Introducing affirMAYtions
Spring is a time for rebirth and renewal, fresh nourishment and new starts.
The garden of the earth thrives on life-giving rain and rich soil; the garden of your soul needs quiet moments, inspiration, and affirmation.
Or, as I like to say, affirMAYtions!
Please join me for 31 days of reflection, affirmation, and encouragement – delivered right to your inbox each morning, beginning May 1.
Each day I’ll send you an e-mail – a love letter of sorts – that includes my wishes and hope for you on a series of topics. You can sit with the messages any time of day you’re compelled to get contemplative, whether that’s when you first wake up, during the still of the evening, or for a much-needed midday break.
Sign up is easy… click the button below to check out and, starting May 1, you’ll find me in your inbox.
You can also send gift subscriptions to a friend or special loved one. (affirMAYtions make for a great Mother’s Day surprise!) Just check the gift box and note the recipient’s e-mail address!
Thanks for joining me for this special month. May each day’s words bring you a sense of peace.
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A sporadic love letter from me to you with insights, happenings, homework, and the occasional kick in the pants.
Newsletter
You ever swear something off and then, within minutes or hours, you find yourself doing the damn thing – almost against your will?
Like you’re being compelled to it by some overpowering force, and even as your mind shouts “Nooooo” the body goes there anyway, as if on autopilot?
And then you feel the shame of not being stronger, more disciplined, more committed to the life you say you want?
Alcohol was like that for me before I quit drinking.
My phone and social media are like that for me now.
Last night I listened to a speaker talk about detoxing from unhealthy habits as a strategy for stress reduction – Alcohol! Caffeine! Digital! – and I immediately saw myself. So when I went to bed, I resolved that I wouldn’t reach for my phone first thing in the morning, and that I’d go easy on the coffee.
And yet, here I am, nearly three hours and three cups later, losing my Saturday morning online.
Something needs to change.
*I* need to change.
Contemplating this takes me back to the year I quit drinking. After a decade of trying – and failing – to moderate my alcohol consumption (wine on weekends only, for example, or if I had worked out that day, or just two glasses instead of four), I tried for a Dry January.
I white knuckled three miserable days before giving in to the sweet relief. So much shame because of so little control.
That’s where I find myself today with the digital experience.
Instagram and Facebook and Threads and LinkedIn and Wordle and Dots have me hooked. The more my system craves the dopamine hit of information, entertainment and engagement, the farther away I move from my own inner guidance. In looking outside myself for spark, my own seems to have disappeared; my attention span is shot; my thoughts scattered and chaotic; my time reservoir sucked dry.
Something needs to change.
*I* need to change.
The good news is that I’m empowered to do so. I have a choice to make, I just have to be brave enough to make it.
Still, it feels fraught. Stepping off a platform – however temporarily – that one has constructed over time is a tricky idea. Will they forget me? Will be become irrelevant?
The irony is that my voice on the internet has become increasingly forgettable and irrelevant over the last few years as distractions have diluted my contributions to the space.
What used to be an outlet for me and an offering to others has lost a good part of its focus, depth, and purpose.
I’ve directed my energy and intention elsewhere and it shows.
And that’s okay! That’s what evolution can look like, and evolution is a good thing. Social media just doesn’t feel like the place where I make my biggest impact these days.
So, somewhat impulsively, I am deciding to take a li’l break. Could be a day or a week or a month. Could be indefinite. Could be that, over time, I’ll sporadically pop in and pop out without the act holding so much energy. Maybe I’ll return with renewed purpose. Maybe I won’t.
Who knows?
Over the last few years I’ve watched public-facing friends struggle with the same questions. They’ve gone dark, they’ve returned, they’ve fumbled and stumbled their way toward levels of engagement (or disengagement) that work best for them at a given point in time. I’ve heard their fears and frustrations and FOMOs, but I’ve never heard a single regret for the time they reclaimed.
I offer all this not as an announcement of a departure, or because I expected to be missed as I refocus myself offline, or even as an attempt at holding myself accountable to the intention – but because there is great value in sharing with one another the thought processes and points of view that inform decision-making.
Maybe you’re feeling burned out, too?
Maybe something needs to change?
Maybe *you* need to change?
Or maybe you don’t. Only you can say.
All I know is that I’ve been thinking about taking this step for a good long time… I’m grateful for Saturday morning impulsivity… and I’m optimistically curious about what’s to be discovered on the other side.
Maybe I’ll see you there. 😊 ... See MoreSee Less
Every once in a while, I’ll look back through old posts and try to recall what was going on in my life when I wrote them.
This one dates back eight years and I can pinpoint precisely what prompted it: The angst that accompanies the often agonizing choice to end a marriage.
At that point in time, I’d spent more than 18 months trying to work through the question of, “What do you do when you’re no longer loved?”
I cried about it, of course. Raged about it. Internalized a sense of unworthiness and rejection that still rides along like a pebble in me shoe. (Usually that tiny pebble is negligible, an annoyance more than anything, but when I get tripped up and land on it just so, it has the potential to drop me.)
For 18 months I’d sat in the space of Do I Stay or Go I go. My inner knowing just didn’t know what to do. Neither did my husband’s. So I tried to turn the question over – to whom I wasn’t entirely sure – in hopes it wouldn’t keep turning me inside out.
And one day, maybe five weeks later, the clearest answer came: Go.
Go in grace and in confidence and in peace.
Go with dignity and the knowledge that your efforts to salvage were true.
Go in new beginnings.
It felt ironic that choosing to end the marriage was what softened my frayed and ragged edges; I had expected only reunion could do that.
The lesson?
Clarity of soul and openness to change beats clinging to a particular outcome.
If you’re in the middle of a whirling storm of distress and discernment, I urge you to stay with yourself as long as it takes.
Clarity will find you. ✨ ... See MoreSee Less
I couldn’t send this to my husband fast enough 👏 ... See MoreSee Less