Blog
Your Purpose? Or Someone Else’s?
I believe purpose is a deep-seated sense of the legacy that we wish to leave for the world. The deep-seated aspect means it can either feel ingrained and pervasive, or ill-defined and elusive. Much like the oxygen we breathe, either we know it’s there on a visceral...
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Inspiration/Desperation: Purpose Arising From Challenge
Studies show that happiness increases with wealth up to the point where we get our needs met. After this point, it is believed, that we must then fill our lives with eudaimonia (doing good) instead of hedonia (feeling good) since hedonism has a limited impact on life...
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Purpose, Passion, Productivity. In That Order.
Early in my career facilitating leadership development, one day I jumped out of bed thinking, “I can’t believe I get paid to do this!” At this moment, I realized what work is meant to be. Too often, work seems to be something different. Instead of feeding our...
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Rebuilding Back Ethically
Austin Sachs is dedicated to working to create more inclusive and prosperous communities and economies. He serves as the Treasurer of Shalom Mennonite Congregation, Treasurer of FairVote VA and a manager of the Sustainability Alumni Network (SAN) Investing Collective,...
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Yin Leadership: An Alternative to the Masculine/Feminine
Sometimes I just long for life to be simpler. Years ago, things seemed more cut and dry, and I didn’t question matters much. I knew what was right and wrong, and of course, I was usually on the side of right. With age, we tend to realize that matters are rarely so...
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The Dreamer
I’m often invigorated by my inner visions. My body responds with glorious sensations as I dream of bliss-filled realities of Union. Many of my visions are quite vivid. I feel blessed and filled with wonderment. I child-like once again. Yes, I am happy to be a dreamer....
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Working on Relationships, Part 4: Marriage, Partners, Swiping Right
Coming out of my 20-year marriage in the late 1990s, I felt like Rip Van Winkle entering the Matrix’s dating scene. Where we once employed gyms and bars as the places to meet one or two potential partners at a time, we seemingly transformed overnight onto online...
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Working on Relationships, Part 3: Soul Mate Radar Detector
Ah, what’s better than the feeling of falling in love? Finally finding your soul mate, happily ever after, yadda yadda. Then two, or maybe five years later, we’re realizing maybe they’re not our soul mate after all. The prince is actually a frog and pushes our buttons...
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Working on Relationships, Part 2: Boundaries
Trigger warning: pleasers and conflict avoiders, you’re not going to like this topic. You’re going to learn that a healthy relationship includes setting boundaries, which may displease or cause conflict. Setting boundaries means that you first know your values and how...
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Working on Relationships, Part 1: Intimate Communication
A lifelong student of relationships, I have worked hard - and am a work in progress - at learning the skills needed to create healthy relationships. Intimate communication is one of the most transformative and essential relationship skills, one that I hope everyone...
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Exploring Rabbit Holes
If you’re as curious about your human existence as I am, I invite you to join me as I venture down another rabbit hole of self-exploration about the polarities we experience while on planet Earth. I begin entering these rabbit holes with practices I picked up long...
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What Doesn’t Kill You During Pandemic
Most would call 2020 a disastrous year, with no real end in sight even now that we’re in 2021. I’m counting my blessings and challenges, and feeling so grateful. I don’t mean to diminish the bona fide pain and suffering that is occurring around us. I too have had my...
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Relationship Education and Why it Matters: A New Opportunity
The “three R’s”, reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic cover a lot, but not a key component of successful lives, families, and communities: healthy relationships. I used to think that good relationships were all about compatibility and chemistry. But healthy and resilient...
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Communication in a Committed Relationship
Successful relationships require commitment and good communication. This advice often seems to be misconstrued as being limited to articulating views and beliefs clearly to the other. Good communication should be reciprocal, aimed at mutual understanding. Too often...
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Journey to Be in Relationship
Like most girls, I spent my childhood imagining that I’d meet a wonderful man and live happily ever after. The search was the hard part, according to cultural lore. One day, about 6 years into my marriage, and much to my surprise, I found myself crying as I walked...
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The Art Of Acceptance
Standing before many mirrors over the past thirty years, I’ve seen patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior in myself that produced outcomes I’d prefer never experiencing again. At one time, I wore these patterns like a well-worn pair of jeans that defined me. On...
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Earth Mother is Feeling Ill Today
I sit on my screened-in porch in the company of the trees and birds, especially enjoying the sound and sight of a female cardinal in the tree. I savor the contrast of her orange and browns and marvel in her subtle beauty. She visits often and this time, chirps to me...
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Re-imagining Our Sacred Relationships
Mindy Zlotnick, Virginia Community Rights Network Susanna Calvert, Foundation for Family and Community Healing Rugged individualism has served America well in some respects. It’s created many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and decades of economic...
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Walking for Life: Voting with our Feet
In the USA we have just come through a long election cycle, which appears to have no end in sight. No matter where a person falls on any ideological or political scale, it is paramount for everyone to vote. Voting is one way to listen to each other, even if what we...
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Introducing “Living In The BlueSpace”
As a man who has traveled the inner pathway over the last thirty years, studied under many masters, and died a thousand times, I discovered my true Self was within me all that time. Already whole and complete, my Self was awaiting my acknowledgment then its embodiment...
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Happy Everything Day
The holiday season (whichever holidays you celebrate) is so magical because they ask us to stop and celebrate something. It’s such a relief to raise our noses from the proverbial grindstone and take a step back to count our blessings, express gratitude, spend time...
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Mother Earth’s Love Language
We often speak of the golden rule: treat others as we wish to be treated. But have you heard of the platinum rule: treat others as they wish to be treated? Both are hard, the second is harder. Understanding what others want can be challenging because we tend to...
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Hidden Abundance
Did you know that only 40% of your happiness is genetic? That means that 60% is within your control. That 60% is determined by your habits and perspective, both of which are choices. For example, according to Martin Seligman, the author of the theory of learned...
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Thanksgiving And Lovegiving To Earth
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” ― Mark Twain Twain’s wisdom resonates because it strikes such a chord of...
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Developmental Stages of Humanity and Earth
Harvard professor Bob Kegan’s adult development theory explains how adults develop on a cognitive level, as opposed to the traditional life stages framework. In his theory, Kegan describes how adults move through stages defined by ones’ ability to understand and...
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Family Responsibility and Time-Out
I have the most generous parents in the history of humanity. They provide my home, my food and clothing, and even my entertainment. They provide all my inspiration, and even the most amazing, beautiful retreats for contemplation and rest. I know my parents are...
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The Treasures of Our Yin (Shadow) Side
In religion and spirituality, we often talk about light and love as being good and desirable. The dark is ignored or discussed as undesirable, often equated to evil. Is the distinction really so black and white? My background as daughter of Chinese immigrants...
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Relationship Power Differentials: Reciprocity and Fairness
By Susanna Calvert, MAPP, PhD and Victoria Ronnau, JD Good relationships are central to our wellbeing but can be so hard to create. Few of us are taught how to create healthy and rewarding relationships. A lucky few have had good role models. The rest of us have...
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Night Vision: Exploring Our Shadow Side
“Ogres are like onions…Ogres have layers. Onions have layers.” – Shrek Disagreements, the kind where we’re digging our heels in for the long haul, often to have an element of disbelief where we wonder how the other person can think that. But I know that if we dig...
read moreGaia and Personhood
This week's blog post is in collaboration with Victoria Ronnau, of Virginia Network for Democracy and Environmental Rights, VNDER.org. The idea of Earth as an integrated whole, a living being, is not new to this blog. Versions of this concept are practiced by...
read moreBy Her Sickbed
By Her Sickbed She’s resting quietly now. She’s too tired to speak, and she naps frequently. I don’t want to disturb her. I want her to rest and become stronger, and I also don’t want to leave her side. She doesn’t have to speak for me for me to know what’s going...
read moreAn Apology to Earth
Dear Mother Earth, I’m writing this letter because this is really, really hard to say and I wanted to make sure I’m telling you everything I need to express. I screwed up, beloved Mother, and I’m really, really sorry. I don’t want this letter to become about me and...
read moreDiversity, The Myth of Separateness, & Earth Care
“The myth of the separate self underlies our entire civilization, says philosopher and author Charles Eisenstein. This dualistic view of the world pits people against each other and turns nature into something we want to control. But we can choose another story — one...
read moreSmell Thy Neighbor
Loss of smell is often reported as one of the first symptoms of COVID-19. Many people associate our sense of smell with pleasure, such as a warm pie cooling from the oven or the unique and heart-warming smell of a loved one. Smell also can alert us of something...
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A Letter to You
Dear Earth Family, I’m writing to you now because my heart is breaking and I don’t know a better way to communicate my feelings to you right now. These rifts between all of us feel devastating and I’m writing in hopes that we can find a way to reconcile. We’ve...
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Why We Have Systemic-isms
Did it feel like this discussion about systemic racism came out of left field? I suspect it took many of us off guard, not unlike the discussion about gay marriage several years ago. One day, everyone is saying WTF?, and then the next we’re all acting like the...
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Jason, with The Audible Bark
A month ago, my co-worker, Bridgette and I were driving home from the field late after catching and attaching satellite tags to alligators at the Okefenokee Swamp Park. As you may have read in the blog, The Silent Bark, we were discussing how people and events happen...
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Nature, The Nerd
I was surprised each time I have found myself single, first after my divorce from my husband of 20 years and then after the death of my late husband Chris. I just didn’t expect to have to be out dating again prior to each instance. It is very different dating in my...
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What I Hate About You
Getting along can be challenging, especially during these days of pandemic and polarization around so many topics including masks, race, politics, and climate change. Solutions are needed more than ever, but we can hardly find a way to talk to each other much less...
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