Let’s say you’re afraid of something. Maybe big, maybe small. Maybe the very heart of the work you feel is yours to do right now.

Whatever it is, it scares you.

And let’s say there’s a story around this thing that you fear:

• If I try it, I’ll fail and end up worse off than if I don’t try at all.
• If I succeed, everyone I care about will resent me and I’ll find myself alone.
• I’ll never find someone I connect with deeply.
• I’m unhelpably stuck.
• I will always feel this way.
• I can’t find the money.
• I don’t have enough time.

So you have this story, and you feel like it’s the only possible story to tell. There’s even a part of you that likes this story – how familiar it’s become. How predictable. How it covers you somehow, makes you feel less exposed.

And let’s say part of the comfort of this story is watching for corroborating evidence and finding it. Hah! See? The story’s true!

You find the evidence so you tell the story more, adding weight and weight and more weight to it from all that evidence until the neuro-pathway in your brain between that story and that fear is a Grand Canyon-shaped crevasse.

The neurons don’t even have to think when it comes to what to do with this fear. The story. Always tell the story.

But what if.

What if your fear itself is just a point of view?

What if you walked around to the other side of it and imagined what someone with more hope than you currently have might see? Or someone who isn’t religious or spiritual. Or who totally is. Someone who’s been through the fire and lived to tell the tale. Someone who’s been around the block of your particular fear and found a way to another route?

What would they say? What stories could they tell about you?

(No, really. Coming up with an actual answer to this can knock your socks right off.)

Or what story would your own wise self – the one you hope to be in 15 or 30 years – tell you in the face of this fear?

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

If you’ve read here these last months, you’re aware that I’m in a season of inner expansion, of stepping more fully into my power…and that I’ve been doing so tremblingly.

Because as much as I feel called to this work and like my life has been a grooming for it, I have internalized a story around success that goes something like: Stepping into my power will cause me to lose the friendship and support of all the people that I love.

Wonderful, right?

And totally triggered whenever I taste success.

Last month I attended Tara Sophia Mohr’s retreat and one of the exercises we did was to pair up with a partner and look her square in the eyes. Without speaking, each of us was to look for the “light” in our partner – the light that isn’t synonymous with the physical body. The light that some call spirit or soul.

We did this for a few minutes.

We were then instructed to look, again without speaking, for our OWN light in that person’s eyes. To see our own spark in them.

And then, finally, after more minutes had passed, to wordlessly wish our partner well. To send her whatever blessing we felt moved to send.

WOOOEEE, that experience left me undone. Tears streamed down my face the whole time. I felt as if my fears of abandonment and disconnection melted into a warm pool in that stare, and I saw – no, felt – what it is to be safe. To feel as if “Don’t leave me!” and “What if I find myself alone?” make no sense at all. Are words that float like dust in the space beyond the Whole that is you and me and everyone else together. If, indeed, there’s any space beyond Us at all.

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

My point is not to preach about oneness, though.

My point is to name an experience where a story I’ve been telling myself for a lifetime suddenly got unveiled as just that: a story. And one I no longer wish to tell.

I’m not cured of my story. Neuro pathways run deep. But I’m now recognizing that story for what it is and doing the conscious work of telling a different one whenever I find my mind slipping into it.

As I step into my power, I will be more supported and less alone has become my new mantra.

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

Last week I wrote about sensing the time is ripe for us to address the intimacy issues we all carry around. And I’m wondering whether it might be revolutionary, in that very task, to recognize the stories we tell about ourselves and our real or imagined significant others – and even about the possible paths that our lives and relationships might take – and to listen with a new kind of interest for which of them are ones we want to lay down.

Which of those stories have become less security blankets and more scratchy, too-tight clothes.

Which have become less inevitabilities and more mere points of view?

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

What are you most afraid of? What story about that are you wanting, with growing awareness, to tell?

[Note: I wrote this post as though it applies to everyone, knowing full well there are always exceptions. I hope you'll listen to your own wise heart to know whether these words are for you.]

Just outside and below our kitchen window is a ledge. I’m guessing it’s meant for flower boxes, but the only thing we’ve ever used it for is jack o’ lanterns.

And since that ledge isn’t right next to our front door, it’s easy to, say, forget that there are pumpkins on it until the pumpkins have turned into gray-and-orange-and-black mush that’s slowly oozing down the side of the ledge toward the ground.

Yesterday I spent some time with a shovel, transporting pumpkin glop to the compost and then washing our ledge of decay.

And it occurred to me: this is not the way I want to deal with pumpkins next year.

+ + + + + + + +

I’ve been thinking about relationships this week, and how possible it is to get so used to dysfunction in them that we pour truck loads of energy (anger, fear, resentment, bitterness, regret) into that dysfunction without hardly batting an eye.

Because those truck-loads usually happen in a drip…drip form, so that we’re rarely ever doused like a coach with water post-game, waking up stunned to our dysfunction, but rather flicked daily in the face or heart or gut with mere drops of the Big Picture: a little resentment here. A little anger or child-like clinging there. A little conversational pattern that always leaves someone punchy or wilted or wanting to run away.

These drips feel terrible, but they come to feel normal and inevitable and the thought of actually making a move to stop them becomes way more uncomfortable than than just learning to live with the drips.

And I’m wondering: what if it’s time for all of us, myself included, to work to stop these drops?

+ + + + + + + +

I had an amazing conversation with a friend this weekend about relationships. She’s in a season of deep inner work around patterns she’s repeated in intimate relationships throughout her life – patterns that haven’t served her very well, and haven’t been ideal for her dear ones, either. The work she’s doing is excruciating. And radiates more hope than I could dream up.

She’s walking straight through her fears. She’s letting anger and regret surface. She’s having hard, hard conversations.

She’s a phoenix in full flame.

And as I quieted myself today, listening for what to write here, I felt a surge of this:

We – all of us – are living and co-creating an amazing age of human history. We are facing jaw-dropping challenges and being offered (by the connectivity of the internet, by technological developments beyond the web, by all that’s come before us and all that pulses to get born) incredible opportunities to participate in the healing and awakening of our world.

And as far as I can see, there’s a massive shift afoot from emphasis on the mind to emphasis on the heart. An opening to the necessity (for wholeness and healing and health) of things like emotion and intuition and all that’s typically deemed feminine.

And as we face these current challenges and receive these wondrous opportunities and welcome (or chafe at) this shift from head to heart, the health of our intimate relationships feels like the heart of the heart of everything, the root of our most powerful future.

Because learning to love and be loved well is our way forward.

My body shakes with conviction as I write it:

Learning to love and be loved well is our way forward as a species. Is what it means to step beyond fear and into a landscape of trust.

And our most intimate relationships – the ones that we have, and the ones we only long for – are where we learn about love.

They’re where, in our moments of honesty, we come face to face with our darkest shadows – the self-protective patterns we’ve developed that no longer service our (or our world’s) thriving.

They’re where we learn compassion and humility and grace.

They’re where we learn to open ourselves to trust, again and again, and where we learn what trust even means – that sometimes it means staying with the loneliness of not having an intimate other or the challenge of togetherness with the one we do have long enough to see it all the way through, to learn the lessons our deepest selves know are ours to learn in that place.

And sometimes it means stepping off into the unknown of life-after-this-relationship or life-after-loneliness and toward something or someone our hearts have been calling us toward for some time.

I have this sense that finally naming the drip…drip of energy we’re individually and collectively pouring into intimacy dysfunction (and again, I’m talking about the dysfunction that’s had whether we’re partnered with someone or not – we carry our dysfunction within ourselves and the dynamics between two people are merely a place where it gets outwardly displayed) and doing something to stop that drip: I have a sense that the time has come for this work.

That the time is now.

That the universe is standing on a threshold, smiling, knowing we have lots of work to do (though when have we not?) and that all of it, all of the work that we’re beckoned to do, will be, is already, totally worth it.

+ + + + + + + + +

It scares me to face my intimacy issues. I’d much rather ignore them like the pumpkins on my ledge. I’d much rather will them to disappear on their own, to shrink them through lack of attention.

I don’t want to deal with my body image.
I don’t want to acknowledge how often I feel triggered into childlike feelings.
I don’t want to admit my part in patterns that leave me resentful and frustrated.

But good heavens, it fills me with every kind of hope to realize I can do so, and that on the other side of whatever hard work must (continue to) be done is more and more of what I want. More trust. More connection. More power. More health. More knowing how deep and vast and wide is the love that I catch glimmers of now, and trust we’re all swimming inside of.

And what is my alternative to this work?

What’s yours?

Is that more appealing?

+ + + + + + + + +

There are many ways to clean up pumpkins, to turn them into the rich and fertile soil from which new growth and flowering springs. Why not choose the path of least goo? Why ignore that necessary work any longer?

One of life’s arenas that has a history of scratching at my trust is one I’ll call Impact: how much, or how little, I’m changing the world. I tend to feel like life is good when I’m contributing tangibly and obviously to people beyond my own home, and to feel restless and moorless when my energy is spent exclusively on private things – things only I or my family will see.

This was particularly true during my kids’ infancies and toddlerhoods, but just as poignantly through the seasons before and after those, when I was (before) writing a novel and (before that) doing deep inner work around the loss of my childhood faith and the meltdown that caused in every crevice of my being. After my kids’ infancies and toddlerhoods I was feeling a strong call to turn outward, but not yet clear about what that “outward” would be. And finally working for what felt like EONS to vision and actually launch this site.

And all of that – every one of those seasons – was fraught with a nagging feeling of not-enoughness for me, of needing to hurry up to do something different or more, to finally translate all the (hard, hard) work behind the scenes into things other people could see.

I wanted to matter, for sure. So there was the need for validation in my mix. But I also felt intensely like I had good things to offer the world, and like something important was getting hidden or wasted by all my private years. Such a pity, my bones would groan.

The longer I live, however, the more drastically different my view of all such things has come to be.

You couldn’t have convinced me of this then – “then” being every season when my work was mainly private – but from where I sit today, every ounce of what I’ve done in private has been woven into my public life now. All that hard inner work, the years of therapy, the reading, the journalling, the years when I had nothing left to journal and hardly anything to say, the blood, sweat, and tears that got poured into that novel (which, by the way, sits muse-like in my closet, informing my life and work constantly, yet noncommittal, still, as to whether it wants to get readied for publication), the diapers I changed, the gazillion fights I’ve refereed, the looooong afternoons with one and then two little beings in my care:

All of it matters. All of it has changed and continues to change the course of our whole world.

And I’m wondering whether you might need to hear this, too. Hear that nothing is getting wasted. Hear that if you’re in a private season, a season of grief, or a season of some other inner transformation; hear that if your work is mainly with your kid(s); hear that if you’re in a season of working on some project that who-knows-when will see the light of day; hear that even if you’re hiding, or just barely getting glimmers of, or slinking around the background of whatever it is you feel is yours to do right now:

All of it, every last thought and choice and movement, is getting woven into the fabric of our world. All of it is helping you and other people wake up. All of it matters, immensely.

And lest you take this as caffeine for your inner perfectionista who’s just looking for reasons to feel uptight about the small stuff too (Ack! My sucky parenting is getting woven into the universe!! My lack of discipline is affecting us all!! I can’t lift a finger without fucking something up!!), don’t.

Really. Don’t.

Give that part of you a hug and wish her well and go back to your business of being awed by the ways the little things aren’t little at all, and the quiet seasons of dormancy, and the frenetic seasons of young parenthood, and tumultuous seasons of private upheaval, and those stretches where you just don’t care and want to numb out to it all: all of them are of impact, and are necessary for the shedding of old things and the cultivation and growth of what’s new.

Don’t let the seasons of others – seasons that might look more glamorous and wonderful from the outside – dissuade you from this truth.

Everything belongs. I couldn’t say that with more than a whisper for most of my life, but here I stand today, feeling that to my core. And with love for you, and hope for the very place you find yourself right now, pouring from my heart.

I wish you peace. I wish you ease in your growing pains. I wish you hope for your bright future.

This last weekend I attended Tara Sophia Mohr’s Fall retreat. And it was fantastic. Tara did an outstanding job of facilitating and the group of women that gathered was such a kind, safe container for the deep inner work we all did.

And I was struck by a couple of things that relate to trust.

This retreat was held at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, a Buddhist practice center nestled in the hills just north of San Francisco. I got the feeling on the winding drive that leads onto the property like I was walking a labyrinth – those maze-like symbols of pilgrimage where the “pilgrim” walks an inevitable path toward the center (God, Source, one’s own wise heart), and then back out the same path to every-dayness.

I stepped out of my shuttle that first day to the sound of wind through trees. A woman with a shaved head – a sign of her devotion – was just finishing preparing the guest house for our group. And as the sun warmed my face and shimmered off the sea in the distance, my heart said, “This. THIS.” Like all of this – the quiet, the land, the contemplative spiritual setting – was water and my heart parched beyond telling.

Tears fell from my eyes.

The next morning many of us took an early walk to the shore, winding our way silently through the Center’s many gardens – vegetables, flowers, shrubs, trees – past horses and then out to sand and sea. I felt the whole time like the land was hugging me, like it had been loved and tended well and had, because of that, so much to give back.

And it struck me as I walked and cried and received that huge hug how harsh life has felt these last months. Not mean, but requiring much. In addition to the challenges of family life, I have poured myself into my work here, saying yes a thousand times (and often late into the night) to trust and to listening more strongly to my sense of calling than to my racing heart and trembling knees. I feel silly admitting how out of my comfort zone I’ve been doing almost everything I’ve done here, since my life has prepared me well for all of it. But that’s the truth: I’ve been out of my comfort zone this year far more than in it.

So I’ve known this year has been hard work. But it wasn’t until I found myself in a soft place that the truth of it, the depth of the stress and the rigor, had freedom to surface.

And I wonder:

What if becoming (painfully, gut-wrenchingly, sometimes) aware of our fear is not always a sign that we’re far off from peace, but actually quite the opposite: a sign that we’re actually close enough to peace to start collapsing into it, to start admitting to ourselves or someone else how hard things have been? How much we need Life’s hug?

If you look at the labyrinth above, you’ll see the bulk of the last steps to the center are actually furthest away from it.

The other thought I’m left pondering is the surprise that softness was for me this weekend. The surprise of quiet and stillness in the midst of my otherwise loud, frenetic life. The surprise of land that felt so powerfully good. The surprise of Tara’s warmth and skill as a facilitator and the lovely group of women to explore with and grow alongside of.

What if it’s possible to be surprised by softness when you very least expect it? To be going along in the midst of your gut-clenching challenges – the ones you admit to yourself and the ones so hard and protracted you almost cannot – and find yourself turning a bend into kindness. Warmth. Generosity. Understanding. Love.

What if all such things could be far more close than you think?

I hope that they are. I hope you know rest and softness soon. I hope you’re surprised by a warm and healing Hug.

I’ve been learning and practicing what has felt to me like magic. Magic for all the times I’m online and get triggered into shame about who I am or what I have or haven’t accomplished; magic for all the times I get overwhelmed as I read and research and surf; magic for the times when a stiff drink of Frantic feels less like a choice and more like a command.

My whole life – on the Internet and off – is changing because of this magic, and I want to share it with you.

I’ve created a little book that’s all about tending trust while working online and you can read more about it and download it for free here.

I love you and am rooting for your trust with my whole heart,

When I was ten, I deeply offended one of my friends. I told a joke that she thought was about her weight and, from all I can gather, I triggered deep shame. The look of shock and then distain on her face when I told that joke stays with me still, and, too, the memories of her ignoring me for months; her unwillingness to listen to my frantic explanations and apologies; and her attempts to help other kids join her front against me.

Were I a spit-fire kid myself, this might have been normal. I might have been frustrated, but basically resilient and able to brush myself off and move on.

But I wasn’t. Oh, I so wasn’t.

I was as earnest as they come, and offending anyone was virtually top on my list of Things To Be Avoided At All Costs. I told few jokes in general and, as you might imagine, this particular one had nothing to do with my friend’s weight.

I struggled hugely that year to come to terms with the reality that I could a) hurt someone unintentionally and b) be powerless to right the situation when it actually happened.

I’d like to say that I did it – that I came to terms with both things – but I think the very opposite is true. I think my fear that this could happen again grew ENORMOUS and even more so, my resolve to try to avoid the recurrence.

But of course life will be life, and I have and continue to hurt and offend and disappoint people. Without even trying! Because in addition to all of our unspoken needs, we have land mines – all of us – that can get triggered by even the most delicate, planful of strides. The look of a stranger can set them off. The growl of a dog. The respectful work of a dear one to tell us what they need.

I’m guessing every one of us has experienced both sides of this equation…on more than one occasion!

And for a number of reasons, I’m feeling the yuck of that reality this week. I’m feeling frustrated that relationships are a dance between two or more people, and I can only be responsible for me. I’m feeling my fears of being blind-sided by someone’s disappointment or offense – expecting it to happen around every bend. And I’m sitting with the discomfort of knowing I see deeply into things AND have a lot to learn about when and how and to whom to actually talk about what I see. And how to know how confident to even be about what I (think I) see!

Oh, the riches in my mind this week!!

So as a move to tend trust in the midst of my week’s trenches, I’m going to try something I’ve been hearing Goddess Leonie do in her World’s Biggest Summit interviews (if you haven’t signed up for the summit, you still can! I’m slated to give my talk there later this month, but every day there are links to 3 or 4 wonderful videos or audio recordings, delivered to your inbox). I’m going to imagine what my future/highest/wisest self might say to the me of today whose gut is in such knots over when my next offense will occur or the fact that some offenses unquestionably already have.

And here’s what I think she might say (hopefully these can help some of you, too):

1. Oh honey. Want a hug?
2. Your tender heart is beautiful and not a sign of weakness, over-sensitivity, or immaturity. It’s a gift you can nourish others with and yourself be nourished by.
3. Fully honoring your tender heart is a more effective way of containing its fears and woes than is listening to it, constantly, half-heartedly. If you can, listen to its feelings purposefully and with as little judgment as possible. Write these down. Do this daily, until this storm has passed. And where you sense they might be needed, create rituals that honor what needs honoring – the grief, the fear, the desire to put some lifelong pattern to rest. Help your heart feel safe with you, respected, and heard.
4. Learning when to trust your intuition and what to do in response to it are lifelong endeavors. There’s no rush. You’ll find your flow with time.
5. Utter confidence in what you know and spot-on social grace in your delivery of it aren’t your highest goals. Love is. Keep your sights there and good things follow.
6. Whenever and wherever you can, lean into trust – that it’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to hurt people, it’s okay to be hurt by people, it’s okay if people can’t hear or understand your intent, it’s okay to have blind spots, it’s okay for you and others to have inner land mines and shocking, startling needs, it’s okay for conflicts to remain open-ended indefinitely, it’s okay for you to grieve.
7. Watch for life’s kindnesses, no matter how small. The way the sun warms you, an unexpected quiet, that there was enough shampoo left for your shower, the kind smile of a stranger. You’ve given your attention to life’s sharp edges lately, and they’ve been plentiful. See what happens when your attention turns toward kindness.
8. Take a week and forget about your inner world altogether. Instead, focus all your attention on getting more sleep, getting your blood moving for 20 minutes each day, and eating more greens. You will be flabbergasted by the results. This might be the most important item on your list.
9. Go read this post. No seriously. Go read it and listen all the way to the end of the song. Then play the song again. Hold it close to your heart.
10. Each day as you awake, and each time your fears flare, pull back until you see a broader view. Imagine yourself pulling up above the forest of your life and seeing what you’re really about – what you’re really here to be and do. Nestling your fears and stresses inside this BIG container makes them seem so much smaller. So not hindrances to you being who you’re here to be.

What do you do when you hurt, disappoint, or offend? How do you navigate broken relationships that you’re helpless to fix? How do you step out of fearful vigilance and into greater trust? I’d very much like to know!

I don’t know about you, but sometimes our world’s biggest challenges feel less like opportunities to me and more like reason to either weep and gnash my teeth, or turn the other direction completely. La-la-la, can’t HEAR you!

I’ve done both at different times in my life, and while I think there’s a time and a place to grieve deeply, to sit with overwhelm, and to focus our attention only on life’s lovely, beautiful things, I think there’s also a time and place to look squarely at huge challenges – long enough to grow trust in the midst of them.

Huge challenges don’t always mean global ones. They can be within your own being, your own household, or your circle of friends. But huge challenges ARE global, too, and sometimes our personal traumas and despair are healed and tended by a closer look at these broader issues and the hopeful, trust-inducing work people are doing in the face of them.

Today I’m joining a wave of awareness, sweeping across the web, for a trust-kindred organization called Girl Effect. The focus of their work is girls in poverty and the drastically different paths girls’ lives can take depending on their access to education, their ability to choose when to marry, and their freedom from HIV.

If words like “poverty”, “HIV” and “access to education” tend to make you turn away or go numb – both natural, normal responses – chances are your heart is troubled deeply by them. Chances are you don’t know what to do about their implications and/or feel the challenges of your own life so acutely that you see zero psychic or emotional or financial reserves to pour into thoughts about girls in the developing world.

And that’s okay!

But I’ve been thinking about The Girl Effect and wondering whether the hope and transformation that’s generated by it might actually connect with you deeply – connect, actually, with the very deepest fears and wounds that you carry.

What if you watched this video not as a distanced observer, but with an eye for the ways that you are like the 12-year-old girl in it? What if you watched it as a metaphor for the poverty (emotional, relational, financial, parental) and stuck-ness you feel in some area of your life, and the trajectory that would unfold for you naturally were nothing significant to change?

You know that fear, right?

And what if you watched the alternative trajectory the 12-year-old girl takes as one that’s actually open for you? – not necessarily her literal trajectory, but the broader one of possibility, of choices, of passing on strength and trust and hope to those who come after you?

The Girl Effect is not only some distant magic.

It’s also about you.

(If you don’t see the video above, click here to watch.)

If you’re moved by what you’ve seen – for its own sake, or by the ways you see connections with your own life and wishes for hope and opportunity – consider exploring more at girleffect.org.

Giving to this organization or spreading word about it could be a conscious ritual you create to honor your wish for hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges – within your own self, in your life, or in our broader world.

Every act of trust, every ritual we make to say “I choose hope” matters. Every one of them shapes our world.

+ + + + + + + + + +

Bloggers across the world are talking about Girl Effect today. Go here to see what other people are saying. Deep bows and thanks to Tara Sophia Mohr for her work to start and continue this wave.

Sometimes your ego is ready for a good challenge – is all chipper and open-arms about uncomfortable conversations or your growing awareness that you’re scared of something – maybe the very thing you’re most wanting or needing to do – and are finding every reason to stall instead of doing it.

“Bring it on!” your ego says. “I can take it!”

And with the onslaught of that discomfort or that deepened awareness, your ego stands up, flexes, and muscles you off to new and wonderful places.

Sometimes, though – okay, maybe lots of the time – your ego has much less spunk. It feels more like a weary, wounded animal.

Like…for instance…mine right now. The very challenges that start the Rocky theme song going on my best days are leaving me rocking this week, hugging my knees.

So what to do on weeks like these?…especially when there’s still work to be done and checking out completely isn’t an option.

I get this image in my head of lists. Running lists, almost like ticker tape, of all the things that could help:

• More sleep
• Journaling
• Exercise
• Meditation
• Yoga
• More greens
• Gluten-free???
• A cleaner house
• A cleaner desk
• A cleaner head space…

Which really all sound like this when I’m feeling this way:

• Blah
• Blah
• Blah
• Blah
• Get your act together!!!
• Blah

Not so trust-inducing, right?

And then this other image comes to mind of those little stickers given at American polling places that say simply, “I voted”. Only in my vision, they say things like, “I chose self kindness,” or “I put my arm around my f*$%ed-up-ness and walked lovingly like that for a while.”

Wouldn’t that be cool???

I see so many warm looks of knowing in that scene – person to person. High fives, too.

So if your ego is feeling weak right now, and you’re tempted to respond with self condemnation, or your numbing-out habit of choice, or by drawing up personal marching orders or referencing self-help articles or buffing up your to-do lists, maybe you…maybe WE…could consider something much more gentle, and ultimately, more conducive to the natural growth of trust.

Maybe we could do something completely counterintuitive in the face of our own glaring weakness and try some small act of celebration – a lighted candle, a container of berries all to ourselves, a paper crown created for our head – to honor the steps we’re trying to take – even if only on our good days – into trust.

Because they matter. Every single move into trust matters. All of them till and feed and shine warm light on trust’s soil.

Me? I’m going to go crack the cover on the first for-fun book that I’ve opened in nine months. I’d love to hear what small act you might choose!

Quick note: Many of you subscribed to receive Trust Notes only (rather than Trust Notes + blog posts) via email. I’m having technical difficulties getting you sorted from those who want blog posts as well. I’ll have this resolved soon, so this will be the last (and only) blog post you receive this way. Apologies for any inconvenience!

There is so much talk these days about the power of the mind. So many deep and thoughtful people from a wide array of disciplines speaking of our power to shape, with our minds, the physical and emotional and spiritual landscape of our time.

I’m so on board with lots of this! Our minds are immeasurably more powerful than we give them credit for being most of the time. I’m stunned, really, by their power!

And…I’m uncomfortable with the implications of some of these your-mind-is-so-powerful teachings.

In particular, I’m uncomfortable with the assumption that ignoring the “bad” stuff – difficult emotions, painful memories – will make them or their power go away.

And I’m uncomfortable with fear as a motivation for “positive thinking” – the fear that apart from rigidly-controlled positive/happy thoughts, we will unwittingly create lives and relationships and inner worlds that we really, truly don’t want. Or, to put it conversely, we will miss out on everything we DO want.

It is true that wallowing around in yuck will not translate immediately (or sometimes ever) into rainbows and sunbeams.

But I want to give voice to the power of listening attentively to our whole range of emotions and experiences. You may not be a power-of-the-mind disciple, but you may be an average human being who instinctually assumes that distancing yourself from whatever feels or looks or smells bad is your best route to happiness.

I’m here to testify to the opposite.

I want to testify to the transformative effects of welcoming, rather than pushing away, things like bitterness, jealousy, anger, lust, depression, shame, and difficult memories.

I have Big Stories I could tell about what happened when I opened myself up to my own rage and despair – both things from which I had walled myself off before my mid-20s – but for now I’ll speak more to the present:

My son just started kindergarten this month. And he’s having a rough go of it. By the end of some evenings, once he’s in bed and all the day’s processing with him is through, I leave his room with a ball of tension in my gut and a really heavy heart.

I have work to do – always more than I can finish in a day – and much of it is deeply, wonderfully nourishing: finishing my book and starting the next, writing posts, responding to heartfelt emails, working on new art and new projects.

There is a school of mind-power thought that would say follow my bliss into work. Leave worry behind. Know that I’m doing what I can to support my child, communicate with his teachers, brainstorm and debrief with my husband about everything, etc…so by all means, don’t waste energy feeling tense and heavy-hearted about how things are going on the kid front. If anything, envision good things for the kid, trust that they’ll come to fruition, rinse and repeat. (Rinse and repeat, goddammit!)

But you know what? I’ve discovered that actually sitting inside my feelings on purpose for a while reduces their power WAY more effectively than trying to ignore or rush past them.

So last night I did that. I sat inside of them and listened. And I realized that my tension is about a LOT of things. I feel vulnerable about the job I’ve done as a mom to prepare my kid for life and about striking a balance, in this particular season, between legitimate concern about my son’s struggles and a more can-do confidence that all of us – he AND we (my husband and I) can make our way through this well.

I feel worried that this much time and energy poured into this situation will make my work deadlines ever more impossible to reach. And who knows when this “leak” will stop?

And I have a tiny niggle of fear that we’ll eventually decide some sort of home-schooling is what we feel is best – fear because I can’t see how I can home school AND do the Trust Tending work I feel is mine to do.

Phew!

Maybe it doesn’t sound like it, but what a liberating list that was to name! It doesn’t answer my short or long-term questions or POOF my child’s challenges away. But wow, I feel so much lighter just knowing what’s going on in me, and can situate my feelings inside much broader conversations not limited to my little life and time – conversations about feeling vulnerable as a parent, about navigating the tug of more than one area of life at once, about what sacrifice means and when it makes to sense to make some and why and for whom.

I’m living an archetypal story of 21st century America!

I’m so not alone!

My point isn’t that, though. My point is good heavens, I feel better having not ignored my feelings. And darned if the physical outflow of that looking won’t be more beautiful in the ways I want it to be beautiful than if I taped a happy face over everything.

So what if instead of fearing the power of dark thoughts, we used our minds’ power to create safe havens within ourselves to explore them. Maybe literally envisioning cocoons inside our hearts where we can sit before cozy fires, hot drinks in hand, and ask of our fear and laziness and depression and shame and lust and rage and whatever other thing we might otherwise try to ignore: What is it you’d like to say to me? What indispensable nourishment do you have for the Life of trust I want to live?

Oh, you guys. I am so thick in the midst of tending trust this week. I’m working on projects that are out of my comfort zone and having waves of inner freak-outs washing over me, punctuated by all the moves I can pull to step into trust again, and again, and yet again. I feel like I’m in trust tending bootcamp!

Ze book

One of the projects that’s both in AND outside my comfort zone is a book I’m writing called “Trust tending and the internet: A resource for transforming the way you use the web”. I’m listening deeply to all the ways my time online triggers fear and pushes me into comparison games, compulsive behaviors, and feelings of overwhelm. And I’m writing about the magic of tending trust alongside those feelings. I laugh sometimes at how much I need this book, and I’m pouring all my love into every word and illustration, hoping it will cultivate trust well beyond my self.

If you’d like to be one of the first to have it delivered, free, to your inbox, sign up for Trust Notes in the sidebar of my site. (If you’re already subscribed to my email list, you’re all set – no need to resubscribe.) My plan is to send it out to subscribers first, for any feedback or kindnesses you wish to offer. Kindnesses, with links back to your sites, will be posted on the book’s about page so people who haven’t read it yet know what they’re in for; constructive feedback will help shape what I do with the book going forward.

So about these Trust Notes!

I’m looking for ways to connect more personally with you than this forum allows. I want to be able to tell you some of the simple, rough, raw moments of fear and trust I’m facing and invite the kinds of stories and feedback that don’t always get shared in public comments.

So in addition to my once-a-week post on the blog, I’m going to try sending out a once-a-week note to those who wish to receive it – sometimes a brief thought or meditation, sometimes a simple sketch, sometimes questions I’d love company in trying to answer. And little gifts of love and thank-you sometimes, too!

If you’re already signed up to receive blog posts, you’ll automatically receive Trust Notes. And if you’d like Trust Notes, but don’t need blog posts sent to your inbox (I’m this way with people in my rss feed), you can sign up for the notes in the sidebar and simply highlight “Trust Notes only” in the drop-down menu.

I am so thrilled to be on this ride with you. I feel myself and ALL of us joining a movement that’s so big and so hopeful, of people growing trust, week by week, day by day, minute by minute. People transforming our world.

I love you, and bow deeply to all you are and all you’re becoming,

P.S. I’m speaking at The World’s Biggest Summit and would love your support as I do! This is a free, online event, organized by Leonie of GoddessGuidebooks.com, where 100 inspiring teachers are offering words of wisdom. I’m thrilled to be joining people like Julia Cameron, SARK, Jennifer Louden, and Fabeku Fatunmise in sharing some of my light. I hope you’ll sign up and come!!