The Daily Ascent

Last week Danny, my seventy-five-pound lab mix, accidentally ran a little experiment for me. I had been giving him these yak milk bones and then taking them away before he overdid it, and every single time I gave him one, he went at it so frantically he would sometimes make himself sick.  So I tried something. I put five or six of them out on the floor at once, just to see what would happen. And t...

In today's episode, I'm sharing a conversation I had with my best friend during her surgery recovery week, when the house unexpectedly went quiet and she started running through a list of hobbies to pick up to fill the silence.  Tricia Hersey writes in Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto that we don't have to be everything, that we don't have to know everything, that we don't have to do everything, th...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something I have been carrying for a long time and have not really known how to talk about, the loss of a friendship that was a main character in my life for decades, and the strange, unnamed ache of grieving someone who has not gone away in a way our culture knows how to recognize.  Francis Weller writes in The Wild Edge of Sorrow that grief was his gateway back in...

In today's episode, I'm sharing the trip I almost didn't take, the inner voice that told me I had to go anyway, and what was actually waiting for me on the other side.  Melody Beattie writes in The Language of Letting Go that courage and strength, ability and resourcefulness are never lacking when we follow the guidance within and trust in its direction, and that all doors will open and our steps...

In today's episode, I'm sharing what I noticed while I was with my best friend the week after her major surgery, and the moment when one of our friends, who had had the very same surgery a few years ago, came over to take her on a walk and then sat down with her for coffee.  Vivek Murthy writes in Together that human relationship is as essential to our well-being as food and water, and that loneli...

In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened the day my calmest friend in the world finally yelled, after the accumulated weight of all the well-meaning advice she had been getting during her divorce became too much to hold.  Megan Devine writes in It's OK That You're Not OK that some things cannot be fixed, that they can only be carried, that grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solu...

In today's episode, I'm sharing the call I made to my spiritual advisor twelve hours after I drove my new car off the lot, the way she gently laughed at me, and the pattern she has been watching me run for eight years.  Jack Kornfield writes in A Path with Heart that we live in a sea of conditioning patterns that we repeat over and over, yet we rarely notice this process, and that the work is to d...

In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened the day a recruiter called for a reference on the assistant who'd stolen from me and refused to talk to me on her way out, and the one line from my friend Billy that I have not been able to put down since.  The Daily Reflections reader published by Alcoholics Anonymous says it has been said that anger is a luxury I cannot afford, that we are not asked...

In today's episode, I'm sharing something I've never talked about on the show, what happened with my last assistant, and the deep inventory work I was doing with my spiritual advisor at the same time her betrayal was unfolding.  Melody Beattie writes in The Language of Letting Go that we look at our behaviors and patterns with love and compassion for ourselves, and that we perform this examination...

In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened when I heard a wildly successful comedian say something so honest about his early days that it made me think differently about the runway we give ourselves for the things that matter to us.  Anne Lamott writes in Bird by Bird that not one of the great writers we love sits down feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident, that none of them write elegant f...

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...