Today, I am hon­ored to be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the new blog­ger series, Self-Discovery, Word by Word, launched by my friend and blog­ger supreme, Ashley of Nourishing the Soul. Be sure to check out the details about the series (and see how you can par­tic­i­pate!) and make sure to explore Ashley’s fab­u­lous blog. Read more

Hello my lovelies! Today I am deeply hon­ored to intro­duce you to the fab­u­lous Tonya Leigh. On March 24^th, Tonya pub­lished a blog post titled “Why I’m Not a Fan of Weight Watchers.” My life coach sent me a link to the post — I had never been to Tonya’s web­site before that day. Interestingly, March 24^th was my final day as a Weight Watchers leader, after four years of work­ing part-time for the com­pany. Read more

When I was a lit­tle girl, we lived in a home with no air con­di­tion­ing for sev­eral years. On the hottest sum­mer nights, I remem­ber thrash­ing around in my bed because I was so mis­er­ably uncom­fort­able. I would twist and turn, and kick my legs at the air, try­ing to some­how fight off the heat. In the process, of course, I would get hot­ter and more uncom­fort­able. Read more

“…We all die, some sooner rather than later. We are all just a breath away from it, all the time.

Don’t fear being near death — but rather fear, dread, loathe, and do all you can to do avoid near-life expe­ri­ences. No one goes to the grave or to the nurs­ing home wring­ing their hands and gnash­ing their teeth and just wish­ing they’d served on a few more com­mit­tees, worked a few more hours. Read more

In June of 2009, I gave myself a pow­er­ful gift. Before leav­ing my class­room for the sum­mer, I pulled out a box of note­cards from my desk and wrote myself ten notes. My lessons were orga­nized in fold­ers labeled by month, so I dropped one note­card inside each monthly folder. Read more

Hey every­one! My “Discover Your Dreams” tele­con­fer­ence (you know, the totally FREE one?) is just about two weeks away! I wanted to take a minute to share with you a lit­tle bit about WHY I’m offer­ing this and WHAT you can expect as a par­tic­i­pant. Enjoy! Read more

“My body is the only box

I belong in.
But you like your boxes
So keep them.
Mark them geek, wimp, bully.
Mark them china doll, brainiac,
Or plain dumb jock.
Choose what­ever
Box you like, Mike.
Just dont’t put me
In one, son.
Believe me,
I won’t fit.”  — Excerpt from “Black Box” by Devon Hope in Bronx Masquerade (Nikki Grimes)

Teachers talk. They are quite will­ing to share with each other which chil­dren push their but­tons, and which ones they’ll enjoy hand­ing off to the edu­ca­tors in the next grade level. During my first week of teach­ing, I lis­tened closely to the remarks of each teacher, mak­ing care­ful notes. Read more

Tis the sea­son of “back to school.” This is the first time since kinder­garten, that I will not be return­ing to a school build­ing and spend­ing the next nine months in a class­room. Some of my teacher friends have jok­ingly expressed jeal­ousy over this, as if I’ve won the lot­tery or some­thing. The truth is that I made very delib­er­ate (and often dif­fi­cult) choices and about start­ing a new career path. I didn’t luck into it, that’s for sure. Read more

I have a big announce­ment today that I have just been dying to share with you!

Have you ever felt stuck in life? Boy, I have. I often felt stuck in my career as a teacher. I knew I wasn’t work­ing my dream job, but I just had no idea how I could pos­si­bly make a change. I also spent many years feel­ing stuck in pat­terns of unhealthy eat­ing and dis­sat­is­fac­tion with my weight. It was tough for me to even imag­ine feel­ing good about my body and not obsess­ing about food. I’ve also felt stuck spir­i­tu­ally, emo­tion­ally, and intel­lec­tu­ally. I’ve felt stuck in just about every aspect of my life that I can think of. And I’m guess­ing you have, too. Read more