It’s been a prolonged ordeal just to get to a complete diagnosis. Then surgery, and soon, treatment. From the moment she first shared this news, she was astounded by the generosity of what she calls, her “Village.” A tribe of friends who’ve been showering her with love, well-wishes, and small acts of kindness. She joked with me recently that she’s been eating a lot of delicious home-made soup lately.

“Yup,” I said. “When you don’t know how to help, you make soup.”

Last weekend a couple of her villagers suggested she join us on a mini getaway. When we first proposed it to her, she said no. She had just received some discouraging news from her doctor and all she wanted to do was curl up in the fetal position and cocoon. We understood. We didn’t press.

But later that day, after a gentle nudge from another member of her village, she changed her mind.

We drove her to our friend’s cottage a little over an hour outside the city. No plan, just a couple of coolers stuffed with good food (yes, soup) and our overnight bags.

We talked openly about her illness, but we didn’t dwell there. We shared stories. We walked in nature. We planned a trip together. We were even given a tutorial on how to make cappuccino in the most elaborate, scary-looking contraption I’ve ever seen. (We were terrified we’d break it!)

We laughed. A lot.

Before dinner, our host proposed that she “whip up” some fresh biscuits. “It’ll take less than 10 minutes to put them in the oven,” she claimed. We called bullshit and took out a stop watch.

“Game on,” she said.

She was right, 7 minutes and 32 seconds!

We also cried a little.

I noticed my eyes spontaneously filled with tears from time to time. Not grief, but gratitude. For my beloved friend, and for her wonderful village that seemed to be holding us all up.

My friend’s village didn’t just happen.

She cultivated it with care and tending to intimate relationships. It grew from the hundreds of kindnesses she has shown to her villagers over the years. We feel blessed and grateful to be a part of it.

I’m not always good at tending my villages, those treasured clusters of intimates I have collected in my personal and professional life. I get caught up in the stuff of life – the long list of tasks to complete; the imaginary deadlines to meet. While I (mostly) say yes to invitations to connect, I rarely initiate. Instead, I spend hours squirrelled away in my writing perch. I forget that even though writing is a solitary pursuit, it still needs a village. I still need my peeps.

I’m declaring today, Village Day, to celebrate our beloved villages in all the forms they take. In honour of Village Day, I am sharing the work of three writers and friends from my local community who have recently joined Substack.

Gingerbread Guts by Kelly Hennessey

A little over 10 years ago, , novelist , and I formed a tiny writers’ group, affectionately called Word Salad.

We’ve been urging Kelly to share her memoir, Gingerbread Guts, for some time now, and so we were thrilled when she launched it on Substack in late April. Gingerbread Guts tells her remarkable story of confronting cancer in her forties, as a mom of three, whose career was getting traction after putting it on pause to raise her little ones. It is told with heart, humour, honesty, and yes, guts. Her story unfolds in gripping, short, (under 5 minutes) vignettes that she publishes twice a week.

For an overview, watch this 15-minute video, from her appearance in the 2024 Halifax Story Slam event.

Gingerbread Guts by Kelly Hennessey

My Story in 15 Minutes

Gingerbread Guts is an honest and often hilarious memoir blog about my perspective as a woman, patient, wife and mother in a small Canadian East Coast city figuring out how to deal with the deeply impractical reality of living with a missing breast. (Never mind the cancer!) To deal with this issue, I decided I’d have immediate breast reconstruction — wh…

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a month ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Kelly Hennessey

Earth School Field Notes by Karn Nichols

Karn Nichols is a kindred spirit and long-time colleague and friend. I was delighted recently to discover her here on Substack. Karn is a walking embodiment of the phrase “student of life,” and is her study hall. Brimming with insight and wisdom, her essays are beautiful in their depth, honesty, and humility. You don’t learn from Karn, you learn with her, and that’s what makes Earth School worth reading.

Earth School Fieldnotes

The Curious Business of Growing Older.

Lordy. Lordy. Look who’s 64…

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15 days ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Earth School Fieldnotes

How Can This Be Easy? by Krista Smith

In the fall of 2021, I was trying to transition out of a 20-year coaching and leadership development business and into a life as an online writer. I was intimidated, overwhelmed, and stuck. Enter . Her first words to me were, (no kidding), “We can make this easy.”

And we (she) did!

This March, Krista brought her wealth of experience and her extensive library of practical guidance to Substack. In her words, How Can This Be Easy “is where we talk about the mindset, the tech, & strategy required to turn your decades of experience into real revenue online.”

If you’ve been publishing online, are feeling discouraged and wondering if anybody’s out there, “The Grocery Store Truth Nobody Talks About…” is a truth you need to hear.

How Can This Be Easy?

You Never Know Who’s Actually Watching You

The Grocery Store Truth Nobody Talks About…

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2 months ago · 16 likes · 2 comments · Krista Smith

Shout outs!

The very best thing about publishing on Substack is its village vibe. It has introduced me to a wonderful community of writers who not only publish here, but who generously support and encourage each other.

I want to thank the growing village of fellow Substack writers who have supported and recommended me to their readers over the last few years.

Special thanks to , , , , , , and . I hope you all see and take advantage of my invitation below.

Please consider adding each and every one of these writers to your summer reading list.

It’s summer play time!

It’s that time of year when I take my annual summer break.

To my subscribers, whether you like, comment, or simply give a passing nod to me in your inbox, thank you for being here and watch for my return to your inbox this fall.

And to my incredible village of paid subscribers who support me and my work with your hard earned dollars, I see every one of you, and am so grateful for you and your generosity.

An invitation to the Substack Village

If you are a Slow Sip subscriber and you have written something you believe your fellow villagers might like to read, please tell us a little about it and share a link in the comments below.

Leave a comment

I first published this piece in 2023 and it continues to be one of my favorites.

This month, my dad would have turned 100 years old, and I like to think that in the afterlife he is celebrating as I write this. (He was notorious for stretching out his birthday celebrations well past their “best before” dates.)

This essay shares an ancient practice that influenced one of our last conversations.

Enjoy.

Do you have friends like this?

The other day I met a friend for tea. We’ve known each other for more than 40 years. She’s one of those people who has drifted in and out of my life, like a fine weave in a treasured garment. Sometimes we will go a few years with no contact at all and then come together again for a season, as if no time has passed.

Still, this conversation was different.

Warm and easy as always, but deeper and more connected somehow.

We talked about getting older and that sense that “the runway is getting short.” We talked about what that means for our mutual passion for writing and our desire to publish. We talked about the sense of urgency this awareness of a short runway creates.

Then she told me that as much as there is lots of writing she still wants to do, she’s decided to make more time for tea with good friends. I don’t think this thought came out of the blue. She had recently lost a close friend who went from a terminal diagnosis to death within a few months.

“Afterall,” she said, “You never know how many more afternoon teas like this we will get.”

The Stoics spoke about the power of this simple truth to transform our relationships with each other and with life.

It’s the great and often hidden gift of impermanence.

The last piece of chocolate.

On the meditation app, Waking Up, there's a brief recording called "The Last Time Meditation" guided by William B. Irvine, author, and expert on Stoic philosophy. He begins, “I have some gloomy news for you, for everything you do, there will be a last time.”

He goes on to make the point that this really isn't gloomy at all, but a powerful practice we can use to keep us from taking life and our relationships for granted.

Imagine, if someone offers you a piece of chocolate and tells you that this is the last piece of chocolate you will ever eat.

What are you going to do?

Are you going to drop to your knees and wail that life is unfair and unbearable because, you are about to be deprived of chocolate? (Well maybe. Probably.)

But also, you would take that piece of chocolate and savor every exquisite morsel. That piece of chocolate might turn out to be the best piece of chocolate you ever eat.

The Last Time Practice is to briefly consider the question, what if this is the last time?

On his popular and very funny blog Wait but Why, author, Tim Urban shares a light-hearted, but no less sobering take on this in an article called, The Tail End. Among other things, he does some brutal math on how little time we all get to do the things we really love. And how little time there is to connect to the people who are really important to us.

After doing some personal calculations, he wrote “It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time."

You can think about that from the parents’ point of view. That teenager who is causing you no end of grief right now, is not going to be “in your face” all that much longer. (Or at least that’s the plan.)

Contemplating loss heightens our appreciation of what we have.

The last months of my father’s life were difficult.

He was an old man suffering the final ravages of Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s had robbed him of his ability to walk and stripped away his voice. He spoke in whispers and in the end, I was one of the few who could still understand him.

It was a sad, exhausting, and heartbreaking time. But it was also a precious time. I began to feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for him, for the wonderful father he had been to me, for our special relationship. It was bittersweet.

During that time, I wrote a tribute to him that would eventually serve as his eulogy. I didn't write it for him. I wrote it for me, in part, to help me process the crushing waves of anticipatory grief.

When I finished it, though, I began to wonder if I should share it with him. To do so, would be to openly acknowledge what we all knew. I wasn’t sure how he would feel about hearing his own eulogy? Would he want to?

I talked to some people close to me about it and the response was mixed. My husband feared it might be too difficult for both of us. Others wondered if it might be depressing for him or make him anxious.

But this haunting question remained, “How would I feel when he died, if I didn’t share this expression of how much he meant to me?” What if the next time I saw him was the last?

I decided to ask the one person who would know the right thing to do.

I asked my dad.

I was uncomfortable and tentative, “I wrote this thing. It’s about you. I decided to write it knowing that you may not be with us much longer.”

He did the perfect “Dad” thing. He put his hand to his chest and gasped, as if the thought that he was nearing the end of his life had never occurred to him. I laughed.

“Would you like me to read it to you?” I asked.

He nodded his head vigorously. His eyes brimming with eagerness and curiosity.

When I finished reading it, because it was difficult for him to speak, he reached out and grabbed my hand. Then he put his other hand over his heart. (A few days later he confessed that he reread it four times.)

That was not our last conversation, but after that, no more conversation was necessary. I felt a tremendous sense of peace.

How would your interactions change if you considered them your last?

What if the fight you had with your spouse was your last conversation?

What if you were about to hug your daughter or kiss the top of your son’s head for the last time?

What if you had just one more chance to have tea with a dear friend?

The Stoics did not mean for us to dwell or churn on these questions, or to become morose and depressed. They meant us to hold them lightly in the back of our minds. They wanted us to be present to the preciousness and impermanence of life. 

One of the gifts of getting older is that these questions do not seem like such a stretch. You start losing friends and loved ones. You become increasingly mindful that you are approaching your last time for many things. And strangely, for me, it heightens my appreciation of them. It makes me more present and more grateful.

The last time practice is not just for when you get older. The Stoics taught this practice to their young students as a way for them to live their lives more fully.

Holding that question, “What if this is the last time?” sharpens your attention. It heightens your experience. It kicks you into a higher level of appreciation and gratitude for what poet Mary Oliver calls, “your one wild and precious life.”

I was extraordinarily fortunate to be mothered for 62 years. My mom, Bev, died in 2018 at the age of 91. Like far too many, I lost the mother I knew long before she died, as dementia slowly robbed her of her memories, her cognition, and aspects of her unique personality.

Mom was introverted and reserved, so to really know her you had to be in her inner circle. Underneath that quiet exterior lived a person of intelligence, depth, and a wicked (and I mean that quite literally) sense of humor.

Mom was my confidante and my anchor. More than anyone else on the planet, she could see through my bullshit. When I became a mother, I leaned on her for wisdom, compassion, and support and she delivered all three in abundance. She enjoyed my complaints about how hard motherhood was a little bit too much. I think it felt a little like sweet justice.

There are many words I could use to describe my mother and the powerful and loving force she was in my life – but “sweet” or “cute” were not among them.

Until dementia.

Strangely, while dementia took away the mother I knew, it gave me this lovely, polite, sort of echo of my mother. Maybe it was the disease or perhaps a combination of that and the medication she took to ease her depression. She became a sweet old lady.

While this version was easy to be around, I missed the mom I grew up with. I missed her sharp wit and her low-drama, pragmatic take on life. I missed the hilarious counterpoint she offered to my father’s exuberance and silliness. I missed her grounded way of mothering.

The last few years of her life were very hard, as the disease chipped away at who she was piece by piece.

The most helpful advice I received during those difficult years came via an article written by a counselor who specialized in caring for people with dementia.

The author wrote, “Don’t try to bring them back to your world, try to meet them in theirs.”

This poem is about what I discovered on that journey.

Villanelle to Planet Dementia

My mother wanders another world, circles another sun,
Roams a parallel universe, floats in primordial mist,
she whistles in a tangled wood, singing her song unsung.

She travels to another time, hears the vastness thrum,
cowers at the gathering dusk, sucks her trembling fist.
My mother wanders another world, circles another sun.

She hums a remembered melody, speaks a foreign tongue. 
Words rise like butterflies, some caught, some missed.
She whistles in a tangled wood, singing her song unsung.

She prays another prayer, greets a long loved someone,
mutters to the holy ghost, strokes her broken wrist.
My mother wanders another world, circles another sun.

From time to time, she journeys home, speaks my tongue,
seeks a loved one in my face, accepts a gentle kiss,
then whistles toward the tangled wood, singing her song unsung.

She slips through a gaping wormhole, sucked through the foggy mist,
back to a time more primal, back to the black abyss,
back to the planet dementia, where she circles another sun,
she whistles in a tangled wood, singing her song unsung.

Big hugs to you, on Mother’s Day.

Love,

Cathy

This is my fourth and final post with poem to celebrate National Poetry Month.

In case you missed them, you can find the first three here.

Today’s poem is Unmoored.

It’s so easy to feel at sea right now.

So many things we thought we could count on, now feel threatened. Things we once thought would never happen are unfolding before our eyes.

We can feel the dissonance everywhere – in our news feeds, on our televisions, in podcasts we listen to, or videos we watch. We feel it in conversations with family and friends as we try to make sense of what is happening.

We are bombarded every day with lies, partial truths, and spin. Opinion is presented to us as fact. Ideology as morality. At times we are told, what we can see with our own eyes is fake. This can create in us, a kind of psychological vertigo, where we don’t know what to believe, who to trust, or what is true.

Beyond all the stress and anxiety, and what it may be doing to us, lies another risk.

And that is our capacity as human beings, to adapt and adjust.

Sometimes, the disorientation becomes so all encompassing, so pervasive, that it no longer feels abnormal. Outrage becomes normal. Cruelty becomes normal. Corruption becomes normal. When we float in these waters, day in and day out, we run the risk of losing ourselves.

This poem was inspired by that sense of profound disorientation. Our very human struggle to find a place to stand and be true to who we are. When our values are so routinely violated, we can lose connection with them. They can weaken as anchors for our lives.

At times like these, our rational, adaptable mind is not always our friend. It has a gift for rationalizing and filtering that does not always serve us.

When we feel disoriented, sometimes we can’t think our way back to solid ground. In those moments, it can help to listen to the body. Our senses can guide us back to equilibrium. The body holds a more deeply encoded sense of what feels true. It can access both our conscious awareness and the unconscious layers beneath it. It is often faster than our minds to detect things we need to notice.

When we become still and alert to what we are sensing, we can start to notice that feeling of dissonance that warns us something is off. It says “not this.”

Or, we can feel a quiet resonance that steadies us.

This isn’t intuition; it’s alignment.

That feeling of inner coherence, when our sense of who we are, what matters most, and what we need to do, all align. Resonance feels different than righteous indignation or outrage. Resonance does not seek validation. It does not arise from an ego needing to be right.

Authentic resonance is quieter, more subtle. It comes from a deeper place.

It does not activate us; it settles us, so we can move forward toward peace.

It whispers, yes, stand here.

Unmoored.

Have you heard the story
of the ship’s cat? How
it drops down on the dock,
reels and sways 
like a sailor
stinking of rum. 

This is what it is 
to be at sea so long 
you forget the feel
of ground. To become 
so accustomed to the roll 
and pitch, the eyes and feet
of one body, no longer agree. 

This is what it is
to be unsure
what is moving 
and what is still. 
Familiar feels unsafe.
You try not to fall.
Or fall and fail
to get up. 

All you can do 

is 
drop
anchor 
and wait 
to feel it
bite,

fix your gaze
and breathe,

plant your feet 
and rise.

Your inquiry for this week.

What do I sense when I am still?

This question invites you to stillness. It asks you to settle the mind and listen to your body. It invites you deeper.

A sense of dissonance is that signal that something is off. It will arrive as a tightness in your chest or a sinking sensation in your belly. It invites you to be curious about how your current environment or actions may be out of alignment with your values.

Resonance is a settling or peaceful sensation. Follow it. Ask the question. Notice what arises.

This form of inquiry doesn’t always give you answers, but attention to resonance and dissonance can offer clues. Follow the breadcrumbs.

Tell us, how do you stay grounded in these tumultuous times?

Leave a comment

When I was young, I searched high and low for “the one.” I started trying on boyfriends at age 14. The parade of teenaged candidates who shuffled awkwardly to our front door in those early days, terrified my father.

For reasons I will never understand, I was impatient to get the choice of a life partner over with and get on with my life. The problem was I had difficulty discerning the kind of person who would make me happy. And my discernment didn’t improve much with practice.

In my early twenties, newly wounded after the end of a serious relationship that had ground down my sense of self-worth, I had a chance encounter with a fortune teller. I was not in the habit of consulting fortune tellers, but I was miserable, she lived close by, and she was cheaper than a therapist.

After turning my palm over and gently tracing its lines, she looked me hard in the eyes. “You have bad taste in men. The men you are dating are no good for you,” she said sternly. “You need to choose a different kind of man or you will live a miserable life. Look for someone who is not your type!”

It was not long after, that I met Ralph.

He was definitely not “my type.”

He was extremely introverted, socially awkward, and a total nerd. And, he still lived at home with his parents. (Huge red flag!) He did have a few advantages over most of my previous boyfriends, like a good job and a fancy red sports car, which he could afford because he still lived at home with his parents.

There were a few other refreshing aspects to him not being my type. He was very smart and he had this quiet self-assurance. He didn’t need to belittle me to feel good about himself, and he wasn’t threatened by my intelligence. He actually got my sense of humor!

The first time he asked me on a date, the invitation was so awkward it made me cringe. In a total failure to read the room, he interrupted a perfectly jovial group conversation to ask me out in front of my co-workers. It was like one of those public proposals where the “bride to be” looks totally blindsided and hesitates just a little too long before answering the question. My first inclination was a hard no. But in that moment, I remembered the words of the fortune-teller and I thought, “Oh, what the hell.”

Less than two years later, I was walking down the aisle.

I was 24. He was 25.

In retrospect, we probably had no business getting married. I was impulsive. I thought a good marriage was a wedding followed by a happily ever after pill that produced a world of romance, passion and bliss, punctuated with just the right amount of drama.

Ralph doesn’t do drama. And as for romance, if we were a rom-com, the dial is turned more toward com, than rom.

Case in point. This photo, (staged, with his brand new tripod and timer), was snapped just seconds before our cabin filled with fireplace smoke. We scampered out to the front lawn in our boudoir finery as thick smoke billowed out the front door. This would have been slightly less humiliating had it been dark outside. But, it was two in the afternoon, and the front lawn, which happened to double as a playground, was full of little kids and their parents. Further, we couldn’t get back into the cabin until the smoke cleared and the little kids kept asking their smirking parents why we were still in our pjs. I was grateful that my choice of boudoir-wear leaned more convent than brothel.

I’m not a marriage expert. I’ve only had one, and though it’s lasted 45 years, it’s still only a sample of one. What I noticed, though, was that our relationship got significantly better when I stopped wishing he was someone else, and started fully appreciating who he was.

I have come to suspect that a key ingredient in a good marriage is appreciation. Strong relationships are built on foundations of love, mutual respect and trust, of course. But appreciation is quality fuel for great chemistry. Genuine appreciation asks you to pay attention. It asks you to hone a sensibility to the finer qualities of the other.

I have learned, it is one thing to be lucky.

It’s another to know, before it’s too late, how lucky you are.

It’s another again, to say it out loud.

This poem was my way of saying it out loud.

Sensibility

I used to envy those literary couples.
I longed to peek under the covers
of their unions. I imagined a fire
more intense than ours.
A life of sonnets. Loves
preserved in elegies.

I longed for ardent.
I yearned for exquisite words
to fall from your lips. For you
to compare me
to a summer’s day.
I grew impatient
with your spartan lines.

That was fun.
You look nice.

It took years to learn the poetry
of you. First, we had to walk
that arid stretch of modern marriage.
Make hurried love to the scuttle
of tiny feet. End our days, bickering
and undone; your hand reaching
for my angry back.

It took years to hear the lyric
of your love song, feel the texture
of your tenderness. The way
you wrapped around me like a curled leaf,
your nose nuzzled to my neck. The way
you knelt on the floor with our children,
then theirs. Performed your pliant
rite of play.

I had to grow an eye for nuance,
sense the deeper passion
in still life. Attune my ear
to the subtle meter
of your devotion,
your eloquence
beyond words.

Your inquiry for this week.

This is not a question you’re meant to answer, but one you take away for reflection. Keep it somewhere where you’ll see it during the week. You might use it as a journal prompt or stick it on a posted note somewhere as a reminder.

Work with it and let it work you.

What is here now?

This question asks for more than presence. It asks you to be receptive to the unexpected or the hidden. So often the delightful, the exquisite, the beautiful are right in front of us. We simply need to look closely.

Please let us know what you discover.

Leave a comment

On her birthday, her parents asked us to drive her to a local indoor playground for her party while they transported decorations and supplies. When we arrived to pick her up, she appeared at the top of the stairs, sporting a new dress and a tiara that said, “Birthday Girl.” She paused, raised her hands in the air, threw her head back and shouted,

“IT’S MY BIRTHDAY AND I AM MAGNIFICENT!”

The effect was enhanced by her missing two front teeth.

I had two reactions. The first was delight. “YES, you ARE magnificent!” I thought.

The second was a little heartbreak. A lump formed in my throat and my eyes stung as I thought, how much longer before the world tells you a different story? How long before the world tells you, you are lacking, that you are not enough?

I said a quick prayer. “Dear God, please never let her forget that she is magnificent.”

At this point in her young life, Maddie arrives assuming she’s loveable and loved. She shows up exuberant, eager to greet the world. That’s, in part because she’s a very fortunate little girl. She has parents who love and care for her, an older brother who finds her annoying but loves her anyway, and grandparents, who adore her and hang on her every word.

But soon, she will learn the hard lesson that the world is not always welcoming. She will receive messages from her peers, from strangers on social media and other places that she is somehow deficient or unworthy. That she is not enough.

As her grandmother, my first instinct is to shield her. I want to pack her into a warm and cozy bubble and never let the world anywhere near her. But my job is not to protect her from the world. My job, along with her parents’, is to prepare her for it.

To support her to become strong and resilient. To encourage her to take her place in a world that is sometimes unfriendly and unsafe. To show her that she is not the center of the universe, but a unique and precious part of it. To help her know at the core of her being, she is worthy and she is loved.

I’ve learned that this doesn’t happen by simply telling her it is so. The hardest part of the job, as parent or grandparent, is showing her what that looks like.

Like any grandmother, I know my time with my grandkids is short. I want them to remember me in a way that is actually helpful to them. I want them to be able to ask themselves when they are in a tough spot, “What would Mémé do?” And I want something useful to come from that question.

If I could point to one thing I need to practice for my grandchildren’s sake, it is showing up. Especially when the world doesn’t feel safe or welcoming.

I’m not a boat rocker. I lean a little too far toward maintaining harmony. Which means I don’t always show up for difficult or essential conversations.

I'm a little too attached to being loved and respected. And so, I hesitate to speak my mind when it might be important to do so.

I want to feel safe, so I don’t always show up when my voice might make waves or create conflict.

Sometimes, despite my best intentions, I fail to show up for others when they need me to do so.

Sometimes, I forget to show up for myself, to take responsibility for my physical and emotional well-being. I forget that my worth is not defined by my reputation or by how many friends, likes, or comments I’ve collected.

A sustainable sense of self worth comes from a deeper place, a place beyond the burden of whatever story the world makes up about me. Or whatever story I make up about myself.

I am working on this because (to use a saying normally applied to dogs) I want to be the person my grandchildren believe I am.

This imperative to keep showing up; this rite of arrival demands that we put aside our fear. We arrive because there is something more important to attend to than our comfort or our safety.

Because if we don’t show up, who will know we are magnificent?

I dedicated this poem to my granddaughter, the Magnificent Maddison.

 Arrival Rite

You don’t remember
the day you arrived. Emerged
from the dark cave, warm
and suffocating. Assaulted
by first light.

You don’t remember
your mother’s body
heave and shudder. How she 
fought for you and against you,
welcomed and resisted you,
with each ragged breath.

How your first cry
tore jagged
the fabric of attachment
and announced,

I AM.

If you were lucky,
in that moment, she
welcomed you,
affirmed you precious.

You don’t remember. 

But if you are brave,
you’ll repeat this rite
each time you leave 
the warm and the suffocating,
each time you choose to surge forward.

And even though 
you can’t know
if you’ll be welcome,
you’ll announce yourself 
anyway. 

Your inquiry for this week.

This is not a question you’re meant to answer, but one you take away and reflect on. It’s meant to support your clarity, offer new insight, or illuminate a path forward. Keep it somewhere where you’ll see it during the week. You might use it as a journal prompt or stick it on a posted note somewhere as a reminder.

Work with it and you let it work you.

What matters more to you than your comfort?

I find this question helpful when I notice I am not speaking up or when I fail to show up for myself? It’s a question that leads me back to my values. What is important enough that I am willing to sacrifice my comfort or even my safety for it?

I’d love to hear from you on this.

Leave a comment

Seasoned creators and teachers will tell you that constraint supports creativity.

I’m going to test that theory.

Unfortunately, I still don’t have full use of my right hand… yet. (ICYMI, back story is here.) So…

In honour of National Poetry Month (and a right arm that aches if I overuse it), we will be practicing “less, is more” this month. And nothing illustrates less is more, more perfectly than poetry. Each week in April, I’ll be sending you a brief reflection including one of my poems and an inquiry for you to sip slowly.

In coaching, an inquiry is not a question you’re meant to answer, but one you take away and reflect on. It’s meant to support your clarity, offer new insight, or illuminate a path forward. You keep it with you in some way for a time. You might use it as a journal prompt or stick it on a posted note somewhere as a reminder.

You work it and you let it work you.

This week our theme is Threshold.

In Nova Scotia, April is just another word for “not yet spring.” I call it the BIG TEASE!

When much of North America is exploding with new life and my social media feeds fill with gorgeous photos of cherry blossoms and shimmering green leaves, here, it’s a different story. The temperature climbs above freezing, then plunges again. A day of warm (ish) sunshine is followed by three days of rain, ice, snow or all three. The ground is covered in mud.

This April, my impatience is accentuated by a broken collar bone. It is giving me a crash course in respecting my limitations by shooting little currents of pain into my arm and neck every time I try to blow past them.

It’s as if both the weather and my body are whispering, or sometimes, shouting, “Not yet.”

At the same time, if I can let go of my resistance and impatience long enough to rest here at this seasonal threshold. If I can whisper to myself, “You are exactly where you need to be.” It can be a rich and generative space.

I wrote this poem in April 2020, another threshold season amplified and complicated by our first COVID lockdown.

Remember that?

Mysterious and deadly virus, no vaccine, no answers, and terrifying separation, isolation, sickness, and death? For many, it was unbearable.

I’m almost ashamed to admit this, but… as stressful as that time was, I was one of those introverted, creative types, who secretly relished the pause like a guilty pleasure I hadn’t earned.

That unique period of lockdown, trapped inside and between seasons, was a very prolific writing time for me. It taught me about the surprising gifts of constraint and that thresholds aren’t only lines to be crossed. They have value in their own right. I wrote more poetry that spring than I had written in years.

This poem was one of them.

Threshold

Winter does not give ground easily.
Snow clings to the craggy shoreline,
tosses white lace on the heads
of crocuses. What we want to shed,
sticks like a burr to a pant leg.
What is trying to be born
will not yet show itself.

Soon we will emerge from the long winter
of our isolation. We will peek out,
lift our noses to the wind,
testing, testing. There will be risk
in our unfurling.

We will forget the gifts of this
liminal season. The long solitudes
and making good company
with ourselves. The sweet savouring
of simple pleasures taken from us for a time –
the stickiness of a child’s hand, the tickle
of a whispered secret, or free falling
into an embrace.

We will forget the clear blue of a clean
sky over the city, the way the deer
appeared on the sidewalks,
and how, for a time,
the harsh cry of horns and squealing brakes,
the din of buzz saw and sledgehammer,
gave way to the swell
of birdsong.

Your inquiry for this week:

What’s trying to happen?

This is one of my favourite inquiries for times like these. It’s a non-forcing question. Tell me, what comes up for you when you ask this of your life?

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A farmer’s horse got loose and ran away. Learning of the farmer’s misfortune, his neighbors came over to commiserate. “This is terrible luck,” they said.

The farmer replied, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”

The next day, the horse returned and brought more horses back with it. The farmer’s neighbors came over to celebrate with him. What great fortune, they said.

Again, the farmer replied, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”

A few days later, the farmer’s son broke his leg while trying to tame one of the horses. The neighbors cried, “How terrible! We feel so sorry for you.” The farmer’s response was the same.

The very next day, the army came through the village to conscript all the young men. All the neighbors’ sons were taken away. But the farmer’s son was left at home because his leg was broken and the army had no use for him. The farmer watched the soldiers march the young men off to war and said to himself, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”

As I sat in the hospital emergency room, this parable and its question came back to me.

Who knows what is good and what is bad?

My personal version of the parable began with a two-week holiday in beautiful Barbados.

😊At exactly the halfway point, we took a taxi to a gorgeous beach on the Caribbean Sea called Carlisle Bay. The weather was perfect, the water was warm, and from my beach chair, I watched my husband frolic in the waves. It looked so enticing, I decided to join him.

😒When the water got slightly above knee level, I saw a small wave coming toward me and realized it was going to crest exactly where I was standing. Instinctively, I turned my back toward it and braced myself. (Rookie mistake!) To my shock, it easily knocked me off my feet and pushed my head under the water. I had just enough time to get my legs under me and my bottom above the surface, when a second, bigger wave picked me up by the derriere and slammed my right shoulder onto the bottom. It felt like hitting cement. I felt a sickening crunch.

😊Our friends knew of a medical clinic on the drive home just a few minutes from our villa. The waiting room was empty, they had a working X-ray machine, and a doctor ready to see me and my credit card right away.

😒My right clavicle was broken in at least two places. (Have I mentioned I’m right handed?) He thought it might require surgery.

😊After examining me and looking at the X-ray, the doctor agreed, if I kept it immobilized in a sling, I could wait until I got home a week later to have it examined by an orthopaedic surgeon.

😮He handed me his written report and a copy of the X-ray. The report began with the words, “Elderly female presents with injured shoulder.” What???? This can’t be about me! How about, “Hot babe in a stunning bathing suit presents with injured shoulder?”

😎I would spend the remaining week of our holiday sitting by the private pool at our villa letting my husband and dear friends fetch me food and beverages.

💕It was here that I met my new best friend, a small dove who, coincidentally, was missing his right foot. I’m not sure why he chose to spend so much time on our patio. Was it a sense of solidarity due to our common predicament? Or was it the reliable stream of food droppings that resulted from my extreme difficulty getting food into my mouth with my left hand?

😒While Barbados proved to be an ideal place to convalesce, it turned out to be a much more difficult place to leave. Our flight to Toronto was delayed nine hours.

😜The Prosecco at the Barbados Airport bar was delicious and on seeing my injured arm, the bartender said, “Just blink twice if you need a refill!”

😒When we arrived in the Toronto Airport the next morning, we learned that our flight to Halifax was also delayed.

😮At some point during our 12-hour wait in Toronto, we learned that shortly after our flight from Barbados took off, authorities closed Barbados airspace over a dispute between air traffic control employees and the government. Suddenly, we were experiencing that “dodged a bullet” feeling.

😁When we arrived in Halifax, our luggage was the first off the airplane. We were home! I resisted the urge to fall on my knees and kiss the ground.

😒The next morning, at a nearby clinic, we heard the words we had been dreading. “You will have to go to the Dartmouth General Emergency Department.” Emergency departments are overwhelmed where I live and wait times are notoriously long. It was very possible that I was destined for another 12-hour wait. With a week-old clavicle fracture, I was guaranteed a spot at the very bottom of the triage list.

😣I told my husband to go home and get some sleep. Unfortunately, I didn’t account for the logistical issues associated with going to the bathroom, one-handed, with a jacket loosely draped over my right shoulder and backpack in tow. The early part of the “procedure” went smoothly but when I stood up and reached around to flush, I was horrified to see that my coat had slipped off my shoulder and my right sleeve was stirring urine in the toilet bowl.

🤣I’m not sure if it was fatigue from the travel or just the sheer absurdity of the situation, but as I lifted the offending sleeve from the toilet bowl to the sink and tried to figure out how to perform one-handed laundry, I started to laugh uncontrollably. It was one of those primal, injured animal kinds of laughs. When filtered through the bathroom door, it must have carried an emotional meltdown/psychotic break kind of vibe. When I emerged a few minutes later wiping tears from my eyes, I was greeted with looks of alarm and sympathy. One woman jumped out of her chair to adjust my sopping wet coat sleeve that had once again slipped off my shoulder.

💪Five hours later, which is more like 5 minutes in ER time, the doctor described my newly X-rayed shoulder as a mess. She said, “You stayed in Barbados with that? You are one strong lady!” I envisioned her report starting with, “Incredibly strong female presents with injured right shoulder.”

😉I saw an orthopaedic surgeon the very next morning. He described my injury as borderline. There was a case for surgery, but also a reasonable case for letting it heal naturally. I chose to go with nature. I’ll find out on April 20^th when they do follow up x-rays if I made the right choice.

As I reflect on this adventure, I notice how quick I am to put my experiences into either a good or bad bucket. And the unnecessary psychological whiplash that ensues. Inside everything that happens to us is a universe of experiences that defy simple labels like good and bad. I find I do better when I simply stop labeling.

Writers plan; God laughs.

Losing the use of my dominant hand, albeit temporarily, has been a ride. I am so grateful that this is temporary. Weirdly, I’m also grateful for this short-term crash course in utter helplessness, rapid adaptation, and extreme patience. (I’m not doing so well in the extreme patience department.)

As you might imagine, being a writer adds another dimension to the challenge. I am trying dictation to write this piece. It’s been… awkward!

When I returned to my office and looked at the long list of things I promised myself (and you) that I would accomplish when I returned from my holiday, a variation on an old Yiddish saying came to mind. “Writers plan; God laughs.”

In addition to my plans to publish a weekly series in April, I also found a rather manic list of personal challenges I had signed up for. (One of the gifts of being on Substack is the never-ending opportunities to participate in 30-60-90-day self-improvement challenges.) There was a daily writing challenge complete with prompts, no less than three fitness challenges, and something called a “real attention challenge” that I can’t remember but I think came from my meditation app.

As I reviewed this list on my laptop, sitting in my chair, arm in sling, unable to type a single word, I realized I was able to do one thing. With the index finger of my left hand, I could reach the delete key. Like a hired assassin, my finger quietly “disappeared” the entire list. And just like that. Problem solved.

As I sit here performing this weird ritual of dictating and one finger, left-handed edit-pecking, I have no idea what, if anything, I will be able to accomplish in the next 6 to 12 weeks.

When my life feels chaotic, messy, and completely beyond my control, I find setting an intention sometimes helps.

For this period of recovery, I’ve decided to go with, “Love what is.”

Because really, who knows what is good and what is bad?

This is the first of my “Best of” series, where I re-publish some of my most popular, or just my favorite posts from the past four years.

“Small Decisions” was first published in 2022 before The Slow Sip launched on Substack.

Enjoy!

These days I’ve been hanging out a fair bit with a 5- and 7-year-old. I’m seven years into this grandmother gig and so far, it’s way easier and more fun than parenting.

But here’s the funny thing about it.

Sometimes, it’s more fun in retrospect than it is in the actual moment.

Little kids demand a lot of patience. They demand the ability to hang in with stuff long after you've lost interest. My grandkids do not have short attention spans. It’s their grandmother who has the short attention span. There’s only so much doll-dressing, tiny vehicle-driving, bed-jumping, or living room fort-building I can take.

Further, little kids are bossy. They complain about your food, and they are too fond of potty humor. Being called “Poopy Bum” 50 times is just not that funny.

So, I’m not ashamed to admit, there are times when I’d rather be doing something else. Like reading a good book or sipping a cool drink on a beach chair. Especially when the alternative is in the icy waters of the north Atlantic, jumping in waves.

This little bit of grandmother torture occurred at a family resort in the south shore of Nova Scotia this summer.

My grandkids are well aware that I have a profound aversion to cold water or simply getting wet, for that matter. I’m a bit like a cat in that regard. So, this summer, when they asked me to wade into the 63-degree Fahrenheit / 17-degree Celsius ocean water, my response was quick and definitive.

No.

They would have to settle on jumping waves with their grandfather, who is built of hardier stuff than I am.

This, of course, was insufficient.

“Please Mémé, come in with us. It’s not that cold.”

Did I tell you that little kids lie?

“Don’t you lie to me,” I warned. So, they backtracked.

“Well, it’s not THAT cold. You’ll get used to it! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE.”

Did I mention that little kids are not too proud to beg?

This is one of those decisions that on the surface seemed a no-brainer. In the scheme of things, me joining them in the freezing water was not going to make or break their holiday. It wasn’t going to result in some deep trauma that would color the rest of their lives. There would be other, warmer ways to bond with them on this holiday.

I was just about to respond with another, more definitive no, when I was suddenly reminded of the many tiny decisions, just like this one, that I regret from when my own kids were small. The too many times I said no to their invitations for fun because I didn’t have the time, I had to work, or I was too tired. 

It struck me in the moment that a lot of what makes life fulfilling and meaningful are the tiny day-to-day decisions I make just like this one.

We face small choice points like this all the time. As individual decisions they don’t matter much. It’s in their cumulative sweep over time that they make a difference. These tiny decisions when gathered together have a massive impact on the trajectory of our lives and the lives of those we care about.

It seems to me that most personal decisions fall into one or more of these three buckets:

1. The things I want to do.

2. The things I should do.

3. The things I’ll be glad I did.

The “want to” bucket.

I’ve learned the hard way, that what I typically want in the moment has little connection to my longer-term well-being. I want to devour that box of chocolate chip cookies. I want to binge watch Netflix. Or I want to curl up in the fetal position and pull a blanket over my head. Little good comes from any of these decisions. Also, there’s a significant body of research that says we are astonishingly bad at predicting what will make us happy. As a result, we have a habit of chasing things that ultimately lead to misery.

It's good to know what you want and constantly denying yourself life’s little pleasures is not a recipe for a happy life either. But the "want bucket" is not the only bucket to consider.

The ”should” bucket.

In coaching sessions, my ears perk up every time I hear the word should. If I hear it a lot, it's a signal to get curious. I sometimes counsel people to be wary of the word “should.” There is nothing that sucks the joy out of life faster than filling your life with “shoulds.”

Usually, should decisions are motivated by avoiding guilt, seeking approval, or responding to what is expected.

Should decisions are not always bad decision. Sometimes should means should.

But if should becomes a way of life, life becomes one big fat string of obligations.

The "I'll be glad I did” bucket.

When buckets one and two produce different answers, bucket number three is a great place to look.

It’s reflecting on the question: How will I feel later if I choose this now?

While this seems like a contradiction of what I’ve just said, that we are not great at predicting what will make us happy in the future. This question actually points to something deeper. It’s not so much a check-in with your future self as a check-in with your values and your sense of what really matters.

I will be glad I did it because deep in my heart I know it’s the right thing to do. Or I know in my soul that this is what I want to have done in my short time on this planet.

This is what my heart and soul were telling me on that beach this summer.

There was not a cell in my body that wanted to step into those 63 degree waves. I could see that even my stalwart husband was struggling to stay in the water.

But as I stood on the sand watching those children and their grandfather shrieking, jumping, and laughing in the waves, I knew the choice I needed to make.

The choice to run screaming toward the water was more important than getting splashed, cold, and uncomfortable. I would be sharing in memory making for those little kids and for us.  I knew that the cold water would make me feel alive and bring me fully into the present moment with these precious human beings who I adore.

I was right.

In those first few moments, it was horrible. In the next few moments, it was sort of fun.

And then I screamed, “RETREAT, RETREAT, RETREAT” as we scampered out of the water and back to the sand. This quickly became a game of running in and out of the waves until my feet and legs were so numb I couldn't feel anything.

In retrospect, it was a blast.

In this moment, it is a treasured memory and I’m glad I chose it.

What tiny decisions have made a big impact on your life?

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Today’s post is a lightly edited, somewhat redacted entry from my daily journal. It’s a letter addressed to that legendary, literary genius, Snoopy, from Peanuts fame, who sits poised over a typewriter on the cover of my journal.

Enjoy.

Dear Snoopy:

Nature has delivered another snowstorm, and with it, a YAHOO day. One of those yummy days when all your outside appointments have been canceled and the day is suddenly wide open.

While I love YAHOO days, my problem begins when I try to use them to be productive as I did this morning. My last meeting for the day was canceled late afternoon yesterday, so I had already indulged my obsessive planning fetish and mapped out the perfectly, productive, YAHOO DAY.

I reminded myself that I only have seven days of writing time left this month, and I have three posts to write, record, and publish in that time.

Predictably, this set up a battle between my inner drill sergeant and my puppy mind. Drill Sergeant had already warned me, “Do not squander your YAHOO day!” Puppy wasn’t listening because it was too busy wagging its tail and barking YAHOO! You know what puppies are like, Snoopy. They aren’t serious writers like you and me. They like to sniff, explore, and most of all, fritter.

Now I have to say, over the years, Drill Sergeant has built strict guardrails to keep Puppy in line. Most of the time, Puppy is on a very short leash. But Yahoo days present a new level of challenge.

This morning, I dragged myself out of bed at 6:00 a.m. in an attempt to suppress my natural “YAHOOness” and get down to business.

Things started well.

I began with my morning meditation. However, I was only a few seconds in when Drill Sergeant went all Navy Seal on me and started yelling things like, “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND AND GIVE ME TEN THOUSAND WORDS!” and “YOU DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YAHOO, I WANT SOME BOO-YAH!”

Problem was my puppy was primed for YAHOO and was already sniffing around for something fun.

What followed was an hour of pseudo-writing. Puppy searched my extensive file of writing prompts looking for one that matched its mood. It reread passages written by me and others to get the creative juices flowing. It spent an hour scrambling down associated rabbit holes until Drill Sergeant finally dragged it back out, forcing it to sit still for twenty excruciating minutes while I coughed up a single boring paragraph of what was essentially throat clearing.

So, I decided to try a yoga session to try to get myself into flow. Surely a few well-placed asanas would tame the puppy, right?

Wrong.

Neither Puppy nor Drill Sergeant could tolerate more than 10 minutes of yoga, and even then, kept interrupting to urge me to get on with my damn day.

Puppy Wins!

Then, kiss of death, Puppy opened email.

Another ninety minutes of rabbit holes later, I poured my second cup of coffee. Bored with email, Puppy opened a book I’ve been reading for inspiration called, The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad, a beautiful book packed with writing prompts.

By this time, though, I’m feeling just a wee bit “over-prompted.”

So, the puppy’s cure was to grab another cup of coffee, pick up my phone, and scroll.

So, Snoopy, here I am, over four hours later, at 10:38 a.m.

Drill Sergeant is weeping in the corner. Puppy has won the day.

But before we crap all over my little puppy mind, I want to stop and consider all the essential things I learned from this morning’s adventure in frittering.

1. I learned that consuming two or more cups of coffee a day can lower my risk of dementia.

2. I perused the winning entries of the 2025 Canadian Geographic Photography Contest, which included heart stopping nature scenes and an adorable shot of three otters on a train track, looking at the photographer, as if to say, “RUDE!”

3. I listened to a reassuring talk by author, Oliver Burkeman called Does it Matter?

4. I spent essential time on my note taking app, Evernote, perfecting my filing system.

5. I wrote down a few ideas for a future essay I may never write.

6. I poured another cup of coffee… how many is that now?

7. Finally, I wrote this entry, that spilled out of me and into your pages in 15 minutes of frustration. And look at that. This might just be a usable post!

Seasoned pros in any field – science, sports, writing – will tell you not to wait for inspiration. That the most important things are consistency and endurance. That you must overcome your resistance and get to work. And they are right.

Productivity feeds off consistency. It requires the hard work of showing up. My drill sergeant, as much as I dislike him, has been steadfast. By my side helping me show up day-after-day.

But creativity also requires the freedom to frolic, to sniff around, to push your little nose deep into those warm and enticing burrows.

And if I’m to be honest, some of my best work has come from letting the puppy roam.

Thanks for listening, Snoopy.

I know you get me!

Love,

C

This morning, as my husband and I drove to the gym, we were treated to a post-storm winter wonderland. The trees shimmered silver in the morning sun, their bare branches coated with a fresh film of white powder. Nestled among the deciduous trees, evergreens cradled soft mounds of snow in their emerald needles. It was as if nature had delivered an exquisite peace offering after a night of howling chaos.

Sometimes, I find it helpful to think of the circumstances of my life as a series of weather systems. It reminds me that everything that happens to me and around me is temporary and ever changing.

Most days it’s sunny, cloudy, or a mix. Some days bring a gentle drizzle or snow flurries. But on occasion, the circumstances of my life seem to converge like a perfect storm.

I’ve been experiencing storm conditions in the past few months – a wave of serious illnesses in my intimate circle, the loss of an old friend, and of course, the non-stop blow of geopolitical chaos.

It’s at times like this that I’m grateful for the steadying influences in my life – a gentle, unflappable husband and a small army of caring friends. And occasionally, the wherewithal to pause and remember one of my favorite lines:

I was reminded of these words a few days ago after a sleepless night. They were comforting. They connected with something deep and familiar. Later that day, while struggling to figure out what I needed to do, like a subtle wink from the universe, the answer came in an email.

A gentle call to return.

The email was from Adriene Mishler, creator of Yoga with Adriene, announcing a new yoga series. There, in large letters across my screen was a single word. The guidance I’d been looking for in this precarious moment. The word was “Return.”

Return is the gesture of coming home to yourself. It begins with a pause.

I remembered powerful coaching conversations over the years when breakthroughs would come after a moment of return. How a client, in one moment full of anxiety or frustration, would calm and return to themselves after a few intentional breaths. How from that space, they could access an inner wisdom that often knew, better than I did, what they needed to do next.

When anxiety, fear, and grief wash over us, we can allow the wave to pass, then pause and return to a quiet sanctuary inside. We can recover a sense of stability and peace beneath the storm of our circumstances and our emotional response.

As a practice, return is coming back to fundamentals. Those basic but essential things in our lives that keep us grounded and whole. A return to the sound of our breath. Listening for the quiet voice beneath the critical chatter. Placing a hand over our hearts for comfort and compassion. Returning to the values that anchor us.

Return is a ritual of recovery and re-alignment of our body, mind, heart, and spirit.

When we are caught in a perfect storm, our greatest opportunity for influence is not in trying to change the weather or in resisting and wishing it were different, but in how we engage with the forces acting on our lives.

And most of all, who we bring to that moment.

Welcome to Season 5 of The Slow Sip

Here’s what’s coming in 2026:

• Introducing One Sip. Think of One Sips as single shots of goodness that you can sip in under three minutes, and savor all day long.

• Deeper dives including personal essays and humor for inspiration and encouragement sprinkled with some of my most popular posts over the last four years.

• “Shareables,” will return this year with occasional recommendations of gems I find on Substack or elsewhere.

• And finally, The Practice, where I slip into “coach-mode” and share my best tools, exercises, and practices to help you make small, positive changes that create transformative impacts over time.

What’s changing in 2026.

• No more paywalls. Beginning in 2026, all my posts on Substack will be available to all subscribers. I’m exploring some new and better ways to thank my paid subscribers for their generous support, without restricting access to my writing. Stay tuned for more about that!

• A new format for The Practice. I’m replacing monthly Practice posts with seasonal Practice Intensives. Intensives feature reflections, powerful questions and simple practices that build on each other over three to six weeks. These intensives will be free to all subscribers. Paid subscribers will receive downloadable tools, guides, or workbooks to complement and enhance their practice. Our first series, called Return, will launch this spring. Stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

• Seasonal production schedule: I’m taking a seasonal approach to producing and publishing The Slow Sip in 2026. It’s my way of walking my talk about working at a natural and sustainable pace. This year’s schedule will run from January to May and September to November.

My goal is to deliver an experience that is inspiring, encouraging, and practical, with a wee bit of irreverence and levity to help the medicine go down.

One of the prime tenets of a Slow Sip lifestyle is “Less, but better.”

That’s what I’m going for in 2026.

I hope you’ll send me a note or leave a comment from time-to-time to let me know how I’m doing.

With gratitude,

Cathy

P.S. If you know someone who could use a little more slow sipping in their life, please recommend The Slow Sip and share this post.

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Here’s the image I get when I hear the phrase ‘Finish Strong.’

Emaciated marathoner stumbling through the tape, gasping for air, and collapsing on the track.

So right now, as I deliver my final post of 2025, I want to declare that emaciated, exhausted, and gasping for air is not how we roll at The Slow Sip!

Photo by Jupiterimages

Here’s a different twist, with a brief story and a simple but profound practice for finishing strong.

The Celebration That Almost Didn’t Happen.

Eight months after the sale of our company was complete and all the obligations had been met; my colleagues, our life partners, and I finally gathered to celebrate and formally bring our business relationship to a close.

What was interesting was not that we gathered to celebrate, but that we almost didn’t.

After several failed attempts to schedule and reschedule the gathering, we began to ask ourselves, is it too late? Should we just let it go?

It would have been so easy to do that. And understandable.

It happens all the time. It’s so common to blow by endings like that. Things are often moving so quickly, that we haven’t even reached the finish line before we’re mentally running the next race.

Had we given in to that urge to just not bother, we would have missed an evening that turned out to be much like the people who attended – full of fun, laughter, affection, and heart. We’d also have missed a gathering imbued with a deep sense of meaning and significance.

We opened a couple of bottles of bubbly and toasted. We honoured the founders and what we had created. We raised a glass to the new owners who had helped us build the firm and were already shaping its future. We toasted our business manager whose gentle steadiness became an essential ingredient to our success.

Then, one of the founders raised a glass to our life partners. A few of them had been early clients before their spouses joined the firm. Others had played an active, hands-on role providing unpaid support for everything from emergency IT troubleshooting to spread sheet ninja to financial and business advice.

One even tried to give us brand advice by suggesting we adopt the tag line “We do woo-woo better than you do!”

Their commitment went way beyond support. In their own way, each one of them had been a champion of us and our work. But that night, there was something they needed us to hear.

“You need to know this.”

After the toast, one of them told the story of being one of our first clients and how, at the time, few were offering what we were offering. He talked about the initial skepticism we faced, the risks we took, and the lasting impact we had on him, on his leadership, and on his organization. He said, “I think it’s important to acknowledge the courage it took to do what you did, when so few were doing it. What you built over the last 20 years was no small feat and a foundation to be really proud of.”

One of the founder’s spouses spoke from the heart about the positive impact of his wife’s decision to join us in founding the company and how he and their children had learned and benefited from what we were doing.

Later, another guest took me aside to share a personal story of the impact of a coaching conversation we had at a pivotal stage in her leadership. “You need to know this,” she said.

The phrase, “You need to know this,” came up in one way or another more than once that evening. I think this was their way of saying, “You need to honour this.” And they were right.

As I listened to the stories that night, it struck me that everyone in that room had contributed to creating a rare and precious thing together. This little organization had shaped and grown all of us and gave us an opportunity to do work that mattered.

There’s a ritual we bring to the teams and leadership groups we work with called “Completion.”

It’s the simple but intentional practice of closing down and honouring our time together. Typically, we invite everyone to offer a single word or phrase, whatever participants need to say to leave the room feeling a sense of closure.

Often, participants use it as an opportunity to express appreciation for each other. But sometimes they use it to acknowledge some hurt or challenging realization. Honouring endings is not always about appreciating positive things, sometimes we need to honour our pain or our failure.

Honouring, as a ritual of completion, is as old as humanity itself. Funerals are a ritual of honouring. Grief is a process of honouring and completion.

What I have learned over and over again in my work and my life is that finishing strong is not about crossing finish lines or “gettin’ ‘er done.” It’s about taking the time to honour where we are and how we got here.

The practice of honouring endings matters because every significant ending involves, in some way, a change in identity.

This is what can make moving on so difficult. It involves letting go of some part of ourselves. It can be painful. It may require that we forgive ourselves. We may grieve. We may cling even when clinging creates suffering.

Before that evening with my colleagues, I would have told you that I had already moved on. Because I thought I had.

But on reflection, I found the gathering surprisingly cathartic. I felt this new sense of closure and peace that I had not felt before. There were glimpses of it along the way, of course, as I pulled back from the day-to-day operation of the company, but nothing felt quite so complete.

I carried no regrets about selling the business. I knew it was in capable hands and because I believed so deeply in the work, I was grateful to the new owners for continuing to take it forward. But somehow, those few hours together, long after actually crossing the finish line, enabled me to finally release that part of me whose identity was still attached to the firm and the work.

Everything I needed to say, I said. Everything I needed to honour, I honoured.

Now I could move on with peace and gratitude in my heart.

Tell me, as you come to the end of 2025, what do you need to honour?

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Sometimes this feeling is a signal that I need to rest. I’ve learned the hard way that I need to heed that signal. But …

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You have a great idea.

And it’s BIG. It’s REALLY BIG!

You can feel the surge of creative energy. It has all the fresh start momentum of torrents of water gushing over Niagara Falls. It’s brilliant. It’s groundbreaking.

IT IS GOING TO BE AMAZING!!!

You, my friend, have entered the land of possibility. It’s glorious, thrilling. You are pumped!

Until… you think about beginning to work on it.

It’s at the first sign that you might be prepared to do something with your VERY BIG IDEA that a chorus of doubting and critical voices begin to sing a familiar refrain.

This is a stupid idea.

It’s never going to work.

You don’t have what it takes to pull it off.

This, my dear Slow Sippers, is your true creative genius in action. It is your unique, powerful, and divinely inspired gift for getting in your own way.

You have now left the land of possibility and entered the inner sanctum of The Committee, that diabolical secret society that dwells near your amygdala and is quietly trying to exert control. (I’ve written about The Committee and some of its members before, here and here. And a few of them have actually written posts extolling their virtues, here and here.)

My Committee Chair, Brutilla. Photo by DAPA Images

You may know The Committee by another name - inner critic, saboteur, or gremlin, perhaps.

If you have a brain stem, chances are excellent, a Committee has set up camp somewhere near it. Yours may be different than mine. But I’m willing to bet some of this may sound disturbingly familiar.

Many experts describe this phenomenon as a singular voice, the inner critic. But, in my case and in the case of many of my clients, this is more than one voice.

One tells you to go ahead, enjoy that dark chocolate and all its wonderful anti-inflammatory properties. And then, the moment you pop it into your mouth, another voice calls you an undisciplined loser.

Or what about those embarrassing moments, when your spouse knocks on the bathroom door and asks who you are arguing with in there? And you realize, for the last 10 minutes, you’ve been carrying on a heated debate with your bathroom mirror.

This is not one voice. This is a cabal. A collection of shadowy characters participating in the most common and effective conspiracy of all time. The conspiracy to take control of your life, to keep you small, to keep you safe, and to make you as miserable as possible in the process. This is your inner Committee.

Your job is to tame it so you can get back to your BIG IDEA. But first, you need to realize it exists and then you need to learn how it works. When you become a student of The Committee, you learn its moves and countermoves. You discover its ingenious and devious ways. Only then, can you bend it to your will… sort of, sometimes.

It helps to know what to look for.

I thought it might be useful (and only a little humiliating) to reveal my Committee and introduce some of its characters in action. And what better way to do that than to share the agonizing process of writing and publishing this post.

How the sausage gets made – Committee-style.

Early-Stage Drafting: Enter Fret.

When I imagine Fret, she is a skinny, wiry character whose hair is a tangled nest thinned out from all that pulling. She produces emotions from low grade anxiety to full panic. Fret is the chief gardener and caretaker of the “Seeds of Doubt.”

Her primary role on The Committee is to scan for and escalate threats. Problem is, she’s not particularly good at discerning a real threat from anything else.

Here’s a typical example.

My husband and I are watching T.V. after supper.

He sneezes. Fret says…

What was that?

He sneezes a second time.

I don’t like this. He doesn’t look good.

You know he isn’t getting any younger.

Older men are susceptible to pneumonia. Remember, his dad almost died of pneumonia when he was his age.

Third sneeze.

OMG, CALL 911!

Her next role is to try to talk me out of anything that constitutes risk.

New ideas, particularly ideas that may be published, are the very definition of risk.

• There’s the risk of disappointment and failure.

• The risk of rejection.

• The risk of being noticed or standing out in any way.

• The risk of making a fool of myself or revealing that I’m a fraud.

• And most alarming of all, there’s the serious and lethal risk of success.

This post is like a five-alarm fire for her because it presents risks in all the categories above and it exposes The Committee itself.

So, the early draft conversations go something like this.

I’m not sure this is such a good idea. It feels like a lot for a single post. I thought you were writing a book on this. You wouldn’t want anyone to steal this idea by previewing it in a post.

Why don’t we just file this away in “the book you’ll never have time to write pile.” Why don’t you try something less threatening, like “An Expert’s Guide To Folding Fitted Sheets.”

I ignore her pleading and begin to draft the opening paragraph.

Hmmm. This is really not working. I think there’s a flaw in the overall premise. That line there, I’m not sure you can say that. Are you sure you’re qualified to be writing about this?

I keep writing.

Oh, I get where you’re going now. Okay that’s not going to work. I’m thinking this is a little too ambitious.

Oh, you’re trying to be funny. Oh no, kiss of death! Oh my god, this is sooooo NOT FUNNY. Oh, you’re going to look so stupid! Oh, oh, oh, I can’t breathe.

OMG! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE STILL WRITING THIS SCHLOCK!!!

I begin paragraph two.

This is where she starts with the meaning of life questions.

Really, THIS is your life’s work? A newsletter? I thought you wanted to be a REAL writer. There are a gazillion writers on this platform writing the same stuff, AND THEY’RE ALL BETTER AND MORE QUALIFIED THAN YOU!

Even Chat GPT writes better than this.

I think we need to pee.

At this point my imagined opening two paragraphs of riveting, hilarious, and concise prose have turned into a 2,000-word incoherent stream-of-throat-clearing in search of an actual point.

But when The Committee realizes I’m not ready to give up, they call in the Director of Procrastination and Avoidance, Slug.

Mid Stage Drafting: Enter Slug.

I picture Slug at about 350 pounds, unshaven and wearing a chocolate and beer-stained t-shirt. He makes gross bodily noises.

Slug is a virtuoso of non-doing.

And it is the messy middle of anything I’m creating where he shines.

As I work on these paragraphs, he yawns.

Man, are we tired. Don’t you feel that? Do you hear that noise? That is the sound of life and joy being sucked out of our marrow. I think we need to lie down for a wee nap.

I can’t believe how hard this is. What a slog! BORING.

Then I hit a snag. I need more information.

Slug can barely contain his glee as I decide to consult his new best friend, the AI bot, Co-pilot. Co-pilot is Slug’s quintessential guide to rabbit hole nirvana.

We start with a question like: “What is the origin of the expression “non-doing?”

That leads us down a Taoist rabbit hole, and Co-pilot rewards Slug by offering to produce a table showing him the differences in the first paragraphs of the Tao Te Ching from four different translations. (Because, why not?)

Now, Slug is officially “off leash,” so he and Co-pilot go for an extended spin with riveting queries like…

“Who are the Blue Jays better off facing in the World Series – The Dodgers or the Brewers and why? Please provide a table with the records from previous meetings this season including pitchers used and results.”

And then we move on to health.

“How can we reduce stubborn belly fat without exercising or giving up our favorite foods?”

And more promising rabbit holes.

“What is the best time of year for a Mediterranean Cruise?” Which leads to a two-hour journey to exotic travel destinations complete with recommended itineraries and packing advice.

When I finally wrestle the keyboard back from Slug and exit out of Co-pilot, he says,

Are you hungry? I’m famished. I could go for a little “snorkerel” of chocolate right now or better still, I think there’s an open wine in the fridge. How about some day drinking!!!

Oh, I see the sofa over there, let’s grab a bag of chips and watch some daytime television.

The Point of No Return

This is the ultimate fork in the road. It is the moment that I decide I either have the makings of a workable post, or I realize, in the words of Star Trek’s Borg, “resistance is futile” and it is time to let the piece go in the dreaded dead post file.

The Go Decision.

You would think that once I decide on the go decision that The Committee would finally give up and leave me in peace to finish this post.

But no, this is where they call on CAPTAIN DETAIL!

CAPTAIN DETAIL insists that I write his name in all caps. His detail is zero defects. He has two roles on The Committee – precision and perfection.

I picture him in a superhero costume complete with six pack abs and his name emblazoned on his undersized fire-engine red shirt.

No detail is too small, no oversight too minor, no comma or punctuation decision too trivial. CAPTAIN DETAIL’s genius is time sucking, spirit crushing editing. He can take what should be a 20-minute process and turn it into a multi-day, project killing marathon.

The purpose? To keep this post from ever going live.

The No-Go Decision.

Suppose Fret, Slug, and CAPTAIN DETAIL are successful, and I decide to discard this post. The Committee will finally take the win and shut up, right?

Wrong.

This is the Committee’s true genius – The Art of the Lose-Lose.

In fact, a no-go decision will have them summon the Committee Chair, Our Lady of Perpetual Disappointment, Brutilla. The ultimate judge. The merciless, nastiest, beeyotch to ever pick up a gavel.

Brutilla likes to use the word, “dear,” when she dresses me down.

Well, I wish we could say we were surprised, but we all knew this about you, didn’t we, dear. You are a quitter. A failure. A hopeless wannabe, aren’t you dear? This is why you will never be a writer of any consequence. You just cannot seem to bring anything of value across the finish line.

Brutilla will then pull out the “Ledger of Failures and Unfinished Projects” and review it with me in excruciating detail as evidence for why I should stop writing and crawl back into that fetal position I came from.

Usually, even the threat of a visit from Brutilla is enough to have me turn to CAPTAIN DETAIL and say, “Party’s over, BIG GUY, we’re hitting publish!”

As excruciating as all this sounds, I have learned something about this band of inner bad roommates. They are actually trying to be helpful. They think they are protecting me from myself.

And I’ve learned something even more important. If you take away nothing else from this post, remember this.

They become the loudest and most insistent when I’m taking risks, being courageous, and getting up to something amazing.

I have learned that if I can laugh at them and see them as the adorable misfits that they are, I reduce their power over me. I can pat them on the head and reassure them that I’ve got this. When I do this, it becomes easier and easier to get into the flow of writing. And the wonderful thing about flow is, I can’t hear them from there.

Tell me, can you relate?

What strategies have you found most helpful for taming these voices of doubt?

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Decorated Festive Table for Thanksgiving Day Dinner - Photos by Canva Lovely Girl chose this photo. To her disappointment, my Thanksgiving table will not look like this.

As I was climbing down rabbit holes earlier this week, trying to avoid her incessant nagging, I picked up a translation of the Tao Te Ching that had been sitting on my bookshelf unopened for many years.

This passage jumped out at me.

At first, I chuckled, because Lovely Girl is all about what is lacking, at least as it pertains to me and my hosting skills.

But as the words began to work on me, I remembered an experience I had eight years ago, when I traveled to Nepal.

My fellow trekkers and I had been walking for about six days, when we arrived in the village of Lo Manthang, in a remote area of Nepal, 50 km from the Chinese border.

As we walked through the center of the village, we passed a group of elderly women washing clothes in a large open drainage ditch running through the street. Their faces were wrinkled and weathered by years in the sun. They sat low on their haunches in a position I could never hope to attain, let alone stay in long enough to do laundry. As we passed, they stopped chatting for a moment, looked up at us, and giggled. I’m fairly sure they were laughing at us, and in retrospect, they had good reason. We must have looked ridiculous in our overpriced trekking gear, dirty, tired, and hobbled from days of climbing to an altitude we were not built to endure.

As we passed their houses, it was clear that they lived in conditions most North Americans would find unbearable. And yet, here they were, doing their washing, laughing and chatting with one another, seemingly content and at peace. This was not the only time we would encounter scenes like this — people living in harsh conditions who seemed to be content.

It was for me, the clearest, most stark evidence of a line I read in a book by Buddhist teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, “pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” That much of our suffering arises not from what is happening but from our response to what is happening.

This and my other experiences in Nepal changed the way I saw my own life. When I returned home, things I had always taken for granted – running water, flush toilets, electricity, refrigerators full of food, seemed like luxuries. My hot morning shower, in particular, almost made me weep with gratitude.

I remember feeling humbled, like I had somehow won some undeserved cosmic lottery to be able to live with the comforts of life in North America. Suddenly my problems seemed trivial. I walked around in a state of overwhelming gratitude.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

Within a few weeks, I fell back to sleep. I returned to my normal mildly irritated way of constantly wishing for things to be different.

Unfortunately, this is a normal quirk of human psychology. It’s called hedonic adaptation. We tend to stop feeling grateful for what we have, once the novelty wears off.

While the euphoria and gratitude didn’t last, the memory did. And it changed my understanding of what it takes to be content.

A flawed way of thinking about contentment.

When I was younger, in the exhausting days of striving to build a career while raising two small children, I used to equate contentment with complacency. I believed that dissatisfaction with the status quo contained the seeds of motivation and drive. It was necessary to fuel improvement, excellence, and success. And I was swimming in a business culture that fostered and rewarded that kind of thinking.

In the same way, I confused personal growth with personal improvement, which I viewed as a frustratingly slow journey to a less flawed me. Afterall, how can you strive to become better if you are content with who you are?

Doesn’t contentment lead to stagnation?

If we are content, won’t we lose our edge?

One of the benefits of being able to look back over 20 years of coaching conversations with leaders from many walks of life, is I can see larger patterns in those conversations. I have observed that creating an edge out of a sense of lack, or striving for improvement from a sense of inadequacy, more often resulted in suffering than in achievement or growth.

As I get older and begin to confront the inevitable losses that come with ageing, I have stopped believing in the virtues of discontent. I have come to the conclusion that discontent and its relentless focus on what is lacking, is a time and energy suck I can no longer afford.

If we can’t bring ourselves to “rejoice in the way things are,” perhaps we can, at least, acknowledge and accept our experience of the world in this moment. This is not complacency or resignation. It is greeting the world as it is, greeting ourselves, and each other as we are. Being clear-eyed in the present.

It is saying:

I think of gratitude practice as a doorway to a larger and more stable state of contentment. It brings psychological benefits because it asks us to pause, step back, and wake up to what is. It enables us to see the world, not as it is packaged and delivered to us on our devices, but as we actually experience it — whether we are cooking a Thanksgiving dinner or washing our laundry in the street.

In some ways, The Slow Sip exists to encourage you (and me) to take the time to be with our experience, to sip and savor our lives. To live consciously and intentionally and with gratitude for what Mary Oliver calls “our one wild and precious life.”

Whether your Thanksgiving arrives this weekend, next month, or not at all, may you feel peace and contentment wherever you are.

With gratitude, I’m including a little Thanksgiving gift from The Slow Sip archives.

Enjoy.

Reflect: Learning to hang with discomfort.

Photo of me, hanging with discomfort.

To say I’m not comfortable at public gyms would be an understatement.

First, there’s the fact that my gym’s members are mostly young, fit, and look great in tight workout gear. (I’m in my late 60s and like my gym-wear baggy.)

There’s the full volume, base-throbbing music that b…

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I’m back in my writing perch after an extended summer break. I hope you enjoyed your summer and the sips I sent you from The Slow Sip archives.

Welcome to Tsunami September!

Photo by Alexander Izmaylov via Canva

That’s what one of my former business partners used to call September as we scanned our exploding inboxes and calendars and tried not to hyperventilate. As much as it made my heart pump a little harder, I thought the description was apt in many ways.

For many of us, September feels like the true new year. Here, the school year begins, people come back from summer vacation, and you can almost hear the thrum of a world gearing up.

We have an expression in this part of the world.

“Giv’er”.

It means to gear up, to put the pedal to the metal. To make those tires squeal and go.

September is full of giv’er energy. I love it. It’s my birthday month, it’s beautiful here in Nova Scotia, and it’s full of that yummy fresh start juice.

But sometimes, September can also feel like watching a giant wall of appointments, obligations, and deadlines roar toward you, threatening to swallow you whole.

Each September, I set an intention. A word or two to describe how I want to greet the new season.

Most years, I try to make the most of the fresh start energy and I use words like “reboot” or “traction” or “brace for impact!”

I was all ready to go with “Giv’er,” this year. I had plans to write a Practice post on the theme of reset. Tips to help you get from zero to 100 in 30 seconds.

But this September felt different.

First of all, my fresh start came later than I’d planned due to an extended road trip. I noticed that my giv’er energy was laced with currents of anxiety. It was as if my inner critic was screaming that I was already behind and carrying around a taser, zapping me from the inside. The usual voices in my head telling me to put my head down, get cranking, produce, produce, produce, were not motivating. They were stress inducing.

Then, as often happens, as I reflected on all of this, a quotation arrived in my inbox, (courtesy of my meditation app.)

Hmmm.

What would that be like? This question led me down an online rabbit hole, where I tend to go when I’m angst-ridden and procrastinating.

I stumbled on a recording of “Let It Be” by The Beatles. As I listened, I felt my shoulders relax just a bit. It brought back visions of the solace my young and deliciously tormented adolescent soul used to get from this song. Next stop down the rabbit hole was Idina Menzel’s version of “Let It Go,” from the movie Frozen, complete with Princess Elsa singing her heart out. (Because, as my nieces sometimes remind me, it’s never a bad idea to turn to a Disney Princess at times like this.)

In my mind, I tried on the words,

It would be an understatement to say, this is not a “go-to” stance for me. I’m not big on standing still at the edge of the beach and waiting for the tsunami to carry me away.

I’m a little more…

• Over plan and obsess over what might come;

• Try to change or fix what is; and

• Ruminate and cling to what is trying to go.

.

But I wondered, what if I retired “giv’er” as an intention and played with “Let it come. Let it be. Let it go.” What would remain? That could be interesting. It could take a little courage.

Now, intentions can be powerful, but they are not personality transplants.

I knew that simply repeating these words or adding them as a screen saver were not going to change anything. I’d need to practice this in the real world.

As luck would have it, the universe was more than willing to deliver just enough family, work, and social chaos in my first week back from summer break to put this new (to me) way of being to the test.

And of course, I failed… totally.

I immediately reverted to obsessing, overplanning, and loading up on heartburn medication.

As my dad used to say, "Oops, oh well."

But then, I remembered. I noticed. I repeated the words to myself.

After one particularly angst-inducing day, I went to the window, and the scene took my breath away. The early evening light had a soft September slant. The sun had painted large swaths of intense red, orange, and magenta across the horizon. It had dabbed the undersides of clouds a deep plum and kissed the water pink.

It seemed to say, look what is available to you, if you just let it be?

How do you greet September? Do you lean more to “giv’er or let‘er come?”

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Photo Credit: Congerdesign from Pixabay

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Sometimes when yet another article extolling the benefits of self-compassion comes across my desk, I have this strange dual reaction. Part of me cringes and the other part has to suppress the urge to roll my eyes.

What is that?

What kind of coach rolls her eyes at the notion that most of us need to be more compassionate with ourselves?

Before I answer that, let me share a story.

I had been working with a leader for a few years. Despite a tough start in life, Rachel (not her real name) managed to build a successful career and rise through the ranks of a competitive, results-driven organization. She was a strong leader. Her colleagues respected her and described her as having exceedingly high standards, driven, and fair.

She got results.

At this point in our work together, however, she was crashing against a wall of intractable challenges – at work, with her physical health, and in life in general. She showed classic signs of burnout. It was as if the things that had propelled her forward were now creating serious obstacles in every aspect of her life. One of those things was a demanding, harsh, and uncompromising inner critic.

The coaching was tough during that period. We’d been struggling for several weeks. During the previous session, I conducted a visualization with her, asking her to imagine herself 20 years from now in an ideal future state. Being a naturally creative person, she responded well to the exercise. She created a vivid and memorable picture of this future self in her mind. 

On this day, after a particularly brutal week, she began our session with a litany of her personal shortcomings as a leader. Her frustration, impatience, and disgust with herself crackled in the air between us. I asked her to take a few deep breaths and, somewhat impatiently, she complied. When I sensed that the emotional charge was dissipating, I asked her to close her eyes and conjure up the image of her future self she had created in our last session. I asked her to embody that image, to try to imagine that she already was that person. She struggled at first but then she got there. I asked her to bring to mind a picture of her current self as if she was looking at her from the future.

I asked, “As you look at this woman in front of you, what do you see?”

Silence. And then the look on her face softened. “I see someone who is hurting.”

More silence. And then “I see someone who is trying very hard, who has all the right intentions, and who is just doing the best she can.”

More silence. It was as if we were in a bubble together looking at something intimate and precious.

Then I asked, “What words of comfort and compassion can you offer this woman who is doing the very best she can?”

Slowly, there was a shift in her whole being. I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

The bearing down energy was gone and a gentler energy emerged full of compassion, relief, and tears.

She told me much later, that for her, this was the first moment of true and sustained self-compassion she had ever experienced.

What I would witness over the next several months was the beginning of a longer-term transformation and a significant developmental leap for this leader. Slowly it changed her way of being at work and her impact on her colleagues. She was still a strong leader, but she suffered less. She was lighter, more comfortable in her own skin. She showed more compassion toward others. She and her team continued to produce outstanding results, arguably even better ones. Adjectives like “tough but fair” were replaced with “motivating and inspiring.”

The hard work of rewiring your self-talk.

Strangely, this story illustrates what is at the heart of the eye-rolling for me.

First, there is the concept of self-compassion, which is easy to write about and sounds very… well… nice. There’s the research pointing to the correlation between self-compassion, happiness, and effective leadership, which I’m grateful for, but doesn’t get us any closer to the actual practice.

The concept of self-compassion on inspirational posters doesn't acknowledge the hard work of putting compassion at the heart of your inner conversation.

Particularly for those who have deeply embedded and harsh inner critics.

The exercise Rachel and I did together was not my first attempt to introduce the need for Rachel to be more compassionate with herself. I’d been suggesting that for months. But all the gentle admonitions to those harsh and judgmental voices in her head were not going to reverse a lifetime of self-recrimination. Rachel didn’t suddenly let go of a life-long habit of brutal self-judgment and uncompromising demands on herself because I told her it would make her happier.

And if I’m to be completely honest with you, neither did her coach. What Rachel and I had in common was that self-judgment and the inner drill sergeant were deeply ingrained and critical drivers of our success.

That experience did not only change her; it changed me.

Coaching sessions like the one with Rachel, where the transformative experience unfolds in the session itself, are rare. Often the transformation is much more subtle and takes place over a long period of time. Often the insight lands long after the coach has left the building. The session was powerful, but the more lasting change came after months of work on Rachel’s part. That session didn’t create the change, it nudged her onto a new path. It offered her something better than an explanation or persuasive argument; it offered her a real experience of what it is like to be on the receiving end of self-compassion and a pathway to its practice.

Here are some hard lessons I’ve learned about the practice of self-compassion.

You can’t bully or guilt your way to self-compassion.

I once had a coach who was also a Buddhist meditation teacher. He said:

“Imagine two dogs – a big dog and a little dog – guarding a door. You are behind the door. The dogs are there to protect you. The little dog is yapping. The noise is shrill, constant, relentless. It’s telling you to watch out. It’s telling you there’s danger. It’s telling you all the things that are wrong with you. That you’re going to fail. That the world is coming to an end. It’s nipping at you, telling you that if you are to prevent disaster, you need to work harder, to be better.

The big dog is quiet, occasionally letting out a low growl. Then, every once in a while, the big dog erupts ferociously and barks at the little dog, “Shut up with your constant yapping. You’re too hard on her. Leave her alone, you little jerk! Show some compassion!”

Here’s the thing, they are both dogs that you have created. The real you is behind the door.

That voice in your head that chastises you for being so hard on yourself. That tells you, you suck at self-compassion and that you’ll never be happy. That voice is just another dog.

And here’s the really tricky thing. The dogs need compassion too. The road to self compassion does not begin by declaring war on your inner critic. Your inner critic is just a guard dog that needs love, compassion, and reassurance that you’re going to be okay. When you start fighting with that voice, you amplify it. When you fight with the yapper, you are simply placing another dog at the door. Further, you are turning against a part of yourself. And all parts of yourself need compassion.

Self-compassion is compassion for the dogs AND for the beautiful human behind the door.

Self-compassion is not passive or self-indulgent.

If you look up the definition of compassion, it’s feeling another person's pain and wanting to take steps to help relieve their suffering. The word compassion is derived from Latin and means "to suffer together."

Often relieving suffering involves confronting something uncomfortable, hearing a hard truth, or accepting responsibility for our unintended impact.

Self-compassion does not let you off the hook if you are behaving badly. In fact, the more you practice self-compassion, the easier it is for you to hear feedback and to take responsibility for your actions. Because your inner dialogue is affirming, your sense of self-worth is not so threatened when you fail.

Self-compassion is not about overlooking your shortcomings, it’s about loving you as you are, including your shortcomings.

Further, self-compassion is not curling into a fetal position in your favorite blankie and disconnecting from the world. (Okay, maybe it is, sometimes).

Mostly it’s loving and active. It asks something of you. It believes in you. It champions you and gives you helpful feedback when you come up short.

Self-compassion takes conscious, intentional, deliberate practice. It’s hard work.

Hearing you should be more self-compassionate, is not helpful. It’s just pressure.

All the research I could share, all the benefits I could articulate, all the subtle ways I could point out you’d be happier if you could just love yourself, are not going to convince you to be more self-compassionate. Because you and I don’t need convincing. We already know this.

But knowing it and accessing it are not the same. Many of us have a fear of being self-indulgent, of losing our hard-won gains by letting down our guard. For many, our self-worth feels contingent on being smart or competent or collegial or accomplished. For others, the concept of self-compassion is a handy shield from facing the hard things we need to face.

We need to experiment. We need to experience the difference. We need to build trust over time that our success does not hinge on being relentless task masters. We need to feel what it is like to know that there is an inner voice and wisdom we can trust.

What happens when you stop and listen for the voice behind the door?

This morning I caught my inner voice being encouraging.

For the last few days, I’d been struggling with this post. The little dog was yapping and indulging in a lot of unhelpful questions about whether the world really needs yet another blog post on this topic. But this morning, as I was brewing my morning coffee, I caught myself saying things like, “I think you’re onto something here. This has promise. Just trust yourself. You can do this.”

I stopped in “mid-atta girl” and thought, hmmm. Where did that voice come from? Cool.

I’ve stopped (mostly) telling my clients to be more self-compassionate.

Instead, I try to summon the voice behind the door. I ask…

• What would be most helpful right now?

• If your best friend in the whole world was going through this, what would you say?

• What would be the most loving, encouraging, and honest thing you could say or do right now?

These are also the questions I ask myself.

Ironically, I’ve learned that being self-compassionate is like being a good coach to yourself. Sometimes that requires deep listening and curiosity. Sometimes it’s letting you feel what you feel. Sometimes it’s offering comfort. Or holding up a mirror and lovingly asking you to face a hard truth.

And sometimes, its simply coming out from behind the door, patting the dogs on the head and saying, “It's going to be okay. We’ve got this!”

Photo Credit: Kitty cat lurking in the bush by digihelion

As I looked around, I felt a creeping sense of impending doom. About 30 chairs were arranged in a circle in the center of the room. No tables I could slink under if things got uncomfortable. No rows of chairs I could hide behind. I had been in rooms like this before. This circle configuration could only mean one thing.

Without realizing that I was using my outside voice, I mumbled, “Oh shit, we’re going to share.”

A woman with a kind face and the obvious air of leadership put her arm around me and said, “Oh yes, girlfriend, we’re going to share.” At which point she led me to a chair a little too close to where the leaders would be sitting.

This was my uncomfortable introduction to the world of coaching.

You see, I am a life-long, elite-level lurker. I try to avoid anything that requires any level of personal risk. There are no waters I will enter without a significant amount of toe-dipping first.

I suspect she shared my remark with her co-leader because within 30 seconds of beginning the class, he stood up, walked over to my chair, and asked me to stand. (I willed myself not to bolt for the door.)

He asked, in a kind of in-your-face manner, “What’s your name?”

“Cathy.”

“Welcome Cathy.” Unnecessarily long and dramatic pause for effect.

 “Cathy, tell us. What’s your dream?”

I failed to suppress a groan. My shoulders slumped. I said something akin to, “Right now, my dream is for this moment to be over.” There was nervous laughter around the circle, but he was not amused. He had picked a dud. The vibe I had created was not what he wanted.

“You can sit down,” he said, dismissing me. He moved on to someone who looked more ready to share an inspiring dream. One that could be succinctly and passionately articulated from inside an elevator.

The message that morning was simple and direct.

There would be no lurking tolerated here. This was not a lurk-friendly environment. The comfort zone in this room was and would remain for the duration of the program, the size of a pinhead.

What is a lurker?

Here’s what Wikipedia says about lurkers.

“In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community who observes, but does not participate… Lurking allows users to learn the conventions of an online community before they participate, improving their socialization when they eventually "de-lurk".”

But here’s the thing Wikipedia doesn’t tell you.

The practice of lurking is much older than Internet culture and it is not confined to engaging online. In fact, if you’ve participated in almost any face-to-face business meeting or social gathering, you’ve witnessed lurking.

So, to get us on the same page, here’s my definition.

Lurking is the subtle art of pretending to participate while what you are really doing is standing at the edge of the pool, gently wriggling your toes in the water while watching everybody else get wet.

You are waiting. You are standing by. You are picking your moment to wade in should you decide that the water is of an optimal, lukewarm temperature .

Lurkers prize two things above all else – comfort and safety.

Lurking is a key strategy in one’s arsenal for maintaining personal safety in groups, in particular, those loathsome groups that want to explore your feelings or expect you to be vulnerable.

Note: At this point, I feel I need to own up to what some might feel is a tiny bit of hypocrisy. It is true that I do, in fact, earn a living from facilitating such loathsome groups. Because my day job is coaching and developing leaders and teams, I frequently facilitate vulnerable and sometimes high-risk group dynamics.

When facilitated skillfully, these meetings have enormous value in creating group trust and in developing your leadership skill and effectiveness. Sometimes they can be cathartic and lead to breakthroughs.

But that doesn’t make them any less loathsome to the unsuspecting lurker who suddenly finds herself thrust into one.

Fun fact: A high number of professional facilitators are closet lurkers.

The lurker’s code of conduct.

The expression “still waters run deep” came from the ancient practice of lurking. And while I don’t have data to back this up, I suspect lurking is practiced primarily by introverts. While not all introverts are lurkers, I think it’s a safe bet that most lurkers are introverted.

And make no mistake, some of us have developed lurking as an art form. Lurkers are the people who sit in meetings, classrooms or video calls (although now they can listen to recordings so they often don’t show up at all) and “listen” intently, sometimes taking notes, sometimes frowning knowingly, sometimes nodding. They can appear bored, sometimes skeptical, or fully engaged. But what they are engaged in, is checking things out.

If lurkers were to create a society and have a code of conduct, it would look something like this.

1. Beware of group dynamics. Whether in person or on-line, groups are inherently risky. Groups professing “to be safe” and inviting you to "be vulnerable" should be considered armed and dangerous.

2. Stealth is wealth. Maintain a clinical distance and don’t let them see you sweat.

3. Avoid speaking first. Risk-taking is for dummies.

4. NEVER make eye contact with the meeting leader, chair, or facilitator.

5. Only express popular and uncontroversial opinions.

6. Avoid discomfort at all costs.

7. Controversy and conflict are forms of discomfort.

8. The best time and place to challenge the status quo is when you are alone in your bathroom talking to the mirror.

Why every healthy group dynamic needs at least one lurker.

A friend once sent me a link to information on a course she was considering. Included with the course material was something called “Dynamic Group Guidelines.”

I began to read, my back already stiffening with resistance, as I readied myself for a document telling me how to conduct myself in that group. I hate being told “how to be.”

Then I read the first “guideline.” Immediately, I felt a sense indignation. It was as if the authors of what I now viewed as an authoritarian manifesto were pointing directly at me.

The agreement was, “Be All In.” Here’s the line that set me off: “Those who are shy, or “lurking” call themselves forward to participate with the group in a more interconnected way.”

This was a direct assault on lurking! A clear anti-lurking bias. This was LURK-HATE!

So many people tend to regard lurking as cowardice and have been known to compare lurkers to small rodents or cockroaches who go skittering off as soon as the light shines anywhere near them.

In fact, lurkers are more like cats than rodents.

If you’ve ever watched a cat get ready to settle its furry butt on a cushion, you’ve seen the dynamics of lurking. It circles and kneads to self-soothe, gather courage, create perfect conditions. In this case, the lurker is engaging in a condition-perfecting process of getting outside their comfort zone by slowly and meticulously expanding the zone.

Meeting facilitators tend to be particularly biased and sometimes openly hostile to lurkers. This is fear. There is nothing more lethal to a “transformative” group dialogue than a room full of lurkers.

But, contrary to popular belief, every group space or community can benefit from lurkers.

Here are just some of the benefits of including lurkers in your group or community.

• Lurkers fill space and pad numbers. They represent “bums in seats” or “subscribers.” So, when you need to pad your attendance, your audience or your income, put out the lurker welcome mat. (Note to Substackers: Some of your best and loyal paid subscribers may be lurkers.)

• In online communities, they can be a valuable source of likes or even hearts, which is a low risk lurking activity.

• Lurkers create space for extraverts to dominate the conversation. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Extraverts blurt out everything that’s in their head and, once they are comfortable, lurkers turn it into insight and wisdom.

• Lurkers are good listeners. They are expert at sussing out danger, so they are skilled at listening not just to the content of the conversation but to the dynamic itself. (This is what sometimes makes lurkers good facilitators.)

• Lurkers can tip you off if your meeting or your call is going south. They are the proverbial canary in your engagement coal mine. If they suddenly need to leave the room to take a phone call, go to the bathroom or just exit the video call, this may be a clue that things are about to go sideways.

• Lurkers are skilled distillers. Lurkers take in and ferment the best ideas until they pop out of them like a cork blowing off a champagne bottle.

• Lurkers make your meeting smarter. The reason they so often sound like the smartest people in the room is because they have honed three skills - absorbing, distilling, and reframing.

• Lurkers can help you bring a meeting to a close. Because of their skill at distillation, you can invite them to share their top take away from the meeting as a way of “landing the plane.”

Pro tips for making your spaces “lurk-friendly.”

If you want to add value to your team or community, here’s how to make your spaces lurk-friendly.

1. Do not make rules that are unfriendly to lurkers – like “no lurking.”

2. Understand the lurker’s primary needs – safety and comfort. Explore what would create both for your lurkers.

3. Make sharing voluntary, avoid saying things like “we want to hear from everybody.” (By the way, they tend to dislike small group breakouts as it makes it more difficult for them to hide.)

4. Befriend your lurkers off-line. They tend to prefer one-on-one conversations.

5. If possible, warn them in advance if you are going to call on them. (However, be prepared that they may be called away suddenly due to family emergency.)

6. Don’t coddle your lurkers. There’s such a thing as too comfortable. If there’s a risk that you will call on them, they are more likely to stay quietly engaged.

7. Lurkers like to be invited to contribute. But timing is everything. A lurker will unconsciously or sometimes overtly signal when they are ready to speak. They may lean in or become more attentive. They may even (should you be so lucky) make eye contact with you. This is when you invite them into the conversation with something like, “Angela, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.” If you’ve read it right, fasten your seatbelt for the perfect, insightful distillation of all the verbal diarrhea that has been flowing around your gathering.

8. After this, praise and acknowledge your lurker. Lurkers like to hear words like “insightful” or “brilliant.” Or “WOW!”

Stop judging lurkers, or making rules that make them feel excluded. Embrace their superpowers instead and let them add insight and clarity to your group or community. It’s fair to expect them to contribute, just invite them to do it on their terms.

Let the cat circle and knead the pillow for a few minutes before you pounce.

Photo by StudioMikara

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