When It’s Time to Shorten Your Steps

 

The way became steeper as I slowly picked my path up the ridge of giant clast. The abbreviated summit of Mt. St. Helens had grown much closer while I’d had my head down scrambling over rock the past 90 minutes. It was a perfect late morning in June and I was climbing the fields of treacherous sharp dacite purged from the volcano in its famous 1980 eruption.

But 2000 more feet is still deceptively far on the scale of mountains. My eyes trailed the summit snowfield down to the ridge, and then the curve of the ridge down to where I stood. From where we’d begun at 5:30 am, a few more hours and I’d be there! Before the past three hours, the fact that the USFS permit was for “climbing” instead of “hiking” hadn’t caught my attention. But I was all caught up now. Under the full glare of the sun, I once again began to carefully maneuver myself up the jagged black rocks. Trees and shade were two hours behind me down the mountain.

It was easy to take “short steps” going up–I had to. And it felt good even if the going was slow because I was getting closer and closer to the summit. But later on coming down, exhausted, my legs feeling more than a bit like jelly from the rigor of gaining so much altitude in so short a distance, my smallest halting steps were a frustrating necessity in order to survive the treacherous descent.

My client, Kenny, years ago who ran marathons in his fifties, told me his secret to running hills: short steps. He explained, when you go up, you want to get there fast. So naturally you take longer steps to cover more ground more quickly. But physiologically the body has to produce more energy to the muscle at that fast wide cadence and will potentially bomb out much more quickly. At the very least it leaves us more tired. “If you want to conserve your energy for your endurance because you’re doing long runs,” he told me, “take tiny baby steps up the hills.”

I tried it then. I loved hills but they did tire me out fast. So on my next run, I met my first steep incline of about 100 yards and shortened my steps to a mincing dance up the hill. At first I was self-conscious about my strong stride suddenly turning to a baby pace. But something miraculous occurred. Kenny was brilliant. I made it up the steep hill in nearly the same amount of time as taking long steps. And I wasn’t winded at all! It felt pretty much the same as running the flats. Short steps have been a staple of my active endurance ever since.

In the past year, I had a number of unrelated losses and traumatic experiences happen. We don’t plan these things. In the months following, I observed that my bandwidth was almost zero for the extras: extra patience, extra endurance, extra focus, extra discipline, extra everything. I fought it mentally because this was a crucially important year, but I was losing that fight at nearly every turn.

One day, sitting in my silent meditation only focused on my breath for an hour, I slid into that beautiful space of timelessness. I saw an image of me showing my sister on Mt. St. Helens how to take the short steps on the steeper parts of the trail. As the picture flashed through my mind I suddenly saw those past months of struggle with the clear thought, “This is a time to shorten your steps, Carmell.”

It was an aching thought. I love to cover ground of every kind, quickly. It gives me so much joy. But some times of our lives ask for us to pause and then to catch up to where we are right now–and to take the shorter steps.

It isn’t a failure, it’s an act of grace and understanding. It can also be an act of surviving.

I learned years back, what I teach now, that Life is not one thing. This means that when I’m going fast and strong and suddenly get upended and thrown out of my momentum, or even thrown off course altogether, that it’s all part of the mixed-bag journey we are all taking. I can’t expect my life to unfold the same every day, or for me to run at the same pace every day. That isn’t reality. But in our minds we definitely try to do that. We try to make everything fit the way we’re used to, our days playing out relatively the same. And yet, Life is not one thing.

So I recognized that day in the midst of my meditation that I was on an unexpected and extremely steep mountain in my life. It was not part of my plan. And yet here I was, facing not a few but many near-vertical moments in front of me daily. And looking up, even the summit had become clouded and obscured. It happens.

And here I am. I look down at my feet. I know the summit is inevitable; I’ll get there. Deep breath in. I take the next short step.

Do I focus more on what I want? Or primarily on my responsibilities?

My client is amazing.  And I mean that in a national headlines sort of way.  So it was very telling when we got clear about how she focuses.  I asked her, “Do you want to focus more on what you want, or do you want to primarily focus on your responsibilities?

It’s a good question for me, and for all of us, isn’t it.  We tend to hyper focus on our responsibilities every day, handling the ever-long list of things to be done.  

We consider others’ feelings and make decisions around them.  We try to figure out what will work for everyone else… forgetting to take what works for us into account to the same–or greater–degree.

We’ve made it a habit to focus on our responsibilities.  That’s not bad, right?

But what about when it encroaches on what we want?  What happens when our uber-responsible selves focus on responsibilities to the detriment of moving toward what really matters most to us in this moment?  Taking action toward what we want?  Thinking more of the time about what we want–instead of mostly thinking of all the ‘considerations’?

It’s strange when I put it into words, that it sounds a bit selfish.  Very strange indeed.  Because, I know I am the one responsible for my life, not anybody else.  So if I’m not handling the responsibility to think about, move toward and take action on what I want… Who will?

Is that selfish?

I don’t think so.

Rather, it feels like a shift in priorities.  Ahhh… That’s it!

How did our good intentions of being a responsible person get taken over by obligation, guilt, and fear?  How did I go from living my life to living my life for everything and everyone else?

Most of us do this.  It’s not rocket science.  

But maybe we should consider balancing that pendulum swing.  Maybe we should practice becoming more conscious of what we want–and stepping up to that.  Just for us.

Is it selfish to want more time with loved ones instead of working constantly?

Is it selfish to want time to myself?  It shouldn’t be!  Have I made having time to myself something I feel guilty about?  Why?!  Why would I do that?

Is it selfish to want more from my life than just working all the time?

Or is it selfish to pursue my career goals that matter so very much to me, without feeling guilty for my ambition and discipline?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t check our priorities too.  We absolutely should check in with our heart, our gut and our loved ones to make sure we are staying aligned to what matters most to us.  

But at the same time, I think it bears mentioning that we should do a gut-check on how conscious we are of what we most want in our life right now.  And then to give ample attention to it in order to live a life that really matters to us for the time we’ve spent.

I remember when the second house I tried to buy didn’t work out (wasn’t meant to be), and I had no clear direction at that point.  

My only spark inside was to head to France to study French for a bit.  Even though travel for me is a way of life, still, I hesitated a lot!  It seemed like so many unknowns to actually go after what I wanted.  And how was it going to further my business to study French?…  It wasn’t.  It was just for me.  So how could I justify THAT?!

Add to that, I truthfully had wanted to study French in France for decades.  So when I got on the overnight flight from JFK to Paris on New Years Eve 2019, I was pretty excited, sure.  But I was also having this internal dialogue with myself, saying, “WTF, Carmell?!!  This feels so totally… …irresponsible?…!”  Er– well, yes.  

Still, I went.  

I was so incredibly happy living for two months in Aix en Provence when I had been struggling for months before that, trying to find what I was “supposed” to do since the house-thing wasn’t working out.  

What I had really been trying to figure out was the ‘responsible’ thing I was supposed to do, instead of listening to what I really wanted inside.

We are wise, my friends.  We are so wise.  Life is not only about work.  It’s not only about our daily workouts, our bank accounts, our families, our success, etc.  Life is not about one thing.  It is about us living the most intentionally and truthfully that we possibly can right now.  

And that starts by listening to what we want. 

The New Year is upon us.  Do you know what you want?

Love. Why I hesitate to talk ‘about’ it, and why it’s the #1 emoji I send ❤️

It’s the cliché.  I can’t do it.  I’m not a “hearts and flowers” kind of person, yet the red heart emoji is the #1 emoji I send.  What’s that about?

I don’t say “love you,” very often because it’s too casually non-specific.  And if I’m going to convey that emotion, I feel pretty strongly that I need to be responsible for it.  

So I say most often, “I love you,” instead of just “love you.”

Yet… the laissez faire treatment of love is everywhere.  We tend to skate over moments for deeper connection, to pretend not to see the stranger passing us on the street or in the grocery aisle.

We treat those closest to us with expectation more than appreciation.  And we don’t even realize we’re doing this.  

We choose to be laid-back and observing instead of open and intentional, interested and affectionate.

What is wrong with showing love to people?

Can’t we figure out our own unique way to not only say the right thing, but to reach them with our meaning?  To connect with their hearts–even for a brief moment?

It was Memorial Day when I was 14 years old.  My mom was taking us to the cemetery outside the city, flags lining the manicured drives, petunias, geraniums and marigolds in abundance.  

She wanted us as unthinking kids to connect with what Memorial Day really meant.  The observance of others who have passed in service to our country.  And the observance of all loved ones–our own families and others–who have passed as well.  

We parked and got out.  My younger siblings took off toward the swan pond, eager to see if the eggs had hatched from the swan nest.  I began wandering through the different fields of graves, watching the people who were placing flowers or flags in careful devotion.  It didn’t occur to me until later that they were mostly older.

And then over a small rise, as I was making my own way toward the swan pond, I saw the woman.  She couldn’t have been more than 30 years old.  She was kneeling, bent in half over a grave, sobbing.  I was caught– stunned and mute.  My heart felt her flood of grief in an instant, heavy and unstopping.  I found my own eyes suddenly brimming, my heart barely able to watch her pain.  I can feel her still to this day as I write the words.

It was then that I noticed the toddler wobbling his way around the gravestones near her.  He was unaware of his young mother’s heartache, playfully exploring in the spring grass and the warm sun as the waves of her cries carried across the air, unquenchable.

I stood rooted to the spot.  I couldn’t look away from her.  I knew I couldn’t pass her casually by in all of her grief, to go down and see the swans.  I wondered, at 14 years old, if it was appropriate for me to go to her and put my hand on her heaving back.

I stood there for a long time.  At the very least I witnessed her, my own heart broken entirely in two as I stood, not ignoring or walking away.  Her crying continued without lessening.  And yet I knew I wasn’t trusting myself as a ridiculous young kid to go up to her and cry with her.

I have thankfully had many unexpected moments since where I listened to my heart instead of to my head.  I have held strangers and loved ones alike in sorrow, in joy, in frustration, in anger, in fear, in celebration.  

And all of it has been love.  Every ounce.  Every breath.

We get this one single moment.  Just this one, right now.  And then we get the next.  And it is no small act to express sincere love.  To trust ourselves to do what our heart thrusts upon us.  –And to be so aware and aligned with our heart that we know unequivocally what it is nudging us to do.

I have found many ways to express love sincerely and appropriately in business relationships.  

I have found ways to love those who were not open to deeper connection–where I knew with utter certainty that they had received the gift regardless of whether they could meet me there.

I have worked very hard to love in healthy ways those who have wronged or injured me.  Not because I have to, but because it is my heart’s path to freedom for us both, each time.  That means freedom to love.

The love I feel is not passive.  Not ever.  Nor is it casual.  However I have come to this, I am very certain that the love in my heart is a massive continual river flowing to the ocean of our deepest connection with each other.  Like all waters taking their easiest course to the sea, my heart cannot do otherwise.

And so that is why the red heart ❤️ is the #1 emoji I send–while I simultaneously balk and cringe at clichés.  That is why I will never miss an opportunity to meet someone where they are.  Love is the sincerity behind my intensity as a person.  

My ways of love are my own.  I believe we all have our own ways.  Yet it is our greatest responsibility and gift to make sure in our own ways, that we are not half-assing our love.  

That we are not keeping ourselves partly held back because of fear of what others will think–Who Cares?!  

Or because we have been hurt.  Yes–and you and your heart are stronger than that hurt!

Or because we think so little of our own worth that we believe what we have to offer is not good enough, or is just not enough.  It is greater than you think.  You… are greater than you think.  

And when you extend your love sincerely without asking that it be validated, you will feel with total certainty how truly important you are.  Just like every other person.

That is the great secret.  Love gives to the giver and the receiver alike.  

It is a gift of grace that continues with a person whether they acknowledge it or not.  

It transcends all the ridiculous ways we separate ourselves as humans from one another.  

To truly love is our most radical act of life.

❤️, C

Self Care = Living a Life You LOVE Now

Recently in one of my groups, I asked them to think about and share their “Rules for Loving Myself.”  There were pauses, a few sheepish smiles, a few “Oh sh#@, I don’t even know where to start” looks, and one very perplexed face in the group.

As we dove into sharing our thoughts about what would make a rule for loving the self, it became clear that there is confusion around this idea.  It stems from the concept of self care.

Obviously how we define self care is very individual.  But I found that my people were conflating self care and their rules for loving themselves.  We don’t know differently.

As one of my uber-smart clients was sharing her very steady and practiced ways of taking care of herself such as getting massages, taking time for hot baths, reading for pleasure, fun time with her kids, and ballroom dancing, she also mentioned slowing down.

I paused her there.  I then walked through with her how she has a well-developed set of self-care practices that she regularly follows through with, and that’s fantastic!  But, I told her, they are not the rules of loving yourself.  This gave her pause.

As she stepped back from the self-care practices and considered the question again, she observed that her life was continually running.  A full schedule every day, always so many things to do, even her down-time had a plan.

She considered that what she felt she was always needing was to slow down.  To move through her hours in her day with more presence and awareness of her life.  “I guess I would say a rule for loving myself would be to slow my life down to be more present in experiencing it.”

Brilliant.

In a session with another client, I was trying to break through her ultra-type-A mindset regarding self-care.  In her case, she would self-care the hell out of herself in order to keep on her million-dollar schedule, keep her clients needing her, and stay crucially important to those she served.

As I kept trying to work through the problems in this approach to self-care, I suddenly blurted out, “Self care means living a life you absolutely love, right now!”

I stopped.  

That was it!  That was the true essence of self care.  It didn’t mean I couldn’t go at breakneck speed sometimes.  And yes, it might mean massages, lunch dates, time in nature, chocolate cake or bubble baths…  BUT, self-care was not those things.  

Self care meant showing up to my life straight-on to make it a life I loved, in all the ways, right now.  Loving my life now, was–is–loving myself now.  The point of self-care is to love myself.

How am I doing?  Am I loving myself?  Am I loving myself through this life I am living right now, today?  Not tomorrow or this week–just today.

And this brings me back to the Rules of Loving Myself.

What are those guides like precious guardrails on the side of my daily highway, that make sure I don’t head off on a well-intentioned side-road that ends up working against me?

Or put another way, what are those absolutes for loving me exactly as I am right now, that I must make sure are clear to me?  That are there informing my choices both large and small each day?

Ok, yes, Carmell, but could you give me some examples?

I’d be happy to.  Just remember that your rules for loving yourself can’t connect you to ‘my strength,’ they must connect you to your own strength inside.  They must feel powerful to you–not just sound powerful.

Some of mine are:

RULE #1 Nobody gets to have a negative opinion of me that is greater than my positive opinion of myself. 

RULE #2  I am perfect and whole exactly as I am. 

RULE #3  Everything is art. I must always be creating. 

​​RULE #4  My time is how I experience my consciousness–it is the most precious thing I have.  I give myself space in my daily life in order to consciously experience my time. 

But be aware, yours could go a completely different direction.  I came to my rules by coming to know myself.  

Who am I?  I am not my goals, my accomplishments, or my past.  I am not what others think or expect.  I am not my work or my family.  Who I am is not somebody’s partner or parent or child.  Nor am I my intelligence, my spiritual beliefs, my service to others, my philanthropy or my financial position.

So who am I?

It is my journey to answer this question that has brought me to the rules I’ve just shared and many more, that guide the precious highway of my life.

But I can give you a solid clue that will start you off with a bang.

Discover more and more of what you wholly and totally love in your life, and live it.  

Living a life that you deeply love every day will bring you more directly to know who you are inside yourself–the eclectic, unique, beautiful, brilliant funny, powerful soul that you are.

So instead of trying to do self-care, focus instead on discovering what you love–and live it consistently every day.  

Then ask what your own rules are for living this life that you love so much.  From those ideas, ask how they translate into the rules of loving yourself.

Write them down.  They matter very much.  Because you matter very much.

Don’t lose a moment more of your life to what you don’t love.

That is Self Care, indeed.

“Hati… hati”

| LOCATION: in the garden at my bungalow in Amed, Bali overlooking the Java Sea |

“Slowly… slowly.”

They tell me this in Bahasa with careful caring eyes as I “jalan jalan”–journey.

It is significantly more work to cultivate and practice simplicity than it is to “acquire and fill up” our time and space.

Simplicity requires slowing down.

When I came to Amed last year, I was healing the intensity of a powerhouse year. It worked wonderfully.

I make a practice in my life of “not going back,” though.

So as I came to Amed today, I had wondered all along why I was coming again to where I’d already been.

Met by the staff at my bungalow with the love and greeting of long-missed family, and frangipani flowers arrayed on my bed in a giant fragrant yellow heart with pink blossoms spelling Welcome in the middle. I was awash with joy in their bursting smiles.

It was a few hours later that I felt… what?

Sitting on the crisp white sheets now, careful to not disturb the sweet flower heart that takes up half the bed, I stare out into the garden, sounds of geckos and frogs calling in the early evening. It is the deep quiet that catches me. Without trying, everything has slowed. I’ve slowed. Sitting amidst the simple life not fixated on squaring every corner, fixing every pothole, or enforcing mosquito-free zones.

Even the wifi is down tonight, reassuring me that life is securely beyond my control as always, and it is time to Let Go, Carmell.

I get the clear sense in only a few hours here, that I have not come back, but rather returned after my initiation.

I am ready for a deeper silence this time. A measured clarity of my life as it is now. Being schooled in balance and discipline between the water that flows over and through every part of life here, and the lava running a constant fire beneath my feet from the moment I stepped foot on this island.

I’m right here.

#lifeschool
#everyoneknowsBalidecideswhetheryoustayorgo
#Iamherefornow
#simplicity

Relocation

| LOCATION: Lying on a bench in the Starbuck’s in Chiangi Singapore Airport waiting for 7 am |

As I prepared to be out of the country again for several months with the loosest of plans, I kept feeling the pull to stay home.

“Your bed is SO comfortable… It’s the only thing you miss when you’re gone.”

Or the little half-thoughts, “There’s so much to do with your company. So much easier to stay on track if you’re just here instead.”

“Cozy……”

“How much less stressful will it be–no packing!! Everything you need already right here. No getting ready to sublet. You’re right at the crunch-time of your rebrand, you could just wait–“

“How many hours of flying?!!”

A dear friend said last week, Carmell, you’re living the life so many want to live. And I asked him, Really?!

The truth is, every great kind of life requires sacrifice of some sort. And from what I’ve learned, that ALWAYS includes sacrificing comfort.

From the outside, our life may look like business as usual or it may appear glamorous, but if it is something great, you will find sacrifice in it.

I don’t use this word lightly. I’m not a martyr or a victim.

I choose in.

It took only 7 hours into my 30 hours of flying–I was somewhere over the North Pacific toward Russia–that I felt the shift. The return of my hard-won love affair with Relocation.

Leaving where I am for something new again, struggles and challenges in the simplest daily needs, wonder and creativity off the charts. The anxiety (and exhilaration) of not knowing.

I write this as I made it by minutes onto my Tokyo–Singapore leg, then spent the last 4 hours sleeping on the Starbucks sofa from 1:30-4:30 am waiting to check in for my 7 am flight. Last leg 😉

We all long for home. But that’s not the same as comfort. And confusing those two might keep us comfortably stranded on a tiny familiar island for years or decades, dreaming and never doing.

#adventuroussoul
#relocation
#agreatliferequiressacrificingcomfort
#lifeartist

Detour

| LOCATION: My cozy flat in the Lower Avenues, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA |

I just got a voice text from my dear client and friend on the road who hit I-15 closures out of St George, Utah on her way to Thanksgiving the next day. Taking the detour and backtracking, she messaged me with tears running down her face as this literal detour brought her to the very edge of her frustration with the loneliness and detours of her life.

My heart broke because I know this place. I wrote her back:

Darling…

Be soft and sweet and gentle with yourself. Life is detours.

Maybe we need a different word so that we don’t keep thinking that we are off-track. As painful as it feels, you are exactly where you are supposed to be, and the resistance you feel inside to that–to being exactly where you are right now

–comes from your heart hurting, being heartbroken.

The only thing to do is to go down into that beautiful heart of yours and be soft and gentle and sweet with her.

Listen to her, hold her, and understand her. She knows that you are on the right track. And she knows your desires because your heart is where those desires come from.

It’s in the places of total unknowing, and being with the sadness and loneliness, that you truly trust the path that you’re on and… open in REAL un-resistance to the future that fills all your heart is longing for.

Something in you knows better than what you think you know.

And when that something takes the driver’s seat, it usually looks like detours.

Trust yourself, trust life with your whole heart. Let the tears come and let go and trust. It will be better than you could ever imagine

…surprising and thrilling you just like it has before.

#trustyourheart
#detour
#itsexactlyright

A Year That Answered

| LOCATION: Alive and happy on the corner of 3rd and N Street |

Six years ago.

Moments like this saved my life. It’s a simple picture with the biggest loss of my life happening like a raging underground river barely beneath a very thin surface.

We think we know who we are, what we are doing, where we are heading…

But what we know is just the safe zone we call “right now.” We can pretend we are one thing. We can try valiantly to remain who we think we are. We can be so clear on where our life is taking us or where we want to go.

We are not a book to read the same stories out of to ourselves at bedtime. Even our history changes as we change.

The truth is, life is a mystery living itself out from inside our bodies and souls. Simultaneously heartbreaking and exultant, the victor and the loser.

We are all blind authors.

Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”

Rilke wrote, “Learn to love the questions, and live them…perhaps someday you will find yourself living into the answers”

I love the woman named Carmell sitting here in this sunny Sunday morning bed, and looking back at my own tragedy beneath the surface of six interminably short years.

I am sure that is an answer.

Kindness Never Runs Late

| LOCATION: Sitting in utter relief waiting for United Flight 632 at? |

Arrived just in time at JFK, looking for the United terminal…

There is no United terminal at JFK.

But there is at LaGuardia.

A terrified and frantic taxi ride later, I checked in one minute late to get my bag on the plane… And they said Yes!!

I am thanking God and the universe and all the powers that be for my beautiful, steel – nerved taxi driver with his old big band music playing, and the crisp New York air, and my total trust as he wove us expertly through New York rush hour traffic and pulled up at 5:05 on the dot ❤️🙏🏽😅

I want to mention that as we were stopped at a light waiting, a homeless man with a sign saying he was hungry, was standing to the side. My driver silently rolled down his window, picked up the tied bag of carry-out food ready for his own meal, and waving the man over, handed it to him with a smile and well wishes. My heart was too full for words.

I thought as we waited for light after light to change, I wouldn’t have missed that moment. The same deep effort at life he was putting into getting me to LaGuardia was what he quietly offered to the man on the sidewalk in the midst of our rush.

Thank you to the United check-in duo who got me in and through instantly! I said to her as I ran for security, “That is a ONE-TIME mistake. Period.”

We laughed!

#relief
#onmyway
#adventurousself

The Truth of Who We Are

| LOCATION: Nashville Airport staring out at the most beautiful Southern sky |

I’m sitting in the airport in Nashville having just completed an intense 3-week rollercoaster of business failures and successes, amazing relationships and connections with people, training and coaching from my core genius more than ever before, and… reflection with myself.

I watch so many people I meet struggling in a certain relationship or life circumstance—struggling to be present in their lives. I’ve sat talking for longer with so many because we are all giving so much to life… and at times that giving can be heartbreaking.

I’ve asked myself, why do we find it so hard to let go? Why do we resist moving down into our hearts, and trusting–ourselves, other people or Life itself–in those crucial moments? Why do we stay locked into the tight cages of our comfort zones when what we most long for is to be free?

I’ve gotten the reputation from so many of you who have coached with me or simply conversed, of causing people to cry 😉 I will own that even though I don’t try to make that happen. Yet it does. And as I sit here in Nashville today waiting to board my plane, I’ve begun to try to put words to why tears come when we connect.

I believe it’s because I love you so much. You know you don’t have to BE anything—just yourself, finally. In your eyes, I see that undaunted beautiful soul figuring him/herself out like I am. Like we all are.

So why does this cause us to cry together sometimes? I know it is because you are seen, appreciated for simply being, understood as magnificent, and finally because all BS is ripped away. No excuses. No hiding. No playing small. Just the real stuff. The stuff that matters between us. The truth of who we really are that words can never fully express.

That truth whispers, “…Life is happening RIGHT NOW!” Getting hung up, resistant, untrusting, dissatisfied in our comfortableness is trying to stay far away from the raw joy and sometimes the pain of being fully alive right now, nothing held back.

I feel the incredible men who are secretly afraid they are not enough. They love so much and work so hard for those they love, yet feel so distant from the moments of love that connect them to those they are wholly committed to.

I ache for the powerful women who give and give every minute of the day to make life work better for everyone, yet who can’t feel the deep truth of peace in themselves—who are afraid what they give won’t be enough for the happiness and thriving of those they love.

So when we talk, I feel this. And I know the truth. Gently, I expect you to stop, to listen to your own heart, and to know the same. I know that life is simultaneously intensely joyful, beautiful and grateful,… and heartbreaking—if we’re really honest.

That relief brings tears.

Cynicism, anger and fear shut the heart off from the brain. My first mentor said to me nearly 2 decades ago, “Tears are sacred.” She said this to the woman (me) who had resisted crying for so long believing it was weakness.
It is not. It is honesty. It is an open heart. It is sacred.

It took me awhile to stop being afraid of my own tears, but once I did, I found a paradoxical gift. I could sit with others and truly see them—in their most secret hopes as much as their deepest despair or shame. And not be afraid.

I thank you for who you are, for your truth, and the honesty of your tears. May you be free. May you be blessed.