Here's My Card

On a whim I decided to create new business cards. It was an exercise to clarify and communicate who I am and what I’m about. In business, and in life. Because it’s all the same. Or at least it should be.

I asked my husband to snap a few photos. The camera is rarely my friend, so I wasn’t overly optimistic that he’d capture an image that would capture me in an authentic and real way. But I’ll be go to hell, he did.

The photo became the front of the card. It makes a statement. Here I am. What you see here is what you’ll get there.

Underneath the card, my name. Because with all due respect to The Bard, our name matters. It contains our whole life story. Given to us when we’re born, we’ll be remembered by it after we’re gone.

Underneath my name, what I do. Because what we do matters too. Writing and speaking are two of the ways I connect life’s many dots, and share what I discover with others. My work is always about finding ways for us to more closely connect who we are with how we live. In business, and in life. Because it’s all the same. Or at least it should be.

The back of the card contains the usual contact information. Because connection matters too. As human beings we are hard wired for connection. But it’s hard to connect with someone if you don’t know how to get ahold of them.

There was still a lot of blank space on the back. Enough room for one statement that would sum it all up.

It all turned out to be a great exercise. It forced me to distill it all down to what would fit on a business card. Or maybe it’s a life card. Because it’s all the same. Or at least it should be.

What would your card say?

Climbing A Mountain

Do you think you two have another climb up Mt. Adams in you?

Because if you do, we want to do it with you.

Translation: We want to get up there with you while you still can.

That conversation last year with our niece and her husband started it all. Tom and I had to think about it, given that we’re not spring chickens anymore. On our morning walk the next day we decided that while we might not have multiple more climbs in us, we probably had at least one. With that in mind we opened the idea up to the rest of the generation behind us, and in the end, three couples threw their hats and hiking boots into the Mt. Adams 2022 ring.

We’ve been training for it for a year, readying ourselves to be strong enough to make the 12.2 mile trek to the 12,281’ summit. Over the course of that climb we would gain 6600 ft of elevation.

However.

You can train all you want and still not make it to the top.

Different obstacles got in the way for different people. Some of the hardest work we did was internal. Can I do this? What if I can’t. How can it be this hard? What if I slow everyone else down? Will I be able to overcome my fear of heights? What if I get altitude sickness? What if my old injury flairs up? What if I’m the weakest link?

In the end we had to come up against those fears, which is what happens in life on and off the mountain. Eventually we have to face them in order to be free of them.

The first day we hiked for eight hours, most of it on soft snow, with 40+ pound packs on our backs. It was a harder, longer day than any of us had anticipated, and as the sun dropped lower in the sky we began to give out. The altitude was having its way with some of us, and it was clear we needed to make camp soon. Apparently my speech was getting very slow, nausea and serious dehydration arrived on our scene, and I knew we were in trouble when Tom couldn’t seem to figure out how to put up our tent.

We found ourselves on a rocky outcrop with just enough room for four tents. Except for the ground beneath our tents, we had to maneuver over uneven boulders and rocks that were just a sprained ankle, broken leg, or worse waiting to happen. The temperature dropped, the light grew dim, and the wind came up. I was reminded, in the way that only nature can illuminate, that we are always hovering between life and death. We are so much smaller than we like to think in the big scheme of things. It’s good to be reminded of that now and then, lest I take myself and my brief presence on the planet too seriously.

At times like these, the best of who we are shows up. Those of us who could, took over for those of us who couldn’t, because that is what love does. While we had worked to get our bodies strong, in the end it was our hearts and our love and commitment to one another that got us up there.

The summit awaited us in the morning.

For the last year we have imagined ourselves at the top, each of us believing that we could do this hard thing. Together, eight of us were going to summit Mt. Adams on Friday, July 15th, 2022.

In the end four did.

I wasn’t one of them.

Stay tuned.

I’m dedicating the next few posts to what I learned by not summiting a mountain.

Répondez S'il Vous Plaît

One of my pet peeves is people’s reluctance to RSVP to an invitation. It is like they are waiting to see if something better shows up before committing themselves. I should know because I’ve done that myself, but having thrown some pretty great shindigs in my day, I know firsthand that it’s hard to plan a good party when you don’t know who is going to show up.

Every morning arrives with a new invitation to bring who we are and what we have to offer to life’s party. Some times it’s harder than others to commit to the day at hand, and there are times when the best choice is to bow out and catch our breath. But every morning, the invitation is there, waiting for our response s'il vous plaît.

With or without us, the party is being planned. Are we in? Or out?

Photo by samaraagenstvo feeria from Pexels

Real Life

It’s been in the works for awhile now. It all started with a phone call from a friend. We have a monthly video call where three of us connect to check in, go deep, and help one another become more of who we are called to be. He had booked a house on a beach overlooking the water for another gathering, but had the house for a full week, and wondered what it might be like to join him there, and for good measure, to bring our partners as well. Instantly we were all in. The dates went on our calendars, funds were contributed, and we all agreed to bring plenty of good food, good wine, and something meaningful to share with each other. 

On our last phone call we talked about what we wanted the time to look like.

Did we have an agenda?

Were there topics to be covered?

Well. Yes and no.

The agenda? To show up as ourselves.

The topics to be covered? Whatever felt real, relevant, and revelatory.

It’s as simple as that and as hard as it gets.  Kind of like life.

The Story vs The Real Scoop

A couple of days ago my husband Tom and I sat down with our calendars to make sure we were on the same page, knew who was doing what when, and make any needed adjustments. Noticing that he was going to be gone for a couple of days, I made a request. Rather than leaving late in the morning as he was planning to do, would be willing to leave several hours earlier, giving me a little more of some much needed time to myself. Could that work for him?

In the past I’ve not always asked in what you might call a gracious manner, which as you might suspect, made him feel a little less than welcome in his own home. Thankfully, I’m finally learning to make my requests in a more loving and respectful way. After thinking about it, he said that he could, and in fact, doing so would give him time to make a much needed run to the dump with the garbage and recycling. It sounded to me like we were on the same page, and that we had a plan that met both of our needs. I walked away from our calendaring session feeling great about our interchange, and looking forward to a couple of days with the house to myself. As much as I love the people I love, including Tom, when I don’t have time away from them, including Tom, I’m not much good to anyone, including Tom, or myself for that matter. As far as I was concerned, things were, as they say, all good.

Until this morning when it was time for him to leave town.

Coming back from a morning walk with Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle, already feeling my inner space opening up, Tom was just finishing loading the back of the red pickup with the recycling, and he didn’t appear to be the happiest of campers. Checking in with him, he wasn’t. He didn’t like the feeling of being asked to leave as soon as possible. That was news to me. The story as I saw it, was that we were both good with our plan, but now that we were in the midst of it, the real scoop was that he wasn’t good with it.

At that point things could have gone from bad to worse, but rather than get defensive, my usual go-to-strategy, I worked to listen without judgement and let him say more. We both stayed in the conversation, and by the time he drove out of the driveway we both felt heard. Because we both felt heard, we also felt connected. Because we felt connected, we now have good fodder for further conversation and better communication going forward.

The moral of the story?

The story isn’t always the real scoop.

Givers Of Life

Once a month I have a video call with two individuals who are not only respected colleagues, but also dear friends. It is a call that I look forward to from the moment we end our time together until the next one rolls around. The three of us have worked together in various ways over the years, and while we value and respect one another professionally, it is the personal connection that keeps us coming back for more. Together we’ve created a safe space for courageous thinking, a shelter from our storms, and a shared home for our hearts and hurts.

Every call has a way of infusing more life into my being.

Today was supposed to be our monthly call, and as much as I look forward to it, I almost bowed out of it. After a couple of emotionally packed weeks, I simply felt like I didn’t have the capacity to show up as anything but a worn out mess, and taking anything off of my calendar sounded like a good idea. When I mentioned this to my sister who is here visiting, like any good big sister, she had a word of advice. She reminded me of how life-giving this call always is, and thankfully, like any good little sister, I listened to her.

No matter how I show up at the beginning of the call, I am always better at the end of it, and today was no exception.

The moral of the story?

Make time for life-giving connections, and listen to your big sister.

Being Brave

As I write this today at Rancho La Puerta, our first workshop has finished and I am once again reminded of the courage we are asking people to find in order to answer the questions we pose. Anytime we choose to listen to our inner wisdom, we are entering territory that is both sacred and scary, standing on ground that feels both holy and shaky. As Brene Brown reminds us, any act of courage can only happen when we are also willing to be vulnerable. That is what I witnessed again today as those in our workshop listened generously to themselves, trusted what they heard, and found their way to possible next right steps. While bringing the time together to a close, I shared a story from  my last trip here this past July when my 33 year old daughter Lauren joined me.

During the week she not only enjoyed the beauty of this place and some wonderful spa treatments, she also attended my workshops. It was obvious watching her, that she had decided to show up fully for herself and go all in. She listened to her voice and captured what she heard. The night after that first workshop, I returned to our villa to find her happily reading in bed. Mom, you have my journal from the workshop in your pack pack, right? Wrong. Digging through everything in there, twice, there was no journal to be found. Standing in her doorway, I watched as her face crumpled into tears as she realized that the words she had bravely written, but that were for her eyes only, had been lost somewhere in the Ranch. She felt exposed and betrayed, as she pulled the covers over her head and said, I get brave and choose to write about really fragile and private things that I’ve been too afraid to think about till now, and look what happens. 

It was suddenly clear to me what we needed to do. I firmly told her to get up, get dressed, and come with me. Resistant for a minute, she chose to trust me and we were soon walking through the darkness back to the room where the workshop had been held. A Ranch employee was cleaning up the room, and I asked if we could look through the box of unused journals that had been picked up after my session. Lauren began to sort through the stack, pretty certain hers wouldn’t be there. And then her hands landed on the one that was hers. Gripping it to her heart, we started back to our room, and walked in silence for awhile, as her relief settled in.

Remember, I said, whenever we are brave enough to take action on our own behalf, to do the hard work of becoming our most authentic self, and to step more fully into our own lives, we are supported by unseen forces. And when you find yourself afraid in the future, and you will, you will always have the memory of tonight to remind you that you are not alone.

Onward.

Together. 

Todays post shared with gratitude for the permission to tell her story, and her courage to always show up.