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  “Attention is the Beginning of Devotion” - Mary Oliver   My husband and I spent the latter half of 2020 starting our days off with a Mary Oliver poem. We slowly worked our way through Devotions, a compilation of her work, while we sipped on our morning coffees and I couldn’t help but give Sophie little pieces of my toast.    One of the themes that pulses through Ms. Oliver’s work (I will resist calling her Mary, though I almost feel like she is an old friend or long lost soul mentor) is closeness to life. Her devotion to the natural world reverberates through every word, line, and metaphor, and this devotion is grounded in her ability to pay [...]

  People pleasing is a hallmark symptom of being trapped in the Good Girl energy.    If you have been following my writing for a while now, you are probably well-aware of the detriments of chronic people pleasing.    Losing your sense of self, and your connection with your own desires and needs. Never feeling present in your relationships.  Feeling like a chameleon, who slightly morphs and shifts based upon who you’re around.  Not being able to show up as your authentic self.  Despite having friends, never feeling fully seen or heard.    I could go on.    But, people pleasing is only an effective strategy as long as you’re good at it.    And what makes someone good at [...]

  Last week in my coaching mentorship, I learned a new word. I have to say, I derive a very specific type of joy from learning a new word. It’s as if a concept that once seemed amorphous and difficult to grasp suddenly has been given shape and gravity.    Has become more real.    Like, “Oh there is a word for that thing!”   The word that I learned is arational, and it speaks so clearly to my journey and the work that I do in the world.    For many years, I hungered for a more poetic and soulful life, a life rich with meaning and magic. Part of the reason that it felt difficult and fairly consistently [...]

  A few weeks ago, I decided to embark upon an experimental journey: taking a bit of a social media hiatus.    When I started tapping my paper planner, expecting it to burst to life and give me news like my phone does, I knew it was high time for a break...   Now as a person with a small business, stepping away from social media, even for a limited time, can be seen as dangerous. What if I become irrelevant? Lose followers? How will people find me?    And yet the call was there and I knew that I needed to heed it.    I have been posting regularly for years. What I had discovered happening more often in [...]

For a long time, I took my inner voice for granted.   It was just there; I never stopped to ponder where it came from or what it was telling me.    It was me and I was it.    I feel like this is the case for many of us. There is no separation between ourselves and our inner voice. There is also no separation between our inner voice and the truth.    So often, we believe our own thoughts 100%. We are certain that they are telling us the truth, but that’s not always the case.    My inner voice used to be critical and self-conscious, with a tendency to be controlling and judgmental, both of myself and [...]

“Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke -   A couple of weeks ago in The Dancing Wild, we explored dance as expression and embodied storytelling through the theme of SPEAK YOUR TRUTH.    Speak your truth has become quite a popular saying over the past few years...but what does it mean, really?    When approached through the lens of the Tyrant King, it can be quite monolithic. You’re either speaking your truth or not. Yes [...]

  “Do you ever feel like a bit of a chameleon?”   I remember my coach Lianne Raymond asking me this several years ago.    I froze. My eyes went wide.    “Yes…,” I half-exclaimed, half-whispered.    How did she know?!?   I suddenly felt both seen and exposed. One part of me breathed a sigh of relief, while another part wanted to duck for cover.   After several years of coaching women through the portal from Good Girl to Wise & Wild Woman I now know how familiar this chameleon tendency is, but often, we don’t talk about it or name it.    Chameleons are amazing creatures. They are able to change the color of their scales in order [...]

  When I first started teaching Qoya in 2017, there was one particular aspect that was difficult for me to let go of: GIVING PRAISE.    I would find myself saying “Beautiful!” and issuing mini celebrations throughout the class as I would catch women moving freely. It was so beautiful; I just couldn’t contain myself!   Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes it can be deeply nourishing to be praised and celebrated. It can remind us that it is safe to be seen in our light.    And yet, one of the things that intuitively drew me to Qoya, was the lack thereof.    Because there is no way to do Qoya wrong, there is no criticism or correction.    [...]

  Once we begin to see these patterns of the Good Girl, the Rebel, and the Tyrant King, how do we dismantle them to find the wildness that we truly long for?    The Good Girl believes that perfectionism and performance is the way to get out of the cage. If only she could finally be good enough and have everything “just so”, then she can relax and feel more free.    The Rebel believes that fighting is the way out of the cage. But in her efforts to dethrone the Tyrant King, she often serves to further entrench him by utilizing the very strategies that she learned from him.    We cannot utilize what the Tyrant King has taught [...]

The Tyrant King: The Energy that Keeps us Trapped Alas we have made it to the crux of what forms the inner cage that many of us long to escape without being able to name it: The Tyrant King.  We’ve now met the Good Girl and the Rebel, which we can look at as the feminine split in two: good/bad, light/dark, virgin/whore. When our feminine energy is trapped in this either/or pattern, there is never room for the wholeness or the wildness or the freedom that we most long for. We are divided from ourselves and a piece of us is invariably exiled, whether that be our power or our tenderness (as an example).  But where does this pattern come [...]