Wild and Precious Conversations

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week, I contemplate the power of the curse in our modern lives: The nocebo effect.

This week, I have been contemplating the power of our words. There’s quite an industry dedicated to the idea that affirmations, positive thinking, and the like can make you rich, powerful, beautiful and healthy.

Contrast that with the reality (which hit me this last week) that there is one emotion we all struggle mightily with that we use as a curse: Shame.

We have a fraught relationship with shame, as we do with many of our emotions. My Dad introduced me to John Bradshaw’s “Healing the Shame That Binds You” and the idea of toxic shame. More recently, Bréne Brown has taken up the conversation around how much shame can hurt us.

But obviously, sometimes shame is exactly what we should feel. If we’ve done something horrid, the appropriate feelings is shame.

What, then, is up with our weird relationship to this emotion? I believe it’s the fact that it’s the only emotion we use as a curse.

“Shame on you!” is a pretty powerful thing to say to someone. I go into more depth in the podcast on this topic, leading from shame to other ways our words can and have had a “nocebo” (“I will do harm”) effect on people. There are plenty of interesting examples.

My point being, basically, that it isn’t really “magic” but our words, thoughts, and actions do have an effect and we should choose them wisely.

We should consider whether we have the luxury of evoking negative past and future events, or whether you (like me!) don’t really have space for that in our lives. <= lots of pronouns in that sentence!

I share lots of interesting case studies in the podcast. Give it a listen and let me know what you think!

Notes:

* Wild and Precious Courses. — The Self Care Course Gives much more detail on the steps to take in order to fully feel all your emotions in a healthy way.

* Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

* The Contagious Thought That Could Kill You — David Robson’s article in the BBC

* Article on Placebo Effect — By Jamie Hale with video included with Dr. Paul Bloom speaking on dualism.

Onward. I have changed course a bit and we are moving into magic.

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week, I introduce you to the FREE Science of Well Being class taught through Cousera by Dr. Laurie Santos at Yale.

This week, I think Dr. Laurie Santos’ Yale course was on my mind as I contemplated Magic vs Science. I took her “Happiness Class” a few years ago when my family needed, frankly, a reminder of what happiness was.

I think that is what was behind my thesis that emotional fitness ain’t Magic — It’s science. And kinda boring science, too.

The podcast episode is admittedly a bit meandering this week but the gist is that the Wellness Industry was worth 3.72 TRILLION dollars back in 2015.

Clearly, there is nothing wrong with spending money on things like a spa vacation, or a beautiful serene home. Clearly, there are people who can’t afford even basic things and struggle to feed their children and stay warm in winter.

Between those extremes, many of us eek out our lives trying to get more emotionally fit — more emotionally well. We occasionally splurge on expensive solutions to our wellness deficit, buying a program or spa package or fitness thingy when, really, that is all smoke and mirrors or snake oi.

Speaking of snake oil…have you ever wondered where that term came from? Turns out, there’s a bit of truth to it but, like many things, the medicine got diluted over time and when money started changing hands…

Turns out, the best ways to become more emotionally it, achieve wellness as it were, are the following:

* Practice what you are good at.

* Savor your life — Notice things like your bare feet on the floor, the fact that you have hot water, the feeling of snow on your face.

* Practice gratitude

* Kindness for others

* Stay socially connected

* Exercise

* Sleep well

* Meditate

* Carve out time

These are all things that are taught in Dr. Laurie Santos’ free class, by the way…

Notes:

* Wild and Precious Courses. — The Self Care Course Gives much more detail on the steps to take in order to fully feel all your emotions in a healthy way.

* Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

* The Science of Well Being — Dr. Laurie Santos’ course on happiness.

* What Wellness is

* Best Self Care is Kindness to Others

* True Story of Snake Oil

Onward. I have changed course a bit and we are moving into magic.

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week, you have an assignment: either go and listen to Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us episode interviewing Emily and Amelia Nagosky, or sign up for my free Self Care First Aid Kit Course.

This week I spent a good amount of time editing again — I will admit that I had gotten lazy, but a wonderful piece of feedback gave me renewed resolve to spend the hours editing. Let me know your thoughts....

This week in the newsletter, I wrote that the opposite of uncertainty is boredom. This is true and we will always have uncertainty with us. The key is learning how to live with uncertainty.

This really requires two things, which can be neatly tied up in a mantra I use in my own family: “Feel all your feelings; choose your behavior”

After listening to Brene Brown’s interview with Emily and Amelia Nagosky, I realized I ought to spell out both parts.

* Feel all your feelings. This means not only feel every feeling, but fell your feelings all the way through. Really allow your feelings to flow through you, from beginning to end. This requires some (fun!) strategies, since we often need to “smile and wave, boys” during our day, and then allow ourselves to feel our feelings when it’s safe.

* In other words, perhaps you’re in a very dysfunctional work situation. You can’t express your emotions at work; it’s not safe. You wait until you get home, to a safe space and time, and then you go ahead and continue to feel your feelings.

* What happens when you don’t feel your feelings all the way through? You get stuck. You either get sick, yes, physically sick. Or you numb your emotions through one of several methods: alcohol, shopping, gambling, bingeing/purging (my old fav), porn, etc. Or you both numb and get sick.

* Why? Because emotions are “involuntary neurological events in your body” <= thank you, Emily Nagosky via Brene Brown.

* So, what are the 8 ways you can feel your feelings all the way through?

* Physical Activity

* Breathing

* Positive Social Interaction

* Laughter

* Affection

* Crying

* Creative Self Expression

* Singing

* Now. Now, you’re in a settled, balanced, relaxed state and you are ready to make some good decisions. Enter Emily Oster, Economist at Brown University. These are slightly reworded in a way that I normally use them.

* Reframe your question with two or three options.

* Consider ways to honor your safety

* Consider downsides

* Consider upsides

* (4.5) Weigh upsides and downsides carefully — really consider whether the upsides are such that any downsides are something you are willing to risk. If there are no downsides, really consider your Yes.

* Make your decision.

That’s it! I go into a lot more detail in the podcast — Let me know what you think. Thank you!

Notes:

* Wild and Precious Courses. — The Self Care Course Gives much more detail on the steps to take in order to fully feel all your emotions in a healthy way.

* Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

* Unlocking Us — Episode interviewing Emily and Amelia Nagosky on their book, Burnout

* Burnout — Excellent book by Emily and Amelia Nagosky

* Cribsheet — Parenting book by Emily Oster

* Article about Emily Oster

Onward. Next week we continue this series on Connectedness (see, it’s all connected :)) We move into the idea of kin and what that means. Guests are imminent.

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week contemplating happiness, as in why we should not strive for it. I tell the story of Nick Brown, who called “b******t” on a mathematical constant in positive psychology.

This week I begin with the story of Nick Brown, a veteran IT guy who, after turning 50, changed into Human Resources and ended up smack dab in a Positive Psychology course in East London.

He learned that we need a ratio of 2.9 positive emotions to every 1 negative emotion and when we attain this golden ratio, we achieve well-being, happiness, nirvana, bliss.

He learned that this was empirically proven using SCIENCE.

He called b******t and spent the next several years enlisting a mathematician to debunk this.

Positive psychology in its essence makes a lot of sense. We should move away from outdated therpaies and theories that resulted in “learned helplessness”

However, according to more people than just me :) feeling a full expression of emotions is very healthy.

Rumination is not healthy — and I postulate that rumination (getting stuck) on any emotion, positive or negative, is unhealthy.

The key is acceaptance of all your emotions, as they arrive, observing them as visitors in your lived experience. You then have the agency to choose how to respond. That is golden.

Notes:

* The Underbelly Website.

* Photo by Nghia Le on Unsplash

* Nick Brown

* Brain Pickings

Onward. Next week we continue this series on Connectedness (see, it’s all connected :)) We move into the idea of kin and what that means. Guests are imminent.

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week contemplating retreat. Using Norm MacDonald, Trader Joe, and Sun Tzu.

So, this week, it’s just me again, no guest.

Retreat. When my husband said he needed to retreat (not his words, but I think appropriate) and that I was welcome, I hesitated. I felt the transition was too much. I only went because I knew it was important to him and I felt like I wanted to support him.

The retreat — 4 days camping in the rain — restored me. Nature: woods, lake, mountains, mist, ducks and no human made noise other than conversation. For four days, I unplugged and sat still, not fighting, not doing, just being.

In the podcast are my thoughts from that retreat. I begin with the thought from the 5th century Art of War by Sun Tzu, that winning over your enemy without battling ought to be the goal.

You don’t get gold stars because of how much you fight. We tend, I think, to get wrapped up in the battle, the fight, the constant struggle, and forget to ask ourselves what our strategy is.

Perhaps similar to that metaphor of the frog who stays in the pot of water as the temperature slowly rises, acclimating instead of taking appropriate action, we react and adjust to what life throws at us without a strategy, without a plan.

And perhaps, perhaps, that is because we have not taken time out to care for ourselves, to retreat, to pause, to consider.

Norm MacDonald, the Canadian comedian, has a sketch (link below) about his uncle’s courageous battle with bowel cancer. Perhaps it’s not really a fight worth pursuing.

Last, a favorite retreat story of mine comes from Trader Joe, the business person who began a small chain of grocery stores called Trader Joe’s after his first grocery chain failed. He told a story about retreat to my high school economics class that I have kept close at hand for decades.

Retreat. It’s essential.

As I mentioned last week, I have been spending all my extra time over the last few weeks creating my website (underbel.li), creating courses (Create your own self care kit and Journal to Your Heart) and a little bookshop (Buy Indie books online — my first curated list is related to another course I created).

What I talked about:

* First, My retreat.

* Second, The Art of War and the art of not battling.

* Third, Norm MacDonald.

* Fourth, Trader Joe.

Notes:

* The Underbelly Website.

* Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash

* Norm MacDonald

* The Art of War

Onward. Next week we continue this series on Connectedness (see, it’s all connected :)) Who knows what I will explore next week?

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week it’s just me again, this time contemplating value. What it is, what we value, and what we should value.

I have been spending all my extra time over the last few weeks creating my website (underbel.li), creating courses (Create your own self care kit) and a little bookshop (Buy Indie books online — my first curated list is related to another course I created).

So, this week, it’s just me again, no guest.

I hope I did the idea of value justice. I definitely will come back to it when I hear back from the expert I contacted…

But for now, a few thoughts. First, what do we value? It wasn’t until the mid 19th century that we coupled value to cold hard cash…and since then, I believe, we have commoditized value and tended to place things that are commodifiable at a higher value in our lives.

What we tend to value? Intelligence, atheticism, financial ability, and beauty.

What we ought to value? Wisdom, courage, restraint, and justice.

What do you value in yourself? Whaen you follow or admire someone, what are the values that stand out?

What I talked about:

* First, What is value.

* Second, What do we value?

* Third, We all have intrinsic value.

* Fourth, What should we value?

Notes:

* The Underbelly Website.

Onward. Next week we continue this series on Connectedness (see, it’s all connected :)) Who know what I will explore next week?

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Photo by Quentin Lagache on Unsplash

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week it’s just me again, this time contemplating boundaries. What they are, how to know and set your limits, and why or why not this should start early.

Of course as soon as I decided that I was going to take a look at mental flexibility via relationship boundaries, I knew I was in trouble.

Boundaries and I have a long and fraught history. A child of the summer of love, I came of age when it was normal to fire “stewardesses” for getting married or, God forbid, pregnant. It was pretty normal to tolerate people disrespecting your physical boundaries in the workplace and at home, “all in good fun.”

You know, “the good old days.” So, over the past week or so, boundary issues have popped up here and there and I have been really aware of them. A few examples: A lovely dear old friend who I think of as an aunt posted a meme about how important it is to be “color blind” I know she meant well, but for many reasons, I decided to respectfully stand by my sister and explain that many people take issue with color blindness when it comes to race/ethnicity. Yikes. Boundaries. It felt important but it also brought up the boundary in that relationship…and that I was pushing up against it. Uncomfortable but healthy.

Or this morning, when, instead of focusing on my own stuff, I decided to spend a good long time worrying about and considering my family’s stuff…even though I wasn’t asked, it wasn’t needed, and the net result was that my stuff is still there, waiting for me to deal with it. Uncomfortable, but in a slightly unhealthy way. :)

The limits we set in our relationships — boundaries. These can be

* Rigid

* Diffuse or Weak

* Healthy

We often fluctuate between weak and rigid…beginning with weak boundaries, where we may say “Yes” too often in order to avoid conflict, we may share too much, and we may end up feeling exhausted, taken advantage of, depleted.

At which point, we may valiantly say, “Never again!” and put up rigid boundaries, where we say “No!” too often in order to protect ourselves, not share at all, and feel alienated, misunderstood, and lonely.

There are lots of ways to slice boundaries but what works for me and may work for you is to divide them into 5 categories:

* Physical

* Intellectual

* Social

* Spiritual

* Emotional

You have the right to know and set limits in these 5 areas of your life in your relationships. At work, school, home, etc.

The best way to learn healthy boundaries is through modeling, which happens as you grow in your family of origin. At home, school, sports teams, religious organizations, etc, healthy boundaries would be modeled for you and you would then learn, easily, what the healthy limits are in your culture.

So. In case that didn’t happen for you as a child growing up, it’s doable to learn as an adult. First, simply becoming aware of what your limits are is helpful. I didn’t mention this in the episode, but a couple obvious things to note here:

First, we do live in social groups and there are norms that do exist. Most of the times, the negotiation is subtle and happens fairly naturally, but there is a give and take with all boundaries. An example was how challenging the #MeToo movement was for some people. Our cultures boundaries changed, quickly.

Second, this podcast episode is not tackling serious boundary abuse — in cases of serious physical or emotional abuse of boundaries, it’s important to seek professional help.

What I talked about:

* First, What are boundaries.

* Second, How can we recognize our limits?

* Third, What are some examples of boundary limits?

* Fourth, I bring up a recent video of a young child eating raw cocoa powder.

Notes:

* The Underbelly Website.

Onward. Next week we continue this series on Connectedness (see, it’s all connected :)) I’m going to explore boundaries for one more week as I look at them from childhood on and how they have changed culturally over the last decades.

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Photo by Quentin Lagache on Unsplash

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week it’s just me talking about how our environment affects our emotional well being…and stuff we can do to get stronger.

As I researched this episode, lots of familiar favorite people ventured into my consciousness. A man named Dr. Bruce K Alexander, who famously led the “Rat Park” experiments at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby British Columbia. A priest named Father Greg Boyle, who run the largest gang rehabilitation and reentry program in the world. Joseph Henrich, who wrote a book called “The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous”. And Roy Baumeister, whose research into self control and willpower I find fascinating.

The story I want to tell about our culture, the breakdown of our culture and what that means for us required me to lean on a few (all white male) researchers and activists who I feel have done the important work in this area. So be it this time.

This year began, if you will remember, with wildfires in Australia and the imminent extinction of the koala bear.

At the time, I remember the uncertainty. The tiptoeing into 2020. Our local community suffered from overdose deaths in our small town that forced us to realize that our first responders (firefighters and one doctor, especially) work too hard in an uphill battle against an out of control problem.

We then entered a pandemic. From there, like a bandaid being ripped off too quickly and too soon, we collectively confronted police brutality and racism. I remember the episode I did with my dear friend and mentor Dr. Stacee Reicherzer the week that Ahmed Aubrey’s murderers were arrested. We all, I feel, looked up and around us in a collective “What the heck?” moment. You can be shot dead while out for a jog in 2020?

George Floyd’s murder awoke in us a conversation that is still going on. A loud, emotional conversation with family, friends, friends of friends. One of those conversations that we probably should have settled a long time ago, but since we didn’t, it’s going to be loud, chaotic, and more tense. But at least the conversation is happening. I think it’s ultimately positive and leading to a healthier culture.

And then, the west coast of the United States caught fire.

Have I left anything out?

Against that backdrop, I tell about Bruce K Alexander’s research starting with Rat Park, and giving his rats an enriched environment.

In this enriched environment, he was able to show that none of them overdosed on drugs. Some dabbled a bit, sure. As he says, “For all we know, maybe some rats like to party.” But none — zero — overdosed. When given an environment full of the things rats need and love: other rats, toys, good food, healthy places to play and live…they did not choose the drugs. They did not choose addiction.

It’s safe to say (and yes, there’s mounds of research to this effect) that humans, too, in an “enriched environment” — a healthy culture full of the things humans need — do not overdose.

Father Greg Boyle asks

“How do we obliterate once and for all the illusion that there is an Us and a Them?”

In his work, since 1992, he’s brought his parish together as kin. He’s taken what they already craved and already had — kinship — and strengthened those bonds. Creating an “enriched environment” where there wasn’t one, so that the people in his parish could (and do) thrive.

So it’s possible. If it’s possible for one guy to start something in the poorest parish in Los Angeles and grow it into the largest gang rehabilitation and reentry organization in the world, then it is possible for us.

It is possible for us to take what we’ve got, the hand we’ve been dealt, and create an enriched environment.

Many of us have most likely been using “maladaptive coping mechanisms” for the time being. As placeholders until we learn how to get stronger, healthier, more adaptive so that we can make small changes in our environments — so that, actually, we don’t need to cope — we can thrive.

If you have been using shopping, gambling, drinking another beer each night, wine o’clock, or whatever to cope, make sure and give yourself a huge hug. Way to survive. Way to keep going. Way to stay here, in the world, even when things look bleak.

At the same time, if you’d like, might I throw you a life vest? A rope?

Here are the pillars you can use to create healthy coping skills so you can actually thrive even when times are tough:

* Mental Flexibility

* Mindfulness

* Resillience

What I talked about:

* First, 2020 — Yikes.

* Second, Bruce K Alexander’s research.

* Third, Father Greg Boyle’s success.

* Fourth, Ways you can get stronger so that you can thrive in any environment and eventually make changes to your environment so you don’t have to cope.

Notes:

* Bruce K Alexander website.

* Talk by Bruce K Alexander

* Roy Baumeister

* Atlantic review of Joseph Henrich’s book “The WEIRDest”

* Homeboy Industries

* Talk with Father Greg Boyle, David Vasquez and Ruben Ruiz

* Bloom Where You Are Planted

* First Aid for Grief

* Train for Joy

Onward. Next week we continue this series on Connectedness (see, it’s all connected :)) We’ll focus on Mental Flexibility and learn about how you can get some.

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Photo by Om Malik on Unsplash

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week is a conversation with my sister and my cousins on our perfectly imperfect family.

Chalk this up to yet another time I thought I was going to get off easy…

After many many hours of deep thought, lots of laughing, and many conversations, text messages, and still more conversations, we have an episode for you.

Obviously, we’re not the Kardashians, so it’s fair to ask why you’d want to listen to us talk about our family.

We’re not the Cleavers, either, so we certainly can’t lecture you on anything close to “Do this, not that”.

What we can do, by opening up a bit ourselves, is to start the conversation.

We are a perfectly imperfect family. We enjoy being together, look forward to talking to each other, and genuinely feel close to each other.

Join us as we explore what makes us “work” — even in light of lots of reasons we shouldn’t.

Beyond this, I am really interested in your family. What makes it work? What do you hold in high esteem? What are you carrying forward into the next generation?

What I talked about:

* First, We introduce the family holiday at the Hall household. Not for the faint of heart but lots of fun.

* Second, We realize that the creativity runs deep in our family — was it tolerance or true love that allowed us to create elaborate haunted houses every family holiday?

* Third, No one gets left behind. We explore how it works in our family that we can expand to include whoever and whatever shows up.

* Fourth, We realize that, like separating the wheat from the chaff, we have carried things forward into the next generation and simply left the things that didn’t work on the threshing floor.

Onward to Enriched Environment. We’re still working through connectedness and it seems fitting that the next place to go is to explore our environments. I’m going to look into the Rat Park experiments that took place at Simon Fraser University in the 1970s and learn a bit about the story of Bruce K. Alexander, the man who created Rat Park. Hopefully, we’ll learn a bit how we can create an enriched environment for ourselves and why that is so important.

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.

Welcome to another episode of Wild and Precious Conversations. This week is a short episode to queue up next week’s conversation with my sister and my cousins.

We talk regularly, so we thought we’d give it a go with a basic theme and ample time to talk…but the conversation just didn’t work as an episode so we’re trying again.

This week, you’ve got me for around 25 minutes with some thoughts on the fantasy versus reality of family.

Funny, it occurred to me this week that family is most easily the one subject I feel like I can speak on with some authority, humility, and confidence. I know family. And I know I don’t know family.

What I know: Family is sacred. Of the relationships available to us in our culture, family is the invited, most-inner circle. The relationship held in highest esteem, the relationship with the most obligation.

It’s also, weirdly, given very little space to flourish.

I think that is why there is a gap in the fantasy of family versus the reality of family.

I take the incredibly sad story of the Stauffer family’s choice to adopt and then un-adopt a son as an apt example of the fantasy of family butted up against the reality.

The fantasy says that what you need for a healthy family is a bullet point list of things like a regular schedule, family dinners, neat clothes, good grades, and a mission statement.

The reality, it turns out, is much simpler: You, the adult family members, when you get triggered (and you will) need to do your work. Get therapy, heal, whatever you need to do to grow from that trigger until you are triggered no more…until the next trigger, and the next.

That simple reality costs a lot of time and money. It is not something most families can afford — either because they don’t have the time, don’t have the money, or don’t have the emotional strength.

No shade but until we’re willing to admit that the one thing we need to do to have a healthy family is the one thing we can’t/won’t do, I firmly believe we’re going to continue to have a rather large gap in the fantasy of the healthy family versus the reality.

What I talked about:

* First, Family is sacred.

* Second, My foray into creating a family — I did not go willingly or easily down the path. I was not naturally nurturing. I never wanted to be a mother or really to have a family at all.

* Third, Family means nobody gets left behind. Meet the Stauffer family who adopted and then un-adopted their son.

* Fourth, People, having a healthy family means committing to your own health first. Put your oxygen mask on and then dive in.

Notes:

* Unadopted — Story of the Stauffer Family.

Onward to Family, part 2. I love the idea that we choose our family and I love the idea that we nurture the hell out of the relationships with those we did not chose. Both. All. And, I acknowledge that sometimes we need to pause a relationship while the other person catches up a bit. Look for the Monday morning newsletter, and our conversation from the Wild and Precious podcast episode on Thursday with My Family: my sister and my two cousins. Honestly, it’s going to be quite the conversation.

The Underbelly Project: A weekly workout for your emotional strength and flexibility. If you’re not afraid to get dusty and maybe shed a few tears together, join me and let’s get emotionally strong!

And please, if you know anyone who might like to share this journey, share this project. Excited to stay in the arena with you.