Invincible Summer

The recording of my thoughts about THE GREAT INTEGRATION has taken so much longer than planned. The three weeks of winter break didn’t leave mental space or time to write reflectively. It rarely left time to hold a thought long enough between requests for snacks or play time. That’s okay. Those three weeks were important for different reasons. But now, my attention span is returning. And I want to talk about why we often DON’T self-integrate. Or at least, why I haven’t. I’m slow to thinking, processing, writing. But even slower to sharing. My introvert self can find it one step too far to also have to talk about what I’m thinking about, even if I’m often thinking in social media post-style. I’ll think: oh! I want to share this! But often something else is needed from me at that moment and when time does again become available, I’m tired. And the idea of thoughtfully articulating what I originally meant to say is very easy to dismiss as no longer necessary. the ginkgos of 2022 were exc

2022 was the first year I got to coach and be coached for a whole year. As a result, I grew so much. I was rich with incredible coaches! All gleaned from my certification program through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (or iPEC), fellow companions also learning the skills and mindsets of coaching for beautiful purposes.  Today I want to talk about two specific ways I grew through being coached in 2022:  I worry less. While anxiety certainly still comes looking for me, my relationship with worry is changing for the better. A whole lot of that comes from learning how much power I have in my choices. Just the belief that I have the power to make a choice at all in a situation is huge. But even more meaningful is understanding that I actually have the power to choose my mindset, and whether or not to believe the thoughts I’m thinking or feelings I’m feeling. I can zoom out a bit and see them for what they are, and they are not always capital T Truth. And that I can

Beatrix (who turns four next month) loves to hear and tell stories about when she was a baby. She loves to make reference to something that happened three months ago as “back when I was a baby.” She’s constantly taking in new data about the world and naturally integrating it into her holistic understanding of herself.  I remember doing that too as a child. Of being fascinated by my personal history and having a crystal clear picture of it. I lost that somewhere along the way, in the amassing of so many experiences, in the exponential-ization of my life. At times I felt I could keep a handle on it through journaling. The years when I didn’t journal feel lost to me in a way. And then I lost the sense of permission to look at my whole life and call it mine, or be able to explain it to myself.  She recently grabbed my phone to take photos and now I have a treasure collection of things she deemed photo-worthy, including her cute little fox sock So this very intentional integration has felt

A lot of people lost someone, or several someones, dear to them in 2022. It was the year my dad’s journey with Alzheimer’s came to an end. And if you’d been touched by that or any other such long-lasting, debilitating disease you know there’s a certain amount of relief on the other side of it. To know your loved one no longer is encased in something no one would willingly choose for themself, no longer lost from themself, is to experience wave after wave of relief right there in the middle of grief.  Even after the thread of a story was impossible to hold onto, he still loved to read One of my favorites from the baby days of Beatrix I lost my mother to a long-lasting, debilitating disease twenty-six years ago at age twenty-one. (yes, yes, do the math: I either look young or old for my age depending on how much sleep I’ve been allowed lately). And that grief experience also came with relief but I didn’t have any of the right tools to be okay with that relief. I only felt guilty and supe

At the beginning of 2022 I chose a word for the year, inspired by others who did the same. I wrote it in a journal and mostly forgot about it until the fall. But it worked its magic in the background. My word for the year was INTEGRATION.  I first learned about self-integration in my late twenties when I was also first discovering the transformative power of therapy. Loosely it means seeing all the parts of yourself and your personal history as part of the whole story of you. Being intentional about integration for me has meant being honest with myself about what I want to keep and what I no longer want to carry from previous parts of my life.  2022 had so much beauty and love and positive growth in it for me. But it was also the most challenging year of my life I think, at least of the last two decades. I know I’m not alone in that – I’ve heard from so many friends and family and coaching clients about how the sheer accumulation of challenges in our post-2020 world have taken an extra

In 48 hours this week I bought, devoured, and finished Liz Strout's newest novel, Lucy by the Sea. To say it is relative to my interests is the understatement of 2022. Like my own novel currently in search of a publishing home, Lucy by the Sea is set in early pandemic days. It's so strange to read about what is already a period piece, less than a toddler's life ago. Depressing. Inspiring. Reminding really - I'm not alone in blocking out certain memories from that period, even having placed the last third of my own novel there. Each revision brought it back fresh, and that was not always a welcome experience.  There's much to mourn with Lucy in this gorgeous book by Strout. But I also leave feeling a new appreciation for all of us. The resiliency we've had to dig so deep for, the humanity we've held onto amid such painful, isolating, confusing, and divisive times. The tiny steps we each took to keep going, to stay connected to loved ones, to hold onto our dr