STOP WASTING YOUR ENERGY!

My neighbor Shanna came over, crying, utterly bereft about the election. I told her to put her big-girl panties back on and quit indulging in weeping and wailing and moaning and being angry and sad, moping around like a victim, … Continue reading

NASTURTIUMS: MY SAVIORS

The Park Fire here in northern California tried to snake its fiery fingers right into my world, coming within three miles of my house. It freaked the living daylights out of me, relentlessly debilitating me for a whole month. The … Continue reading

What Inspires You?

I was taught that “great artists wait for inspiration to come to them, and then they create.” So obviously, if I wanted to become a great artist, I needed to wait for inspiration to come. Well that’s just total BS. … Continue reading

Practice

I discovered that practice meant giving up trying to achieve perfection. What it really gave me was a calm, quiet belly. Many long years ago, I practiced Tai Chi Sword, and Naginata, a women’s sword-fighting art, where the sword is … Continue reading

Comments, Connectedness, and Kindness

I wonder why people feel so free to be outright a-holes, mean sons of bunches, and screaming ranting judgmental karens out to intentionally destroy some innocent person’s reality. I’m thinking about the comments we all make online — on Medium, … Continue reading

I Had A Tantrum Yesterday, and It Wasn’t Pretty

Finding out I had zero choice set me on fire. I can usually put up with automated customer service, whether on the phone, or online chat. But this time? Oh my. We bought a new mattress/box-spring set from a company … Continue reading

Excruciating Pain and Horror to Unending, Exquisite Love

The emergency room intake attendant side-eyed me in disbelief from under frowning grizzled brows. Holding my pulse with one hand, with the other he was hurriedly filling in my chart with cryptic slashes and numbers. He looked back down at … Continue reading

Erecting Energetic Safety Zones

‘They’ say “we are all energy, frequencies…” So … I’m wondering … what if we could actually make use of that idea? We are all eating great quantities of chemicals, unbalanced or poisoned nutrients, plastic particles, and industrial byproducts that … Continue reading

Signals that There’s Something Going on Under the Surface

Speaking with my business coach about a plan we were creating for my own coaching, I started to get really sleepy. If I didn’t lie down right now, I’d simply collapse on the floor in a puddle… (Watch/listen to me … Continue reading

I Was Tossed Around Like A Rag Doll; My Angels Took Good Care of Me

27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part II One moment, sunny sweet skies — the next, the Mother Hulk of a demon storm with hideous, grotesque grey-green and black clouds pelting us square on with sheets of ice-cold rain. … Continue reading

Got A Recipe for Eating Crow?

Is it better to just let things go? Or risk being criticized or countered or even cancelled, because of making a mistake? In a post I read on medium the other day, the writer said something I thought was incorrect. … Continue reading

Last Does Not Mean Loser

(Published in Small Craft Advisor Magazine) We were in the last part of the first pack. The finish line seemed impossibly far away. It was right then that I made the most colossal mistake. I had been so proud! I’d … Continue reading

GIVE IT UP!

(Published in Small Craft Advisor Magazine) Sailing is more than ‘just a skill.’ It’s a life-and-death adventure every time you go out, and if you have even one smidgen of smarts in your head, you know you have to be … Continue reading

Why Do Some Men Think It’s OK to Be Such A-Holes?

What can be done about it? How do we deal with it on a daily basis? I can hardly believe the things men oh-so-casually do to women. The things they have the nerve to say. Even after decades of observing … Continue reading

SIGNALS that THERE’S SOMETHING GOING ON UNDER the SURFACE

Recently when I was speaking with my advisor about a business and marketing plan we were creating for my coaching, I started to get really sleepy. I felt like if I didn’t lie down right now I would simply collapse … Continue reading

HOW SAYING “I FORGIVE YOU” SAVED HER LIFE

Sitting like a little kid, with her legs straight out in front of her, she was shock-white, with glazed- eyes seeing nothing. The webbing between her left hand first finger and thumb … My mother and I got into a … Continue reading

SHY ARTIST DEAD TOO SOON

One day about a month before she left the planet, she turned to me with such a galvanizing look that I felt my feet suddenly get cemented to the floor. If I’d wanted to pay attention to anything else, I … Continue reading

GET UPSET? OR TAKE the OPPORTUNITY to UPLIFT?

Images flooded my panicked mind of internet police coming to Get Me and Punish Me, hoards of angry women descending upon my house and doing Bad Things to me, being banned from being online forever…. The first time a customer … Continue reading

BEING TRUSTED BY SMALL CRITTERS

When I drew this, I was focusing on the white part so much that it wasn’t until later that I saw the funny blue face. I particularly like this one because it’s so silly (Silly really ought to be my … Continue reading

BITTEN BY A SPIDER. OR NOT.

Instead of coming to the surface and breaking out, the itchy-burny-hurty toxins spread out into the rest of my instep and into my head…. A month ago, I was bitten by a spider. Or something. I don’t know, because I … Continue reading

MY BODY KNEW WHAT TO DO, EVEN WHEN I DIDN’T

The neighborhood women were complaining that I was ‘out flaunting’ myself, and their men were spying on me all day! After the big hurricane of ’82, my kids and I decided to move to a bigger place down the road … Continue reading

MAKING LOVE UNDER THE SLINKY STARS

I met my second hubby in Big Sur. I had been working at Dancer, Fitzgerald and Sample in San Francisco as a junior art director. My very conservative boss, Sam, had a firm hold on the department. Despite the restraints, … Continue reading