you might have noticed the new blog title. Changes are afoot! As the year turns from old to new, I'm starting a new adventure. My Mama Bliss Coaching training is almost complete. When that happens, I'll be opening up my first coaching spots. I'm really excited to share this work with you. It's deceptively powerful, like a little bit of fairy dust sprinkled over everything and making it feel... lighter. Like you've put on seven-league boots to run your first marathon. Like you've put on a magic wishing hat and found yourself at your destination. Like you've found a sack that pours out feasts of your favorite foods... 

Meanwhile, I'm trying to find moments of stillness in these last few days before Christmas. I hope that in between the pageants, the parties, the Yule fires and carol singing and late-night toasts ... and the teething, the colds, the meltdowns and tantrums ... you are finding the stillness of deep winter, or perhaps the brilliant surrender of high summer. 

If you are curious about my coaching, and want to be one of the first to hear about opportunities to sign up, click here to be added to the waiting list!

I believe in this work. I believe in the power of fairy tale work to change lives. This is a way to make shifts that are deep, powerful, and affirming of your story. 

However, this is subtle work. I've been asked, "What will I really get from this work?" and it's so hard for me to describe. I've tried. All I can ask, is that you try it. And maybe for you, it won't be that big of a shift. You may find only a tiny glimmer of light. When it's really dark, tiny lights are so bright. 

Having done this fairy tale work, using it daily to re-examine my life story and my current place on the journey, I can truly say that it works, that the little changes add up, and that the deeper I go, the more amazed I feel. 

This work can change your relationships. It can open new doors. It can alert you to something you've been overlooking. I want you to experience it.

For all these reasons, I have chosen to drop my price for this course. Not because I thought the price was too high -- It is worth every penny -- but because I want it to be accessible and available. 

We are going to start later, too, as I've heard from a number of people that December 26 is just too much in the thick of things. I understand. Let's wait a bit, and I'll whisper these stories into the quiet of the new year.

$27. I'm holding space for you throughout the deepest darkness of the year, and as the light returns, we are going to make this journey together. Won't you come along? 

What does it mean to read your life like a fairy tale? We can point to the Hero's Journey, or the Heroine's Journey, but how do we listen to the story our own lives are telling and determine what part of the arc we are at?
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The complication that makes this work so worthwhile, is that the story can be said to begin at so many places in our lives. We can read the arc of every relationship, of every job or career move, of every change of place, as its own distinct story. Each strand of story is woven, braided with other strands to create the multicolored, shimmering, living rope of your life.

Let's take a familiar example of Little Red Riding Hood. We can say that the adventure begins with the girl setting out into the woods with her basket. but perhaps it really begins with the red hood itself. We can read this story, and say, "oh, this is like when I went off to college, and I met that guy in the quad..." That assumes that we are the heroine of the story, that we are the central character. And it's not wrong. The scene of Red's encounter with the wolf in the forest is the turning point of the story, the moment of decision. You have thought of a moment in your own life that felt that big, and seemed to push your life down a path you hadn't wanted.

Once we identify this piece of story, this potent scene that stands out so sharply against the rest of the narrative, we are ready to begin working with our own story. It's important to identify the work to be done here. Do you feel shame over the encounter? Maybe you are wanting to understand what happened next. Perhaps the emotion that arises with the story is one of rage, and perhaps it's a gentle, happy wonder -- "Look what would have been different if I hadn't met him! I would be someone else."

We can look for echoes of that moment -- where did it happen again? And again? And where is it happening RIGHT NOW? Where are you giving the time of day to someone or something you know to be destructive? Where are you taking a risk to move beyond prescriptions?

It's important to create these scenes as vividly as possible -- recreate that moment in your mind. Feel what you felt. Smell what you smelled. Hear the music. See if there are details that you thought you had forgotten. Can you shift the view? Can you see the story through the wolf's eyes? Through the hood's eyes (if hoods had eyes...)? Are you, in your life, in one of those other roles today?

This is just the beginning.

If something comes up that feels too big, let it go, or take it to a professional. I'm not a counselor, social worker, psychologist, or pastor. I'm just a fellow traveler.


You story is waiting, and yet, it is running even now. You are in this story. Let's take a look around together.

This summer, I got to go to the National Storytelling Network's summer conference for the first time. It was amazing to be surrounded by storytellers from around the country, and some from other countries, who were exceedingly welcoming, supportive, and kind.

The day before the official conference opened, I took part in the Healing Story Alliance's pre-conference workshop, led by Lani Peterson. Lani does deep, world-changing work in Boston with people who have experienced homelessness or incarceration, and with other community members, facilitating their understanding of one another through storytelling.

There was a lot A LOT of stuff that I took away from that workshop. I'm not a trained psychologist, so much of it went over my head, but there was a part of the morning when we talked about helping people to tell their stories in order to re-construct their sense of self, helping them to "thicken" their stories. We go from the old normal -> through an experience of liminality and "undoing" our story -> to arrive at a new normal, where we are intentional in our responses. We then can return to the beginning of the story and help others. 

This is the hero's journey, folks. We get to take that fairytale, mythic path every single day.

But it goes deeper.

We get to take that path every single moment of the day. In the pause between stimulus and response, where we make a conscious choice, we are responding to the call to adventure. That moment is sometimes briefer than the blink of an eye.

In every breath, in every response to our children, in every time we choose to speak up against hatred, and in every moment that we respond out of choice and not out of habit, we are heroes. We can have a thousand epic journeys in every day. 

Those tiny, miniscule stories are woven together into the novel of our lives, the huge bildungsroman that tells of our journey from innocence to knowing, and then, we hope, into wisdom.

There is so much more to pull out of those few short hours, and I hope to bring you examples and insights over the next few weeks. 

If you missed last night's facebook live, I have the video for you right here! Enjoy!

I'm a woman in America. This means that my life has been defined by certain outside forces.  I'm a queer woman in America, in a relationship with a woman. We have a child. I'm white, middle class, educated.  We live in a house. Somehow, the bills get paid. 

All of these facts contribute to my experience of the world. 

It would seem that I ought to work from a "modern" understanding, that I ought to relate mostly to stories of "modern" women.

Where I find my deepest resonance, is with fairy tales.

Perhaps, to you, fairy tales are unrealistic, misogynistic tales, told to keep little girls in their place, emphasizing making a good marriage and giving up agency.

I find them to be the opposite. Perhaps it is the fairy tales I choose, but my heroines are brave, resourceful, kind, and adventurous. They do not wait around to be saved. They save their loved ones, trick giants and kings, weave shirts of nettles, create worlds. 

They are invincible in their vulnerability.

Recently, I worked with a woman with the tale of Tatterhood. For her, on first hearing, the story was of how the brave and exciting Tatterhood gave up what and who she was, became acceptably beautiful, in order to marry the prince. "Wow," I thought. "That is so far from my reading. Why is that?"

Together, we explored questions of what it is that is being unveiled when Tatterhood removes her hood.  What conditions have to be in place for us to remove the veils we use to keep ourselves safe from others? What is the question we  need to hear in order to take that step? And how do we get someone to ask when we need it?

Shift. Change.

I love these stories.  I love the depth that I can get to so very quickly through their wishing-well of images and archetypes. I would love to share them with you.  

Story/reading is my own thing.  I've been inspired by so many amazing sources, including Rudolf Steiner's Biography work, a beautiful workshop with Kathleen and Leah at a Waldorf conference years ago, my work with teachers and parents, and my own love of fairy tales. 

I am so excited to share this upcoming Group Journey with you. Because Story/reading is different from many ways of working, I wanted to give you a chance to peek in to the riches it contains.  So, I've created a little taste for you. You'll read the story "Diamonds and Toads", and then have a chance to explore your own life story in connection with it, using potent questions and journaling invitations. 

In our group journey, as in my one-on-one work, I use audio stories rather than written ones to give you an even deeper experience, but for a quick, down-and-dirty introduction, reading the story to yourself will be just fine! The link below will take you to a Dropbox file that you can download any time! Feel free to share with friends.