Blog: Healing Choices
This blog focuses on the small moments that make a good day into a bad day, or a terrible day into a gift of a day. It’s my belief that developing awareness in these small moments is the practice we need to be able to navigate all the ups and downs of life, from loss and grief to love, peace, and joy.
The Change Cycle
While change is an inevitable part of every person’s life, the changes that happen are sometimes completely unpredictable. Fortunately, “the process of life change itself follows a predictable course.” (Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star, page 243.) Martha...
Denial
I watched an old Project Runway episode on my iPad a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since—not because of the fashions (although some were memorable) but because of the behavior of one of the designers. For those of you who haven’t seen...
Awareness is the First Step
A client recently told me, “I have to stop giving my power away.” Then she asked me how to do that. “Awareness is the first step,” I answered. The same day, another client told me, “Every year I have such high hopes for the holidays, and then it all goes to hell.”...
Breaking a Promise
"Sometimes you have to break a promise to someone else in order to keep a deeper promise to yourself." I don’t know who said this, or even if it’s a quote. Maybe I’m just paraphrasing. It’s something I read years ago and it stuck in my head. In November, I broke a...
Leap and the Net Will Appear
This morning, I brushed my teeth with hand cream. Not cool, Diane. Nor is it helpful, as the hand cream has the opposite effect I was going for—clean, sparkly teeth? No, just dull and pasty. Yuck. Anyway, when I do things like this I take it as a sign: A sign that I’m...
The Metaphor Tool
One of my favorite life coaching tools is the metaphor tool. Martha Beck taught it to me many years ago and I use it all the time—with my clients and also I use it myself. If you’d like to use the metaphor tool, think of some big area of your life that you are having...
Find Your Passion
Recently, a client I’ve been working with for a while asked me the following question: “How do I find my passion?” He’s been struggling for a while with this question. Other questions he’s asked recently are: How do I figure out my skills? How do I know what I’m...
The Manual
Today when my husband came home with our son, he told me that he’d taken him to Wendy’s and then they’d gone to the park and had a picnic. When I asked my husband if the kid had eaten well, he replied that the hamburger had onions on it so my son refused to eat it....
Feel the Feeling
A new client recently asked me why she wanted to eat all the time, even when she wasn’t hungry. “It’s a coping mechanism,” I answered. “It’s a way to not feel your emotions. You eat and feel comforted or satisfied rather than sad, bored, or lonely.” My client argued...
Emotional Adulthood II
Ever since I’ve lived in my own home, I’ve always hated cleaning the floors. I would look at the wall-to-wall carpet in my apartment and think, Someone should really vacuum this carpet. Did I mention that I lived alone? When I moved to a house with hardwood floors, I...