Welcome to the Whimsical Word!
Welcome to the Whimsical Word—a place where you don’t have to know what you’re doing when you write, in fact it’s better if you don’t. To be whimsical is to change, to be unpredictable, and full of whims, or “sudden ideas or turns of the mind.” Have you ever written...
What’s Your Favorite Lie?–3 Ways Writing Can Change Your Life!
What’s your favorite lie? What’s the thing you repeatedly tell yourself about why you don’t exercise, haven’t had that difficult conversation, made the change, or achieved the goal you set for yourself long ago? What’s the story that keeps your happiness just out of...
Write In Power and Get Clear, Be Who You Are, Create What You Want
What if everything you want and need is right in front of you, but you just can’t see it? What if creating the life you want is as simple as seeing who you are, who you ‘ve always been, and becoming more of that because it actually is who you long to be? I just woke...
The Writing Cycle in Honor of #NaNoWriMo
This morning I played, on repeat, the gospel song, “Lord, Don’t Move That Mountain,” sung by Mahailia Jackson. I turned the volume way up and sang the chorus as loud as my off-key voice would go, “Lord, don’t move that mountain, just give me the strength to climb…” I...
Grasping and Letting Go Are One Motion
It started in the kitchen while I was on my annual week-long silent meditation retreat. I was doing my nightly work meditation of clearing the food tables and putting away the dinner leftovers. In the corner between the storage shelves and the stainless steel...
Finding Joy In What Other People Own
My daughter was up and ready early this morning so we decided to get her favorite bagels before I dropped her off at school. When we pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall, I noticed a red Ferrari F12 Berlinetta parked by itself away from the other cars filling...
View of My Rental Home from the Deck of Ownership
For the past few months someone has been dumping unwanted items by my trashcan. If they fit inside the bin and didn’t cost extra to be hauled off I wouldn’t mind so much, but these items are big—a satellite dish, oven racks, shovels, and just this morning, a white...
A Weekend on the Middle Class Teeter-Totter
I am the middle class. The experience is like being on a teeter-totter, which means hovering around the elusive and precarious pivot point. One moment you are up and the next your butt is being slammed into the ground. [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes"...
Banana Slug: My Power Animal
I’ve recently claimed banana slugs as my power animal. If you aren’t familiar with them, they are large, bright yellow (sometimes brownish) slugs found in the Pacific coastal rainforest belt of Northern California. They are essentially shell-less snails on steroids...
Finding Power in the Field of Powerlessness
It’s been 4 years since my foreclosure. Six years since the process began. The emotional and physical overwhelm that I experienced has been tempered by time. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in the thick of it. It’s an emotional roller coaster of powerlessness,...
“When your write what wants to be written, you stop rejecting the life you have made.
You stop imagining some other place, some other lover, some other career, some other you. You take your life into your arms and call it your own.“