Hello friends, Something interesting happened during our first LIGHTER gathering this week. We started talking about the words we use to describe the things that weigh us down. Not just the typical- Junk. Junk food. Junk thoughts. Also the hidden meanings in everyday words. And we discovered that although we all get the meaning, not all words resonate the same with everyone. Which got me thinking about how quickly we can turn something that’s meant to help us into another thing we think we’re...

Hello, October. If you’ve been here for a while, you know I love the first day of a new month. A blank page. A little threshold. An invitation to notice where we are and decide how we’d like to meet what’s next. But I’ve been thinking that our fresh starts don’t always have to begin by adding something. A new goal. A new habit. A new plan. Something else to accomplish. Sometimes a fresh start begins by putting something down. So before you decide what October needs from you, here are a few...

On Tuesday, I helped my parents load up the very last of their belongings from the place they had called home for 40 years. Forty years. A house. A garage. A shop. A small farm. Eighty acres. And all the stuff that accumulates when you have enough space to keep it. But of course, it wasn’t just stuff. It was memories. Decisions. Identities. Relationships. A way of life. Things that had been useful once. Things that hadn’t been useful for years. Things that were easy to release and things that...