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

I think it’s high time we had some more fun group inter­ac­tion, don’t you agree? So here’s my lat­est zany idea for get­ting to know one another: Below, I have listed 5 word pairs. Without over-thinking, stress­ing, or obsess­ing, choose the word from each pair that most res­onates with your essen­tial self. Go with your gut. Then post your string of cho­sen words in the com­ments sec­tion below. Read more

One of the best things that’s hap­pened to me in the last year is that food is no longer such a big deal in my life. In fact, most of the time, it’s a total non-issue.

Sometimes, though, I’m tempted to worry about the fact that I no longer worry about what I eat. We are liv­ing in an age where eat­ing “right” requires obsess­ing and ana­lyz­ing. “Healthy” eat­ing requires read­ing book after book, watch­ing scads of dis­turb­ing doc­u­men­taries, and fol­low­ing long lists of rules and require­ments from all sorts of so-called experts. 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

Hey every­one! Here’s a quick Sunday bonus for you. My new blog­ger friend, Christie of Honoring Health, is start­ing a vir­tual book club. The first book will be Geneen Roth’s Women, Food and God. Read more

This past Wednesday was, um, interesting.

As I moved through the events of the day (includ­ing los­ing my wal­let and tak­ing a nasty spill off my front porch) I found myself swing­ing back and forth from view­ing the events as a tragedy to view­ing them as a com­edy. In the tragedy ver­sion, I was cursed. My life was ter­ri­ble and unfair. There was a lot of cry­ing and feel­ing sorry for myself and seek­ing pity. Read more

Moving is com­pli­cated. Each day there are end­less poten­tial tasks to do. A mil­lion tiny deci­sions to make. Unpack this box or that box? Put the cof­fee maker here or there? Set up my desk or orga­nize my toi­letries first? Store the Christmas dec­o­ra­tions in the bed­room closet or linen closet? Keep work­ing on set­ting up our home or spend some time on my busi­ness? 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