How Do You Know If It’s Time To Write Your Book?

Tell the truth: how many times has someone told you “My god, you need to write a book”? How many times have you thought it yourself? How often do you lay awake at night, dreaming of seeing your words laid out on the page? How many times have you wondered …

A Love Letter For Hopeful Hearts

Dear one.  This is not an easy world in which to live as the owner of a hopeful heart.  Not an easy time to build a home safe enough to hold the immensity of your own tenderness.  The last few years were not so much built for believing. And yes, …

Ten Lessons From My Solo Trip To Scotland

Two years and a thousand lifetimes ago today I was getting on the plane to Scotland. I was 44 years old and had never traveled outside North America, let alone traveled for longer than a weekend fully on my own.  I had no idea then that the world would implode …

Know The Source Of Your Own Medicine

Get quiet love. Get real quiet.  I know you’re exhausted and frazzled and ten different kinds of underwater and upside down. It’s go-go-go and don’t you dare stop and keep all the balls in the air all the time and frantic tears at midnight and a longing for something nameless …

On The Days You’re Feeling Tender

Listen. If you’re feeling tender this morning, just let yourself be tender. If life feels a little rough or raw around the edges, don’t try to soften yourself to make the others more comfortable. If your skin feels like it’s on inside out, wrap yourself in your favorite sweater like …

You Are Not It.

“Everything about her seems to be saying, Listen, if you don’t look attentively, if you don’t go beyond my simplicity to detect the simmering volcano in me, you are not it.”  Rawi Hage, Carnival They come for me seeking a one-dimensional cardboard cutout they’ve created in their head.  This projection of …

where there is shame, there is no pleasure.

Où il y a de la gêne, il n’y a pas de plaisirWhere there is shame, there is no pleasure.  This is what I know to be true: 1. Your body is a good, good body and infinitely worthy of worship. 2. Pleasure is your birthright and the doorway to creation itself. 3. You, and only …

Uncommon Sense: Wisdom For My Daughters - Jeanette LeBlanc

Uncommon Sense: Wisdom for my daughters

{This may be the longest post I have ever shared here – and yet it is just beginning, and the words keep coming in a way that tells me that this is a part of a much larger project that will continue to take shape over the next few months. …

Do you need a creative community?

A few years ago I launched a writing course that exceeded all my expectations. Not because it made me rich or famous — but because of what happened inside the space created for the participants. What happened when those wild hearted souls gathered together was nothing short of magic. Writers …

Marie Forleo’s B-School: Confessions of A Complete Half-Asser

If you spin in certain online circles right now, you’ve heard plenty about B-School.  If your particular orbit has not put you in the path of the bright star that is Marie Forleo, and her fantabulastic B-School program, hold tight for a minute. I’m gonna tell you all about it. …

Be Unapologetically You.

“There is nothing more beautiful than seeing a person being themselves. Imagine going through your day being unapologetically you.” — Steve Marboli via Tumblr.

100 things I learned in 2011: Part Three

51. Some things can only be worked out through poetry. 52. We’ve been fed truths about relationships that aren’t really truths. Myths about happily ever after that don’t really serve and lies about love being limited that hold us back. 53.. Don’t hold back. 54. It might hurt.  You might …

100 things I learned in 2011: Part Two

26.  I mostly write to myself. 27.  If I sound particularly authoritative in a blog post it actually means I’m giving myself a stern talking to. 28.  Sometimes I actually listen.  Often I do not.** 29.  If you are going to spout off statements like “I’m not a jealous, insecure …

100 things I learned in 2011 {Part One}

I’ve always figured that if I’m going to be a copycat, I might as well focus my efforts on emulating the cool kids (copying regular folks is clearly not a good use of time).  And  dude, the cool kids don’t come much cooler than Colleen Wainwright (raising  $61,517 in 50 …

One Life

You say the more you think You know what’s right The less you do What you feel inside So I won’t pretend that I always know I just follow my heart wherever it goes And I may not always get it right But at least I’m living coz I’ve only …

Moving Me 2.0

Kate Inglis My fellow Maritime girl.  She writes books (real ones).  She takes  pictures (fantastic ones).  She takes care of rude pink-shirt-wearing guys in bar lines (you had to be there).  For sheer talent with words, Kate brings me to my knees every single time. Plus – she’s the only …

What I Wish For You

Every now and then in cyber space, you stumble across a teacher.  Someone you are meant to know, learn from, and grow with. Several years ago, one some fortuitous random night of blog surfing, I came across 37 days, and I’ve been there ever since.  Every new post.  Every new …

Choose Life

Choose Life, only that and always, and at whatever risk. To let life leak out, to let it wear away by the mere passage of time, to withhold giving it and spreading it is to choose nothing. (Sister Ann Kelly)

peaceful space

The window looks out over a thicket of woods, right where the yard drops off steeply into an impenetrable tangle of trees and brush. If you lie in this room and you close your eyes, it is the crashing of waves, and the croaking of frogs and the rustling of leaves that lull you to sleep. This bed, ancient iron with flecked paint and sagging mattress, cradled me the night my truth began to travel home to me. There is peace living in the walls of this space. Peace and simplicity, whispering a reminder of how much I have, and how little I need.