Meanderings with Trudy

What is hope? And what is flow? Back in 2022, Angie and I explored these things… we said that hope is our background program that helps us get up in the morning. It’s actionable and intentional; it empowers us to do what we are here to be. And flow… flow happens when we let go of aspiration and just be who we are at our essence, in this very moment. And when we apply the lens of the Enneagram we ask: how does this framework help us explore our spirit, our very souls, and find our way into the flow of life that is, effortless? We find that we do this in nine different ways… 

I hope you’ll stick with us as we explore. And please, share our work widely, give us a review or a drop us a few stars. If you have comments or questions, please send them to [email protected].

Episode links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Big Stone House

We again referenced Richard Wagamese’s book “Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations”  in this meander

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

This is our third episode in this “Grief Busting” series with special guest and expert on grief and bereavement, Dina Bell-Laroche. You’ll remember Dina from her chat with me back in November, 2022.   

Today we meander all round myths relating to behaviour… how we behave when we are grieving, and when we are supporting someone who is grieving. We walk through our common ways of coping with grief. For example, tears are cathartic and curiosity is helpful; grief, like emotions, have an arc they follow and it’s important to respect the arc in order to support the effective processing of grief; we all have our own ways we care for ourselves, and our own ways of grieving… and it’s important to know yourself in these regards… We also talk about the cues that we have that suggest we may need a little more help in our grief. And finally, we explore how taking care of ourselves is an “ethical imperative.”

There are so many other insights packed into this episode, I hope you’ll give it a listen!

I hope you enjoy this episode, the third of five episodes in our deep dive into grief and how dealing with our grief can deepen our joy. 

Episode Links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Dina’s company is Grief Unleashed

Dina’s blog post outlining her 25 myths about grief, that we are exploring in these meanders

Rumi’s “The Guesthouse”

Dina mentioned Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor and her book “The Grieving Brain”

Kenneth Doka, “Grieving Beyond Gender”

What’s Your Grief

David Whyte, himself reciting “The Well of Grief”; and here is the poem itself for you to ponder yourself

Article from “Simply Psychology” about Attachment Theory as coined by psychoanalyst John Bowlby

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

Ritual and storytelling… intertwined these are. And when conducted using the framework of the Enneagram, I have learned a great deal about myself that has supported my personal development and enriched my relationships. In short, this is what this kind of work is all about.

As we’ve said before on these PauseCasts, the Enneagram gives us permission to pause, and in that pause, to look at who we be, in service of the Greater Good… or Life… or God, whatever your preferred language is for this that is bigger than us alone. In today’s meander, Angie and I explore how ritual and storytelling get us closer to our “…real, essential self” in the words of Richard Wagamese from his book “What Comes from Spirit.” 

In short, rituals slow us down enough so that we can see how our stories inform our world view

I hope you’ll stick with us as we explore. And please, share our work widely, give us a review or a drop us a few stars. If you have comments or questions, please send them to [email protected].

Episode links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Big Stone House

Here’s a book review of Richard Wagamese’s book “What Comes from Spirit” that Trudy referenced in the beginning of our meander 

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

My friend Ari is a lovely person and her heart shines through in our meander. Coming out of an eclectic background in science and art into intellectual property law, she’s followed her whimsey and curiosity and created a pretty unique offering to her clients. While she offers …”customized intellectual property (IP) legal services for small to medium enterprises…”, she does so with a keen awareness of the creative souls that are her clients. Working in a philosophy of “co-creation” she supports entrepreneurs and creatives in fully expressing what they are all about, showing “creative empowerment” in action!

While fully immersed in law, she also earned a Master of Arts in Canadian Indigenous Studies. This brought into her mix an appreciation and awareness of the Indigenous Medicine Wheel, among other Indigenous perspectives, which when applied to business opened up a whole new way of looking at solutions for her clients. 

We wax philosophic, as we do here in these meanders, and Ari asks a beautiful question: how does my intuitive sense interact with my logical side? In asking, she’s able to explore various dichotomies: arts and science, light and dark, and many other dualities. And in this, we talk about how she weaves together the right solution for a client within the law, but not starting there. For in the end, every agreement is about relationships, so by tending to relationships first then looking to the law, she finds she often lands in a better solution for all involved. This can take less time, and be more reflective of everyone’s interests. It’s amazing what we can do when we focus on people, and include a little whimsy, in our problem-solving.

Episode links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Ari’s law practice is Kyma Professional Corporation, Intellectual Property Legal Services

Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk in Mi'kmaw), a foundational concept envisioned and built by Mi'kmaw Elder Albert Marshall at the Institute for Integrative Science and Health

The book Ari mentioned was “Breath, Sensation, Words” by Lisa J. Weiss

The Conscious Contracts approach

Movie: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

We start our meander with a reading from Richard Wagamese (Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) novelist, journalist, and mentor), a passage from his book "Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations" which I think is really about hope. How it’s not enough to be resilient if being so means bouncing back to the same place… what he wants for himself, and offers to us, is to reach Beyond resilience, to a new place of growth, each day. Angie and I wrestle with “resilience” and from this place I ask a few basic questions: do we need resilience to be capable of rebirth? And how does the Enneagram support rebirth? And finally, if personal development is an inside job, how does community fit in?

The funny thing about the Enneagram, and personal development in general, is that the work is both an inside and an outside job. Inside as we look at ourselves and our habits of behaving, believing, and so on so we can see how they serve us. Outside as we need support, and to be held to account, as we do the inner work.  And in community, in contact and communion with each other, we create something more than ourselves. 

Just as the Enneagram gives us a mirror to see ourselves, there is often a lot there about ourselves that we see that we just don’t like. And here’s where community comes in – as its best, community is a supportive place where people who care about us help us see who we are, and help us sit with those things about ourselves that we don’t like. In community, we get the strength to look at who we are, without judgement but with great kindness, enabling us to see how that serves us, or not. And then change, if we wish. Rebirthing ourselves... as we shift.

I hope you’ll stick with us as we explore. And please, share our work widely, give us a review or a drop us a few stars. If you have comments or questions, please send them to [email protected].  We believe these meanderings matter, and we hope you do too. So please share.

Episode links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Big Stone House

milk and honey, by rupi kaur

"Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations", by Richard Wagamese

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

This is our second episode in this “Grief Busting” series with special guest and expert on grief and bereavement, Dina Bell-Laroche. You’ll remember Dina from her chat with me back in November, 2022.   

Today we meander all round myths relating to emotion. English doesn’t serve us well here – in English, grief is both an emotion and an experience. Viewing grief only as an emotion limits us in unhelpful ways, but seeing it as a verb – grieving – makes it an experience, one we can work with more readily…. It becomes a gateway to living with grief, moving with grief, and makes it something active that we can navigate with through time. 

I hope you enjoy this episode, the second of five episodes in our deep dive into grief and how dealing with our grief can deepen our joy. 

Episode Links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Dina’s company is Grief Unleashed

She read us the poem “Space for Storms,” the wonderful BC poet Caroline Miskenack

STUG (sudden temporary upsurge of grief), a concept coined by Dr. Therese Rando, see this summary for more

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and the stages of grief

David Whyte, “What to Remember When Waking” excerpt: “…To become human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others….”

Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov, Dying with Dignity, the Platinum Rule

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

In today’s meander, we tackle wholeheartedness, relationship and heart using the lens of the Enneagram. Angie and I also “show our work” here as we wrestle with the concepts, and how to keep things accessible to listeners at all levels of familiarity with the framework…. Not an easy task.

In short, the Enneagram helps us see ourselves. It really is a practice of paying attention: to our habits and long held beliefs, those we have inherited and those we have nurtured ourselves through life, all so we can see how we are showing up, or not showing up, in our relationships. Relationships first with our selves, and then, with others. Using awareness and presence, we can learn to see how we unknowingly protect ourselves from heartbreak in nine different ways. Reminder: the Enneagram model has nine main personality types… hence the “nine different ways” we protect our hearts from harm.

As mentioned in the last episode, we are exploring the Enneagram as a practice of presence. Today, we wrestle with the question: what if the secret to life isn’t about becoming a better person (ie. self-improvement) but is simply about being more human (ie. more real, more compassionate)? Can the Enneagram to help us do that? We believe it can. Listen in and let us know… do you agree? 

Episode links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Big Stone House

The Riso Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) assessment at The Enneagram Institute, look under “Testing Center” tab at the top of the landing page

About Thomas Merton’s life and writings

Brené Brown on wholeheartedness

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

In this meander, we talk about Dodzi's writing process, which he calls “…a sacred process.”  Writing gives him a sense of purpose. He writes long form, by hand, and bookends his day job with writing time at his desk. We talk about the magic and spirit that is present in his writing, in how his writing touches people’s hearts, and how that brings a texture to life that is otherwise missing. We also talk about language – he initially wrote his book in French, then had  it translated to English. This brings a nuance to the work, and a partnership with the translator to ensure that the sense, the final language, was just what he initially meant. No mean feat, I would think.

In addition to his book, Dodzi writes poetry. And he shares one with us. Poetry, says Dodzi, reminds us to pause, to appreciate the importance of the ideas expressed, mulling them over in our minds and hearts, maybe over coffee. Nice. 

This is a gorgeous, gentle interview with a truly thoughtful author. It has been my pleasure to meander with him!

Episode Links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Craig Senior, episode 9, August 2020

“Surfing the Unknown” on Amazon.ca

The Guesthouse, a poem by Rumi

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

Episode one: The Enneagram. I laid the table at the end of January 2023 with my genesis story of the Enneagram and today, Angie shares hers… and a whole lot more. So what is this thing, the Enneagram? Is it a tool or a model to make me “better?” Is it a map, or an app? Is this an alone thing or do I need community? If it supports spiritual development, does that mean it is religious?

We meander all over the topic of what the Enneagram is, how it outlines types of personalities but so much more. When push comes to shove, Angie tells us, it really is a practice of presence. That is the ultimate purpose, and invitation: to be present to who we really are, in service of shining our own light into this world.

Understanding the Enneagram in this way, from a place of presence, makes it possible to feel with and for eachother. But, and here’s the rub: that’s uncomfortable; it may demand that we change who we think we are so we have room for others… and so, we don’t take up the invitation to ask the big questions about who we be, we allow ourselves to be defined by the behaviours of our type, excusing our challenging behaviour with an “that’s just what I was built to do”, and move on.

Yet the gift of insight and personal development offered by this model is astounding, if you tough it through the work, if you’d let your soul truly shine. There are few places in this world where we spend time asking the big questions of life anymore, but that’s what we’re trying to do here with this series of episodes about the Enneagram.

Episode links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Big Stone House

Comedian Rob Delaney’s interview on CBS, showing the power of human connection, of being seen

The quote Angie was trying to share was from Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

“Old Turtle and the Broken Truth” by Douglas Wood

“Start Close In” by David Whyte

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

This is our first episode in this “Grief Busting” series with special guest and expert on grief and bereavement, Dina Bell-Laroche. You’ll remember Dina from her chat with me back in November, 2022.  For her, the death of her sister Tracy was life-changing and we heard about that in our first meander together. In this new series, we tackle some of the common myths around grief, in service of accessing our joy.

Today we are setting the table for our subsequent meanders in this series, talking about why effectively moving through our grief matters. I share a few stories about my own experiences with grief and loss, and Dina helps unpack those a bit with me. We’re also looking at the myth of time – myths like how time heals all wounds, and that grieving has a distinct end point. As Dina and I are both integral coaches and both know the Enneagram, we explore that too, which dovetails nicely with what is to come with Angie Arendt on "MwT: The PauseCast" next week.

I hope you enjoy this episode, the first of five episodes in our deep dive into grief and how dealing with our grief can deepen our joy. 

Episode Links:

Chapman Coaching Inc.

Dina’s company is Grief Unleashed

She read us the poem “Space for Storms,” the wonderful BC poet Caroline Miskenack

Grieving styles, blog post by BFO – Toronto 

Brené Brown TedTalk on shame, vulnerability and wholehearted living

Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Please send thoughts and comments to [email protected]

As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc.

Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma

Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.