A new year, baby! I love when I first realized that I could start over whenever I want. I don't have to wait for a new year to have a new beginning. My new beginnings are not limited to culturally dictated calendar cycles. As a young person, my year began in September. As a homeschooling parent the year began with our "annual fort-building season." When I was in the business world, I was on a fiscal calendar that varied from company to company. Liturgically speaking, Advent w

Conscious Connection Back in September, I made a decision to start a practice of intentionally exploring my conscious connection to my husband. I was trying to walk the talk of what I tell my clients. I did this by starting each day with a prompt that gave me an opportunity to think about and then articulate or act on it in some way. Mostly for me, this meant that I drafted a post for my Instagram and then I wrote what came up for me in both the most intimate ways with my hus

Can You Give Me what I need? Being in a committed long-term relationship is the hardest thing we do. Individuals in a relationship boil down into two distinct categories. You can call them Pursuers and Withdrawers, Minimizers/Maximizers or the-one-who-is-eternally-Disappointed and the-one-who-lives-in-fear-of-eternally-Disappointing. It all boils down to the same fears: “I am never going to be enough for you and you are never going to give me what I truly need.” What is at th

Mentality {(Need for Romance + Security) > (Fear of Rejection)100} -Memory {(Declaring Love led to Intimacy last time) ÷ (That relationship ended badly)3} × Anxiety (Will she/he reciprocate?)10 √ {(Is this bad timing?) +Intuition (I’m getting a good vide.)} × (Courage + Nerve ± Recklessness) = “I love you.”* What does it mean to you when you say, “I love you”? What story do you make up when your partner says “I love you” to you? The “I love you” threshold comes at different p

Interactions with other people wire the brain for resilience. This dharma talk parable illustrates how interactions can be positively and negatively encoded in the brain. A seven-year-old boy and his family are having dinner at a local restaurant. The waitress, addressing the boy, asks “What would you like, hon?” And the boy cheerfully answers: “I would like a hotdog with fren…” when his mother interrupts and says: “No, no. You want the meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gree

“Do as I say not as I do.” Children mirror parents and peers, fans mimic favorite celebrities, and art imitates life. We know that people learn by watching others. Actions really do speak louder than words. 100’s of billions of neurons make up the brain. Neurons connect with other neurons in what we call brain activity. Among the neurons in the front of the brain, there are “motor command neurons,” which fire when a person performs an explicit action. Reach for an object, ne

Tender touching is one way that we demonstrate affection towards another person. When you tenderly smooth back your partner’s hair, squeeze his shoulder as you join him on the sofa, massage her feet at the end of a workday, and hold hands walking down the street you are offering security, comfort, connection and loving awareness to each other. Intentional tenderness fosters safety and emotional stability that supports the foundation of your intimacy, reinforcing the message