A Glorious Tribe of Erotic Visionaries

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You’re my tribe.

This is a conversation I’ve needed to have with myself for quite a while, now. So, I’m gonna have it here, and share it with you all, too. You’re my tribe.

I’m going to out myself… in service to helping me know, and hopefully any of you out there who are in the same place, that I am indeed part of a remarkable tribe of visionaries.

Sometimes, it is easy to think everyone else has it together, everyone else is completely comfortable in their work, no one else hears that inner critical voice…

The fact is, I’ve had an incessant voice in my head that has driven me somewhat bat crazy with its insistence that the stuff I write and teach about is ‘out there’, a bit ‘too much’, ‘too sexual’, too crazy, over the top, not important, too esoteric, not what people are willing to pay for, that people won’t ‘get it’ … you get the picture.

women’s ways of knowing

the mystery and the unseen world

ways of the heart

the sensual, erotic nature of life

raw and wild creativity…

are out there, a bit wacko, not all that important…

WOAH. Doesn’t that look odd?

Just hearing myself say these things aloud, on paper, on this computer screen remind me of how powerful our inner critics are, how desperately they want to keep us safe, tied to the tribe, one like everyone else.

And…we no longer have the luxury of listening to this voice.

Isn’t it just flat-out crazy?

how our inner-critics keep on pushing that old boulder up the hill, no matter how much feedback we get that we are doing our work in the world?

How many times I have heard in the past month from people who are writing about the feminine, God, spirituality, love, kindness, women’s rage, the plight of life here on earth, and who’ve also expressed fear about speaking out, fear that friends will think what they are saying, writing and sharing is weird and out there.

Right now, so much of what fills our airwaves still reflects the old paradigm. It still mirrors old ways of being, ways that denigrated the feminine, saw only the logical and reasonable as valuable, and so on.

What we share from our hearts, what we teach to our clients, what we write on our blogs, the ways we do business, are all creating a new world, a new way of being with each other. This IS the new paradigm.

The idea that what we are saying, writing and teaching is weird to the old way makes sense. It IS Weird, different, new to the old way. And, isn’t that perfect? It means this IS a new way.

An Enlightening Force

I believe in the erotic and I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women. I have become clearer about the distinctions between the erotic and other apparently similar forces. We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way. And when I say living I mean it as that force which moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change. ~Audre Lorde

Think of the Suffragettes and their amazing work to bring the vote to women in our country. They worked for decades, facing all sorts of backlash from so many. What gave them such incredible determination to work toward this goal for so long?

I wonder if it was this enlightening force that Lorde wrote of…

The thing is, we’ve reached a tipping point. I can feel it. There are so many of us doing this work to bring women’s wisdom forward to serve life.

What if?

What if we just realize that the voice inside doesn’t really want us to stay quiet… it just wants to be listened to, heard, loved? What if it wants to know that we are surrounded by those that understand us, those that love us, those that will stand by us as we do our visionary work in the world?

What if we make sure we tell others we support their work, champion and advocate for them, send them a little love note every now and then, remind them they are not alone…

It’s both an inside job – realizing our wholeness within, and also an outside job – finding the people in our lives who truly honor and support our work in the world… our tribe.

Heal within:
Slip your inner critic a love note… tell it that you now know and realize you are not alone…you are part of a glorious band of creative lovers of life telling a bold new story of a new way of life on earth…

Reach out to others:
We are not alone. We are not individual bodies, swimming alone upstream against an immovable force. 
We’re all together… a glorious tribe of erotic visionaries with an eye for beauty and a deep vast love for the sacredness of life…and we are held by life itself, life that at its core is love.

And, you…

If you see yourself as one of this tribe of erotic visionaries, a woman who feels this ‘enlightening force’ in your life and is working to accomplish real positive change in service to life, please share this in the comments!

Please let me know, let us all know, so we can see just how big and luscious this tribe is!

 

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This Vast Embrace

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To know, and live, that you are both supremely sacred and absolutely human is the magnificent gift of being alive.

This seeming paradox, this knowing in the heart that you are sacred and so very loved…and knowing that you are completely fallable, vulnerable and human, is beautifully painful and vitally freeing.

Within our divinity there is infinite space for our infallibility, limitation and humanity. That which is holding us, holds us  with such tenderness and love, and in this vast embrace there is finally a place to feel, then let go of, shame, humiliation, fear and fighting.

As I write this to you, I am sitting in a profound peace. I just moved through the deepest feelings of shame. These are old, old feelings finding their way to freedom through very wet and profuse tears.

The love I had always longed for, I’ve found in this vast embrace. There is room here for my humanness.  The paradox is resolved. I am both human and divine. One holds the other with a spaciousness that is infinitely vast and utterly present.

Why write about something so personal? Because I am not just me. I am you. And, you are me. We wake up to these realizations when we share them with each other, when we see there is nothing really special about them at all, that things have always been this way.

::

And you?

Please share with us your stories of this vast embrace, even when you feel nobody would want to know. We do.

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To Live as I Dance

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A river so deep

Since I’ve been back from Molokai, I’ve been out of sorts.

Molokai is a powerful place. The land there speaks to the soul in a language my mind neither hears nor understands. My soul did, and does, and it’s insisting on changing the status quo.

I discovered an affinity for the land. Yes, I totally had it before…a longing for the land of Hawaii. Now, I know there is a deep river that runs between my soul and that land. A river so deep that the conversation continues even when my body is back home, so many miles away.

So all I can do is dance to the new rhythm pouring forth. I know how to let go into the dance, to trust the dance. For this, I am grateful.

When I first started dancing ten years ago, I had to force myself to stay. I would go, wanting to be there, but when I got there, another voice inside would want to leave right away. I was embarrassed to move, embarrassed to trust my own body’s way of expression.

It took months for me to soften to my own expression enough so that this internal battle began to die down. It took years to begin to feel such deep joy that now feel. It took time and trust. Trust in the dance. Trust in my body. Trust in the soul’s call to the dance floor.

Now, I know how to let go into the dance. For this, I will always be grateful.

I now see there is no difference between the dance floor and the earth’s floor. To live as I dance is now what I hunger for.

Who cares what others think? Do we really care? Deep down inside, do we really care what others think? That fear swims on the surface, but way deep inside where the soul clamors to be free, do we really care? Will that fear of judgment keep us from experiencing the pure joy of movement, of expression, of gratitude for the gift of being alive?

::

And, you?

The soul guides us to rise up and embody our own beauty and nobility.

It pushes and prods. It calls and yearns, and somehow, somewhere, and in some way we begin to listen.

How is your soul guiding you to move? To listen? To touch? To love? To express?

Somewhere within, you feel the call. So dance. Just dance. With music. Without music. It makes no difference.

 

::

Dance when you’re broken open.
Dance when you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her,
like a wave that crests into foam at the very top,
Begins.
Maybe you don’t hear that tambourine,
or the tree leaves clapping time.
Close the ears on your head,
that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.
There are other things to see, and hear.
Music. Dance.
A brilliant city inside your soul!

–Rumi

::

 

 

Thank you to Charlie Korda for sharing this video and poem.

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The True Mother Within

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Mother

Mother – never our ideal, never that whom we hoped for…really hoped for.

I learned this as my mother was dying. I realized she would never be what I had always hoped she would be. No mother can, nor will. No human can fill that mother longing within us. We mothers try. We mothers fall short. We mothers beat ourselves up for this.

What mother can?

This past week, I was held in the lap of this mother that is the bountiful presence that births life. She is the tree whose arms wrapped around space like a vine wraps itself around the trellis. She is the sky whose stars shot through the night sky. She is the garden, whose birthing beds produced a magical harvest. She is the silkiest, saltiest water to ever embrace this woman’s body.

This past week, I was held in the lap of Molokai. This magical island is deeply rooted and grounded. Her energy is of the earth in a way there are no words to describe. She is wild and untamed and I came to know this place within myself – wild and untamed.

What if she is the creator, the One that gives birth to all that is?

What if she holds all the world’s children?

What if this mother is the mother you long for, the mother that can hold you in the ways you long to be held, can hear you in the ways you long to be heard, can touch you in the ways you long to be touched?

What if She is the only mother who can do so?

How would your life change if you came to know this?

How would your relationship with your human mother change?

How would your relationship change with yourself, and with the world, if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are already held in the most bountiful lap, the most embraceable hug, the most adoring look possible?

This Mother’s Day, may you know Her embrace; may you know her bounty, may you know her adoration, may you know her love. May you come to know that your human mother cannot fill your deepest cravings to be mothered – but the Mother can and she is here, right now, holding you in her most bountiful lap. And it is through Her embrace that we remember the true mother within.

May we offer gratitude and love to our beautiful and bountiful Mother Earth…and to all the world’s mothers.

 

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Divine Appetite: God longing to know God in Female Form

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On Whidbey Island

Something important happens when women gather.

I just spent three magical days on Whidbey Island with women I respect and love. I originally met each of them online; now I know them as real life friends. These women are beautiful human beings.

We soaked up the sun and the beauty of Whidbey Island. We watched a bald eagle with awe. We danced, laughed, and were amazed by each other’s brilliance.

I loved being with them. I witnessed so many forms of beauty. I opened my heart and asked to be loved.

My body was held.

My soul was fed.

My eyes were dried.

My laughter was immense.

The inside of me, that place where no knows what really goes on, where no one sees the tumult of my soul unfold, is richer, wiser and forever changed from my time with these women because, as Rilke wrote, “inside human beings is where God learns.

Just ten hours

after I returned from Whidbey, I co-taught a class with my friend and colleague, Mary Corrigan, for the Women’s Initiative for Self Employment in San Francisco. Mary invited me to join her and the sixteen female entrepreneurs she’s teaching in this six-week course on creativity and business.

I led a segment on sensual discovery…ways to come into the body so we can be present and awake to the creative spirit within and the world in which we create. It was amazing…women so present in their bodies that it became difficult to engage the brain in it’s usual form of over-thinking and judging.

Mary and I then dined at Gracias Madre on a delectable meal of empanadas and beet salad. If you’ve ever dined at Gracias Madre, you know there is no way to describe in words the beauty of this food.

All of this time with women and with the feminine. I am fortunate. It seems to be the nature of my life these days.

Something in me longs to know myself unveiled. Something inside of me hungers to experience the feminine face of God. Something in me drinks in these moments when I am in the company of women who are willing to be vulnerable, willing to speak of their fears as well as their wisdom, willing to open their hearts to each other so we can all come to know the depth of the feminine in human form.

I am drinking up the healing offered from these gatherings of women.

We are coming to know the feminine in ourselves by knowing it in other women. It is a remembering, a relearning, a reclaiming.

I now know that my love of, and thirst for, connection with other women is divine appetite.

This divine appetite is God wanting to know God in unabashedly female form. Through them. Through me. Woman to Woman.

::

And, You?

Are you, too, hungering to gather with women? Are you hungering for this healing? Are you thirsting to know yourself as the sacred in female form?

Can we open our hearts to this deep, deep longing within, this place where God learns? This place where the divine spark within each of us can experience the sacred nature of all of life?

Join me in this place of longing and desire, this place of divine appetite. This is the place of the new story of Woman.

::

Awaken the Wild: a 7-Day Virtual Sensual Immersion from Molokai

I’m traveling to Molokai in just ten days to attend another gathering of women. Yes, this seems to be the nature of my life these days.

While I am there, I’m going to be sharing my experience on this wild island through this complimentary eCourse, “Awaken the Wild”. Over seven days, you’ll receive a daily email that will direct you to a password protected page with audios, images, poetry and practices to bring this wild land into your life and awaken the wild land within you.

You can read more about this eCourse, here.

I’d love to have you join me…join us. Many women are already registered for this virtual immersion to Awaken the Wild.

Let’s discover the wild land within, together.

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Life – The Ultimate Mashup

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Life. It’s the ultimate mashup.

Today can be just another ho-hum day for me, while behind my neighbor’s door they might be going through the most horrendous day of their life.

To mash-it-up more, today can be a complete mashup even just for me: it can be a somewhat normal day and a day of significance, too. It can seem to be a celebration, while at the same time a day of retrospection and tears.

It’s the nature of life to have all sorts of disparate things moving through alongside each other. Much of the time we try to make some sense of it all; other times, we pretty much give up on that idea.

Today is April 17th, 2012

I was struck by the mashup metaphor this morning when I remembered it is the birthday of Danielle LaPorte’s new book, The FireStarter Sessions. What a day for celebration. If you’ve followed Danielle for any length of time, you’ve witnessed her emergence as a woman of style, substance, heart and wicked business savvy.

I think I felt so compelled to celebrate this day for Danielle, because I’ve witnessed, sometimes through emails, most often through social media, what a journey this has been for her. She’s been on an extraordinary trajectory. I’ve taken notice. It’s deeply moved me to witness someone really make their dream a reality.

I first met Danielle at Sweat Your Prayers – what I do on Sunday mornings – my Church of Choice. I recognized her from twitter and her in-person Fire Starter sessions – where she landed in multiple cities, meeting with women who were looking to be ignited. After the dance, I approached her and said hello. She was immediately warm and friendly and we chatted for just a moment.

Since that sweaty Sunday, we’ve interacted a bit. I had a one-on-one FSS with her and joined her in Santa Fe for a Gail Larsen transformational speaking intensive, where seven of us ended up in a delectable hot tub while sharing stories of bits and pieces of our lives.

I know Danielle to be a generous woman. She inspires me. I learn from her and I know she has learned from me. How do I know that? ‘Cause she learns from everything she encounters and because she told me. She is generous that way.

Today is April 17th, 2012

Today is also the anniversary of my late-husband Gary’s death. It’s been 17 years – a long time. In the beginning, not too long after he died, I didn’t think I could get through my life without him. I really wondered. People told me I would get over it. I knew I never would. I wondered if that meant I would always be sad and depressed, with one foot in the other world.

I think of Gary often. We had a love that many long for. One thing I knew after he died was that I had been loved. I knew that beyond any doubt. That is a great gift. It’s as if there is no searching out there for that experience from another man. If I find it, bonus. What it did invite me to know was that I am that love inside me.

I have come to see

we don’t get over the things that happen in our lives, nor should we want to. Each and every thing that is offered to us ripens and seasons us.

This weekend I heard someone say, “Life doesn’t happen to us, it happens for us.” That offers us a big shift in perspective if we are willing to open to it.

I know when I was in deep grief, I didn’t have access to the ability to be with it all. The grief was too much. And, I know that when I’ve been in complete celebration, that has flooded my day.

Can we be with it all? Can we push none of it away, but rather receive it all into us? Can we celebrate with those who are celebrating and offer love to those who might be in pain?

Today is April 17th, 2012

What is this day for you? Is it a day of joy, a day of sadness or anger or despair? Is it just another day to tick-off the calendar? What kind of day is it for your neighbor? Your lover? That person you’re struggling to have compassion for?

There are benefits to remembering that life is the ultimate mashup. When we do we know what is here will pass. Sooner or later, it will pass. When we do we know life is rich in the many ways it presents itself. When we do we also can remember that all around the world people are going through an amazing array of kinds of days.

Life flows. It is impermanent. Yet, we are also here in bodies. Awake. Alive. Very much experiencing everything that is happening to us.

I can be thrilled for Danielle, deep in reflection on my late husband and the gifts he brought to my life, getting work done and packing to travel tomorrow. It is all happening right now in this spicy sweet soup of life.

What is this day for you?

I’d love to know. Please share by leaving a comment. What’s this day for you?

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Woman to Woman – Revealing Our Radiance

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Alla Sera
In my last post, Weaving a New World, I speak of telling a new story.

The story we’ve been living is not our own. It is one of conditioned behavior and beliefs. It is one of power over. It does not serve life – it attempts to dominate it.

This old story keeps us hiding our light, playing down our instinctive nature, not trusting our intuition. It keeps us ashamed of our sensuality and sexuality. It constantly reminds us that we can’t trust femaleness, either in ourselves or in other women.

This old story keeps us believing so many untruths. It keeps us in chains, so that our wildness remains tamed rather than free to express, create and love.

A new story

There is a fullness in all of life. It’s a power, a life force, a presence that simply can’t be put into words. There is no word, for words are removed from this fullness. Words are one-dimensional and this fullness is infinite.

This fullness is the new story.

This new story is a story of truth. When we tell our story, the truth of our experience, we are telling the story of life as it really moves and flows and loves.

The other day,

my friend and I were having an intimate conversation, both sharing things about ourselves and our lives that we’d not yet told each other. It was really lovely.

Then, my friend shared a deeper story, a story that was filled with an intimacy and vulnerability rarely shared in our world. The story had been kept close to her heart. It was tender. It was compelling.

As she began to speak, her body began to sway ever so slightly, her hands began to express what her words could not convey, her eyes closed as she felt into her story.

Words attempt to describe what we long to express, yet they cannot ever capture the experience itself. In watching her body tell the story, and in feeling her story in my body, I began to know the depths of what she was wanting to convey.

As she sat in silence once she was done, I spoke to her of the power of what she had shared, the powerful effect it had on me. I spoke to her of her brilliance and how compelling she was in her rawness and complete nakedness. I shared with her that her radiance was visible and palpable because of her vulnerability.

I watched as she heard what I was saying to her about the beauty of her soul. As she took in my words, her tears began to flow, as if something began to release in her.

The effect on me was profound. It felt as if the effect was profound on her, too.

I witnessed the struggle we go through to allow ourselves to acknowledge our sacredness, our beauty and worth. It was humbling to see how powerful our resistance is to acknowledging our own basic goodness. And, it was deeply moving to see, once again, how incredibly important it is for each of us to give the gift of witnessing and reflecting another woman’s beauty and worth.

How we long to relax into our own beauty.

How we long to settle into our sacredness.

How we long to trust what we know somewhere in the depths of our soul…that our sacredness is both exquisite and ordinary just as we are.

Despite what the old story tells us, vulnerability is powerful.

Despite what the old story says, telling another woman what you see in her, the beauty of the truth within her, doesn’t take anything from you, but rather is a powerful gift to both of you.

Despite what the old story says, when we tell our stories from our bodies, allowing the soul to speak in ways other than words, we begin to remember the deeper aspects and places of womanhood.

I’ve been lucky.

Not only did this friend offer herself as a mirror to me, I’ve had other friends willing to be this mirror, too. Women I know and love are willing to share with me what they see in me, and it’s had a profound effect on me, helping me grow into a woman with increased self-confidence and radiance.

While I’ve also had men who’ve loved me share with me, too, when women share something else comes alive. Things hidden that have been hidden are revealed. Things pushed into the dark have come into the light. A knowing of the feminine has come awake again in my cellular memory. And the light of the new feminine consciousness has grown just a little bit brighter.

When we trust ourselves, we can be mirrors to each other’s beauty. We can help each other remember what we believe we’ve forgotten.

This beauty also includes those things we don’t normally call beautiful. When someone reveals themselves, even in their anger and fear, sadness and grief, that is beauty, for we only really know true beauty when something or someone is real.

I know for me, each time I am invited into the holiness of a moment such as this, something previously hidden in me is revealed, for in these moments we are open to the grace that is always here.

Photo by Alessandro Pinna. CC license - AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved

 

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Weaving a New World

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My last post, “Where do we go from here?” expressed my frustration
with the state of affairs with regard to women in our country.
At the end, I wondered where we go from here.

Some of the comments on my post spoke of how so often it is women who seem to be the hardest on women. Why do we do this?

Just yesterday, a friend clued me into an important article by Ashley Judd, in which she speaks out on the nature of the patriarchy, and specifically calls out both the media and women for much of what we experience:

“Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle,insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.” ~Ashley Judd

These last two lines are POWERFUL.

“…we have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly.”

“…unable to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other women.”

As is this:

It is subtle,insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it.”

Judd states that she does this. I know I surprise myself with my own callousness, and unconscious judgment and criticism. It seems to just pop up from somewhere, as if it has an energy all of its own. That energy is the pattern itself…the pattern that was internalized. It’s a thought, feelings sensations that all work together to create a habitual reaction. I am the only one that can unlearn this habit, the only one that can become aware of how much conditioning still functions through me and do what it takes to heal it.

We are all mightily conditioned in misogynistic ways.

Misogyny is the fear and hatred of women. While on the surface we may believe we don’t do either, we live in a culture that is saturated with misogynistic ways (and also ways of misandry, the fear and hatred of men). There is no way any of us could have avoided taking on these perspectives about women, and about the feminine in general.

For many of us, most of this is focused internally…meaning, we have patterns that cause us to fear and hate the woman in ourselves, the femaleness of our own being. But this is never just an internal thing. We also, in one way or another, focus it out there, even project it onto others.

::

Right now, this whole uprising of legislation and attention on women, women’s bodies, and our reproductive rights are just one piece in so much of what is tossing around in the world today. As Pema Chödrön writes,

‎”The whole globe is shook up, so what are you going to do when things are falling apart? You’re either going to become more fundamentalist and try to hold things together, or you’re going to forsake the old ambitions and goals and live life as an experiment, making it up as you go along.” 

The whole world is shaking and we all react to this shaking in different ways.

Some react by digging in and holding on tightly to ‘the old ways’ through a kind of fundamentalism. We all probably experience fundamentalism in some place in our lives.

We could get caught and stuck in this story. We do need to be aware of what we do that causes pain, and there is a new way coming into being, a way that is about fundamentally loving the feminine in ourselves and all of life.

There’s also the possibility of living this life as a grand experiment. I’d love to begin our own experiment of women loving women.

This is what I’m holding out as a vision for women around the world…that we can awaken to the voices we’ve internalized, see them for what they are, and realize that our own feelings of fear and hatred for the feminine are learned. If they are learned, we can unlearn them.

The very thing that has triggered this hanging on to the olds ways is a mirror of how we each try to hang onto the ‘old ways’ within us. 

Keeping women down out there is a mirror of how I keep myself, and other women, down with my thoughts, actions and statements.

Believing women are just playing the victim is a mirror of our own internal harshness toward ourselves.

It means it could be, and most likely will be, messy.  I know the things that are coming up with my close friends are very messy. I don’t know how to do it, and I am learning.

It does mean that we come to see our own inner workings…and how those inner workings are showing up ‘out there’. It does mean that we come to see ourselves for who we really are, not who we’ve been taught to believe we are.

::

We are creative beings. Even if the illusion that causes us to fear and hate is powerful, our creativity is so much more powerful.

I know, deep in my heart and my beautiful female gut, that women can dive into the lies we’ve believed and come out the other side seeing what is rising…the new feminine consciousness…in ourselves, in each other, and in all of life.

So, as my good friend and speaking mentor, Gail Larsen says, “If you want to change the world, tell a better story.” 

I’ve got a better story to tell. 

I look forward to weaving this new world with you! Stay tuned…

 

 

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