I’m nervous about my next yoga series. That’s a good thing. I just started a yoga series for the Christian season of Lent that explores Christian prayer practices, yoga movement (asana) and breath (pranayama), and some of the teachings of yoga (yamas/niyamas). It’s a...
Social Justice
Loving Your Team Means Giving Them Purpose
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have heard me gush about an interview on the podcast “It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders” with Sarah Schulman, a journalist and member of ACT UP, a movement that fought the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. She has recently...
Time Management: It’s Not Your Fault
I’m a workaholic. It started in high school when I began taking on too many activities: theater and choir rehearsals, speech team competitions, college visits, high school newspaper deadlines. I learned to manage my own calendar because my mom could no longer...
5 Hope-Filled Reflections
Pay attention, and tune into hope. That’s what I’ve been asking people to do in my weekly yoga classes and my Mindful Advent Yoga Series. So I thought I’d put my hope-filled reflections out there, too. Here are five things (plus an honorable mention) that have...
A Countercultural Holiday
I’m conflicted about the holidays, but not for the reasons you’d expect. I’m not stressed out about holiday cooking and shopping; I gave most of that up years ago. I’m not anxious about holiday travel; I’m not doing that anymore either, thanks to COVID. I’m not...
You Will Disappoint People
Spoiler Alert: I wasn’t one of the popular kids. I went to a small Catholic school growing up, and there were only five girls (including me) in my class. The upper elementary girlfriend dynamics played out rather harshly with so few girls. There weren’t enough of us...
Choosing Health Today over Health Insurance
I hung up the apron for the last time. If you’re tracking, I quit working at Starbucks just six weeks after starting. I’ve had many jobs, but I don’t think any of them lasted for such a short time. The primary reason Iapplied to and went to work for Starbucks was...
Liberation in Discomfort
In recent social media posts, you may have noticed that I recently started a part-time job at Starbucks coffee. The position offers me benefits and a little steady income while starting this coaching, training and organizational development business. (Being a single...
From Envy to Gratitude
In my 20s and early 30s, envy would rise up like bile in my throat whenever I opened another calligraphy-covered, heavyweight envelope inviting me to yet another wedding. In my 30s and early 40s, envy weighed on my shoulders when I saw others’ careers progress and...
Remember, Release, Build: Memorial Day Ponderings
Complicated feelings have been part of Memorial Day since its inception. Being a church nerd who loves ritual, I searched for the origin story of Memorial Day recently. Within seconds, (Thank you, interwebs!) I found a fascinating article about how David Blight, a...
3 Ways to Reduce the Anxiety of Returning to the Office
As more and more people get vaccinated for COVID-19, the rumblings (or directives from on high) about returning to office workplaces are in full swing. After a year of breakneck change, the tempting lure of comfort will be overwhelming. You will want to simply return...
Anti-Racist Learnings: Quelling the Voices of Inadequacy
Inadequacy covered me like a smothering blanket. Typing up the description to our first-ever foray into teaching a Mindfully Embracing Anti-Racism series, I heard the whispers of nagging voices in my head saying, “Who are you to do this?” and “You don’t know what...
What to do with Easter? Practice New Life
When I was in seminary, I took a class on theologies of atonement with Rev. Dr. Joanne Terrell. She introduced us to the many Christian theologies of how humanity and God are reconciled through Jesus Christ. (I know. I know. This post is getting a little theologically...
White Supremacy Culture Is Killing White Organizations, Too
I had been combatting the habits of white supremacy for years, and I didn’t even know it. When I first started working as regional church denominational staff, I got called by churches to help them figure out what they needed to do to attract young people. I’d take a...
Pause and Breathe: Combatting Racist Defensiveness
Like this post if you (white people) have thought in the past several months, “I’m not THAT kind of white person.” (i.e. a bigot, white supremacist, racist) Yup. So have I. Underneath this instinct to push away the racism that may apply to us is a desire not to...