​I haven’t written for a while.  I’ve been afraid.  Afraid of missing the mark, of not writing the most wonderful, influential blog post ever. Afraid that the outcome will in no way resemble the spark in my mind that prompted me to write.  Afraid that the only reason I write is to get outside approval, the pat on the head from others that tells me I’m worthy.
 
 So I’ve kept all the sparks to myself, which means they were never written down, never shared, never allowed to burst into the all-consuming flame that gives both heat and light to myself and others.  As Anne Lamott says, “Perfectionism is like held breath.” The fire died for lack of oxygen.
 
The other reason I haven’t written is that I often find myself being bored with my thoughts, or at least less enamored with them. I’ve thought them too many times before.
 
I’ve read many wonderful quotes about thoughts recently.  For example:

• Reality is so much more delicious than our thoughts about it – Judson Brewer
• Nothing can be more life changing than an escape from your own perceptions – Roger Housden 
• The important thing is not to think much, but to love much – Teresa of Avila

 
My mind is a both a wondrous playground and a deep, dark, scary place of doom. My inner world is rich with whimsy.  I love language, being able to convey subtle feelings and emotions with metaphor.  I love reading the magical words that others have woven into stunning tapestries that now hang in my mind.  I love thinking about how my brain works, how the crazy lines on a page get absorbed through my eyes into pulses of energy and neurochemicals that somehow result in meaning-making.  

​But my inner world can also resemble a little shop of horrors.  I ruminate, I scheme, I catastrophize.  I hold grudges, ignore pain, and my inner critic ravenously devours anything that remotely resembles pride, self-satisfaction or contentment. I spend most of my energy planning and preparing so that future moments will be easier, while ignoring the peace and ease that exist in the present moment.  It’s become very tiring.  I’ve watched all the re-runs, know all the endings, and yet I keep hitting the same “play” button, trying to prevent the next “bad” thing from happening.
 
Many years ago, a teacher shared one of those pithy statements:
 
            When the wanted and the unwanted are equally welcome, that’s enlightenment.
 
 “Ah yes,” I nodded in what I hoped would appear as understanding.  But I didn’t get it.  In my gut I remained committed to trying harder to control my world so that it would only contain “the wanted.”  

I’ve been listening to podcasts and reading a lot lately about the science of the brain and evolutionary psychology.  To oversimplify, evolution did not favor those ancestors who could not quickly sort the world into friend/foe or safe/threat. And so, our primitive brains learned this binary way of being in which things are either black or white.  And it takes the amygdala (the “reptilian brain”) only 1/10 of a second to do the labeling.  Wow, how do you get out in front of that ancient “either/or” with an erudite “both/and?”
 
You don’t.  So, once the labeling has taken place, how do you become comfortable what’s been labeled as “unwanted?”  You don’t.
 
It isn’t a matter of becoming comfortable at all. It’s about being so totally “with” the discomfort that there’s no need to push it away.  Huh?
 
Is it possible to inhabit both the wondrous playground and the deep dark scary place of doom with equal curiosity, with equal tenderness?  Can I live in a world that is a continuous flow between meaning and chaos?  Wanted and unwanted?  Wondrous and scary?  The word “paradox” seems to be showing up everywhere for me these days, and I guess that’s the simple label I’m going to use in order to not think too much about both/and. 
 
​Or better yet, “One-ing,” the term used by the 14thcentury Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich describes, the union of Soul with Divine, Self with Other, me and everything else.   “By one-ing, it is made endlessly holy.”  Holy, not comfortable.  “One-ing” is whimsical, poetic.  And as Krista Tippett says, “A poetic mindset is more useful than a fact-based or argument-based approach.”

And so I’ll call on the poet Rilke to have the last word:

If you look closely, you can see Venus to the left of Moon (not bad for an iPhone photo). Yes, they are actually millions of miles apart, but extending my arm I covered both of them with my thumb. Earlier, in the dark sky just beginning to hint at the possibility of dawn, I imagined them having a conversation. 

"Oh Moon!" cries the Sparkly One. "You have spilled all your lovely light! Your beautiful bowl is now more than half empty! You must right yourself before you lose another drop!" 

"Hush, you glittering Wanderer," says Moon. She knows that Venus is not like the other stars, fixed in their travels across the sky. "It is my way. I travel the same path around the blue-green orb below us. For half of that journey, I fill my bowl with light from that distant Golden Lantern until I can hold no more. For the other half, I empty it until not a single glimmer remains. And so it has always been--filling, emptying, filling, emptying. And some--but not all--of those Beings down below on the blue-green orb watch me. They marvel as those beautiful blue pools rise and fall as I tug on them. They plant their seeds according to my light, the seeds feeling their own tug away from darkness. Female Beings follow their own cycles, as their bodies and blood feel the tug too. But these days, fewer and fewer of them honor me with a even a glance my way."

The Sparkly One sighs. "Well, dear Friend. I honor you. You are truly beautiful this morning. I will sparkle with all my might, as close to you as I can get, so that the Beings down below cannot help but notice us both."
​
"Thank you," says Moon. "You are a true friend. And you too are beautiful in your own sparkly way. I know we will drift apart soon, but I will look for you at dawn and dusk, when the Golden Lantern's light is dim. And perhaps we will be noticed by one or two Beings on the blue-green orb. It will be enough."

Donna Bunten © 2019

​When someone asks you this, you probably think of a story from your childhood, a book with pretty illustrations that someone read to you.  Or one of Disney’s many movies (Bambi?  Mary Poppins?  I’m showing my age…)  Maybe it was a Greek myth (winter is the result of Demeter’s grief over the loss of her daughter Persephone).  Or La Llorna, the Weeping Woman from the Southwest, who drowned her children in a fit of rage and now her wails are heard in the wind or along rivers at night. What about the Scottish tale of the man who stole the selkie’s skin and thus made the seal-woman his wife?  How about the Star Wars or Marvel comics never-ending sagas? 

​Humans love stories. Not only are we tool-makers—we are storytellers.  Which brings me to another question: How many of us are aware of the stories we are currently starring in?  One of my own favorites is the one in which I’m like Cassandra, the woman who was given the gift of seeing the future but because she was also cursed, no one believed her prophesies. “If people had only done what I told them to do, this bad thing wouldn’t have happened.  But no-ooooo, they wouldn’t listen to me.”  

​Pause for a moment and think of your own story.  The one where it’s your mother’s fault that you’ve never found the love of your life. Or because your father made you get a job instead of going to college, you could never pursue your true passion and have never amounted to much.  Or “I have to stay stuck in this marriage-job-house because of X-Y-Z.” Or, “I’ll never be good enough, because my older brother got everything he wanted.”

​It’s not that there isn’t some truth to the details, although the results might be surprising if we investigated the facts.  And some stories are so deep and dark that we need a good therapist to help us unravel them.
 
But there are lots of little stories running in our heads all the time that create a fair amount of suffering in our lives.  Why?  Where do they come from?

​My favorite explanation comes from a Deepak Chopra novel:  

​Humans really don’t like uncertainty.  We want to know, to predict, to have an explanation—it’s a good survival strategy. We want to know when to plant crops, or to understand that someone got sick after eating this plant so we don’t do it again.  We want someone to read us a good bedtime story so we can forget about the monster under the bed. 

​But let’s examine a popular saying:  “Everything happens for a reason.” We need to believe this, because otherwise we would be left with the yucky feeling that this particular experience produced.  If we can somehow believe that this unpleasant event had a purpose, that it wasn’t just a random coming-together of events that have nothing to do with us personally, then we don’t have to feel yucky and fearful that it might happen again.

​So, we create stories to explain things, because any explanation is better than the deep, dark, scary place of uncertainty.  Then before we know it, we believe the story—which might eventually evolve into a nightmare—and we keep telling it over and over, letting it control us without ever remembering that we’re the ones who made it up in the first place.

​Whew.  What funny creatures we are.
 
What if we could stop telling the story?

​I’ve had fun lately with a little awareness trick.  Say, for example, someone says something to me that triggers my “I’m-not-good-enough story.”  I feel my chest tightening, my jaw getting hard, and I hear myself thinking “FINE.  I’ll just pull in my sails and never show YOU anything about myself EVER AGAIN.”  And then I catch myself and think, “Ohhhhhh, THIS is the part in my story where I become small and resentful and passive aggressive.  I’ve seen this episode a b-zillion times before.”  It makes me chuckle and creates just enough separation between me and my story that the situation loses its energy.  I might actually be able to be curious about the whole scene and try rewriting it.  “What did this person actually say?  Was it really about me personally?  What’s actually true?” Or I might quickly lose interest in it, and I can move on to whatever is now happening in this moment without bringing along that negative charge from an experience that is rapidly receding into the past.  

​So now the challenge gets a little harder.  Can we allow for the possibility that our beliefs and opinions are also stories that we made up to fill in the void of uncertainty?  “What?!” you cry.  “My beliefs and opinions define me, help me navigate through the world, help me take a stand!”   True, but if we’re too rigidly attached to this particular compass that we’ve created, we suffer because we want everyone else to follow the same course.  

​One of my favorite quotes (from the Buddha through Jack Kornfield) is, “People with opinions just go around bothering one another.”  Watch how many times you or others are bothered  during the day by opinions.

What if you could do this, right here, right now with just one little belief, one simple story? Trust me—you won’t disappear in a puff of smoke if you look with curiosity and kindness at one tiny drama and ask, “Is it true?  What would I have to feel if I just dropped it?” 
 
I encourage you to try it, and let me know how it goes.  (And yes, this post too is a story . . . )

Donna

Donna Bunten © 2018

​It is mid-February.  A beautiful afternoon, late winter/early spring.  Warm in the sun, chilly in the shade.  I am planting pansies, seeing green spears of daffodil leaves thrusting up towards the light, listening to the robins practicing their spring songs.  The chorus frogs are warming up for a raucous evening of courtship in the pasture. 

​I think about the turning of the Wheel of the Year.  I carry the planter box of pansies to the front porch and take down the Christmas wreath.  I trim last summer’s flower stalks and empty seed pods from the anise hyssop and discover the new rosettes of leaves forming at the base of the dried stems.  Soon the barn swallows will arrive, building new nests under the eaves next to last year’s crumbling bowls of mud.  The days grow longer as the northern hemisphere swings back towards the light.

​My thoughts turn to the Wheel of Life.  Seven years ago on the 15th, my mother died.  My 60th birthday will arrive in March.  Two friends are facing illnesses with short-term horizons.  My great-niece will have her first birthday in April.  Every year the date on the calendar comes and goes when I will breathe my last, but that date is not yet known to me.
 
I think back to other springtimes, and one vivid memory unfurls in my mind’s eye... .

I am seven.  It is a March evening, a few weeks after my birthday.  I have escaped outside away from whatever Mom’s “drama du jour” is.  I break off a whip from the weeping willow tree and try to interest the two kittens.  They are the lucky ones who weren’t drowned in the bucket out back.  "We can only keep a couple," my dad said, after we discovered the litter in the old cardboard box under the pyracantha bush.  Now the two pounce, feign indifference, paw the “snake,” roll on it, and then chase each other across the greening grass.  I wander off.

​The wind is blowing, but it has settled into a strong breeze, allowing the stinging sands to settle out of the sky.  Earlier in the day, It was hard to be out at recess on the bare playground.  We hung onto the tormented elm trees, hopping first on one leg, then the other in our white anklets and plaid skirts, trying to jump over the hissing waves.

​The uneven heating of the atmosphere above the desert Southwest causes the spring gales, cool fresh mornings giving way to brown hazy skies and grit in your teeth and eyes.  But now the wind is dying down, and I wander back behind the hedge to the apricot tree by the old rotting woodpile. 

​The ground is paved with pink petals.  The old tree is trying once again to bear fruit.  Every year it brings forth a cloud of blossoms, only to be nipped by a late frost or beaten by summer hail storms.  I grab the gnarled wood of the lowest branch and hoist myself up while breathing in the tree’s delicate perfume.  I suppose its purpose is to attract pollinators, but the scent lights up my own young neural pathways:  “SPRING.” 

​The gray ridges are rough on my bare arms as I lean on the sturdy limbs and find an even higher foothold, going up and up until I’m at the dizzying height of 12 feet above the ground.  The wind rises, and I am sailing, clinging to the mast of my ship as it rides the waves through the pink storm of petals.  I hum a song that I just made up, intoxicated by the smell and feel of the living tree dancing in the current of rushing air.

​Every day I walk out into the world to be dazzled, then to be reflective.--Mary Oliver

​I sit on my patio, on a perfect June day, wondering how to explain what nature journaling is and why I encourage you to try it.
 
I am not in a wilderness, not on a mountain top, not by a rushing river.  I can easily hear the four-lane highway a half-mile away, and I see the rooftops of my neighbors’ houses and sheds.  I sit on a comfy patio chair, with my iPhone playing some gentle music, while I tap-tap-tap the keys of my laptop.

Yet Nature is all around me.  The soft breeze dances with the branches of the dwarf apple trees.  The barn swallows jibber-jabber as they fly to and from the multiple nests under the eaves of our house.  A large shadow crosses the lawn, followed by a raspy croak as a raven speeds over my yard on some business known only to her.  A little white-crowned sparrow descends into the bird bath, sending up fountains of water droplets as he flutters and splashes, followed by such serious preening and grooming on the trellis.

All I have to do is pay attention.  No binoculars, no field guides, just the sense organs I was born with:  eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin.  I like to bring a journal because I like to write (more about that later), but it’s not necessary.  Nature journaling starts with “being”, not “doing,” with awareness, curiosity, and a willingness to be still for a short period.

There’s lots of research available these days about how being in Nature slows us down, helps us connect with our bodies and the energy of Nature all around us, which is larger than our immediate personal dramas—what Eckhart Tolle calls, “the little me.”  That’s not to say that our dramas are without significance, but who can remember the drama they were involved in on this date 5 years ago? Or maybe even 5 days ago?

People have been writing about the benefits of Nature ever since we began to feel separate from it.  Now there’s even something called “forest bathing,” a term coined in Japan in the 1980s.  It’s actually covered by insurance there!   It is reported that “People on nature walks also tend to engage in “less rumination, or negative self-referential overthinking, which has been correlated with depression.”  And in the fields of neuroscience and psychology, these benefits are being quantified.  They’re measuring stress hormones and brain waves—actual physiological responses in the body—that show how being in Nature affects us.  We are more calm, less anxious, more creative, and we can solve problems better.   Even a 25-minute walk makes a measurable difference. 

And then our mammalian brain developed as a result of the need to connect with our mothers and others in our tribe (relationship, emotions, empathy).  Finally, our “thinking” minds came along, with our awareness of past/future, our memories, making meaning through stories. Some of these stories support us, some don’t (many are just “negative self-referential overthinking”).  But they all generate a kind of energy.   And a lot of the energy created by our minds is stored in the body.  Often we’re not even aware of our bodies these days—it’s like our big head just rides around on this body that can be very inconvenient.  How often do you spend hours bent over your phone or computer and don’t even realize you have to go to the bathroom?

​Many of us write in journals.  And if you’re like me, sometimes the entries become just another version of the same story.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that—it always helps “the little me” to put the pen to the page and spill out whatever is on my mind.  But I am so much more than “the little me.”

​Nature journaling helps me connect with the joy of being 100% my authentic self.  I do it for the sheer joy of it.  Sitting still, opening my senses, paying attention, I can practice beginner’s mind.  The act of writing pulls my body further into the experience—my hand is moving.  Writing the words causes me to pay more attention to detail, making my experience a full event.  It starts as sensory awareness in my body.  I move from being lost in worry about tomorrow’s dramas into an immediate sense of aliveness in this place, this moment, with simple observation and plain words.  Tom Brown, Jr., says, “A person without a past has never seen a tree, a mud puddle, or a blade of grass.  A person without a future is free of worries and fears and open to whatever may cross his/her path.”  Beginner’s mind.

​So, find a “sit spot” close by (maybe even out your window?).  Take your journal and favorite pen/pencil.  One other thing—your Inner Critic is not allowed to come with you.  If you feel her presence (for me, it’s tight shoulders and shallow breath), take a moment to picture that part of you in great detail. Imagine walking her back to the house or car, then kindly asking her to sit this one out.  Mentally close the door and come back to your spot.

​Get comfortable.  And just breathe deeply.  Your body will remember how to do this if you’ve forgotten.  You can start by inhaling for a count of 3, then exhaling for a count of 6.  Do this for several rounds.  Then let go.  Close your eyes if you want to.  Then see what you notice first.  A smell?  A sound?  On which side of your face do you feel the sun, or a breeze?  Keep noticing, just noticing.  When it feels right, pick up your pen and start writing.  Just describe what you are seeing, smelling, hearing.

​In nature journaling, we slow down and become aware of our surroundings using our bodies as sensing devices.  Then we follow that awareness to our emotions, noticing how we feel them in our bodies, and then we can notice the stories that follow.  Notice whatever memories, hopes, fears, and dreams arise, whatever sense of wonder or questions come up and continue writing, being aware of how the physical feelings, emotions, and stories are connected.  You are now noticing how your inner and outer landscapes are connected.  You don’t have a particular outcome or product in mind.  Just keep your hand moving.  Write until you feel “done”.

​In this alerted, awakened state, our stories rise from the unconscious to the conscious.  And here is where we can heal.  The past is past, but it may be influencing us in ways we’re not aware of.  

​What if we could see a past event with fresh eyes, like the person with no past seeing a blade of grass for the first time?  What if we allowed for the possibility that things were not what they seemed back then?  Maybe the story would lose its energy and not trigger us.  What if that energy was now available to us for other purposes?  Like a tree sheds leaves that once had a purpose but don’t now—the leaves drop and their nutrients are recycled into new fresh leaves the following season.

​One of my favorite images these days comes from Parker Palmer’s “A Hidden Wholeness.”  He writes that our soul is like a wild animal in the forest.  If you want to see a wild animal, you don’t go crashing and thrashing about in the woods.  You sit down quietly against a tree--listening, watching, and waiting for the animal to reveal itself when it feels safe.

​Nature journaling can provide that safe setting for the soul—or authentic self, or whatever name you give it—to appear.  If you’d like a companion to help you get started with your practice, give me a call.

 Sit Spot and the Art of Inner Tracking, R. Michael Trotta
 
Writing Down the Bones:  Freeing the Writer Within and
Wild Mind:  Living the Writer’s Life, Natalie Goldberg
 
The Wild Within:  Adventures in Nature and Animal Teachings, and
Tracking and the Art of Seeing:  How to Read Animal Tracks and Signs, Paul Rezendes
 
Tom Brown’s Field Guide:  Nature Observation and Tracking
 
Writing Wild:  Forming a Creative Partnership with Nature, Tina Welling
 
A Trail Through Leaves:  The Journal as a Path to Place, Little Things in a Big Country:  An Artist & Her Dog on the Rock Mountain Front, and A Life in Hand:  Creating the Illuminated Journal, all by Hannah Hinchman
 
Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing:  Meditation in Action, and The Zen of Seeing:  Seeing/Drawing as Meditation, Frederick Franck
 
Holdfast:  At Home in the Natural World, Kathleen Dean Moore

To stop the suffering, we want something to change.  But the reality is we can’t change anything that’s already happened or that hasn’t happened yet.  We can only make real changes in the present moment:  right here, right now.  And we have to be present in the present moment—not lost in a trip to the Lands of “If Only” and “What If.” 
 
One of the key ingredients for being present is feeling safe, safe in a relationship with someone who is nonjudgmental, who has no agenda about what we should or shouldn’t do, and who is receptive to who we are right in this moment.  If we’re lucky, we have a coach, good friend, or therapist who can create this safe environment for us, one in which we can remember who we are and explore choices that come from deep within our being. 
 
When we are present, we can also access and listen to all of our wisdom, which we often feel in our bodies.  It’s what we call “intuition” or “instinct.”  I’m sure you’ve already experienced this yourself.  How many times have you been in a situation that was hair-raising, or you had a gut reaction about something, or you suffered a broken heart?  Our language acknowledges that we live in the world as “embodied beings.”

​When we spend too much time in our heads, with this “negativity bias,” our ability to sense the messages from our hearts and guts gets dull.  We are cut off from the rest of the ways we experience this life.  But we can often recognize and label our emotions.  “I’m so angry about…” or “I feel really disappointed that….”  Our emotions can actually be messages from our “instinctive selves,” from those other brains and all of our other senses, and sometimes it’s hard for us to really feel or understand them.  We may even try to shut down our emotions.  We don’t realize that they are trying to give us important information about what action is needed right in this moment.  Maybe we need to set a boundary or let go of something.  We need to learn to listen to these messages and integrate these other “brains” so we can once again feel our whole, undivided being-ness. 
 
Experiencing our world with our whole bodies actually “re-wires” our brains by creating new neural pathways.  It's how we learn.  Just talking about something uses only certain aspects of our brains (mostly reason and language).  We need to have all our senses engaged, our whole bodies involved, and receive input from our hearts and guts in order to really shift existing patterns, beliefs, etc.  These old patterns and beliefs are things that may be keeping us from making the changes we want in our lives, to experience life from our own deep wisdom.
 
Can you imagine what that would feel like?  To put down some baggage you really don’t need to carry any longer?  To change your story from “If Only” and “What If” to “I Am?”

​We need to rediscover how to use all of our wisdom, to feel the emotional messages our bodies send us about what we’re actually experiencing right now. Then we need to allow that energy to move through us, make choices in this moment, take action or not, and then let the emotion and the energy go.  Horses know how to do this, it’s how they live.  They experience something, decide if it requires them to do something like run or just watch, and then they go back to grazing, right in this moment. 
 
In an equine-assisted coaching session, we spend time with a horse, just hanging out in the present moment.  Watching, sensing, feeling.  No judgment, no agenda.  Our bodies respond to this, because it’s what our bodies already know how to do—we just don’t usually let them.  We keep asking out bodies to travel in time, reliving things that aren’t happening now or that may never happen.  When we share presence with a horse, our brains begin to “re-wire” and we can take this new experience of feeling present back into to our daily lives. 
 
Sometimes the horse can reflect back to us when we’re not showing up as whole beings.  A horse may respond to something in us we thought was hidden, or that we’ve even forgotten about ourselves.  We may have an experience of trusting our gut reaction, or feeling our heart open.  When we feel this in our bodies, we again “re-wire” our brains to listen to other ways of knowing.  And then we can use this knowing to help us make  the choices that will result in change, change that will potentially end the cycle of suffering. 
 
When we feel present and safe, with the help of either an equine coach or a human coach, we can listen to all of our wisdom and make the choices that let us live our lives as the beautiful, undivided souls that we already are.  

​Imagine that!
 
Donna

​
Donna Bunten © 2017

Some of you may remember this story from a few years ago.  Thought I would dust if off and post it here:

​My sister gave me the ceramic Christmas tree the year I moved out of my parent’s house.  She gave it to me in the summer, and I stored it in its box until December when I celebrated my first Christmas in my own home.  I was 19.  Six years later the tree moved with me from Albuquerque to Olympia, Washington, from a condominium to a duplex, then to a house, and finally to the farm-lette where I live now almost 40 years later.

​It is a large tree for its kind, solid dark-green, lit from within by a long tubular bulb that ignites little pointed prisms of colored plastic.  My step-daughter likes to rearrange the points to make patterns out of the colors.

​For years the tree stood on my bedroom dresser, its muted glow reminiscent of the Santa and Snowman bubble lamps that used to light up the bedroom I shared as a child with my older sisters.   I would leave the tree lit all night, comforted by its familiar outline.   After the holidays were over, the tree went back in its box for another year. January nights were dark and cold by comparison.

One year I pulled the tree from its box into a world soon to be fragmented by my divorce.   The pain and anger of my husband annihilated everything about Christmas that year, except for the soothing light of my ceramic tree.  I put it up on the dresser and cried myself to sleep most nights wondering what would become of us.

​On New Year’s Day, I nestled the tree down into its cardboard box, packing it with the original crumpled sheets of newspapers from 1977.  And I wondered out loud, “What will my life be like the next time I unpack you?”  I took a scrap piece of paper and wrote myself a note: “I hope that the next time I see you I am joyful, authentic, independent, and aware.”  I folded the paper, put it in the box and taped it shut.

​The year passed.  My husband moved out, we divorced, I found a new job, new friends, a new life.   The day after Thanksgiving, I hauled the box in from the garage and unpacked the ceramic tree.  There I found my note, forgotten in the turmoil of the intervening months.  And I smiled, because I was joyful, authentic, independent, and aware.    

I had a Christmas gathering of girlfriends at my house that year.  I shared with them the story of “the magic Christmas tree box.”  And I gave them little slips of paper on which to write their own wishes for the coming year. Not wishes for material things, but aspirations that they could bring about for themselves by connecting with their hearts’ desires.    We folded the papers and sealed them with Christmas labels, and I put them in an envelope.  After New Year’s, I slipped the envelope in the box and packed up the tree.

​The following year we gathered again and I handed out the little notes to each friend.  Privately we read our aspirations for our lives and pondered what had transpired, which often wasn't quite what we expected.  And once again we wrote ourselves messages and sealed them away in the magic box until the next year.  We continued the tradition for several years. If a friend moved away, I mailed her wish to her in a Christmas card.

​A few years later, I remarried.  The ceramic tree found a new place in the house where I now live with my husband and two step-children.  The Christmas gatherings of girlfriends ended.  And I introduced my new family to the magic Christmas tree box.  I tried to explain to the kids how the magic works, that it isn’t like sending a letter to Santa Claus.  That it has more to do with believing something about yourself and creating the intention to experience that belief.   It isn’t a prayer--it’s an expression of faith that you already possess the qualities you need to achieve your dream.  Like Dorothy, you already have the ruby slippers—you just have to decide it’s time to go home. 

In recent years, I discovered the wisdom of horses, became a certified life coach, and started my own business.  With my clients, I co-create a relationship that allows both of us to rediscover and embrace our unique gifts and use them to experience life with joy and wonder.  And every year when I open the box and unpack the ceramic tree, I feel  the magic and power of aspiration, intention, and Christmas wishes.
​
I hope this story inspires you to start your own tradition of creating a Christmas wish, finding a magical place to store it, and trusting that next year you will see the results of your intention.  Remember:   Allow for the possibility that things are not what they seem.  

Donna

​Throughout my life, I have experienced feelings of inadequacy, of believing that somehow I was just not good enough. I thought if I tried hard to be the best at whatever I tackled and won the approval of others,  I could be happy.  But that external approval, the pat on the head, never seemed to last.  There was always one more thing to prove—THEN I would be happy.  The older I got, the harder it was to remember what I wanted, what gave me joy.  And I realized that lots of other people suffer from a lack of self-worth and are unable to remember their own heart-song. 

​Being present might seem hard sometimes, but it’s the best way to move from feeling stuck to becoming unstuck.  It’s the best place from which to make decisions about moving forward towards whatever goal you are trying to reach.   Being present helps you see when to take action and when to stay still, to discern which emotions are really yours and which ones might be someone else’s.
 
So maybe reconnecting to your own source of well-being sounds mysterious, unattainable, or even irrelevant.  How can coaching help?
 

​What Do I Do?
 
Everyone possesses their own ability to find their way towards whatever goal they seek.  That’s the fundamental belief in coaching: you come to a coaching session as a creative, resourceful, and whole human being.  YOU are the expert on your own experience, your own skills, your own voice, your own goals--not the coach. 
 
But often we can’t hear our own voice because it gets drowned out by the critics, both external and internal.  In order to hear your own creative and resourceful voice, you need a safe environment.  A safe space where you can discover, explore, and experiment without fretting about someone else’s agenda or judgment.  Where you can hear the song your heart has been singing all along.

​That’s what coaching is.  An effective coach won’t tell you what to do, won’t solve your problems, and won’t try to “fix” you.
 
When you hire me as your life coach, we will co-create a safe “container” together where YOU decide what’s important, what you want to achieve, and how you will get there.  I will listen beneath your stories for your gifts, your talents, your desires, for the things you used to be interested in before you were told you were no good at them.  I will remember the things that you say are important when you forget them.   I will remind you to breathe if things get difficult. I will ask you, “Is that true…” and “What if….” and “How will you…” and you can explore the scary edges of those possibilities.  You can be curious and experiment without the fear of being judged. 

​So What Is a Coaching Session Like? 
 
I will coach you in person, on the phone, or via Skype or FaceTime, so it doesn’t matter where you are physically located.  It will take a session or two for us to co-create a sense of connectedness and trust and to fully establish what you want to explore.  Then together we will create an agreement for our coaching relationship.

​I have my own style of connecting the dots of horse wisdom, spirituality, humor, neuroscience, and the natural world to help you see the wonder of it all and to feel creative and resourceful about your goals.  I emphasize breathing and paying attention to any messages that may be coming to you from your body—not just your mind, but also from your heart and gut.  And I will ask questions to see if there’s a different story in play, some unseen belief running in the background that’s preventing you from finding a new path forward.  There’s no right or wrong to it, no judgment about it—just the possibility that things are not quite what you think they are.  I listen and create a safe space for you, inviting you to be curious about it all--even the stuff that’s uncomfortable.
 

Whether we work together for a day or a year, you will have a companion on your journey back to what really matters to you, to the “you” who so often gets lost beneath the critical internal voices, the judgments of others, and just the overwhelming busy-ness of modern life.  
 
If this sounds like something you’d like to experience, give me a call.  We can set up a complementary session to explore your path back to the source of your well-being:  YOU

Donna

​How can I describe this swirling mass of experience in a string of words that I can share with you and leave tracks for myself so that I can rediscover it in moments of confusion? 
 
I guess I'll just start somewhere….hang in there with me and let’s see where it goes.
 
I’ve been listening to an on-line seminar about feminine mystics with Mirabai Starr.  The gist of it is that these women (Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Rabia) had a direct experience of the Divine, the Beloved, without the need for a religious structure, or permission from a male-dominated priesthood.   They experienced Love, with a capital “L”.  That sense of being outside of one’s small, personal story of woe, what Eckhart Tolle calls “the little ‘me’.”
 
Instead, they experienced this (from Hildegard):

​ 
This sings to me.  I see and feel it when the pasture glows in the evening light.  Oneness with nature.  It’s where we came from, who we are—but too often we forget.
 
I came across this D.H. Lawrence quote:

​What does it mean to be magically connected to the earth, to experience the Divine?  I keep searching for it, believing it to be “out there” or in the next good book.  But these women mystics experienced it from the inside out.  It was already theirs.  However it happened, they got out of their own way, they let go and voila!—they merged with All That Is.   John O’Dononue called it “a radical letting-alone of yourself.”
 
I heard a story recently about a teacher who drew a small “V” on a big piece of white paper and asked his students what they saw.  “A bird!” they all said.  “No,” he responded.  “It’s the sky with a bird in it.”

​What an interesting week.  I’ve been completely lost, falling down the rabbit hole of technology.   I cannot believe the number of hours I have spent trying to put a Facebook link on my web page or into an email, or trying to add a signature block to emails, or creating an automatic signup form for my web page.  All in the name of creating connection.
 
Really? 
 
Instead, I lost an important connection—the connection with the world around me. I’ve been spinning in my brain, my poor old, tired, techno-challenged brain, until I’m sure smoke has come out of my ears.   All because I’m a perfectionist, because I had a goal that I was unwilling to let go of.  Because—damn it—if my 12-year-old step-daughter can create an amazing video on her phone from an iMovie template, then surely I could figure out how to create a professional presence online using Yahoo, Weebly and Facebook.  I had something to prove.

​Meanwhile, rainbows formed and faded above the pasture.  The Brewer’s blackbirds finished building their nest in the hedge.  My lettuce seeds sprouted.  These are things my brain is actually designed to take note of, things that connect me to the natural world, to the place where I live.  When that connection is temporarily “offline,” I get really cranky.
 
So now that I’m emerging from that electromagnetic storm in my head, I can notice what happened and reflect on it with curiosity and compassion.  Instead of wallowing in self-criticism about the hours lost in forgetting, I can relish the delicious moment of remembering.  The moment when I looked up from the computer screen and saw the evening light dancing on the fresh, new maple leaves.  This moment. 

​Right after I wrote the preceding, I received an email with the latest Wise Brain Bulletin (click on the link to Volume 10.2, under the heading, 2016 Bulletins).  (Coincidence???)  It’s all about how our Paleolithic brains need down time.  I strongly encourage you to check it out.  (Yes, I realize the irony of sending you off to chase yet another link via your computer or Smart phone—you’ll appreciate the irony even more if you read the article).
 
Here are some juicy excerpts: