A Life In Progress®
Befriend Your True Self + Walk in Freedom, Health and Joy
You don’t have to hunt for joy, manufacture it, or figure out how to lead a stress-free “perfect” life. You can ALLOW joy to live alongside whatever else you’re experiencing. You can WELCOME it into the messiness of your life in every season. You can learn to expand your capacity for joy and show up brave to your messy and beautiful life in every season. Even the hardest of them.
Learning to expand our capacity for joy – to hold space for joy and allow it to live in our lives alongside whatever else we’re experiencing – isn’t only about joy specifically, though. The benefits are further reaching.
It’s really about expanding our ability to experience and not run from all emotional experiences. It’s about living resilient, present, empowered, showing up fully to life in every season (within our capacity), navigating grief or trauma or other stressful life transitions with better outcomes, and ultimately reconnecting with and befriending ourselves.
Expanding our capacity for joy or for other emotions is also not ONLY about emotional experience. Our emotions don’t live in isolation. We have embodied experiences: we experience life through the wisdom of our mind, emotions, and body. And what’s more, we have a nervous system wired to keep us safe and alive that is always at work gathering information beneath conscious awareness, deciding if we’re safe or unsafe, and impacting the ways we engage in life and relationships.
In order to live self-aware and on purpose, and walk in greater freedom, we need to reconnect with our true selves and bring awareness to what’s going on in these bodies of ours. We need to befriend ourselves and this includes befriending our nervous system so that we can show up brave, whole + with joy in every season (even the hardest of them).
There are seasons in life when the old way of living no longer fits, but the new way has not fully taken shape. As I share in the following podcast episode, I find myself in one of these places right now. Maybe like me, you are feeling unsettled and uncertain, or like the ground is …
Inside: Learn what a mantra is, examples of powerful mantras, and how choosing a mantra can guide your personal growth this year. Choosing a mantra to guide you for a year involves a dance between intuition or listening inward to our inner wisdom, and a commitment to consistent practical action. Listening inward, or setting aside …
Inside: I’ve had three core dreams for my life. They give me a clear sense of purpose and direction. I’ve learned to release urgency and let things unfold in their own time. In this post I also share about how simple a “Life Vision” can be and how I use mantras. It’s early 2025 and …
Inside: Winter seasons can feel harsh and destabilizing. I offer ways to think about and practice good soul-care so that you are able to mine for the beauty and wisdom of the season and thrive forward. In “winter seasons”, or following times of prolonged stress or over-giving, you can tip into sluggishness or low motivation …
Inside: Learning to honour your wiring and capacity helps quiet all the internal and external noise so that you thrive and experience health and joy in every season. It also supports healthier families and communities. You’ll learn 14 ways to get started. Western culture promotes a linear, constantly productive, ‘more and faster is better’ way …
Inside: If you’re doing the work to let go of the life you wanted or the version of life you once had, here are 5 truths that will help you thrive forward at a soul-honouring pace and with compassion. Let go. Let be. I wrote this at the top of my planner the past couple …
Inside: When I look back and remember how I used to think, I feel like I was a different person. It seems like this was a lifetime ago. Learning to shift my thinking helped change my experience of life. It’s shocking to me to look back at how I used to think. How I’d allow …
Inside: Middle age is full of big changes. Rebranding middle age will help you live joyfully in the messy middle season of life- and beyond. This post includes one referral link. Firmly in my messy middle season of life, this has been a season of stretching, stripping away, meeting and befriending my True Self (or …
Inside: The people you spend the most time with determine who you become. Here are 28 books to read as you grow into your True Self. Referral links included. You know the adage that we become like the 5 people we spend the most time with so choose wisely? I like to apply this idea …
Inside: Mind-body-spirit intentions are words that paint a vivid mental and emotional picture of who we choose to be or how we want to feel in our body and life. This post includes resource referral links. I homeschooled my kids for many years. About 15 years ago during a friend chat with my friend Renée, …
Inside: Creativity is about process more than product. In this post I share a four stage creative process that can help you learn to trust yourself and your unique creative process. If we assume that only those skilled at handcrafts, fine art, or digital art are creative, it’s likely because we equate creativity to a …
Inside: Change is hard in general. And being thrust into a dark season of life can be painful and scary. But sometimes, what feels incredibly stretching can facilitate personal liberation and greater self-love. Today’s guest shares about her liberating self-discovery journey after hitting a dark and low point in her early 50s. “It was painful, …
Inside: Could you give yourself permission to play? Take this short quiz to discover your play personality. Lately, I’ve been exploring the connections between play, creativity, and purpose. I want to feel fully alive and thrive in every season of my life. And one of the gifts of Second Spring and beyond, I believe, is …
Inside: To avoid stagnation we must keep expanding, stretching, learning as we go. We must be willing to let go of how life used to be so that we can keep living fully and mine for the wisdom and beauty in every season. Do you feel like you’re outgrowing your old life or how you …
Inside: Betsy shares about living creatively and hopefully and building a beautiful life with Functional Neurological Disorder and what her experience feels like in this season. If you don’t fit neat and tidy into the prescribed ‘boxes’ of ‘success’ or you’re wired differently than the majority, life might feel challenging. It takes creativity – and …
Inside: Kate shares her experience of moving from Second Spring toward Second Summer. This post contains a referral link. The theme of my upcoming podcast season is “Old Stories. New Possibilities.” I’m thinking about the stories we are told or ‘inherit’ through conditioning and the storytelling of family, religion, media, culture. And how to walk …
Inside: We walk in greater freedom and joy when we question or examine the stories at play in our life and allow ourselves to open up to a new joyful possibility. Who is writing or telling the stories of your life? We all have stories playing out in our life, many unconscious, others that we …
Inside: Are you ready for a new joyful or hopeful possibility for your life? Notice the old stories operating in your life. And then, begin writing a new story that will help you thrive forward. As we feel safe enough, if we are open and setting the intention to keep listening, growing, and attending to …
Inside: What people, habits, or circumstances are pulling you out of freedom? How will you take action to walk in greater freedom? Freedom is one of my core 5 values. It’s also one of my top 2 values. As a personal value, what freedom means to me (us) as individuals can vary season to season. …
Inside: It’s empowering to figure out your core values. You live on purpose by walking out your values in every season. This post includes my favourite Wise Woman exercise which can help us begin with the end in mind. I want to live on purpose in every season, and every day of my life. This …
Inside: One of the most life-changing habits that I have adopted is weaving a seasonal living practice throughout my life and work. Seasonal living teaches us a kinder way of being in our body and life. Happy spring! If you want to quiet the noise and practice a kinder way of being in your body …
Inside: Embracing your limitations means choosing to love and accept your whole self as you are today. When you embrace your whole self you build inner safety. And when you have inner safety you are able to see and practice a new possibility. In 2016 I wrote a short post that went viral around the …
Inside: Healthy and brave relationships are so important to our health and wellbeing. But they take work. Relationships in middle age can be messy. They take work and nurturing at every stage of life. But in middle age – yikes! If you’re growing, healing, becoming your most honest and integrated Self… this will affect your …
Inside: How to make space for more rest in your life – whatever season you’re in, including the hardest of them. In this episode I refer to 8 Types of Rest that we all need. We all need rest, probably more than we’re getting. Expanding our view of rest beyond naps or Netflixing is helpful …
