The Daily Ascent

In today's episode, I'm sharing something I scrolled past while bracing for a return to social media that completely shifted the way I'm holding criticism going forward.  Marianne Williamson writes in A Return to Love that nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth.  Today's episode is about criticism, where it actually comes from, and the small shift that takes a...

In today's episode, I'm sharing the decision I had to make before a trip I'm about to take that surprised me with how much it revealed about how I approach the things that matter most. Richard Rohr writes that when we can stand in mystery, not knowing and not needing to know and being dazzled by such freedom, we are beginning to stand in divine freedom.  Today's episode is about the urge to study...

In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened the day I accidentally left my phone at home and discovered something about my own nervous system that I genuinely didn't see coming.  Pico Iyer writes in The Art of Stillness that not many years ago it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury, but nowadays it's often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that...

My best friend was having surgery, and I'd quietly decided I had to be there every second of it.  So when a once-in-a-lifetime concert landed right in the middle of that week, I said no before I'd even finished hearing the offer, and I wore that no like a badge. Then on a walk a few days later it hit me. I had never actually asked her what she needed. I'd just decided.  This one's about the quiet...

In today's episode I'm sharing something I am still learning — knowing when to fold.  I have a condition called mast cell activation syndrome, and a while back I pushed through to a hard exercise class on a day my body was clearly telling me not to. And I suffered for it.  Audre Lorde wrote in A Burst of Light that living with cancer forced her to consciously jettison the myth of omnipresence — th...

In today's episode I'm sharing something one of my retreat participants did after our retreat that I think is one of the most quietly radical things I have heard in a long time.  She found herself in New York City with almost no phone battery, turned it off, and spent the day following her own curiosity — the Jefferson Building, Rockefeller Center, Broadway — with no map and no agenda. She left ti...

In today's episode I'm talking about something I've been slowly noticing and am finally ready to say out loud.  Before Covid I was in the world every day. Covid moved everything online and something unexpected and good came with it. But now some time has passed and I miss the rooms.  The 3D version of people. Real heart and soul in the same space.  David Whyte writes in Consolations that the ultim...

In today's episode I'm sharing a ritual my friend Betsy introduced me to — you write thirteen wishes, burn twelve, keep the one that survives. Mine said physical health. And what I discovered is that showing up for my body has required something I didn't expect: actually prioritizing myself.  Bell Hooks writes in All About Love that one of the best guides to being self-loving is to give ourselves...

In today's episode I'm sharing something that started as a genuine annoyance — major nighttime construction outside my home, 9pm to 6am — and turned into one of my favorite spiritual practices.  The ancient Buddhist practice of metta — lovingkindness — offers four simple phrases: may you be safe, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you live with ease.  Today's episode is about what happens w...

In today's episode I'm talking about something I witness at almost every retreat I host — women who have come specifically to be received, and the moment someone offers to get them a glass of water, they say no thank you I can get it myself.  John O'Donohue writes in Eternal Echoes that our bodies know that they belong — it is our minds that make our lives so homeless.  Today's episode is about th...

In today's episode I'm sharing something my friend Andrew modeled for me at a Q + A recently that I have been genuinely trying to practice ever since. Someone in the audience hijacked the microphone and Andrew just let him.  With complete grace. He told me afterward that after years as a journalist he'd come to understand that sometimes people just need to say what they need to say.  Today's episo...

In today's episode I'm sharing a reframe that has saved me more times than I can count — sometimes you don't know what the next right thing is, but you almost always know what it isn't. And that knowing is its own form of wisdom.  The Language of Letting Go asks: what doesn't feel right? What can't you stand? What makes you uncomfortable? Our guide is within, ever-present.  Today's episode is abou...

Today's episode is a vulnerable one... YAY! I had a hard Mother's Day and I'm talking about it.  Susan Cain writes in Bittersweet that our longing is the great gateway to belonging — and that if we could honor sadness a little more we might see it as the bridge we need to connect with each other.  Today's episode is about having a hard day in a room full of people you love. And about not pretendin...

In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened when my friend Michelle and I co-hosted an event that started with big plans for twenty people and ended up being five women in a quiet, intimate, extraordinary room — and how glad I was that we hadn't pushed to fill the seats.  Today's episode is about yielding to what's actually arriving instead of forcing what you planned.  Question to carry into yo...

In today's episode — your official public service announcement for meditation, you're welcome — I'm making a case for the practice that makes everything else possible.  A friend of mine with a profound meditation practice said something recently that I wrote down immediately: if you can't sit still, how can you do anything?  Today's episode is about the real version of meditation — not the blissfu...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something that happened at a retreat I hosted recently — watching three women who know each other well slowly put down the performance they'd each been carrying, and discover that underneath their very different stories they were all longing for exactly the same thing. Intimacy. To be truly known.  I opened the retreat with healing and grounding work and asked them:...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something a friend said to me at my house recently that opened up a whole new way of thinking about boundaries — the moment she realized you're allowed to cancel without a reason. Just say you can't make it.  Nedra Tawwab writes in Set Boundaries Find Peace that the hardest thing about implementing boundaries is accepting that some people won't like, understand, or...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something a friend said to me recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. He called it a one-handed surrender — the willingness to put down the behavior but not to look at what's underneath it. Not just in recovery.  In the relationship you left but whose patterns you brought to the next one. In the job you resigned from but whose defenses traveled wit...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something I saw on a sign in a cute little cafe that I genuinely could not stop thinking about — don't stumble over something behind you.  I had gotten a call the day before from someone from a chapter of my life that never really fed me, slept on it, and walked into that cafe the next morning still carrying the loop of it.  Today's episode is about the spiritual va...

In today's episode, I'm sharing a conversation I had with someone two weeks into one of the bravest decisions of her life — and the reframe that changed everything about how she thought about asking for what she needed.  Brené Brown writes in Daring Greatly that sometimes our first and greatest dare is asking for support — that true belonging requires us to be who we are, not the version of us tha...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something I caught myself doing recently when a friend of mine started doing some consulting work for me - I wanted twenty years of a business absorbed immediately. And what happened when I recognized my own urgency underneath the frustration and chose to slow down instead.  Harriet Lerner writes in The Dance of Anger that change is a process, not an event, and it d...

In today's episode, I'm talking about something that came up in my SOS group this week that I think doesn't get named nearly enough - one of the greatest abuses of diet culture is what it has done to our capacity for patience. I lived inside that urgency for years.  Sonya Renee Taylor writes in The Body Is Not an Apology that unlearning is challenging - do not expect neat, tidy resolutions, and we...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something that happened at a car dealership recently that revealed something about myself I genuinely didn't see coming - and that I think a lot of us are doing without realizing it.  Geneen Roth writes in Lost and Found that if you're trying to fill something that can't be filled with what you're using, the emptiness never goes away.  And just because we've been li...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something that happened after a group sound healing I hosted at my house last week. One of the participants called me the next day in tears - and what I told her changed everything for her.  Francis Weller writes in The Wild Edge of Sorrow that healing is a process of hollowing ourselves out so we can open to what is emerging - that our work is to make ourselves rec...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something a friend of mine came up with that I found so spiritually alive I couldn't stop thinking about it — a shame fast.  She was at a church lecture about why spiritual traditions throughout history have honored fasting, and had this lightning bolt moment: I need to do this with my shame thoughts. Mark Nepo writes in The Book of Awakening that loving yourself is...