7 Things to Practice to Embrace My 7-year-old Self I recently completed my 49th trip around the sun. For those who like to play with numbers (as I do), it’s my “7 squared” birthday. Remember being a 7-year-old kid? I feel like it’s that time of life when you can just soak in the full glory of the world. You’re in the prime of childhood, mastering skills like reading, ‘rithmatic, and riding bikes. Hard times come in the form of scraped knees; things that can be repaired by band-aids. No one can stop you from taking on the world, at Read more

Letting Go (With a Tribute to Mary Oliver) Summer is fleeting. Last night I felt a chill that had an all too familiar crispness to it. The couple sitting next to my partner and I at the brewery remarked on the changing alchemy of light and air. I’m conflicted by these changes. There is a part of me that is looking forward to the coziness of cooler months, curled up under a blanket with my knitting, with a cup of hot tea by my side. At the same time, it’s all coming at me so very fast. Summer, this year, Read more

Changing the Geometry of Success What if we looked at changing the geometry of success? Look up the word “success” in the dictionary, and you’ll find some version of the following definition:  The accomplishment or achievement of one’s goals. The favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors. These definitions frustrate me, because they imply that success is linear. Going back to high school geometry, I’d say that success as it is defined above would be categorized as a line segment. You have a starting point when you set a goal. You have an endpoint when you achieve it. You’re Read more

Opt Out of the Rat Race: 10 Simple Ways to Reduce Consumption, Save Money, & Build Community Raise your hand if you’ve worried about your finances in the past year. If you didn’t raise your hand, that’s great! As Forrest Gump would say - one less thing. However, I’m betting that a lot of people reading this did raise their hand. We’re hearing a lot right now about the economy. Prices of just about everything have increased, and many of us, myself included, are itching to get out and experience life, especially after the past few years of anxiety and Read more

Radical & Revolutionary: Looking to Nature for the Answers Often these days, when I tune in to news reports or listen to the ongoing hum of our culture, I find myself overwhelmed. Everywhere we look we are presented with challenges. They surround us in the world in the form of climate change, inequity, social injustices. They fill up our inner lives with doubts about our self-worth, fitting in, and having enough. We look down at our phones and check in with Google to try to find the answers, to heal ourselves and the world in which we live. What if Read more

Three Gifts: How spending time in the natural world impacts our well-being So many voices that enter my world these days are expressing the same basic sentiment: spending time in the natural world has a positive impact on our lives and well-being. I experience this myself, whether I’m sitting on my porch listening to birds, walking around the block looking for signs of spring, or hiking in the mountains inhaling the scent of the balsam trees. Being outside calms me, helps me to sort through my thoughts, and just generally brings on feelings of happiness and contentment. I’m curious about Read more

Challenge accepted, a first step to hiking the Appalachian Trail The summer before my 40th birthday I decided to attempt a 105-mile hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail. The Appalachian Trail is 2,190 miles long. With an average of 2,000 steps/mile, that’s approximately 4.4 million steps. A little daunting and overwhelming to say the least.  I often feel the same way about the rest of this wide, wonderful, crazy world we live in. There are a lot of struggles and issues being experienced by all living things, human and non-human alike. When I scroll through the never-ending newsreel of catastrophes, Read more