“I had fun,” one of the women in my dialogue circle said at the end of our monthly gathering. “Me too,” I nodded. “That’s just how weird I am. This is my kind of fun.” We all laughed, knowing that we had just shared some innermost thoughts and that much of our talk was emotional [...]
Someone in the women’s dialogue I belong to made a suggestion of an exercise we could do in between our monthly meet-ups: make a list of 20 people that have loved you. Not necessarily the ones you know love you, but the ones you have felt loved by. I quickly, mentally ticked off the obvious [...]
We got some baklava in our mailbox, homemade by our neighbor. I cooked the venison tenderloin that Joe hunted, while he and a friend were building a winterized coop for our chickens. Later, I baked cookies – the kind made with butter and with raspberry jam in the center – while listening to a Michael [...]
We made it through the longest night of the year with a dusting of snow and a gusting wind that seemed to mirror the recent upheaval of violence in nature and culture. We marked the passage of the winter solstice with feasting and dancing with friends around the warm hearth of community. According to the [...]
The elderly man that used to wave from his garden as I drove by on my trips to town has been gone now for several years. His house is for sale for a second time and the grass has grown over his vegetable plot, a long rectangle of plowed earth that was lined with pink [...]
My husband Joe and I were lounging in the yard by a patch of creeping periwinkle flowers. We were enjoying a late breakfast in the unseasonably warm spring morning when the mailman drove up and hand-delivered a package. For a moment I had forgotten what I ordered from the new Sears Catalog, Amazon.com. I remembered [...]
I recently picked up an old dog-eared book from 1990 called Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment because I needed some fresh insight on some challenging family dynamics. The book is just as good now as it was 20 years ago when Joe and I participated in a study group that was exploring its themes [...]
The following originally appeared in Natural Awakenings of Southwest Virginia “Don’t leave before you go.” — Alan Forrest on the last morning of the iBme fall self-care retreat What could be sweeter than gently waking after plenty of sleep in your own room at a self-care retreat by the soft sound of a Tibetan bowl [...]
I come from the tribe that says ‘anything worth saying is worth exaggerating.’ It’s up to you to sort out the truth. Fear is being carried by the ego; not the soul. Fear is telling you where to go. It’s trying to create motion, either motion towards or away from. What doesn’t get finished in [...]
The story written on the walls of our soul is intended to be lived out as the great experiment of each life. ~ Michael Meade If I was the kind of person to have a guru, Michael Meade would be it. After spending three hours at his Maryland lecture on Fate and Destiny and eight [...]
“I’m so tired of being me,” I heard myself say. In that moment it was true. It was more of an observation than it was a complaint, but it was a complaint too, not so unlike saying ‘I’m so tired of sweeping the kitchen floor, over and over and over.’ My kitchen floor is getting [...]
A woman in my dialogue circle shared something positive about her childhood that I didn’t experience in mine. Instead of being triggered by what I felt as a lack, I was able to feel happy for her that she was so fostered. The thought of what I had missed crossed my mind but I was [...]
A dialogue circle is a microcosm of the larger circles of family, community and world. In circle, we each bring a piece to the woven living art of conversation. But is it the right piece? Is it true? How does my piece affect others? The dialogue circle I belong to is small enough, and the [...]
The mysterious malady I was struck with last week that seemed to have both physical and emotional components has passed without aspirin, anti-depressants, or surgery. It was treated with one part poetry, one part private dance party (compliments of Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews), and an exceptionally dynamic monthly women’s dialogue. I didn’t want to [...]
As far as I can determine, I’m a Jungian Taoist who might have been a Transcendentalist if I lived in the time of Emerson and Thoreau. I’m a cultural Catholic who believes in Divine Intelligence and accepts Evolution as fact. I believe a myth is a lie that tells the truth and in the radical [...]
~ Note that real feelings can begin with depression. Reframe “weaker” feelings as a sign of progress. – The Pocket Enneagram My husband and I are shipwrecked in the hammock with no energy to save ourselves. It’s so hot and we’re so tired that we have to drop our extra baggage, drift aimlessly through the [...]
The reflection that the dialogue circle provides can be utilized as a fast moving current to move participants to the doorway to a transcendent awareness. Dialogue is talk that moves you forward! ~ Judy O’Brien Therapy or play? A salon or a café? A scientific laboratory or a book club? I don’t know what my [...]
As a brain-based educator who developed an educational program on slavery, who speaks to her Avatar by way of meditation and facilitates group dialogue in communities, author Judy O’Brien has a stranger than fiction background. The spiritual journey she recounts in her autobiographical book “The Way of the Mystic” is compelling, but I was even [...]
