Monthly Archives: October 2025

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Grieving, Changing, Reemerging

I’ve working with a dear friend and colleague to put together a program for a community wellness team. There’s change to be dealt with and maybe more importantly grief. Leona pointed me to Francis Weller and I’ve been reading and adjusting my approach to change – here’s some thoughts I’m surfacing for myself.

When I think about change or crisis,
I think about the river of life —
ever-moving, ever-shifting —
where change, grief, and conflict
are part of the same current.

We often try to manage what’s beneath the surface —
to fix, analyze, or soothe it in isolation.
We turn to counseling, confession, retreat —
as if healing were a private act.
But that’s the mistake.

What’s beneath the surface
is what most needs to be met together —
in communion, not separation.

Francis Weller reminds us that grief is not here to take us hostage.
It’s here to bring us below the strategies of control and competence —
to the place where we can be undone,
remade, and reconnected.

Yes, we may fall apart —
but maybe that’s the point.
Maybe falling apart is what makes falling together possible.

Because the real steps
to moving through crisis, conflict, and change
are always the same:
Grieve. Commune. Reemerge.

Communication, Connecting, Embracing Unknown, Life Experiences, Valuing Differences, Vulnerability

Fear, Love, and the Risk of Reducing Aliveness

I recently came across a research abstract suggesting that Virginia Satir’s experiential family systems approach might be “integrated” with models like Emotion-Focused Therapy. The intent: give her work more structure, theory, and replicability.

It stopped me in my tracks.
Could Satir’s profound body of work—rooted in presence, creativity, and relational aliveness—be reduced to “mere creative techniques”? Sadly, yes.

And it’s not just Satir. Many programs born of humanistic psychology have been distilled into measurable techniques, slotted neatly into systems that can be studied and standardized. Relevant, yes. But at what cost?

When we prize only what can be researched or proven, we lose something vital. Aliveness. Creativity. Connection. We flatten the very field where transformation emerges.

Creation vs. Consumption

What I long for isn’t consumption of another “evidence-based” tool. It’s creation. Taking an idea and living in it—moving, playing, risking. Not applying theory with rigid gestures, but engaging the unpredictable edge where life actually shifts.

Evidence-based living too often traps us in right/wrong, safe/unsafe. The result? A shrinking space for wonder, possibility, and connection.

What Haven Taught Me

As part of The Haven Faculty, I’ve witnessed again and again the raw, alive field where healing happens—not through protocols, but through presence. Haven’s roots were never built on the theoretical. They grew from two physicians—one working with teens, one with elders—who noticed transformation simply by bringing people together.

Of course they developed models to support learning but they also made presence and connection the bottomline.

What drew me to Haven, and originally to Satir, wasn’t a model to be replicated. It was the power of human beings meeting each other without guarantees, without smoothing over, without management.

Haven has always been about leaning into conflict, discomfort, intensity—not to retraumatize, but to discover. To find more of ourselves and more of each other than we thought possible.

The Trouble with Safety

When frameworks and protocols become the defining lens, the focus shifts. The energy becomes about safety, prevention, containment. Safety matters—but transformation doesn’t live in managed safety. It lives in risk, in storm, in staying connected when it would be easier to retreat.

True safety is born in presence, not control. In the messy, unpredictable space of being human together.

The Larger Gift

Yes, trauma walks through our doors. It always has. And we hold it with care. But I refuse to let trauma—or the management of it—define transformation.

Satir’s gift, and Haven’s, is larger: a space that is alive, not managed. A space where fear and love meet, and in that meeting, choice becomes possible.

Communication, Community, Connecting, Life Experiences

From Scroll To Soul

I find myself struggling in this moment. I want to be productive—yet I don’t know what to work on.

Here’s the possible To Do List:

There’s the garden; I could go out and pull up weeds, harvest what’s ready.
I could go for a bike ride—it’s beautiful outside.
I could read. I could write.
I could even reach out to the folks I’ll be leading with later this month to start building our connection.

Indeed, there is much I could do.

And yet, here I sit. Scrolling, then thinking. Scrolling, then thinking.

Recently, in an intuitive session, I was told something that stuck with me:
Maybe I don’t need to be “creating opportunities.” Maybe I need to let them evolve. In my business, when I push to “make it happen,” I may be missing what’s already right in front of me.

That message echoed during our Find Your Mojo in Montana weekend. On the final morning, we went out to the pasture together. Each woman was asked to connect with a horse and bring them back to the arena.

Of course, in my mind, the “real” work would happen once we were back in the arena. So I charged ahead, intent on finding the herd.

But Bobbi, who owns and lives on the ranch, reminded us to slow down.
Not to beeline to a horse. Not to treat them like a task to complete. Horses sense us long before we reach them, and it matters how we enter their world. To notice. To listen. To respect the herd before engaging.

That moment stays with me.

So often, purpose on a given day looks like a to-do list:

  • Go to the store.
  • Walk the dogs.
  • Write the blog post.

The focus is on getting it done. Which means I miss the trees swaying overhead, the sound of paws on leaves, or the spark of an unexpected idea.

What if I didn’t narrow in on just the task or the outcome?
What if I stayed present in the unfolding of the moment—curious about what else might want to emerge?

Writing is much the same for me. It takes time to settle. I’ll meander—scrolling Facebook, reading a few pages of a book, playing music, even bouncing on the trampoline. Back and forth I go—writing a bit, wandering away, then circling back.

And then, at some point, something shifts. I drop into a current. The words begin to flow. My focus narrows, not in a forced way, but like sliding into a slipstream.

I’ve learned to appreciate both—the wandering off-road and the ease of finally being carried by the current.

Maybe that’s the real invitation:
To trust the meandering.
To let go of forcing productivity.
And to remember that sometimes the most important thing is already happening—if I just stay present enough to notice.