The Shadow Hunter

So I recently did something a little bit crazy. I brought a new little creature into my world —   a now 13  week old mini goldendoodle named Sage.   She's been an absolutely wonderful addition* to my life, and now I finally understand why people love their pets so much. They become your world.  (Mostly wonderful...she can also be a tiny baby snapping turtle with veerrrrry sharp white puppy teeth. Waiting for this phase to end. With grace, God willing.) I’m hoping that her name imbues wisdom and clarity to her disposition, and she IS smart — but if any of you that are reading this have ever trained a puppy — my hat goes off to you, my friends. You get all the credit in the world.  It. Is. INTENSE.   It is. WORK.  But it’s so rewarding.   I’ve learned that there are a billion ways you can say your dog's name — Saagge. (Lovingly. When she’s curled on the couch next to me and being the sweetest most adorable thing ever. This is usually post nap).   SAGE. (Get off the couch/screen/

Have you ever read one of those books that you simply can't put down? You know, the ones where you become just a little obsessed with it. You pick up the book whenever you had 5 minutes just to get in one. more. chapter. You walked around the house with it.  You read it while you were drinking coffee, eating lunch, walking on the treadmill (aka in my case: falling off the treadmill....!!) You felt like you were totally living this character's life -- feeling their happiness, sadness, excitement, relief.  These books are the best, because the author knows how to write to encapsulate empathy -- you feel with AND for this character in your novel. Stories are powerful.  Sometimes it's good to reflect on the stories we tell ourselves.  The good AND the bad. We tell ourselves stories about who we are.  Who we were.  Who we want to become.  Sometimes (like a game of telephone) the stories we tell ourselves can get a little distorted.  We often tell ourselves things that simply

Ah, Spring.  I'm back outside on my patio -- happily basking in the sun.  Listening to the birds, breathing in fresh air -- winter is finally over! Kinda.  (Ok, so tomorrow it may be rainy and cold but we take advantage of what we can get, right?!) The energy of spring and renewal is huge right now.  Warmer weather. Spring break.  Spring cleaning.  So with that -- what needs to be swept away so we can step into the new bright energy of springtime? What shadows can we confront so we can jump into a brighter future? Here's a big one. Self-doubt.  Self-doubt can be a suuuper sneaky tricky little thing.  Case in point: a new, awesome opportunity will show up. I'm excited and happy and ready to take a chance and all of a sudden... Self-doubt creeps its way in. It slinks over everything. It feels like unease, settling on my skin, darkening my mood.  It often shows up for me when I'm JUST about to do something new and then I find I'm about to talk myself out of it.  Just w

How do you recharge after a busy day? (PS: if this is even a fraction of how your morning goes, you probably need it!) Let me know if this sounds familiar.   It’s 8:20am. I have 17 new notifications on my phone. My Slack channels are alive and running with the ever present “popcorn” notification — tap tap tap — people are chatting away. My phone buzzes with a text. Then another. There’s an Instagram notification. A Teams notification. My email dings. Then again. My calendar reminds me that I have a Zoom meeting coming up in exactly 9 minutes and I may or may not have just rolled out of bed 15 minutes ago (whoops). I quickly find some lipstick and mascara. And a sweater. Sure, that’ll work, its Zoom, right? Hair fluff. Ok, go. Wait, wait, coffee — do I have time to get coffee? Yes, I do. Yessss. Ready. Crap. Where exactly did I leave my AirPods?! (I am constantly misplacing my AirPods). Ok, now I'm ready! Let’s go.  And its now only 8:30am.  Whew! And for all of it, I’m grateful, t

So... I need to be honest. This blog took days to write.  This is because my computer keeps yelling at me. A box with an urgent yellow triangle in the right hand corner of my screen kept  aggressively appearing with: YOUR DISK IS ALMOST FULL. SAVE SPACE BY OPTIMIZING STORAGE. Oy.   (IGNORE) I’ve moved documents and folders to the cloud, but my computer has a woefully tiny drive and every giant PDF and powerpoint I download for work eats that right up.   Finally, I surrendered to the yellow triangle, and t he act of moving and removing files was actually a cathartic process.  Each file I moved or deleted brought up a new memory. Some memories were very happy, others I greeted with an audible sigh of relief.  Here’s the thing about memories. They are in the past.  The initial pain, or happiness, whatever emotion they caused -- now presents a mirror to you — it is an echo of what you felt before. You can never feel THAT thing again — joy, grief, pain, excitement, anger — for better for wo