and agitated and begging for release. Pele is here to help me break my pattern of taking in without giving out, of diverting my fire rather than creating with it. As I sit here, finishing this post I can feel the lightness, not only in my body but in my thoughts. I had started the morning with online banking, paying bills that have arrived way too soon compared to the income needed to cover them. In this moment, that reality has not changed, I have not won the lottery or discovered I am the long-lost heir to a massive fortune, but I know that all will work out. There is always a choice and a solution.

On Christmas night, I drew a new card: Laka, the Hula Goddess of inspiration. She appears as an invitation to deepen my connection to my creative space, internal and external, to spend time exploring this sacred space for inspiration and renewal. A cooling respite from Pele’s upheaval and fire. Balance and flow. I’m sitting with that today. And some eggnog. Inspiration comes from many sources.

Merry Christmas! Thanks for reading.

 

I used to ghost write for a financial advisor (and if you want to know how that worked for me, check out my Finding Maria series 🙂 ) who often told me – money problems are seldom about money.  Oh, really, I’d nudge, not understanding, so what are they about?

Unhealthy relationships, low self-esteem, loneliness, unchannelled passion, general unhappiness … and the list went on. The old adage that money can’t buy happiness was playing out in my client’s office every day.

I have never yearned to be rich, never wanted to sacrifice my time and soul to the corporate mechanisms that would render me somewhat wealthy in exchange for 100-hour work weeks and blind adherence to the company mantra. I know money does not create happiness, nor does it create misery. Yet here I sit, mere days after an intensive enlightening immersive retreat that rewired me from the inside out, never more terrified in my life.

Why? Because I am daring to dream, and the old parts of me are vibrating in absolute outrage, singing a chorus of Where Will the Money Come From? with the fervour of Broadway performers on pub night.

I am moved to create this week, some writing yes, but bigger picture, too. After four years of divorce and sharing the family home with my co-parent and former husband and children living or returning home for visits on school breaks, it is time for greater physical space – to live my life, to create, to breathe. We have a cottage I love, that with imagination and good contractors can be my magical living and studio space. Thinking of it sends waves of tingles through my body. Then the chorus tunes up and my gut clenches in an all-too familiar dance.  I have owned my own cars since I was in my early 20s, but have never owned property. I co-own our family home and the cottage, but have never been solo on a property deed. An interview for a mortgage, the requisite sorting through of tax returns, utility bills, income statements and what I had for breakfast three days ago is dragging my dream down to the cold concrete of what it takes to survive, and dragging up the tethers I have had to safety in money and in the relationship that is no longer a marriage, but is still a cosy place to be where money and shelter are concerned. I lived independently before marriage … a couple of decades later, can I do it again? Hold my own mortgage? Pay all my own bills? Plunge my own toilet? Shovel my own driveway? Who do I think I am?

And I realize in the terror that somewhere, somehow, dreaming itself became dangerous. Safer to be content with what comes your way. Want more, go after more, you might be disappointed, you might fail. Those words have been enough to keep me content, yet small. This past week, getting up close and personal with the signal that I am, Choice Unleashed reared up and dared to be seen. I dared to listen. I breathe and remember that everything is a choice, no choice is a choice. Do I listen to the chorus of bullies telling me who do I think I am, or do I listen to the signal that IS who I am? You bet, I choose me and in choosing me, I choose to dream and in dreaming, I choose to believe that while the money I will need is not at the moment in my pocket, it is somewhere and will become apparent if and when I need it. To eliminate the need is not the answer. To allow the question and trust I don’t know as an answer is  a start. To forget questions and answers and just imagine and feel the next choice, that is what I am doing. That means today I will immerse myself in a year’s worth of paperwork to sort out my budget, my team, my resources and my timeline as a structure in which my idea can incubate. Like pregnancy, give it a warm and nourishing home, and be open to the surprise.

I have never been more terrified. I have never been more excited. Two words, one energy, one awesome life.

 

Forward. Retreat. I know, the phrase seems to be a tug of war, moving in two different directions. But it feels perfect. Welcome to the world of quantum processing. In a world where for centuries we were trained to rely on our brains and institutions ‘that knew better’ to tell us who we are and what we need to do, we are awakening to the real power in our lives: ourselves, a signal born into a body that can acquire, retrieve and process information trillions of times faster than the brain. When in the midst of many decisions, chaotic circumstances, intense fear or immense joy, the default pattern is to work harder, faster, to get away or get through it all. The quantum method embraces our body’s innate ability to process information and support the brain in making a choice, but requires us to stop, breathe, and be in our bodies. The awareness comes, the choice clarifies, the moment eases into the next. Awakening and learning to listen to our signals takes practice, and comes easier in community where knowledge and support are shared in a safe, committed space held by participants deeply invested in their own evolution. These experiences have lately take virtual form, in which we spend hours each day for a week or more diving deep into our own beliefs and strategies, feeling our words and those of others, and sometimes, simply feeling our own breath. These retreats, time out of the fray to awaken, learn, practice and recharge, are essential to our unique paths of discovery and growth. Forward. Retreat.

After six days spent in such safety and support, it can be chaotic, overwhelming, even depressing to return to the wider world, remembering all we learned and became during our time in community. Not that the time in community was always easy. Remember my dwarfs of misery? I listed five the other day: cold, heavy, dizzy, weepy and snotty.  Rewiring one’s nervous system means all of those things, and then some. I’ll add two more: frantic and fiery, as capacity becomes accustomed to the heightened awareness, increase in energy flow, and billions of little details overlooked or ignored in a sleepier state. Jamming foot to accelerator in a race from a gas bar where an automated pump wouldn’t take my credit card. Panicking at the list of unread emails. Double-booking appointments and then spinning stories of incompetence as I unbook and rebook into a dwindling number of slots on my calendar. Two hours into my day it was as if the retreat never existed.

Then I stopped, dropped my phone on the desk, closed my eyes and breathed, deeply in, deeply out. Again. And again. Suddenly I was not jamming things into my calendar, but choosing to allow invitations to engage, and allowing them to flow into a week of possibility. I was not overwhelmed, but inspired. I no longer beat myself up about what I had left to do or do over, but felt the warm spread of knowledge that I can do this, and I will do this, each thing in its own time. I had not taken a deep breath in two hours, and stopping to do that – retreat – opened up a world of flow that moves forward. I also did not blog this morning, or draw a Mana card. And now as I choose to blog I can feel the tension in my writing, flow tightened by distraction, words inching rather than pouring out as I recount the details of an average day. But I breathe into the tension and allow the recording of where I am, in the moment, perfect in its imperfection, brilliant because it is real. Words on a page, owned and shared, rather than spinning stories of what-if and maybe-later and when-the-time-is-right in my mind.

Breathing. Living it. Retreat. Forward. Retreat. Forward. It starts here and never ends but oh, the thrill of the expanding journey.

Thanks for reading.

I spent the last day of our six-day experience watching the snow melt. Midweek brought our first winter storm, transforming the landscape into a Christmas card with a foot of fresh snow. The pine tree outside my window was laden with visually perfect clumps of whiteness that lowered its branches to the ground. Not comfortable for the tree, but beautiful for me to look at.  Then on our last day, the temperature rose to spring-like conditions and with the threat of rain later in the day, the snow began its departure. Hour by hour the pine boughs raised inch by inch until as darkness fell, it stood upright as it had before the snow, visually unaltered and ready to dance in the rainy maelstrom that this morning has returned the landscape to the greeny-brown greyness that greeted me at the week’s beginning. I miss the snow but know it will be back. That’s one of many joys of living in Nova Scotia: if you don’t like the weather, give it a day and you’ll get a new choice.

Choice. My greatest takeaway from this amazing experience. My signal identified. Who I am, the essence of me inside this body that retrieves, processes and shares information on its behalf. The part of me too long forgotten, silences and overrun by the choices and assumptions of others. In six days I put words to my signal, felt them, and, like the landscape, have melted layers of beliefs and habits and embrace all that I am and choose to be. Choice. I am Choice Unleashed.

When asked on Day One to allow words for our signals,  I started with ‘choice rewiring.’ It served me then and to reflect on it now, it still resonates, but in nostalgia. My father was an electrician. His electrical work was one of the few glimpses of passion he allowed himself. Even when he could physically no longer do it, he retained a a joy in thinking about, knowing about it. He kept his Red Seal active and hanging on his wall. In one of our last conversations, as I struggled to set my newest book to form, I had the image of electrical impulses struggling to connect. I sat at his kitchen table with him, slid a blank piece of looseleaf toward and asked, “Can you show me how to wire a house?”  He spent the next hour drawing, explaining, pointing out the circuits and grounds, the codes and insulators, the components and planning that kept electrons flowing in continuous loops, running appliances and fuelling light bulbs in the process. He spent his career lighting up people’s worlds, but would allow so very little light for himself.  My consolation is that now freed from his body, he is free from the pain and the limits he placed on himself in life. Choice Rewired was an homage to him, but as he often told me, I was raised to be independent and live my own life. So I honour myself, and him in the process, and let ‘rewired’ go.

My words shifted to ‘permission unleashed’, and in that moment, it was accurate. Seeking permission was a childhood trait that I didn’t fully shake as an adult. An innate need to please, to be praised, to ‘do the right thing’ as defined by teachers, employers, clients, partners. I needed to give myself permission to not only be myself but to know myself, to honour my impulses and imaginations, to dream, to trust my instincts, to allow myself to be fully me, regardless of how loud, messy of mixed up that is. And I needed to give myself permission to own that I actually know what I’m doing, that I can’t get it wrong. ‘Permission’ was a freeing word, allowing me to swim and soar in the vast ocean of who I was, am and will be. But by week’s end, it felt like a stepping stone to another word vaster still.

It was time to melt my signal words together.

Choice Unleashed.

In this moment those two words invite tingles, flow, and a huge smile. It feels right.  When I sat down to write this morning, in the space that I have shared safely and with such inspiration with my fellow women manifestors, I felt the tightness of transition, the creep of sadness, just as the snow creeps into oblivion in my yard. But like the snow, our group will gather again and like the weather, my signal is always present, always flowing. I just need to be mindful of it.

Thanks for reading.

We begin each retreat day by pulling a card. No, we’re not playing blackjack in Vegas … a card as in oracle card, those decks of Sacred Rebels or Hawaiian wisdom or any myriad of other cards with soul-feeding artwork and text that invite us closer to the power within us.  I’m using Mana cards, a gift to me in my first Manifesting a Meaningful Life conversation in Hawaii in 2018. These conversations are not the ‘one and done’ of other offerings, but are often repeated as your journey beckons. And here I am, in Day 5, staring at the card I picked. This has never happened before.

What does it mean to pick the same card twice in one week?

Looking back at me is Ti, the card of Purification. I had picked it on Day 2, read about the importance of Ti leaves in purification of body and spirit, the need to celebrate the cherished and discard what no longer serves. Now, on Day 5, here it is again. Did I do something wrong?

Funny how that goes, how repetition to me is linked to failure. One and Done is how I earned praise in my life. My body was round and slow, so phys ed was a writeoff but in the realm of intellect, I was the quick study, the first one finished my homework and tests, the first to learn the words to our choir songs, the first to step up and be helpful. Practice was for those needing to catch up, revisions were for those who needed extra help. That wasn’t me. I got it right the first time. And when I slipped through university and into a job in journalism, that belief paid my bills and gave me a purpose. Daily deadlines meant getting it right, or at least legally passable, the first time was a must.  There was no time for reflection or finessing: get the facts, assemble them in a readable formula, get it done.

But life is not like that. The life I wanted, that I feel called to, is one of creation, exploration, new ways to be and do and have. That means trying new things, and trying again, and again. There is no one and done in creation, no getting it right the first time, no right and wrong at all. Creation is messy, full of missteps and mistakes and do-overs and revisions. On many levels I know that. But on the level where my next book rests, where I need to touch to release it, my gatekeeper is sitting there, arms folded and shaking its head. You can’t do this. You will need to revise it. You will get it wrong. Don’t do it, You know what will happen when you get it wrong.

I know all to well. People will get hurt. I’ve been aware, I think, for as long as I’ve been writing that my word choice and style can touch people. The four books I have written were based on the life of a person I care deeply about, and who trusted me enough to give me his story. He handed me key words and scraps of memory; I handed him a story that he could read, review his life, face his fears, celebrate that which he cherished and discard those things clouding his sky. But in the course of that writing I also hurt him deeply, because I had little awareness of the power my writing held for him. Attempts to fictionalize the stories awakened me to the fact that he was reading my work not for enjoyment, but as a map. And with his story done, his attention turned to my story, which I had promised us both, and in my flailings I inadvertently sent to him a virtual journal into which I had poured years of uncensored, unfiltered snippets of rage and rebellion, curiosity and frustration, fiction and non-fiction. I sent this as part of the first draft of my book; he had no idea what he was reading, that it was never intended for anyone’s eyes but mine. And he took each word to heart. It ended our business partnership. It nearly ended our friendship, but after giving each other space and time, we slowly came back into each other’s circles, and today we meet and chat in increasing comfort. But I still bump into elephants in the room.

Elephants that the Ti card tells me are ready to move on.

‘Take away all great faults, and all small faults, Throw them all into Moana-nui-kai-o’o, the great ocean’

What do I throw into the great ocean?

Responsibility for other’s reactions and responses to my writing. What came up for him as he read my journal is unique to him. I have blamed myself for years for causing him pain. I blindsided him, immersed him in a world for which he was unprepared. I didn’t mean tom but I did, and I take responsibility for that. What I cannot be responsible for are his feelings and responses. I can offer compassion, I can learn from what he shared, but I should not use his experience to shut down my flow of words. I did that. I’m choosing in this moment not to do it any more.

My responsibility is to share my truth in the moment, allowing that my truth may change as I learn and open and continue to awaken. I toss into the great notion the beliefs that there is one and done, that anything else is a mistake, that playing and rewriting and re-imagining are wastes of time. They are essential in my world. It’s time to give them space. And in this moment, I give myself permission to do that.

Permission unleashed. It starts with giving myself permission to be imperfect. Because that is my truth.

Thanks for reading.

There is nothing like a week with fierce and knowing women to dredge the dark weighty corners of life, those spaces overlooked and forgotten, but oozing despair and confusion into an otherwise brilliant space. Here is something I learned this week.

I was a kid who loved to travel. My parents have the upholstery stains and stories to prove it. Because I was a kid who also puked at the slightest motion. From the time I could eat solid food, I regurgitated on every roadway in southern Nova Scotia. In the days when you could toss your kids in the car without restraints, my parents invested in a car seat so I could sit high and look out the front window. That brought some relief for both puker and the cleanup crew, until I grew some more.  I was outgrowing my nervous system as well as the carseat, making me even more sensitive to motion, more resistant to change. Why was I outgrowing my nervous system? My theory is it got shorted out in very early childhood, a rambuctious incessantly curious and loud kid born at a time when children were to be seen and not heard, into a family deeply reliant on quiet, calm, and what would the neighbors think of such a wild unruly child. As I shrunk to fit in, my system to acquire and act shrunk with me. Information became unwanted, capacity to process slowly shut down. By the time I was 7 or 8 I could barely leave the driveway without the tell-tale misery starting to surface: the pressure in my forehead, churning in my gut, and the overwhelming fear of being trapped in a moving car with nowhere to go if the eruption couldn’t be swallowed down. The joy of travel became lost in the despair of not being able to control the sensations, not being able to see the sights outside the window or play board games or enjoy the radio or even have a conversation, able to do nothing but think about not getting sick and making a mess.  I would close my eyes and pray, and even then, inevitably, the pressure would build to choking and with the precision of a race car driver my father would angle off to the side of the road and I would vault out of the door to heave into the ditch.

Over time I learned to control my carsickness, a combination of medication, herbal remedies, relaxation and eye tricks to calm my nervous system and stomach that has allowed me to drive, ride shotgun in cars, and take public transit without tossing my cookies. It also became apparent that while I could board a plane, train or automobile, I was still carsick in my life, just trying to get through the moment, then the next, then the next, without making a mess. For years it seemed to serve me, but when, as a writer, I found myself suddenly without words or the desire to find them, I finally allowed that something was not serving me in the life I was choosing to live.  Trying to get through meant I was missing moment after moment of beautiful experiences. Trying not to make a mess meant I would try nothing new, never take a risk, would never allow myself to write anything that didn’t come out finished the first time.  I could no longer live in a life small enough to include ‘getting through’ and exclude ‘messes’; I needed to let go and allow myself to live, feel and do in every minute, choosing all the way. I needed to allow myself to make messes, and if the results didn’t serve me, heave them away. Heave-ho, like a sailor off on a new adventure. Choose, always choose what serves in the moment.  Choice rewired.