Day 13
What makes a conversation powerful? My current definition is one where you can feel the energy shift as words are received. Conversations where ideas are challenged, especially my ideas. That is part of why I love coaching so much. I do go into every conversation agenda free and I always take something away, a nugget, a morsel that teaches me, challenges me, delights me.
A had such a conversation with someone yesterday. It was a conversation with Janet Giangrasse, the founder of Anne’s Haven, a newly minted non-profit in the northwest side of Chicago. A little bit about Anne’s Haven taken from website is a “… [a] space for women, girls, and nonbinary people of all ethnic, racial, sexual, and religious identities. Our center offers a vibrant environment through which people can learn from and support one another through their spiritual, physical, intellectual, financial, emotional, professional, and social development journeys.” Anne’s Haven, like so many other brick and mortar service based entities has struggled through Covid. But her heart keeps on beating, keeps wanting to part of the life force everyone is yearning for right now.
During our conversation I found myself saying to Janet, ”Anne’s isn’t a place, it is a movement. A movement to enliven and empower all those who want to explore and be enriched. It is a place to share skills, build confidence and understanding. It is an incubator for women who are searching for a safe space to practice their skills, share what they know and be in a community to hold it all.
As the words left my mouth I realized that A Life All In is also a movement. It is a movement to make being present, curious, honest and powerful the norm. A movement to unite head, heart, and spirit- thoughts, feelings, and sensations – mind, body, soul into one. A movement where that allows listening, deep listening to ourselves and others causes us to see, really see ourselves and our neighbor. In the words of Valarie Kaur, a movement where we “See no Stranger.” Whether we see that stranger by looking in the mirror or looking through a window.
A Life All In is a movement.
Life is a movement by definition. Things are constantly changing and, well, moving.
My honor is to be a support for you to intentionally engage in the movement that is happening, for you.
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Day 14
Yesterday I had another experience of expecting grief and it did not come. Instead, I experienced partnership. I was intentionally engaging in an exercise that called for me to be in an emotional space with mom. I thought what would result was a yearning for what could have been. A sadness for memories that were not created. Grief over what was lost.
None of that came. In the space was simply awareness and energy. I was experiencing her in real time as a – person, a complex being with thought and feelings and experiences. As a soul who struggled with darkness but loved the sun. I felt her as a companion on this journey that I am on now.
It is all part of the spiral of knowing and feeling. Grieving and growing. And I am shifting the way I am in the cycle now. Spirals allow for movement round and around (there is that movement thing again). It is all on the continuum over and over again, experienced again in a different way.
I am learning how to move with it.
