Posts in category: Uncategorized

There are people in our lives who may not have been able to give us everything we needed.

And sometimes, somehow, they often still lead us toward something that can.

My dad did that for me.

Four years ago, I came home after heartbreak feeling pretty rattled. I was trying to find my footing again, to find some calm and remember myself.

My dad brought me to the water on the Gulf Coast of Florida. And the water led me to the manatees.

Over time, these gentle creatures became more than something I loved seeing in the wild. They became teachers.

Manatees are discerning about where they spend their energy. They seek warm water. They move slowly enough to sense what’s around them. They’re curious without rushing. They come close, and they move away. They rest. They surface for air.

This past week I made it into the ocean five of seven mornings as part of a commitment to self-care.

Some days the bed was incredibly persuasive.

But on the days I chose the ocean, I came home feeling lighter, energized, and more connected to myself.

The best part is the whole experience is just a ten-minute  ride from my home, easily accessible, right in my backyard, like my own little sunrise bike-thru.

One morning on my ride to the beach, a dear friend sent me a short reflection on surrender to listen to. Not surrender as giving up, but surrender as gently releasing emotional waters we carry inside ourselves – old hurts, old stories, old triggers.

It had me thinking about how often we spend so much of our lives trying to calm and control the ocean around us, when we might actually help is getting the water out of our own boat.

When I arrived at the beach, the water was transparent, almost translucent, completely still, warm like bath water. One lone boat rested in the sunrise.

Last week, I flew to Massachusetts because of a leaking shower.

Water was escaping where it wasn’t supposed to, finding its way into the basement of the little home I rent out in the north. I’d been planning a trip there all summer but hadn’t made it happen yet. Then the leak happened.

I smiled as I booked my ticket.

Sometimes life has curious ways of getting our attention.

After the repair work was finished, I found myself doing what I’d secretly hoped this trip would allow me to do all along. I drove to the banks of my beloved Quinapoxet River, wandering familiar trails I’d walked since childhood and discovering a few new ones along the way.

As I followed the water, I found myself laughing.

One kind of water had quietly led me back to another.

The river was where my great-grandfather and grandfather spent countless hours fishing. Once in a while, as a child, my grandfather would invite me to come with him. Those days felt like gifts. It was as though he’d opened the door to a world few people were invited into.

Looking back now, I realize it was never just about catching rainbow trout.

It was his sanctuary.

The place where the noise of everyday life seemed to soften just enough for something deeper to emerge.

I don’t think my grandfather would have described it that way.

But I think that’s what sanctuaries do.

Standing there again, I could almost see him.

Watching the current.

Reading the light.

Adjusting to the river instead of asking the river to adjust to him.

Knowing when to move.

Knowing when to stay.

Sometimes waiting patiently for hours.

The river didn’t reward force.

It rewarded attention.

Every cast was less about catching a fish than entering into relationship with a living thing.

My grandfather wasn’t a perfect man. Like all of us, he carried contradictions. But the river seemed to call forth something beautiful in him.

Maybe we all have places that do that.

Places where we become just a little more ourselves.

A little more patient.

A little more present.

A little more able to hear what matters.

As I walked, I began wondering how often what we call an inconvenience quietly becomes an invitation.

A plumbing leak.

A canceled plan.

A difficult conversation.

A season we never would have chosen.

What if some of the things we spend so much energy trying to fix are, every now and then, gently steering us back toward places we’ve been meaning to return to all along?

Over the years, I’ve come to notice that rivers aren’t the only things that invite us to slow down.

Some people do, too.

They don’t rush us.

They don’t tell us who to become.

They simply create enough spaciousness that we begin hearing ourselves again.

Sometimes that’s a dear friend.

Sometimes a mentor.

Sometimes a therapist or coach.

Sometimes it’s a meaningful conversation around a kitchen table or a deck of cards that asks just the right question.

The best companions don’t force answers.

Like rivers, they invite us to pay closer attention.

I’ve come to believe that good questions work much the same way.

They don’t demand an answer.

They invite us to pause.

To listen.

To notice what has been there all along.

Maybe that’s why I love questions so much.

Not because they solve our lives.

Because they help us hear them.

Before I left, I stood quietly beside the Quinapoxet one last time.

The river hadn’t been waiting for me.

It had simply kept flowing.

Patiently.

Steadily.

Just as it always had.

Maybe that’s what sanctuaries do.

They don’t ask where we’ve been.

They don’t scold us for staying away.

They simply welcome us back.

So today I’m wondering…

What place helps you hear yourself most clearly?

What interruption in your life might actually be an invitation?

And perhaps the question I’m carrying home with me…

Where is life quietly trying to lead you?

As I sat along the rocky coast of Maine this morning and took a cold plunge into the icy Atlantic, I was surprised by a feeling I hadn’t experienced in fifteen years.

The last time I stood in these waters was when I scattered my grandmother Ruth’s ashes into this same sea.

The water was just as cold. The rocks just as steady. The ocean just as alive.

Every summer when I was growing up, Ruth would drive me from Massachusetts to Maine on what she called our Magical Mystery Rides. We’d rent a little cottage near the beach. She would sleep in a tent on the porch with her teddy bear, T.R., because she wanted to hear the waves more clearly, feel the ocean breeze on her face, and wake to the moon and stars above her.

That was Ruth.

She drove a Volkswagen Beetle she’d painted with colorful handprints and footprints, complete with a Model T horn that announced her arrival with a glorious “Ahooooga!”

Every outing with her felt like a parade on the way to a treasure hunt.

Sometimes those adventures led us to the coast of Maine.

Other times they led us down forgotten back roads where we’d discover an old cemetery, a tiny antique shop, a hidden beach, a farm stand, an eagle’s nest, or some curious roadside wonder that somehow felt like it had been waiting just for us.

Looking back, I realize the remarkable thing wasn’t where she took me.

It was how she looked at the world.

She was teaching me what was worth noticing.

What was worth pulling off the side of the road for.

What was worth celebrating.

She wasn’t trying to tell me what to think.

She was quietly teaching me where to place my attention.

Ruth expected beauty.

She expected delight.

She expected that if we wandered long enough, we’d find something worth stopping for.

As adults, we often think we’re choosing the people we spend time with simply because we enjoy their company.

But we’re choosing something else, too.

We’re choosing the lenses through which we’ll begin to see the world.

A grandparent.

A partner.

A dear friend.

A mentor.

A child.

Sometimes even a stranger we’ll never see again.

They don’t simply share experiences with us.

They quietly shape what we begin to notice.

Spend enough time with someone who complains, and eventually you’ll notice more reasons to complain.

Spend enough time with someone who believes people can’t be trusted, and suspicion begins to feel like wisdom.

Spend enough time with someone who notices beauty, possibility, kindness, and tiny everyday miracles…

…and almost without realizing it, your own eyes begin to change.

Because ways of seeing are contagious.

Perhaps that’s one of the greatest gifts we can offer one another.

Not answers.

Not certainty.

But better questions.

An invitation to pause.

To wonder.

To notice what has been there all along.

I’ve come to believe that’s true whether we’re walking with someone we love, sitting beside a friend over coffee or tea, exploring a deck of conversation cards, or in a coaching conversation.

The best companions don’t tell us what to see.

They simply stand beside us long enough, asking thoughtful questions, until we begin seeing with fresh eyes ourselves.

As I sat on the rocks this morning, I found myself asking a question that felt much bigger than this one memory.

Whose glasses am I wearing?

Do they help me notice more beauty?

More possibility?

More kindness?

More wonder?

We don’t get to choose every person who shapes us.

But we do get to choose whose ways of seeing we continue to carry.

Perhaps the greatest inheritance someone leaves us isn’t advice or possessions.

Perhaps it’s a way of noticing.

A way of expecting delight.

A way of believing there is something beautiful waiting just around the next bend, if only we’re willing to pull the car over and look.

Today, standing on the same rocky shore where I said goodbye to Ruth fifteen years ago, I realized something.

She may no longer be here beside me.

But every time I stop for an unexpected view…

Every time I pull over because a winding road promises something interesting…

Every time I choose curiosity over hurry…

The Magical Mystery Ride continues.

Yesterday, I found myself feeling triggered. Not in the dramatic, relationship-ending kind of way. I felt it just enough to notice an old part of me tightening around something familiar, an old sore spot my nervous system still remembered.

The sting was real.

This morning, I went for a bike ride and found myself standing in front of this magnificent crested Peruvian apple cactus in a neighbor’s yard.

What struck me wasn’t just the blossoms.

It was that this cactus was holding everything at once—sharp spines, unopened buds, flowers in full bloom, and fruit already ripening.

Last night, a group of us gathered on a beach in Naples, Florida. The sun slowly melted into the Gulf as we passed around the Manatee Love & Connection Cards, sharing stories, laughter, and pieces of ourselves that might never have surfaced in ordinary conversation.

As I looked out across the shoreline, I found myself thinking about something I hadn’t expected.

Just two years ago, this beach had been torn apart by a hurricane.

Standing there now, it was hard to imagine the destruction. Families were walking the shore. Pelicans skimmed the water. Friends gathered in circles as another sunset painted the sky.

Nature has a remarkable way of rebuilding.

And so do we.

It made me wonder if one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to hurricane-proof our lives—not by trying to prevent life’s storms, because none of us can—but by building relationships strong enough to help carry us through them.

The hurricanes in our lives don’t always come with names.

Sometimes they’re heartbreak.

Sometimes they’re divorce.

Sometimes they’re coming out later in life and wondering where your people are.

Sometimes they’re grief, illness, loneliness, or simply a season where life feels heavier than we expected.

As a coach, one of the greatest privileges of my work is watching people revisit old storms from a new vantage point. The story itself may not have changed, but the meaning has. They discover strengths they couldn’t see while living through it. They recognize the people who quietly stood beside them. They begin to trust that they can rebuild.

Healing rarely happens in isolation.

It happens in conversation.

It happens when someone listens without trying to fix us.

It happens when we feel safe enough to tell the truth.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I love the Manatee Love & Connection Cards so much.

They’re not really about the cards.

They’re about creating the kinds of conversations that help us know one another more deeply. The conversations that turn acquaintances into friends, friends into chosen family, and ordinary evenings into something we’ll remember years from now.

One of the questions that came up during our beach gathering was this:

What is your most memorable sunset, and what made it so meaningful?

Last month, I was carrying a little heartbreak. Some plans changed, and I wasn’t able to make a trip to Scotland to visit my mom. I had been longing for that reconnect with family, roots, and ancestors.

Days after the realization that I couldn’t make the trip, I was sitting on the ocean sand here in Florida, and a feeling of connection to the place I was missing began to emerge from somewhere much closer.

A melody arrived, along with a stream of lyrics that felt like the beginning of a song. More ideas began to move through me as I rode my bike back home.

I then recorded a couple voice memos and sent them to my dear friend Dar, who produces amazing music. She and her team, including vocalist Taylor Rice, wove magic around those early threads, creating a song that feels like both a remembering and a homecoming.

Sometimes the things we are longing for don’t arrive in the form we imagined. And this song felt like a gentle and important reminder of that.

It also became a reflection on how our ancestors are never truly far away. Even when we can’t return to a particular land, place, or person, our ancestors live with us, in our stories, our cells, our longings, the land itself, and even in the songs that find their way through us.

If your heart could use a few minutes of beauty, nature, and a reminder that we don’t walk alone, I hope you’ll give it a listen.

Today I stood on the ocean sand watching the sunrise through the broken pier by my home.

For years now, the pier has remained split in two, battered by multiple hurricanes.

Most people look at it and see what is missing.

This morning, I found myself focused on the sun rising through the opening between the two pieces still standing.

A few months ago, the sun rose on the other side of the pier. The light never came through the break. Yet today, because the Earth has slowly tilted and turned its way through another season, the sun rose directly into that space.

The pier hadn’t changed.

The break hadn’t healed.

But the light found its way through.

It made me think about the places in our lives that feel broken. Relationships that ended. Dreams that unfolded differently than we hoped. The parts of ourselves that carry grief, disappointment, regret, or loss.

So often we focus on what is gone, what should have been different, or what still feels unresolved.

But sometimes healing doesn’t happen because the break disappears.

Sometimes it happens because the light reaches us from a different angle.

The circumstances may not change. The history may not change. But our relationship to it can.

The season shifts.

We gather support.

We survive something we weren’t sure we could survive.

And one day, almost unexpectedly, the same opening that once felt like a wound becomes a place where light can enter.

As a coach, these are the moments I find myself most curious about. Not how to force a repair. Not how to rush healing. But how perspective, time, support, and tenderness sometimes allow light to reach places we thought would remain dark forever.

A few questions I’ll leave you to ponder:

Can you think of a break in your life that once felt like a wound, but over time became a place where light could enter?

Is there a place in your life where you’ve been trying to force a repair? What might happen if you gave it a little more room to breathe?

Last week, a dear friend, Carol, placed a small gift in my hand when she came to visit from the west coast of Florida for our sunrise gathering during Wilton Women’s Week.

It was a bracelet with a tiny manatee.

Its purchase supports the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, a place that rescues and rehabs manatees, like the real manatee named ODare, who this one represents. She’s tracked via microchip, so I can follow her travels.