Something new has coalesced . . .

Spring 2026

For months now, I’ve been asking, “What is mine to do, in this gorgeous ruckus?” “What is needed now that I can offer?” and the idea for my next project finally dropped in — simple and all at once, the way ideas sometimes do — and I’m here to share it with you because your input and participation will give it life.

The Hearthfire Project, a series of online gatherings, hatched with the simple image of a central open fire, a hearth: People gathering around it. Taking inspiration and encouragement from the warmth of the fire and the generative companionship of the circle.

While it felt new, it coalesced from the Ancients.

Hestia — goddess of the hearth in ancient Greece and Rome — was for centuries one of the most revered figures in the pantheon. Not because she was the most politically powerful, or the most dramatic, but because she held the center of civic society. She tended the fire. Her round temples held an eternal flame at their center. She was the one around whom others could gather and be restored and inspired.

Over time, she was eclipsed. The more assertive goddesses — Athena with her strategy, Artemis with her fierce independence — rose to prominence. Hestia quietly receded.

What Hestia represented — the sovereign leader who holds space with warmth and inspiring continuity — is the kind of leadership we need to empower in civic society now. Not instead of strategic brilliance or the ability to be decisive under pressure, but alongside them. A presence and a place that holds true to vision and purpose.

I’ve been thinking about what was lost when Hestia receded into the mysteries. And what can be gained by bringing her narrative forward again.

There’s a quote from Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine that I keep returning to: that in complex systems far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence have the capacity to shift the entire system toward a higher order. I believe that’s true. And I believe a small, deliberate gathering around a real question — a fire tended with care — is just that kind of island.

That is what I want to create with the Hearthfire Project. This brings Hestia’s much-needed narrative forward while creating islands of coherence.

This feels like mine to do . . .

I’m finding delight at the prospect of it.

Turning Toward Next

December 2025

The year is turning again now. As promised, I’m posting an updated version of my annual reflection practice. This practice offers a way to fully embrace all that this darkening-before-the-light time of year has to offer. To engage this practice, carve out a protected chunk of time to be still and listen to the voice in you that arises when you put pen to the page. Be willing to peer into the uncertainty of these times as they are playing out in your life. I trust that this practice will illuminate or clarify what is next for you and give you purchase on your path to fulfillment. Please feel free to share it!

The idea here is to take some time to close up the year and begin to turn towards next year. Part 1, the practice of closing up your year, gives rise to good beginnings. The practice of turning towards what is next (Part 2) by listening for your emerging future, gives a very different flavor to our usual New Year's Resolutions. As my wing women have described, this practice is both gentle and powerful — there is both grace and grit here.

This practice will acquaint you with your inner Wisdom Council, which is a most wonderful and effective way to experience and get access to the fundamental capacities of grace and grit. The Wisdom Council is an archetypal ever-present inner "committee" that is always with you, and as you will discover, we all have one!

So, do you already have a practice or ritual way to close up the year and open to what is next? If not, I highly recommend it. If so, you already know how wonderful and beneficial it is and you might want to try this.

Part One - Closing Up the Year

Download the Wisdom Council inquiry questions and then carve out a little uninterrupted time (+/- 30 minutes) to cozy up with a cup of tea to really take stock with the first part of this practice. Give it your full attention to facilitate closure to the year in a very remarkable way. Have your journal handy, or just some paper and a pencil will do. Free write into these questions by putting your pencil to the page and just write whatever comes up for a few minutes without lifting the pencil. Remind yourself that your responses are for your eyes only, unless you want to share with a trusted friend, companion, or spouse.

Part Two - Turning Towards the Next

Give yourself as much as a week, or as little as an hour, before picking up Part Two, wherein the Wisdom Council questions will have you look ahead with the clarity and compassion of the closure afforded you by of Part One.

(Be sure to Bookmark this page so that you can refer back to it easily later . . . )

Note: Wisdom Council inquiries are powerful stuff. Please let these questions, and your responses to them, penetrate your heart, mind, and will-to-act. Let them begin to do their work as the year turns and unfolds in the coming months.

I have found that the most resourceful decisions arise out of incubation in deep stillness. May you find some of that deep stillness as the year turns and may the year ahead astonish us with all its beauty, truth and goodness!

Warmly, Lyedie
December 2025
Putney, Vermont

Photo credit: Elizabeth Ungerleider

Turning Toward Next with Grace and Grit

Hello, Lyedie here.

As this year turns into the next one,

I send you warm and light-filled greetings.

Lyedie

May you grow still enough to hear the small noises earth makes in preparing for the long sleep of winter, so that you yourself may grow calm and grounded deep within. 

May you grow still enough to hear the trickling of water seeping into the ground, so that your soul may be softened and healed, and guided in its flow.

May you grow still enough to hear the splintering of starlight in the winter sky and the roar at earth’s fiery core.

May you grow still enough to hear the stir of a single snowflake in the air, so that your inner silence may turn into hushed expectation. 

— Brother David Steindl-Rast

Click here to receive the gift of my annual year-end practice.

Where was the Beauty, Truth and Goodness in this tumultuous year?

Good morning, 

I’m writing to share my annual reflective writing practice with you — Finding the Beauty, Truth and Goodness in the year. 

Last week, the Gingko tree out in front of my office here in Putney was shining a brilliant yellow and then one morning when I came to work, she had shed her leaves creating a glorious circle of yellow in the bright green grass on the common. This is her autumnal habit, prompted by the first night that the temperature descends to precisely 29 degrees. My autumnal habit is to reflect back as I collect the leaves from the ground with a practice I developed that is inspired by a passage I found in Jean Yves Leloup’s translation of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene*. This late autumn reflection prepares me to turn towards next as the solstice and calendar year-end approaches.

Here is the practice: Finding the Beauty, Truth and Goodness in the Year

Carve out some time to reflect on the last year in your journal. Pulling out your calendar to jog your memory might be helpful. Then just soften your gaze back over the past year and respond to the prompts below for each of the four seasons. The invitation here is to respond to these six prompts four times, beginning with the winter a year ago. (Could take you as long as an hour or so to complete . . . ) Significant milestones or intimate moments in your answers are all appropriate. I think you will find that specificity gives wonderful depth to the process.

For each of the seasons, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall: 

Describe a time that you experienced beauty.
In what way(s) were you the cause of something beautiful?

In what way(s) was the truth revealed to you?
In what way(s) did you reveal or speak the truth?

In what way(s) were you on the receiving end of goodness?
In what way(s) were you the cause of goodness?

Upon completion, give yourself a little time to let your responses settle in you. I invite you to feel the interplay of these three fundamental threads in the tapestry of your life. Take a walk or a bath and take in the beauty, truth and goodness that you found when you put pen to page.

I’ll be posting my annual year end practice, Turning Towards Next, in December, which will give you an opportunity to look ahead and consider any reorientation, renewed commitments, or actions that all of this may inspire in you.

Enjoy, and may we all wage peace . . .

Warmly, Lyedie

November 11, 2022
Putney, Vermont

*(Click here to find that passage on the About page of my website)

Do you have the patience to wait
until your mud settles,
and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
until the right action
arises by itself?

 — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Photo credit: Elizabeth Ungerleider

A Riff and a Practice from the Archives . . .

June 15th 2022

I just realized, it’s been five years since I turned my longing into a project and dedicated my coaching practice to the longings of women. So, to mark the occasion, I dug into the archives and found this treatise on longings from that spring of 2016. Admittedly, a lot has changed since then — And I remain steadfast in my belief that staying connected to the call of our deepest longings provides us each with a beacon in these times and gives us access to becoming warriors of the human spirit.

Here is my riff on the language of longings and the offer of a reflection practice for these languid days of summer written in April of 2016. I think I just may have become less wordy since then . . . :-)

Longings Are a Yearning Toward Wholeness 

Longings are a deeply felt full-bodied conversation that is always going on between self and spirit, self and the world, self and others. They are a specific kind of desire that take up residence in our bodies, our emotions, and in our thoughts. Longings are a yearning towards wholeness that is involuntary. You may find yourself feeling stuck or somehow disconnected simply because you are not currently acquainted with your deepest longings. With a recklessly ambivalent relationship to desire, our culture has obscured the feminine art of listening for and attending to our longings. Following these instructions will initiate you into a practice of full-bodied listening. This is an invitation to attune to the language and voices of an essential conversation that you need to hear amidst the din and the ruckus of everyday life. 

Longings speak their very own language. They “speak” in images, poetry, song, and occasionally in commands. Longings communicate in the turn of the phrase, in the movement of dance, soft clay, wet paint, bread dough, broken dishes, split infinitives.  Especially when we are at the height of our sexual prowess, longings express themselves in sexual desire that demands our attention and can be quite mischievous in nature. Being afraid of this dims our capacity for sensuality. Longings do not come in tidy packages; you will find that they are not subject to the rules of rationality. 

Longings often present themselves as wishful thinking, fierce desire or smoldering ambition. Often, we feel them deeply in our body-mind in the form of yearning, aching, pining, craving, hunger, thirst, a pang. In its earliest definitions longing means to summon. Longings swell our hearts with unexpected enthusiasm, or the tenderness of an unresolved loss that needs our attention.  Truth is, our deepest longings are often the quiet ones. 

Longings that have gone underground surface when something reminds us of them. When my life fills with work imperatives, my longing for the domestic side of life shows up as a strong tug just under my breastbone whenever I see a young women with a baby sleeping against her chest, cherry tomatoes and peas in a garden, and sheets hung neatly on a clothesline − I attend to that longing by keeping an altar at my kitchen sink, ritually unloading the dishwasher as a start to my day, air drying my laundry whenever possible, and coaching women who are wrestling with work and life balance issues in the mother / warrior phase of life. 

The Practice: 

Begin - Become Fully Acquainted With Your Longings (Without having to do anything about it right away)

A Week or So of Noticing and Reflecting

This is a Step One Practice. In the spiral of the creative process it is a beginning that is always good to circle around to, it keeps us fresh and new. The thing to pay attention to here is to learn the language of your longings so that you can hear how life calls to you. This practice will naturally inspire you towards your authentic response to that call. If you approach it with curiosity, some gritty daily discipline, and a smidge of courage, it will open up your emotional intelligence, sensual receptivity, and playful nature. You may feel as if you are recovering a long lost lover, or perhaps even discovering her for the first time.  Hold your discoveries from this practice close to your heart and allow them to incubate. Share them only with a trusted few. Keep them safe and consider carefully when and how to bring them out into the light of day. 

Start by Noticing. Invite yourself to slow down on certain occasions as you go through your day. The occasions you want to slow down for are when something sparks a heart centered tug (desire, elation or sadness) in you. Slow down and invite all of your senses into that moment. What sparks your longing could be almost anything: a person, place, or thing, a song, the sound of a specific musical instrument, a bird call, a dance, a painting, a smell, a poem, a gesture, an activity, an idea, a color, a texture . . . Get really curious about the nature of this tug. Pay close attention to specificity; the specific things that spark your longing, and the specific nature of the longing as it arises within you. Choose one particular instance to reflect on at the end of the day or first thing next morning. 

(Here are some examples from my practice reflections over the years: There is an eight word line in one of Joni Mitchell’s songs that pierces my heart and sends a shudder through my body every time I hear it . . . The smell that emits from the ground-ivy in my freshly mown lawn makes me want to dance with joy . . .  The moist edges of that man’s lips inspires a exquisite gurgle in my pelvic region that almost hurts. ) 

Reflect on What You Notice: Jot down some notes about what you noticed in a journal dedicated to this purpose. Use these questions as a start. 

1. Choose one longing that you discovered today that is of particular interest. Briefly describe the spark and the tug using language as sense filled and specific to the experience as you can. 

2. What thoughts are associated with it? 

3. Were your thoughts past, present, or future oriented? 

4. Does it have a specific idea or ambition associated with it, or is it telling you about something that you love with no logical direction or instruction? (Describe briefly)

5. What is it that you know in your gut about this longing today? 

6. What is it that remains a mystery to you today?

Review: At the end of your week review your notes and look for themes in the content of your longings, and their languages. 

Honor What You Discover: Another way to further bring these tender wishes and dreams out into the air and sunlight is by making an altar for your longings. Collect a few things that represent your longings to you. Arrange them beautifully in a place that it is safe (away from curiously unaware children and any unsupportive adults) and where you can tend to it easily. A place where you just inevitably encounter it every day as a part of your routine is good. (My altar started almost inadvertently on the windowsill of my kitchen sink, back in 1983. A good friend of mine kept hers on the dashboard of her car for years.) 

The Call to Action: At some point longings start to point us in a direction and we experience a call to action. Projects, goals, new directions start to come into focus. It all starts to coalesce into the golden thread of a call. Urgency, passion and determination, will come on line. Whether the call is to make a quilt for your granddaughter, end a relationship, start something new, finish that book you started, or relocate to another continent, it is good to gather your forces and get some support as you initiate action and move into the arena of the creative process. 

Responding to the Call of Your Longings 

Wise women have known for centuries that longings can wreak havoc in our lives when we don’t meet them with our practical integrated self.  Acting to fulfill a longing, by its very nature, can upset the familiar “normal” of our lives and often precipitates change. Interpreting, tending, and fulfilling longings skillfully is a critical part of learning how to live authentically, and dare greatly without just making a big mess of things. Understanding how the phases of our lives color our longings, and how to skillfully respond accordingly requires the support and structure of a guide, mentor or coach. We are talking about the mysteries here, and the call to step into a new level of learning to trust yourself and the world. 

The Longings Project was born out of my longing to witness (in my lifetime) the beauty, truth and goodness that will be unleashed when more women are able to fulfill their deepest longings. I guess you could say it is my Maja Project. Although I do have a sense of urgency about this, I also believe that longings are expressions of our most intimate selves and they require protection during their incubation phase. Please be gentle with yourself, and with your tender longings as you gain their acquaintance. Timing is of the essence in matters of longing and slower is often more expedient at the beginning of almost anything. When you find you need help with attending to, interpreting, or fulfilling your longings please feel free to contact me. We can start with a free 20-minute phone conversation during which we’ll cover: 

• What it will mean for you to respond to the call of your longings. 

• Why now?

• Your next steps.

• What is it that is longing for you?

I can also answer any questions you may have about engaging in the coaching process and how my unique combination of encouragement and practical support can help you live more closely connected to your gorgeous longing and step into your most radiant self.

Turning Toward Next in the Midst of All This Uncertainty . . .

December 2021

Turning Towards Next in the Midst of All This Uncertainty

The year is turning again now. As promised, I’m posting my annual reflection practice. This practice offers a way to fully embrace all that this darkening-before-the-light time of year has to offer. To engage this practice, carve out a protected chunk of time to be still and listen to the voice in you that arises when you put pen to the page. Be willing to peer into the uncertainty of these times as they are playing out in your life. I trust that this practice will illuminate or clarify what is next for you and give you purchase on your path to fulfillment. Please feel free to share it!

The idea here is to take some time to close up the year and begin to turn towards next year. Part 1, the practice of closing up — your day, week, month, year — gives rise to good beginnings. The practice of turning towards what is next (Part 2) by listening for your emerging future, gives a very different flavor to our usual New Year's Resolutions. As my wing women have described, this practice is both gentle and powerful — there is both grace and grit here.

This practice will acquaint you with your inner Wisdom Council, which is a most wonderful and effective way to experience and get access to the fundamental capacities of grace and grit. The Wisdom Council is an archetypal ever-present inner "committee" that is always with you, and as you will discover, we all have one!

So, do you already have a practice or ritual way to close up the year and open to what is next? If not, I highly recommend it. If so, you already know how wonderful and beneficial it is and you might want to try this.

Part One - Closing Up the Year

Download the Wisdom Council inquiry questions and then carve out a little uninterrupted time (+/- 30 minutes) to cozy up with a cup of tea to really take stock with the first part of this practice. Give it your full attention to facilitate closure to the year in a very remarkable way. Have your journal handy, or just some paper and a pencil will do. Free write into these questions by putting your pencil to the page and just write whatever comes up for a few minutes without lifting the pencil. Remind yourself that your responses are for your eyes only, unless you want to share with a trusted friend, companion, or spouse.

Part Two - Turning Towards the Next

Give yourself as much as a week, or as little as an hour, before picking up Part Two, wherein the Wisdom Council questions will have you look ahead with the clarity and compassion of the closure afforded you by of Part One.

Click here to download the questions in pdf format

Please feel free to be guided through the practice with the audio recordings below if you’d like.

(Be sure to Bookmark this page so that you can refer back to it easily later . . . )

Wisdom Council Reflection Questions - Part 1 (17 minutes)

Lyedie Geer

Wisdom Council Reflection Questions - Part 2 (23 minutes)

Lyedie Geer

Note: Wisdom Council inquiries are powerful stuff. Please let these questions, and your responses to them, penetrate your heart, mind, and will-to-act. Let them begin to do their work as the year turns and unfolds in the coming months.

I have found that the most resourceful decisions arise out of incubation in deep stillness. May you find some of that deep stillness as the year turns and may the year ahead astonish us with all its beauty, truth and goodness!

Warmly, Lyedie
December 2021
Putney, Vermont

May you grow still enough to hear the small noises earth makes in preparing for the long sleep of winter, so that you yourself may grow calm and grounded deep within. 

May you grow still enough to hear the trickling of water seeping into the ground, so that your soul may be softened and healed, and guided in its flow.

May you grow still enough to hear the splintering of starlight in the winter sky and the roar at earth’s fiery core.

May you grow still enough to hear the stir of a single snowflake in the air, so that your inner silence may turn into hushed expectation. 

— Brother David Steindl-Rast

Photo credit: Elizabeth Ungerleider

Starting your day with a potent pause . . .

It's up!! The Fulfillment Journal is now freely available to you as you start your day!

These are crazy times we are living in. Normalcy has been pitched out of our political system. People are describing to me how they are reeling from the effects of disruptive uncertainty and paralyzed by the hungry ghosts in the relentless news feed. Daring greatly is called for now, and our deepest longings and callings can seem audacious. With the Fulfillment Journal I offer you a practice that is simple and sustainable. Working with it for 10 minutes each morning will help you keep replenishing your resolve to fulfill your longing, to make your contribution, and to enjoy the gift of living on this beautiful planet.

Click here to download this basic version of my Fulfillment Journal to help you start your day with what deeply matters to you. I'm a big believer in starting with a pause to connect, reflect, replenish, and then set a trajectory for your day. Begin to develop the habit of dropping in with this page on a daily basis . . . but if you find yourself struggling to forge that discipline, don't worry—many have reported that it provides a significant uplift when they are feeling un-tethered or discouraged, however often they remember to make use of it.

This is a potent practice:

3/1/2017 Dear Lyedie, I have been using your 10 minute practice for several weeks now,
and have found it immensely, wonderfully inspiring :)

3/27/2018 - Dear Lyedie, Now looking back over the year I can see that your 10 minute practice is what got me started with finding this dream job overseas and getting started on this new project.

Yes! This is the small stuff that reverberates . . . builds on itself  . . . and generates transformation.

Please be brave enough to tune in to your deepest longings . . . And always remember to make breakfast. Make love. Make some trouble on behalf of beauty, truth, and goodness.

Thank you for everything you do to keep putting power in the hands of love.

Warmly, Lyedie

I hope you have found this helpful in some way. If you are looking to make a shift in your approach to life — to developing your resilience and to getting on to fulfilling  those longings, click here to learn more about working with me. Or click here to schedule a free 20 minute discovery session with me.

Why Poetry is a Necessary Luxury

Good morning,

Lyedie here again from my blue chair.

The crocuses are bursting forth here in New England, and it has been about a year now since I launched The Longings Project. The irony of having chosen this year to dedicate myself to fulfillment of the personal and professional longings of women is not lost on me — I have to admit, there have been times when I heard a booming voice saying, "How dare you put the longings of women at the forefront!" 

Here is the thing I have to say to that booming voice. We can't have true fulfillment without longings. Longings are Point One on the trek to fulfillment. Point One is where we set our direction. When we skip over Point One, we easily set off on rudderless adventures, driven by the winds of necessity and other people's worn itineraries. That is why I dare.

Longings give us access to living life with the heart of the Lover. (One of four members of the archetypal Wisdom Council that I offered you a few weeks back in the Daily Activist's Log) Lover is the one who feels and who loves life. She gives us access to our emotional intelligence and to our playful nature. When the Lover isn't firmly in her seat at your council, life starts to lose color and texture.  Your feeling life recedes and the dry winds of 'shoulds' and 'what ifs' begin to pervade.  Some people report feeling as if they are just going through the motions, or that they feel lifeless, even dead inside — dreams remain untapped.

Longings are the sparks and tugs of the Lover.  Glimpses of the future breaking through into the present, calling us into the next chapter of our lives. Longings speak through our felt sense, the little details of life, the exquisite swelling of our heart, the tears welling up in our eyes. There are times that we can barely feel the spark and the tug of longing, and other times that unrequited longing is burning holes through our lives . . .

One of the languages of longing is poetry. We are living in a moment in time when our very language defends against matters of the heart. Poetry, as David Whyte suggests, is language that melts through this defense and gives us access to the territory of the heart. Often we are quick to jump to instruction manual language that tells how to do it faster, more efficiently, more effectively and we skip right past the poetry that makes it all worth while.

Poets re-acquaint us with the language of longing, inviting us to live closer to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to the mystery that gives rise to a meaningful life. Nayyirah Waheed whispers about the courage it takes to put longing first in a tiny poem that resounds in my heart.

flower work
is
not easy.
remaining
soft in fire
takes
time.
 

The poet Brooke MacNamara offers us an intimate glimpse into her response to the jug breaking political event of 2016 in her poem Upon Learning Donald Trump Has Been Elected POTUS, I Clean the House

Mold in the toilets must be scrubbed,
and my toddler’s spills demand my supplication.
I always hate the beginning of cleaning,
and the mess gets bigger
before what’s under begins to shine.
Some things must be discarded
but the little gifted sailboat mug
will be glued back together for my boy.
Now, head bowed
and crowned with earned beads of sweat,
I’m humming along and my husband
joins my effort. The bad news is:
unearthing, we don’t know what we’ll find.
The good news is: we don’t know what we’ll find.
My love, help me lift the weight
of the bed we’ve been sleeping in
so we can face what’s been collecting
under it in the dark. In the corner back there,
I see my lost heirloom ring - ring of my lineage -
has been resting against a dead fly

Mary Oliver slyly invites us to kneel down in the grass, even invites us to be idle and blessed, before she flings a heart-of-the-matter question right at us in her poem The Summer Day.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

One thing my life has taught me is that the greatest acts of courage are the small ones.  Like remaining soft in fire — Like saying 'no' to the news on occasion, and then saying 'yes' to poetry. Carving out time to spend with poetry has become a necessary luxury for me. Reading poetry invites the Lover to take her seat more firmly at the table of my Wisdom Council. It helps me to stay connected to not just what I care about, but to the full bodied felt sense of caring itself. 

Lately, I've been keeping a pile of poetry books beside my blue chair. Yesterday, in the quiet of the morning, I read an old favorite over again out loud to myself. Hearing Rilke's words become my own, and then reverberate in my kitchen gave strength to my resolve to hold fast to dreams, my own and yours.

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst....

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

 Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Robert Bly

I urge you to make a place for Lover on your Wisdom Council, and to keep your favorite poets by your side.  Feel free to contact me if you'd like learn more about how I can assist you on your trek to fulfillment. 

Thank you for taking a little of your precious time to read this today. May we all have the courage to be open to the mystery in our every day, to put our strength in service of the good, and to celebrate the joys of fulfillment.

Dare to have your longings, and thanks again!

Lyedie

Daily Activism - How do you start your day?

How do you start your day? My day generally begins with a cup of coffee in my blue chair, and 10 minutes spent reflecting and planning with a morning page. In the last few weeks, my sense of being a citizen (a citizen of our nation and the world) has deepened and expanded. So much so that it caused me to update my morning page. I've started calling it my Daily Activist's Log, and for the next few weeks, I'm making it widely available here.

Perhaps you share in this expanding sense of citizenship? If so, you might want to give 10 minutes of your morning to trying this out, especially if these sorts of things are coming up for you:
- the need to keep up your good work in the uncertainty of our times
- the desire to expand your sphere of influence — and make it felt
- a longing to put power in the hands of skillful love
- an awareness that this is not just a sprint, it is a marathon
Click here if you'd like to download the morning page.

As Jean Houston recently pointed out to me, uncertainty seems to have reached truly mythic proportions. We are cracking away from the expected, into times that require an upgrade of the pioneering spirit. "To succeed we can no longer go it alone, but must partner with one another to share innovative and creative ways in which to rethink and restructure our individual existence within the context of our expanding global communities." We are not going to succeed with just the usual activist tactics. I see a need to call in the feminine and upgrade our activism. Some are calling it the Politics of Love.  What ever words you are using, there is a need to marshal all the love, wisdom and energy that we can. Pacing and elegant use of energy is called for in this marathon

Keeping fit for the long haul starts with each one of us, every morning, when we set the trajectory for our day. One of the secrets to creatively living through tumultuous times is to develop the art of the potent pause. There are a number of ways to pause mindfully; meditation, martial arts, even walking being among them. One way to develop the art of pausing potently is to maintain the practice of starting the day with well orchestrated time to reflect, and to align your attention and energy. 10 minutes can wield a truly alchemical shift in your day, when it is well orchestrated.

If you are in for the duration, spend 10 morning minutes with My Daily Activist's Log for a few days or a week. Then please let me know how well this potent pause rocks you into your day. It is a work in progress, so I welcome your response. My hope is that your success with it contributes to our collective rise to the great task before us. Feel free to tinker with it and make it yours. If you find you want help with implementing it, click here to learn more about my work or just contact me directly.

I know, I do get lofty when I'm in my blue chair. Then I put away the dishes and I rock into my day. I feel very lucky to be able to carve out 10 minutes of quiet in the morning, and one thing that really motivates me is my longing for all beings on the planet to someday to be able to enjoy this same privilege.

Please go ahead and share this post.

Onward we go!

Saying, 'Yes'

God Says Yes to Me

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
what if I cavort with squawking saints
forage with a crowd of long legged water angels
sail with a regatta of white pelicans
sing glory hallelujah with the cormorants
drying their wings over the water
and she said Baby I made you for this
cavort as you wish
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Poem by Kaylin Haught

Exploring Habits

I’ve noticed that when people think about habits they are usually focusing on what they perceive as bad habits and looking to break them.

Good habits / Bad habits, either way they structure our lives.

Habits are activities that have connected to our autonomic nervous system and have quietly transformed what we do into routine. Habits are structural in the way that they impact our lives. And the beauty of that is that we don’t have to expend energy deciding over and over again. I don’t have to decide whether to have my first cup of coffee in the morning, or whether to give my daughter a hug and a quick kiss before she gets on the school bus, or whether to review and update my list of tasks for tomorrow at the end of my work day.

Recently I had the pleasure of hearing Gretchen Rubin speak about her new book on making and breaking habits.  One thing she said really stuck with me, “What we do everyday matters more than what we do once in a while.” I got a subtle and significant perspective shift when I went from thinking about habits to thinking about what we do everyday, and my practice design “elf” awakened.

So, if daily habits are the architecture that structure our lives then the practice of tracking and appreciating what we do on a daily basis for a week could be very illuminating. Tracking something puts your attention on it and attention is a form of currency. (This is what I call a Noticing Practice.)

Start a list of your daily habits. Add to it every day for a week. Then at the end of a week give yourself 15 or 20 minutes to reflect on your list.  A few key questions might then be:

What abilities am I maintaining and even building with my habits of doing?

What neural pathways am I maintaining and building with my habits of thinking?

What are the things that I’m doing every day that presence* what matters most to me?

Then pick a few new habits to invite into the daily-ness of life.

And if, during your noticing practice you trip upon a few habits that you want to break, Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies Framework is a great resource.

If you’d like support with venturing further into inviting new habits into your daily life, or breaking a few, you can contact me by clicking here.

*Note: I’m using presence as a verb here, meaning to be able to sense and bring into the present. See Otto Scharmer’s Presencing Institute

Great Questions

Great questions spring from the mouths of babes. . .

One afternoon, way back when I was a young mother, I was busy putting groceries away and thinking about making dinner when my 7 year old daughter, Sara, burst into the kitchen with a burning question, “Hey Mom! What I want to know is, how come God doesn’t talk to me the way he talked to Noah?”  I knew it was a burning question because of her wide stance and the way she had her hands on her hips. I found out later that her teacher had just read Noah's Ark to the class in school that day.

My first response was internal, ‘Damn, he never talks to me the way he talked to Noah, either!’ Then I managed to slow down and stop bustling around in the kitchen. We had a talk about the Bible's booming voice of God and I started to articulate for her, and for myself, the many ways that God "speaks" to us.  Sara’s question has reverberated in my life for years. I’m so grateful that she asked it and that I stopped long enough to listen. For the life of me I can’t remember what I cooked for dinner that night.

Initially, Sara’s question roused me to examine the masculine voice of God that so often prevails my western Judeo-Christian lineage. Her question was what prodded me into discovering the feminine face of God. It led me to wondering, ‘How is it that we just Know? What senses inform me? How accurate is my interpretation of what I intuit? How can I tell? How could I have missed that? From where do I feel enough certainty to act?’ Since that day you could say I’ve been on a quest to “listen” (active mode) and to “hear” (receptive mode) more, better.

Eventually it led me to my interest in leadership.  In graduate school and subsequent trainings I specialized in the nature of creativity, innovation and emergence and the multifaceted aspects of what constitutes authority. Now the focus has evolved into seeing how Noah’s brilliant response to massive flooding is a story about a leader who innovated because he had a glimpse of the highest future and he managed to act on it. All of this lofty business translates directly into practical application in my daily coaching and facilitation practice. Yes! Now almost thirty years later, I can trace all that back to my little girl’s great question. And I'm still, always, honing my listening skills.

Great questions. They show up in our lives in the darnedest places, when we least expect them. The trick is to recognize them and to open to letting them reverberate and inform us. Tracing the reverberation can reveal the narrative of your life and give you a strong glimpse of what is calling you forward.

What is calling you forward?

What might you need to let go of to move toward that calling?

What action will it require?

What joy will it bring?

When questions like these start to burn in you, contact me.  I can help you cross into the next chapter of your adventure.

Harnessing the Energy of Spring

May 2nd, Walpole, New Hampshire

It is a glorious May morning and I'm just in from a walk. While I was out there I got inspired to offer up a few simple practices for harnessing the energy that spring offers. My hope is that you enjoy them, and they are helpful to you in some way.

Many of us are looking to further our intentionality, resourcefulness and the ability to enjoy life.  Working with the cycles of nature can help us to understand how to sustain these capacities over time. The practices below are intended to build your capacity:

  - To initiate more intentional communications with others

  - To work actively with the cycles of the creative process that are inherent in nature

  - To be more resourceful

Harnessing the Energy of Spring   (A few practices)

Recent breakthroughs in the field of neurobiology are telling us just how connected we are to the natural world and to each other. The palpable uptick of spring is a gorgeous example of this truth.  Our bodies and minds are attuned to the waking up energy at play in the natural world. This provides great support for initiating communication, moving up and out in purposeful ways.

Take a Daily Infusion: Carve out time on a daily basis for an infusion of spring. This could be just 7-10 minutes of your lunch break or a longer stretch if your schedule allows. The idea is to go outside and commune with spring as it bursts forth.  Leave your mobile phone behind and refrain from engaging in conversation. Dedicate this time to being fully receptive and aware of what is occurring in the natural world — the rain falling, sun warming, buds swelling, ferns unfurling, sap rising. Let it all bring a smile to your face. Invite it infuse your energy level and mood as you go on with your day. Doing this on a daily basis will support the initiating practices outlined below

Reflection: Take note of how being receptive to the uptick of Spring actually shifts your well-being, how it changes your energy level and emotional state.

Look for Opportunities to Break out of Winter’s Grip:  As you go through your day, look for ways to break out of the stasis of winter and to push forward into new possibility. The stasis of winter is something we often experience internally as a kind of inertia.  When you are on the verge of breaking out of it you might feel euphoric (and a even a little reckless) from the uptick that spring is giving your limbic system. But it is just as likely that you will experience at least a twinge of anxiety and feel your courage quicken. At those times consciously attune yourself to the energy of spring, the “yes” energy of inspiration and yearning; go with that.

Two Ways to Break out of Winter’s Grip:

1. Start Something: Start a project (small or large) that is dear to your heart, one that you have been considering but that has been in the grip of winter's inertia. Initiate that new project at work. Make that recipe that appears daunting. Throw that dinner party. Send that letter of intent. Teach your child how to knit.  Hurl yourself into preparing that garden bed.

Reflection: How much energy do you gain by applying your attention and energy to something that is meaningful to you?

2. Break Through and Melt Ice: Communicate intentionally by saying what you see and what you’d like to see.  Tell someone what you notice is happening in the space between you. Begin with the data; describe what you observe in as objective and straight forward a way as you can. Then express your warmth and what you hope for, what you would really like to experience and perhaps why. (It could be that there is something you'd like to see more of, or something you’d like to have less of, or perhaps there is something you wish was different than it is.) Be as real as you can, be your authentic self, listen to their response, stand in your intention.  This may feel risky at first and I encourage you to start with the small stuff. Sentence stems are a great help:  

I notice that . . . 

I see that . . . 

Followed by

What I’d really like to . . .

What is important to me is . . .

Here are some examples:  

I notice that we don't have dinner as a family the way we used to . . . I really miss it and it is important to me that we get back on track by having dinner together at least three times a week.

I notice that when you ask me to make changes in the work I submit for approval, even though I value your input, I get defensive. . . . I'd really like to be able to accept criticism more gracefully and be open to feedback so that we can collaborate more effectively .

I notice that when you greet me at the end of the day with that quick little kiss on my cheek . . . that I really want you to linger there with me a little longer. 

Reflections:

What does it take for you to say what you see and to offer your tender hopes to another?

What happens when you do?

How could you become more adept at these conversations?

Go ahead.  The idea here is to work with the inherent full-bodied invitation of spring. Experience how spring works with you to support your intentions. Notice how spring invites us, by its very nature, to be restless in our frozen old habits, to envision new patterns and potential, and to move up and out into the fullness of life. I urge you to harness the energy it offers to do what really matters to you.

Feel free to let me know how it goes.

As a life and leadership coach I help my clients develop capacities they need to meet their objectives, and to fulfill their promise.  Developing a new capacity is building a new muscle; it takes repeated effort and awareness through practice. 

May spring bring be all that you hope for!

Warmly, Lyedie