Category Archives: Connecting

Communication, Community, Connecting, Embracing Unknown, Life Experiences, Vulnerability

The Cry Beneath Conflict

CrisMarie introduced me to Gene Keys—a synthesis of practical wisdom meant to guide a deeper understanding of the self.
It’s a bit like astrology (rooted in birthdate and place), the Enneagram, psychology, philosophy—all woven together.

I was curious when I generated my free Gene Keys profile. What surprised me was how closely it mirrored my life’s purpose and path.

One line really spoke to me:

“Walk into conflict with an open heart—and peace will walk out with you.”

My life has been a long walk through conflict, crisis, and change.
Likely yours has been too.

Early on, I learned that when there is a cry for help—whether it sounds like grief, rage, accusation, or even war—I need to listen.
At first, I believed my role was to solve the cry, to eliminate its source. I spent years living inside that idea.

What saved me, I think, was that nature and spirit, laughter and play, music and movement were woven into my days. They seemed to know something I didn’t yet understand: that solving or silencing pain isn’t the only option.

Pain became something strangely familiar—intriguing even. A reminder that I existed. That I was alive.

What was much harder was finding ways to be heard.
My voice didn’t fit the dominant narrative. I didn’t fit the norm. So I learned where I could fit, where I could belong.

Oddly, I’ve often preferred people being upset rather than calm and quiet. Because in my world, calm and quiet were often layered over deep pain, fear, rage, and doubt—and I could hear it humming underneath. When I named what I heard, I was shut down. Told I was making it up. So I learned to share with trees and animals instead. Or through songs—where the truth could scatter, land softly, and not rattle the thick armor of the adults around me.

And now—I am one of those adults.
I have armor. I know how to numb. I know how to block the sounds and vibrations.

And still, I feel the elements calling: earth, fire, water, air.
I feel the larger web. The unified field that holds us all.

We are terrified of that web—those arms, those roots.
And yet we long to rest in them.

Here’s the deeper truth I hesitate to admit: if I stand fully in that field, the separate “me” begins to dissolve. And that scares the hell out of me.

And it calls to me.

That unified field often shows itself right in the middle of battle. Not in the shouting—but in the quiet pulse of the person beside me. In the ones standing hand in hand at the front. No words. No frantic movement. Sometimes just a soft song that reaches the heart:

We are one.
We are love.
It is how we treat each other—nothing more.

Beneath the rage that has surfaced, that song is still there.
You can hear it—if you listen.

That is how peace walks out with me.
With you.

Connecting, Embracing Unknown, Vulnerability

So Many Different Worlds

So many different worlds,
So many different suns,
And we have just one world,
But we live in different ones.

Those lines from Brothers in Arms — old words still not yet lived — echo with painful resonance today.

We are still at war.

Not the war of battlefields with clear lines — but a war of competing realities and a nation torn at its seams.

In Minneapolis this January, the killing of Renée Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen shot and killed by an ICE agent, sparked shock and outrage. Her death — now ruled a homicide with multiple gunshot wounds by medical authorities — has ignited protests, legal scrutiny, and national debate over use of force by federal immigration agents. 

And just this weekend, another person was fatally shot by federal agents in south Minneapolis — the second such deadly encounter in recent weeks — drawing tens of thousands into streets and fueling massive demonstrations. 

These are not distant battles. They are here, on our streets. They touch parents, neighbors, nurses, clergy, ordinary people who showed up to stand for peace — and now grieve a life lost. 

“Now the sun’s gone to hell, and
The moon’s riding high…”

I was profoundly moved by the moral courage I saw — people standing in the cold in Minnesota, clergy on their knees at the airport to block deportations, risking arrest, refusing to look away. 

And I was moved by the words of Mark Carney at Davos — proud to be Canadian, urging cooperation, common ground, shared humanity.

Yet even with all that heart and hope, someone was killed.

Again, there are many conflicting narratives about what happened, but murder is murder and should not be happening when people rise to protest and speak out. These deaths deepen the grief and fracture the fragile trust we have in each other and in our institutions.
“Every man has to die… But it’s written in the starlight…”

We are fools to make war — on our brothers in arms, on our own people — and it sure feels like our government is bent toward that very thing. 

I don’t understand the venom, the dehumanization, the hate that is so casually dished out — across media, across lines of ideology, across dinner tables.

I do believe we are being torn apart.
And I don’t know what will stop it —
But it won’t come from guns, bloodshed, and hate — I am certain of that.

Maybe — as Mark Carney suggested — if nations, if people, act together from the middle ground; if middle states find shared humanity rather than competition; if compassion becomes the law of the land… — perhaps then we will remember that might does not make right.

“We’re fools to make war
On our brothers in arms.”

Community, Connecting, Embracing Unknown

I Want It To Make Sense – It Isn’t Possible

Here’s the thing for me — I want to understand it.
I want it to make sense. I want to settle the fear.
But that isn’t possible anymore.

Every time something horrific happens, I get driven to the news, to the screen, trying to make sense.
9/11. January 6. George Floyd. The COVID outbreak.
And now ICE and the recent shootings and deaths — the one in Minnesota is another I want to understand — and I can’t.

Then comes the political spin — “all self-defense,” “they deserved it.”
That enrages me on so many levels.

Murder is never a solution — much less something that is good for anyone.

I have talked to enough people who have killed to know this:
none of them believe that was what they wanted.
None of them walk away untouched.

War veterans with PTSD carry this truth in their bodies.
The people sent to “protect” our country often return unable to metabolize what they have seen — or what they were required to do.
That is trauma. Not victory.

So when we say that someone — anyone — deserves to die or be shot, especially on our streets, we are denying what we already know to be true.

Law enforcement.
Citizens.
Undocumented immigrants.

No one needs to be gunned down.
And saying that it’s okay — saying it’s justified — only deepens the violence we claim to be trying to stop.

And still, it seems we need an enemy.
We make them because it is unbearable to say, I was wrong.
To feel the shame of actions born from misinformation or partial truth.
So we defend, protect, blame — and that reflex spreads everywhere.

I watched Wicked: Part II last night.
Did you know the original Wizard of Oz came out just before WWII?
I couldn’t watch that one — the monkeys terrified me.
But Wicked, especially Part II, speaks directly to this moment.

The Wizard — someone who knows they are powerful will use anything and everything — and the look on his face when he realizes what he has destroyed.
That moment landed hard.

But what moved me most was the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda — and of course, the song.
A song about true forgiveness.
About being changed for good.

I so wish we could get that.

Even here, Elphaba leaves because people need someone to call wicked — as if goodness can only be embraced by casting someone out.

Do we really need that?

I know in myself how hard it can be not to want to destroy the perpetrator — or at least the one I believe is the perpetrator.
We can get so far down the road of right and wrong that it feels like there is no way back.

And yet — there is.

The way through may require feeling so deeply, and owning our part so fully, that it feels like sitting in the middle of a wildfire we ourselves set.

Yes — our bodies may burn.
Certainty may collapse.
Stories we tell about ourselves may turn to ash.

But real connection does not burn away.
What is true holds.
Even in the fire.

Our hearts keep beating — not despite connection, but because of it.

Maybe the flames don’t destroy connection at all.
Maybe they reveal it.

And maybe that is the only path to joy.

At some point, we have to risk that.

Can we?

Communication, Community, Connecting, Connection, Life Experiences, Vision, Vulnerability

Forgiveness

I’ve never been particularly comfortable with the word forgiveness.

Yet here I am considering it my word for 2026.

Here’s a popular definition of forgiveness:

Forgiveness is the conscious, voluntary decision to let go of resentment, anger, and vengeful thoughts toward someone who has wronged you, freeing yourself from the pain of the offense rather than condoning or excusing the act.

It sounds reasonable.
Even generous.

But I get stuck on one idea:
“toward someone who has wronged you.”

Because as long as forgiveness is organized around they wronged me, it stays trapped inside a courtroom.
Someone is right.
Someone is wrong.
And someone has to rise above it.

Real forgiveness—at least the kind that actually changes something—doesn’t live there.

For me, forgiveness begins when I’m willing to question my certainty.
Not erase my experience—but loosen my grip on the story I’m telling about it.

I don’t actually know what the other person intended.
I don’t know what they were seeing, hearing, or feeling in that moment.
I don’t know what shaped their choices or what fear, pain, or blindness might have been operating.

When I truly own that, something shifts.

The work of forgiveness stops being about them
and becomes about my willingness to step out of righteousness and victimhood.

What I’ve discovered is that suffering is real—but blame only hardens it.

Forgiveness happens when I stop insisting on being right
and start telling the truth about what I cannot know.

In those moments—when I land there in real presence—
my heart opens, but my spine doesn’t disappear.

There’s clarity.
There’s connection.
And there’s a surprising strength in not needing anyone to be the villain.

It doesn’t feel passive.
It feels liberating.

Which is why I don’t think forgiveness can be thought through or performed correctly.

Forgiveness is experiential.
It arrives in moments of curiosity rather than collapse,
innocence rather than innocence lost,
wisdom that comes from letting a rigid story soften into something truer.

And when it’s real,
the freedom moves both ways.

Community, Connecting, Embracing Unknown, Life Experiences

Maybe Community Lives in An Aphorism

I recently read a great article about aphorisms—those pithy observations that carry a general truth or a thought-provoking point of view. The piece was adapted from James Geary’s book The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism.

I loved it.
Not just because the lines were clever, but because they sparked thought. And conversation. And difference.

Some Aphorisms from Geary’s peice:

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote:
Those who were carried to a goal should not think they’ve reached it.

Magdalena Samozwaniec said:
Love is that short period of time when someone else holds the same opinion of us as we do of ourselves.

And then, a line that became the seed of Geary’s life’s work:
The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

What I noticed is that each of these doesn’t tell you what to think.
They invite you to think.
They open something rather than close it down.

That feels like something we’ve lost a bit in the world these days.

I often find myself wondering why community on Gabriola Island felt—and still feels—more alive and thriving for me than many of the places I’ve lived since moving back to the States in 2000. I mostly attribute that to The Haven.

There, I learned relational skills. I discovered just how vital difference, intimacy, and dialogue are to aliveness, health, and thriving.

Yes, I loved the programs. I believed—still believe—that those programs were a foundational playground for community. And maybe the place itself held some magic.

But it wasn’t really the space. Or the rooms. Or even the brilliance of the teachers who carried The Haven. Those mattered, of course—they were the mud, bricks, and mortar. But they weren’t the thing itself.

What I’m slowly learning—gathering some grit around—is that Haven isn’t just a place. It’s a space I can create inside myself, one that connects me to the world around me. And that space is always shifting, changing, evolving.

Community isn’t a place you arrive at—it’s a way you stay in relationship with uncertainty.

So I ask you:

What is it that leads you to a place where you can love the shifting, not just the beauty of a new location?
What lets you listen to all kinds of music—not only the chords and tones that harmonize easily or touch a familiar, sentimental place?

What I’m realizing is that what I learned, I could have learned by taking many roads. What makes any road special isn’t the route itself—it’s the connections, the conversations, the deeper roots, and the invisible threads that weave us all together.

There’s no single “right” way to come home.

What we’re offered, again and again, is a choice: more connection or more isolation.

And those aren’t always about proximity. Some people hike alone and are deeply connected. Others sit in crowded rooms and feel profoundly alone.

Connection—and intimacy—run deeper than what meets the eye.

Communication, Community, Connecting, Family, Life Experiences

Carrying What Matters

A year-end reflection

This past year held a lot.

I said goodbye to my mom—at least to her human form—and discovered that grief doesn’t arrive in a straight line. It comes as an undertow. Quiet at first. Then suddenly pulling up old family currents I didn’t know were still alive in me.

It was also a year of aliveness.
We returned to Finding Your Mojo in Montana.
We launched Pop-Ups for People.
Worked with new and old clients in new forms.
Traveled, taught, learned, loved.
Studied together. Studied Apart. Created. Said yes to what was alive.

And somewhere in the middle of all that living, my body slowed me down.

An extended stretch now of being sick.
No skiing. No Peloton. No real movement.
At first, I didn’t care.
And then—when the fog lifted—I noticed something surprising.

I wasn’t rushing back to the discipline I usually rely on to “keep myself in check.”

Instead, I found myself reaching for comfort:
Mochas.
Craft beer.
Pizza.

Not because I don’t know what supports my body—but because sometimes comfort feels like a small shelter in a world that feels loud, divided, and relentlessly intense.

Recently, in a Tarot reading, the card that landed in the physical position was Burden.

I realized how much I’ve been carrying:
Grief.
Concern for the world.
The desire for connection without always knowing how to create it consistently.
The tension between what nourishes me and what soothes me.

And yet—here’s the other truth. In this seeming world of rage.

Up close. Face to face. In real conversation.
I’ve experienced genuine connection with people who hold very different views.
I’ve found common fears. Shared hopes. A longing for understanding.
That part gives me hope.

Still, the headlines keep coming.
And some days, that part is hard.

As this year comes to a close, I find myself asking quieter questions:

  • Where was I touched and changed?
  • Where did I show up with my full heart?
  • Where did I hold back?
  • What actually mattered?
  • What no longer needs to be carried into the next year?

This season—of lights and darkness, tradition and reinvention—seems to invite both grief and possibility.
Promise and pain.
Joy and uncertainty.

Maybe that’s the work right now:
Not fixing.
Not resolving.
But noticing what we’re carrying—and choosing what’s worth bringing forward.

So I’m curious about you.

What touched your heart this year?
What feels heavy—and what feels essential?
What are you ready to set down?

May this season offer you moments of peace.
May the questions that rise lead you toward connection.
And may whatever you’re carrying be met with kindness.

Communication, Community, Connecting, Connection, Life Experiences, Vision, writing

I Don’t Want a Platform—I Want a Campfire

Sometimes I get caught in spinning.

I want to do something—
move toward something purposeful, meaningful, alive.

But I don’t have a job like that.
I don’t work from an office or keep set hours.
I try to stay in service to our work, and sometimes that starts to feel like marketing or overselling, when really I just want to connect.
To share.
To see what might be offered—or received—in relationship.

Instead, I’m in my house in Montana.

I could go downtown and sit in a café and write.
Have a coffee. Maybe chat with people doing their thing.

I could go to the mountain—
ride the chairlift, talk about life and politics, take a few runs, eat curly fries.

I could walk the dogs and exchange small, human moments with people I pass in the woods.

I’d love to share more online.
But honestly, there’s so much noise there.
Ads. Rants. Performance.
So where do heartfelt words belong?
Who is really listening?

I’ve explored platforms—Substack, Mighty Networks, and the ever-growing list of “the next best thing.”
I’m not looking for big.
And I’m not looking for viral.

What I want is simpler—and maybe harder.

Camp Connection wants to become a small, human-scale space.
A place for stories, questions, and unfinished thoughts.
Not a funnel.
Not a brand.

More like a campfire—
where people wander in, sit down for a while, listen, speak when something feels true, and leave a little more connected than when they arrived.

As an Enneagram 5, I know I can get stuck in thinking and refining.
Coming close, then pulling back.
Wanting to share, then needing more quiet first.

Sometimes it’s hard being me.
And—this is me.

If you’d sit down at this campfire, let me know in the comments.
That’s enough to start.

Connecting, Embracing Unknown, Life Experiences

Electric Patience: Where Fire Flies & Dragon Flies Meet

I’m working through something.
It feels big.
Though who knows—
maybe it’s just like opening a pressurized can of tennis balls.
Still. For me, big.

This idea of ground-to-sky lightning came to me.
At first I thought it was just my dyslexic mind showing itself—
because isn’t lightning supposed to go sky to ground?

So I did what we do now.
I asked Google. I asked AI.

What came back surprised me.

Ground-to-sky lightning is real.
Rare.
An upward flash.

A negative strike drops from the cloud,
but before it hits the ground,
something rises.
A positive streamer—
from a mountain, a tower,
the earth itself—
and it surges upward.

Wow – Wonder- Electric

Apprently I didn’t need Google or AI.

Just yesterday I had a really cool meeting
with a kind man
who spoke of the masculine, feminine,
and the elements—earth, fire, water, air.
His secret source and wisdom

Encouraged me and all to listen better, deeper and trust

From earth to air – feet to brian – Earth-Fire-Water-Air

And in me Electric Patience showed up.
In a strange way,
it felt like my own
masculine and feminine meeting.

Now I wait.

Inside me, the lightning is fast—
fireflies, sparks, ideas.
Busy. Bright. Jumping.

The feminine is slower.
Rooted.
More like lava.
And mucus
(yes, I just had a cold moving through my body—
mucus fits).

She’s not in a hurry.
She demands patience.

As the surge comes from the depths—
dragons becoming dragonflies.

Not ground fire.

A storm of fireflies and dragonflies instead.

I’m found a new kind of fuel from fire.

Where before it was combustion – now a dance of fire in sky
I like that.

A gift from Electric Patience.

May there be more.

Community, Connecting

Mindfulness, Reimagined In Cancun

I’ve always carried a bit of judgment around mindfulness.
Whenever people talked about “being mindful,” I heard be calm, peaceful, more zen-like. My old story, that i was too loud, too much, too reactive – so should be more mindful. So I wasn’t as excited about mindfulness as many others.

That changed.

At a recent Dr. Joe Dispenza retreat, I had the privilege of hearing Ellen Langer—the pioneer of mindfulness research and the force behind so much of our modern interest in it. She completely rocked my understanding.

First, she defined mindfulness in the simplest, most liberating way:
mindful = not mindless.
Not checked out. Not running predictable habits. Not assuming.
But questioning, noticing, and being awake in the moment.

Then she introduced another shift that landed deeply for me:
mind–body unity, not mind–body connection.

That one word—unity—changes everything.

The old framing is still dualistic: mind and body, as if one leads and the other follows. Work on the body. Then work on the mind. As if they’re two separate systems talking across a gap.

Mind–body unity aligns with what I’ve believed and taught for years:
consciousness is both energy and matter, always.
We are physical and energetic—thought and heart, sensation and meaning—an integrated field expressing itself through form.

Ellen shared stories that reminded me of the many people in my own life who’ve taught me versions of these lessons. One example stuck hard:

Two people take an IQ test. One scores a 70. One scores a 69.
The 69 is labeled “cognitively impaired.”
The 70 is not. And that one point—one tiny point—shapes entirely different life paths.

That’s the power of language. Labels. Meaning.
How we name things becomes how we live them.

And this brings me back to Me + We.

We aren’t isolated parts trying to become whole.
We are wholeness in every part—each individual an expression of a deeper, unified field.
Me lives inside We.
We lives inside Me.

And here’s the real clincher: we have choice.

Mindfulness—true mindfulness—is not about being calm or zen.
It’s about remembering that in any moment, we get to choose how we engage.

Choice in how we see.
Choice in how we respond.
Choice in how we influence the living matrix we’re part of.

We are not victims of our wiring, our history, or even our wholeness.
Wholeness isn’t a fixed state—it’s a field.
A shimmering, responsive, alive field that changes the moment awareness touches it.

When we meet this moment without judgment—
with heart, curiosity, and presence—
the field reorganizes.
The energy moves.
Possibility opens.

This, to me, is mindfulness:
Not managing yourself into stillness,
but entering life awake enough to influence the field you are part of.
Me affecting We.
We informing Me.
Wholeness alive in every part, reshaped through presence.

That’s the power.
That’s the invitation—
in any moment, with whatever stands in front of you.

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.