Each day we have is a gift, and an opportunity to feel and spread love. But it’s really hard to do that if there’s something weighing on your mind or your heart (those usually go together). There are some things in life that are just brutal, or deeply uncomfortable, or presently without a solution. If you’re in the midst of that scenario, my heart goes out to you. It’s very hard to open to the idea of spreading love when your heart is broken. Nonetheless, you want to open to at least some love and some light today, if at all possible. And that’s a lot more likely to happen if you can acknowledge your pain, or your confusion, frustration, loneliness, rage, despair, or hopelessness. If you can simply be with what is. Because the “logjam” is really caused by the pushing away of the painful reality. The more we push it back, the less the river flows.

You have a gorgeous heart that is capable of incredible expansion. It can hold loss and grief and joy and wonder all at once. It’s not all one way or another in life. You have the potential to discover your gifts if you haven’t already, and to give them away freely. That’s the joy in life, the connection. But that’s nearly impossible to do if you’re spending most of your energy fighting what’s true for you. And maybe things are beautiful right now. I hope they are, because that’s a set of circumstances when it’s fairly easy to open to life, to splash around in reality as it is, and to feel enormous gratitude. In the state of gratitude, you naturally want to share your love and your happiness and all your gifts. But if you’re in beaver mode, stacking logs against a torrent of emotion because you fear you’ll get swept under, then listen up, beaver. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life gnawing on wood with your giant teeth every night, it’s time to start pulling that dam apart. (In reality, beavers use dams to provide still, deep water to protect against predators, but for the human beavers I’m talking to, the predators are living in your mind, and you need to swim with them so you can see they’re not going to do you in or pull you under!!).

I don’t know how many days you have, or I have, but I know they are not meant to be spent gnawing on wood! Sending you LOVE!!! Ally

grief [noun]

1.keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.

There’s no getting through life without grief; it’s built-in to the deal. You may grieve over the loss of your own innocence, for example. Sometimes things happen when we’re very young that are traumatic, like the loss of a parent, or growing up in an abusive environment. In those instances, it’s both healthy and necessary to allow yourself some time to mourn, or to be enraged, or to shed a full ocean of tears. I have two small children and I do everything in my power to protect their innocence because childhood happens once in a life. You can’t get it back. Few things make me sadder than a child who’s seen or heard or been through too much. If that was you, I really hope you find some compassion and kindness for yourself. I hope you give yourself permission to fully feel whatever you need to, to release the heat of the experience, and to forgive if at all possible, so that you can unhook your journey from events of long ago. That’s a very big part of loving yourself. Acknowledging what was, what you were taught, and unlearning it so you can forge something completely different for your “what is”, for your, “I Am.” I know too many people who never face their pain and end up dragging it around with them forever, spilling it all over everything. It doesn’t have to be like that.

Sometimes the losses come later. People we’d do anything for are ripped away from us without warning on a Friday morning, or a Wednesday evening, or any moment of any day. It can all change in an instant. That’s an uncomfortable and heartbreaking reality to face that can fill you with fear, or inspire you to live every moment with your heart wide open and your mouth full of thank you. Some losses are so devastating you wonder how a person can survive it. How they can get up in the morning and just breathe in and breathe out. You can’t hide from grief like that, it’s going to overtake you for a good long while, unfolding like chapters in a book–shock, despair, anger, confusion and heartache. Those are the kind of losses that create incredibly compassionate people who have to somehow learn to live with that space in their heart that belongs to someone who can no longer be hugged.

Maybe you’ve given up on yourself. That’s a huge loss in life, when a person no longer believes in themselves. It usually goes along with the loss of hope, trust, faith. If that’s the space you’re in, mourn the loss of your spark, your Yes, your purpose. Acknowledge it and grieve over it so you can put it to rest and begin to birth a new way of being. So you can find your yes again. Underneath the grief and rage and pain, there’s a well of love that is limitless. It’s your comfort and your warm blanket on a cold night. It’s your shoulder to lean on, and the hand that reaches for you in the dark when you can’t see the way, and even doubt that that there is one. But you simply cannot tap that reservoir without diving into those keenly painful waters first. Sometimes those losses make us painfully aware of how fortunate we are: “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” ~ A.A. Milne

Sending you love, strength, and a hug if you need one. Ally

“We ask advice, but we mean approbation” ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Except in rare cases, advice is pretty useless. No one else can tell us how our story “should” unfold, or what we should do. Generally people ask for advice when they’re feeling stuck, trapped, and/or paralyzed by fear. They know what they need to do, but are resisting the actually doing of it, or are hoping someone else will save them from having to face what they already know is true. To come up with a way around the work at hand. This is common when a person’s intuition is at odds with their attachments. We human beings can get attached to so many things: people (a good, healthy attachment in many cases), but also ideas about how things should be, how we should be, how other people should be, and what our lives or relationships should look like. The path is the path; it unfolds as it unfolds, there are no roads marked, “Should”. Opening to the journey, facing reality as it is, trying not to hurt others as you move forward, and using your intuition as your GPS is a great way to travel.

No one else can tell you the best route for you, or what you need for your growth and well-being, These are the roads you must travel to be at peace. And if you find yourself telling someone else how to live, even if they asked you, take a step back and recognize we never know what someone needs for their growth. Mostly, if people ask me for advice, I try to listen and ask questions, and see if I can help them hear more clearly the very quiet, but always truthful voice of their own intuition. To sort of quietly and kindly hold up a mirror. Because short of abusive situations a person needs to leave for their safety and their heart, I don’t know what’s right for anyone but me. Most of the time we know what we want to do, what we need to do, and what we’re going to do, and the asking is really a plea for someone to support our decision, or to sit with us as we grapple with our task.

There’s no such thing as an askhole ;). We need each other, that’s all. We need connection, and to be able to bounce ideas off each other. We need to cry together, and know we have people in our lives who will just hug us and not try to solve anything. Advice is pretty useless, but a great hug is priceless. Sending you love, and a mirror if you need one! Ally

For many people a root canal sounds better than having to say the words, “I’m sorry”. I think people who struggle with that learned somewhere along the way that they were supposed to be perfect. Or maybe they grew up in an environment where it wasn’t safe to make a mistake, where they paid the price dearly if they did. As a 93-97% recovered (thanks, 20+ years of yoga!!!) Type-A personality, I really relate when people have unrealistic expectations of themselves. No one operates from their highest self in every moment. We are human, and we will all make mistakes. Being able to recognize when you’ve blown it, and to own that and apologize quickly are gifts you give to yourself and everyone in your life.

But we humans are funny, and sometimes we just want to be right. We dig our heels in and paint ourselves into a corner. If you’ve inadvertently hurt someone, elicited anger or inspired a person to start to grab their tent and head for the hills, a simple, “I blew it, I’m so sorry” is usually enough to release the heat of a situation. Most people who are hurting simply want to be seen and acknowledged. Realizing you’ve screwed up is like getting caught with your pants down unexpectedly, though. Once when I was eleven, I was at a party with my parents where I really didn’t know anyone, and went into the bathroom. A man opened the door as I was pulling my jeans down, and I still remember the embarrassment and shame I felt, even though I hadn’t done a thing but be human. I froze and felt my face flush as we made eye contact, and he looked down, apologized (even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, either) and ducked out the door. It’s sort of the same feeling when you have that realization that you are the one who’s made the mistake. You’re naked with your pants down, and someone else has seen how vulnerable you are.

Hopefully that someone can be forgiving. Can remember that this time it’s you, but there will be a time when it’s them. Having compassion for yourself is the best way to find some for other people. Being gentle but truthful with yourself when you’ve messed up makes it possible for you to find empathy for other people when their pants are down. Forgiving yourself, but examining what happened so you can show up differently next time are some of the best ways to really grow. Not everyone will do it. Some people struggle to forgive as much as others struggle to apologize, and there are tons of people who have a tough time with both sides of the equation. But the more you’re able to be honest, to see yourself clearly, to do your best to live in a way that feels truthful to you, the more you give others the freedom and permission to do the same. We could all use a little more compassion and forgiveness. Sending you some right now if you need it, and a lot of love, too! Ally

Having two children means, among other things, that I meet little people all the time, and I can tell you it’s very rare to meet a child who isn’t full of joy, curiosity, enthusiasm, laughter and love. I believe most of us come into the world this way, but sometimes we are taught fear, mistrust, repression and hatred. It’s so easy to blame “society” for the state we’re in globally, but society is made up of people; all these things start at home. Everything around us is a reflection of everything within us. Why are we at war within ourselves, and why are we feeding that violence to our kids?

I could go back a long way and talk about tribal cultures, and how members of the tribe took care of one another. If one person had a sick baby, everyone had a sick baby. If one person had food, everyone had food. The beautiful planet was respected and honored, and people knew how to read the night sky. It’s funny how we describe tribal cultures as primitive; “every man for himself” is a much less evolved way of being. Thinking we have infinite resources that we can just tear through is completely naive. I’m not here to suggest we should all go back to tribal living, although I will say they didn’t worry about health insurance.

The reality is that we need each other, we need community and connection and a sense of meaning and purpose, and we need to recognize we are one people, on one planet. Few things in life are more fulfilling than uplifting other people. Giving your heart, your attention, and anything else you’ve got in the service of helping someone else fills your being with gratitude and joy. We’re built for this stuff. Empathy is natural to us.

We have to change the stories we’re telling ourselves and our children, and stop (literally), buying into the lies. What’s the fastest way to get a person to buy a product they don’t need? Make them feel their happiness depends on it. How are you going to be happy if you smell bad? If your teeth are yellow? If you have wrinkles? If you feel sad sometimes, or anxious about social situations? How are you going to be happy if you don’t look like a supermodel? You only have 1000 square feet?? How are you going to be happy?!? Your car is ten years old? Gosh, you must be embarrassed about that. You haven’t met your other half? OMG, get online!!! You’re ten pounds overweight? How exactly can you stand to walk out the door and let people see you in that condition? Self-hatred is poison, and our society feeds on it. If you believe you’re not enough, you’re believing a lie. Culturally, we distract ourselves with this whole line of thinking, and fail to pay attention to the things that matter. We get so involved in buying, we forget about being in and of the world. We forget about standing up and saying, “Hey! Wait a minute, this is not right, and not okay.” And by “this” I could go in so many different directions, and I’m sure you could, too. There is injustice, poverty, heartbreak, violence and a lack of empathy in our own backyard, and all across the globe.

When you love yourself and recognize your gifts and figure out how to share them, you’ll be lit up from the inside. You won’t worry about how you look, you’ll just glow. How you look is the most fleeting, unimportant, ephemeral part of who you are. It’s the result of a genetic lottery. How you look will change as you get older, and when you die, hopefully way off in the distant future, I don’t think you’ll be consumed with how you look when it happens. My guess is, you’ll be thinking about all the people in your life whom you love, all the people who love and cherish you, all the marvelous experiences you’ve had that have brought you joy and a feeling of incredible gratitude. If we spent half the energy we spend obsessing over how we look on things that matter, I really believe we’d change the world in record speed. And who obsesses over that most of all? Women.

It’s a generalization of course, but women tend to be the nurturers in our society. Let me say right away that we all have masculine and feminine sides. Some men have a stronger feminine energy, some women have a stronger masculine energy. Some men I know are way more nurturing than many women I know. So please don’t misunderstand me. I just don’t believe it’s a coincidence that as a society we distract our nurturers with all this bullshit. If we’re all worrying about numbers on a scale, we aren’t paying attention to the number of children in the world living in war zones. If we’re obsessed with frown lines, we aren’t looking at political lines being drawn in the sand. I say this, because we need our nurturers right now. I say this whether you’re a man or a woman.

When you give of yourself you create a feeling of well-being around you, because that’s the feeling within you. That’s how we change the story. One person at a time, healing from the inside. Watch what you’re feeding yourself. I don’t just mean the food you put in your mouth, or the products you put on your body (but a lot of that stuff is toxic, and when you love yourself you’ll lose your appetite for that, also); I mean watch what you ingest on TV, the radio, magazines, newspapers…it’s all food. You feed your body, but you also feed your mind and your heart. If you stop tuning into and supporting messages that are designed to make you feel badly about yourself, that appeal to the basest, lowest parts of yourself, that feed on your fear, you do your part in dwindling that market. If there’s no market for self-hatred, who knows what might spring up. Stories about connection and consciousness? About community and being there for each other? Aren’t you really hungry for that?

The world is in chaos. Many of us are looking around in despair, anger and frustration. And you know what? That’s a sane response to what’s happening right now–violence, destruction, fear, confusion, and polarization. People digging their heels in and defending their opinions instead of working together to figure out how to get us back to a place of peace. We’re all scared, we’re all confused, angry, and heartbroken. But we got ourselves into this mess we see around us, and we can get ourselves, and our children, out of it. Are there people so far off the grid there seems no hope? Yes, unfortunately. But is that the majority of people? No. We may have different ideas about how to right this ship, but the first order of business for each of us individually is creating inner peace. Then we can express ourselves calmly, and with compassion. Then we can channel our anger and despair into meaningful action. Then we can say what we want or need to say with respect, and an open mind. This applies to our global situation, but also to our personal situations. Sending you love, and hoping we all start to create some new stories, soon, Ally Hamilton

There are many things in life that are confusing, but this isn’t one of them. If someone wants to spend time with you and get to know you, they will. I get so many emails from people around this topic, and I really do understand. It hurts when you like someone and you can’t figure out what’s happening. But if it’s right, and both people are feeling it, it’s not going to be a mystery, it’s just going to flow. Do your best to accept that. This happens with friends and colleagues as well. Sometimes someone just doesn’t respond in a way that feels good. Try not to stew over it and torture yourself about why. It may have nothing at all to do with you.

Here are a few ideas:

1. If we’re talking about a romantic interest, don’t jump in the sack with a stranger, and then be surprised when you end up feeling confused, vulnerable, and unsure as to whether you have any “right” to ask questions about where things stand. I don’t say this to you in any kind of judgmental way. If you jumped in the sack with a stranger last night, I love you every bit as much as I did yesterday. I’m simply saying you are precious. Your heart is such a gift. And when you’re reckless with yourself, you are the architect of your own heartache. Love yourself enough to be gentle with your heart. (And respectful of your body, which is your home. It’s where you’ll live for your whole life. A stranger doesn’t belong in your kitchen scrambling your eggs ;)).

2. Be open, honest, kind and fearless when you communicate, whether it’s with a person you dig, a family member, friend, or acquaintance. Sometimes people hesitate to say how they feel because they’re afraid the feelings won’t be reciprocated. That’s a form of avoidance, a refusal to face and accept reality as it is, and a way of keeping yourself stuck. It’s choosing confusion over clarity. You can only manage your side of the street, but do your best to keep your side clean. “There’s a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.” ~ Vera Nazarian

3. There are 7 billion people in the world. You are not going to get along with all of them. Not everyone will see you and receive you as the amazing and unique gift you absolutely are. And that is okay. Walk toward and with those people who do celebrate you. Send love and compassion to those who don’t whenever you can. Life is too short to stand around waiting for the story to unfold. It’s unfolding right now. Walk forward and co-create it.

Sending you love, as I always am! Ally

You will never free yourself if you don’t love yourself. If you’re stuck in self-hatred, you’re in prison, truly. There’s only one way to escape your inner dialogue permanently, and it’s not an appealing option. People numb out to dull the pain of being at war within themselves, but that pain is more powerful than any drug, and it will overtake every area of your life if you don’t face it. When the buzz wears off, whether it’s from something you ingest, buy, or partake in, guess what’s sitting there in the corner, smirking and strumming its long, thin, scalding-hot fingers? Your pain, with a hat over one eye, and its feet on the coffee table of your mind. It’ll wait for you, however long it takes.

What’s crazy is that we’ve created most of our own pain, just like we’ve created clocks and calendars and scales and money and borders and insane ideas about what it means to be successful. We’ve designed a fog that covers everything and is based around a premise, and the premise is Keeping Up with the Joneses, aka, “Why Do I Suck So Much?”  The more you buy into that ideology, the more miserable you’ll become. Because few things feel worse than comparing and contrasting yourself to other people. Healthy competition in a basketball game can be fun, but competition as a way of life is the most isolating, lonely path there is. Because you can’t trust people if you’re racing against them. You can’t be vulnerable, admit you’re scared, confused, heartbroken or hopeless if you think there’s a chance people will go for your jugular if you expose your weaknesses.

Of course it’s an upside down equation, because being vulnerable is the bravest thing there is. Putting your heart out there with the understanding it might be broken, admitting you are human, acknowledging your fear or shame or rage or grief, all these require strength. It takes effort and courage to clear the fog and see reality.  If you do, you may be faced with some pain for awhile. But if you don’t the pain will never end, and you will miss the most liberating fact of all. Look around if you need to. You won’t find any other you anywhere. You won’t walk out the door and stop at the local store and run into your very self in aisle 4. Do you know why you won’t run into yourself today, or any day, no matter how far you travel, and even if you visit every place on earth? I think you do know. Are you starting to smile a little? Is it because maybe some part of you is remembering how f&cking awesome you are? There is Only. One. You. No one on the face of this earth can be you better than you. And I mean, innately, because of just that, not even COUNTING all your particular gifts and quirks, or the way you laugh when you don’t hold it back at all, just based on the fact alone that there’s only one of you, makes you so freaking special.

So you have a choice. You can acknowledge that and start treating yourself with love and kindness, with compassion and respect. Or you can beat the crap out of yourself for not measuring up to other people. As if we’re all the same. As if we’re all meant to look the same and feel the same and act the same and follow the same path to what, exactly? Here’s something you need to know: your pain only owns you if you won’t face it. Take off the blinders, head for the couch, knock fear’s hat off its head and use the scalding-hot fingers of your pain to cut right through those chains. You do not need them. And time is a-wasting!! Happy Tuesday, get busy if you need to! And if you don’t, way to go!! Sending you love. Ally

I know it can sometimes feel like you’re alone in this thing. Times when it feels so dark, it’s an effort to get out of bed and take a shower. Moments when it feels absurdly painful, and like no one can really see you or know you. But that’s all illusion. Most of the things in life that cause us suffering are universal: grief, doubt, fear, attachment, loss, expectation, desire, shame, rage and loneliness. And there are people who care, and can see you, and want to offer a hand, or a flashlight or a shovel if you need to dig your way out of some darkness. (You’ll probably have to manage the shower on your own, though ;)).

For the vast majority of time here, you will be alone with your thoughts. Even if you’re in a crowded room. Examining your thoughts is essential because if you’re in a dark fog, that’s the way to begin to let some light in. If you’re telling yourself, “No one cares” or “People suck”, or “I suck”, start there. Because everyone you meet has pain. Private struggles and anguish and hopes and fears. It’s not a level playing field to be sure; some people will face loss that breaks the heart wide open and makes it an effort just to breathe in and breathe out. But I don’t believe this is an easy gig for anyone. Be gentle with yourself, but don’t run from your pain because it’s faster than you and you cannot win that race. Try if you need to, but you’ll just become exhausted and hopeless and eventually you’ll run yourself into a corner where you believe no one can see you or understand. See what I’m getting at here?

If you can recognize that we are all vulnerable and human and full of confusion sometimes, and joy in others, that we will all face obstacles and make mistakes and have our hearts broken and surprise ourselves and keep growing and learning, then you’ll begin to realize you’re never alone. We’re all in this thing together. Be kind to yourself and everyone you encounter. Do whatever you can to spread some love and some light. Take good care of yourself so you can take good care of the people in your life. And don’t allow your thoughts to convince you that you are alone. Sending you love and a big hug, Ally

You cannot trust yourself until you heal yourself. It’s a sad fact, but if you’ve avoided your own pain through denial or numbing or running or repressing, you’ve only succeeded in feeding it power. And as long as you’re suffering, your pain will spill out on those who come close to you. You know whether you’re “right with yourself” or you aren’t; it’s no secret to you. You are aware if you’ve done the work to heal or you haven’t, and you also know whether love is at your center. (It is, but it may be buried under rage or blame or resentment, and if you haven’t walked through that fire, you’re just burning in it).

Maya Angelou speaks about this: “I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” If you want to trust yourself, you have to find the courage to stop numbing your pain, and instead invite it, embrace it, and hold it up to the light. Otherwise anything you’ve pushed down owns you, your choices, and your behavior. Jung on this, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” You have to be willing to let your heart break open, and to be brave enough to be soft. That’s the only way to heal yourself, and it’s also the only way to trust yourself. Because you won’t heal without truly understanding who you are, without releasing the heat of painful events you may have been carrying with you for years, without understanding your blind spots, your tendencies and your outlook. You won’t heal until you know yourself deeply, and until you accept all parts of who you are, even those things that are hard to acknowledge.

Once you see yourself clearly and kindly, once you love yourself and understand what a gift you are, even with your flaws and your scars and your fears and your pain, then you can do that for other people, too, you can love with your heart wide open. If you’re coming from love, believe me, you can trust yourself. You can feel assured that your actions and responses will be coming from a strong center. You’ll still make plenty of mistakes, but they won’t be motivated by places within you that haven’t been explored, that are cloaked in darkness. Love gives you the strength to sit with painful feelings without acting on them. Love is not gonna sing “Kumbaya” all the time, or tell you or anyone else that “it’s all good.” It isn’t all good. Sometimes people will say things and do things that are careless or thoughtless or hurtful or cruel, manipulative or aggressive or dishonest. Sometimes you will, too. Love is like a mirror, you cannot lie to it, it’s just going to reflect back whatever the truth may be. There’s no hiding in love, it’s a naked, vulnerable experience, and sometimes love is gonna let you know you blew it and have some work to do. What’s beautiful is that when love says “no”, you can believe it. You can trust it. And when you trust yourself, you will know how to live. You will recognize the no’s and embrace the yeses, you will know what you need to feed your soul and keep growing and opening and challenging yourself to love more and heal more and give more, and also when to rest. Knowing how to live so that you can honor yourself and still face reality as it is, is a gift to you and everyone you encounter, and a true liberation. Wishing that for you, and sending love, as always, Ally

Sometimes it can feel like no one can really see you or hear you or know you, but that is such a lie. We all have struggles and fear and pain, places where we’re raw and unfinished. We all have doubt and uncertainty and times we think it’s hopeless. You’re never alone. This is not an easy gig. We’re born into this thing and left to make sense of it on our own. There are people with big answers who stand on hills and rooftops and tell you how it is. But they don’t know for sure, and you need to know they don’t. No one knows for sure. I think it’s a big, gorgeous, heartbreaking mystery. It is a wilderness, and sometimes there’s a clearing full of colors you never could have imagined that takes your breath away and makes you fall to your knees in wonder and gratitude. And sometimes you turn the corner and are swept into a hurricane with no warning, no protection, and nothing to hang onto. Except those few people who DO know you. Who DO see you and understand and care. Those people who would walk right into the middle of that hurricane and grab you by the hand and yell,”This way!!” over their shoulder as they pull you forward. You can do that for people you don’t know, too. This stuff is in our DNA, we are hard-wired to care about each other and to want to lend a hand or an ear or a shoulder.

Connection is where it’s at. Love is the thing. That’s what you make that has value and is lasting. It’s an energy and my belief is we are all made of that energy. It’s not going to die. The question is, how much of it will you open to and explore? How much are you going to allow your heart to expand? How willing are you to lay yourself bare, to expose your soft heart and your vulnerability and your unanswered questions? You can do this journey in isolation, but I think you’ll feel pretty awful. It’s lonely enough even with close friends and a tight community of people who are also walking forward, through shimmering fields and merciless storms and joy and heartbreak and seriously? Could it ever be about stuff? About a car or a house or what size jeans you’re in? Could that really be the point of it all? I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you for sure it’s not about that. Or most of the stuff we obsess about. Love the people in your life with everything you’ve got for as long as you’ve got. Love people you don’t know, too, because they are also in this thing, trying to figure it out. Some people are hard to love. They are having the toughest time in this wilderness. Maybe they’re trying to do it alone, or clinging to big answers ferociously because they need something to hang on to. Love them. They need it. Don’t let a single day go by when you don’t let the people you love know exactly why you love them. Because honestly, that’s a day well spent. And if you string a whole bunch of those together, that’s a life well-lived. That’s all I’ve got for you that I can guarantee will lead to a life filled with purpose and meaning. Love your heart out and amaze yourself with the sacredness of that experience. Sending you a huge hug and a ton of love right now, Ally

People yell when they don’t feel heard. It’s almost funny to think about that when you’re not in the heat of a battle– the logical but totally faulty reasoning that if you just say the same thing with more decibels, you’ll suddenly be understood. As if the other party will be like, “Ohhhhh, now that you screamed that sentence at me and threw in some curse words, it finally makes sense!”

Feeling misunderstood is awful, especially if it’s happening with someone you count on to know you, accept you, and see you for who you are. Having someone you love look at you as though you’re someone you aren’t feels like an attack on, and a betrayal of, the trust you’ve granted by making yourself vulnerable enough to love them in the first place. It’s hard to stay open when you feel threatened by a person you want to love you, even if you’ve screwed up. We humans tend to dig our heels in and want to be right, want to be seen as our highest selves even if we haven’t acted from that place. It’s a form of denial, a refusal to accept that of course we will all make mistakes. It’s the nature of being human. But even the language we use pits us against each other, when one person “wins” an argument and the other loses. There are no winners when hurtful things are said that cannot be unsaid or unheard.

Anger is a powerful emotion, and many people feel overtaken by it. There’s no doubt it creates tangible reactions in the body: there’s an adrenaline rush, the blood pressure goes up, the breath is shallow, the heart races. You’ll never hear or be heard when you’re in the midst of a fight or flight reaction, you’re either going to want to win or run. And being yelled at feels awful; it puts us in a defensive position, or for some people, it incites greater rage. It isn’t possible to experience rage and empathy at the same time; in the midst of anger, we see things as black or white, and the other person becomes the opponent.

People who love us are not against us. Misunderstandings and disagreements are perfectly natural when two complex people come together, each with their own history, pain, struggles, fears, doubts, shame and confusion. You have yours and they have theirs, the question is, what are you going to put in the space between you? Because that’s where the relationship happens. You can fill it with rage and blame and resentment, you can yell and say terrible things, throw stuff and storm around, but you’ll only be polluting the space and setting yourself up to feel miserable and guilty later. And that guilt won’t just be for anything you said or did in anger to any other person, it will also be because you betrayed yourself. We all want to be kind and loving. There’s a beautiful, open heart within each of us that longs to expand and embrace and accept and celebrate and understand all the people we encounter.

If you find yourself betraying your heart and acting out in the midst of your anger, see if you can start to speak out about what you’re experiencing instead of the inciting topic. Ask the other person to give you a minute and a little space. Talk about your heart racing, or the fact that you feel your shoulders tensed up. Say out loud that you’re all worked up and that you need to calm down before you go on. Sit down or walk outside for a few minutes or get yourself some water. Turn your attention to those visceral sensations in your body. If anger puts us in an altered state, tuning in to sensations brings us back to the now. In the now, you might be able to see the other person clearly again. Your attempt to pull yourself out of the storm might inspire your family member, partner, friend, colleague, or poor bast%rd on the bar stool next to you to do the same. There’s a good possibility you may reach a deeper understanding of one another. And you will surely realize you can trust yourself, which is an essential feeling to have in this world. Wishing you peace, strength, courage and love, Ally

Love wants your growth and your full expression and your inner YES, out loud and all over the place. You did not come here to be quiet, or to work all day in a box, to live in a box and drive in a box and stare at a box and think in a box and go back to your box and stare at another one all night. That is not your purpose here. You are not here to cling to sad stories and tell yourself what you cannot do, to dwell on your past and feed it and keep it alive so it spills all over your present. You are not here to wither, to make yourself small, to buy into the idea that you are somehow not enough. You are not here to be a size zero unless you were made that way, and you are not here to get ripped until your biceps bulge, although you’re free to do that if you wish; it’s just not your purpose. You are not here to amass money and things.

You are no less miraculous than the trees and the stars and the moon in the sky. No less unique than a snowflake. You are not here to hide, or to make yourself like anyone else. That would be a crime against your soul. You are not here to be hard and tough, and you are not here to compete in order to survive.

You, my friend, are here to love. To open and to blossom and to release yourself from any feelings that you are not amazing. You’re an expression of love in human form and all you really have to do is open to that, and let it out. It’s not as hard as we make it out to be. Fear lives in the mind, and it sleeps with doubt and should and rage and resentment. It hangs out with bitterness and blame. Love lives in your heart. It’s a beautiful thing to thirst for answers, to be open to many, to recognize there are some questions you won’t ever resolve, but to be curious anyway. To seek anyway. The mind can be an incredibly powerful tool for your growth, for your understanding of who you are and what you need to be at peace. Discernment lives in your mind as well. But your truth lives in your heart.

The earth is spinning. You are just as wondrous and beautiful and full of life and movement and possibility as any waterfall, the light reflects off of you just as much, but the earth won’t stop and wait for you while you figure that out. If you’re caught up in something: a job, a relationship, a way of thinking about yourself or about the world that is dimming your light and making you feel this life is not beautiful, get out and get out now. Listen to your heart, and use your mind to make a new plan. Because you could be shining, that’s the thing. You could be so full of gratitude just to get up in the morning. To hear the laughter of people you love, or to be the cause of it. To see the sun bouncing off the leaves of a tree right outside your house. To feel the breeze on your cheek. To see the twinkle in someone’s eye, to be present, awake, aware. You could be grateful when your heart breaks that you were able to love so much, and thankful for this experience, even though it’s full of mystery and the ride isn’t easy. You could find your place and fall into the flow and offer up everything you’ve got for as long as you’ve got.

If you need to be hung upside down and shaken a little to figure that out, I surely wish I could crawl through your computer screen and do that for you. Just pick you up by your ankles and shake you until you were laughing like you did when you were six years old. Shake you until all the change fell out of your pockets, along with every negative thought you have about yourself or anyone else, because that’s just dead weight, it has no potential. Shake out your doubts and your fears so you could hear the tinny sound they’d make when they hit the floor, and then watch them roll away, realizing they’re so much smaller than you thought. Shake out that thing someone said once that hurt you to your core. And that awful moment that terrified you and made you want to run. And not set you right side up until the only thing left inside you was that limitless well of love you possess, and that huge smile on your face. I’d love to shake you like that. I hope I just did, even a little. Sending you so much love, Ally

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” (MLK)

Happy Birthday to the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. When I first read the Ferdinand Foch quote on the poster, I thought I’d love to change “weapon” to “force”, but you know, there are times in life when you have to fight. When you have to stand up and get loud. When it’s your responsibility to say, “This is not okay.”

We have gotten incredibly confused. We are not here to compete with each other, to step on each other, to push each other out of the way. Have you seen people drive? Do you realize there are people who will not let you merge? Who speed up if you indicate you’re going to move into their lane with the correct and courteous use of your turn signal? Have you experienced someone pretending not to see you as the elevator door closes? Had a door shut in your face when it could just as easily have been held open? How about you? Do you have a policy of ignoring homeless people? Do you ever buy anyone a sandwich if you have the money to spare? Or stop to talk, to let them know you can see them, that they are not invisible? What happens when you see someone who’s very large, or dressed in a way you would never be? What springs to mind, compassion or judgment? This crew is so full of love and light, I really doubt any of you need to think about those questions. But when I look at the state of the world, I want to send out an army of love warriors. Anyone want to enlist?

We glorify violence and domination in our culture; we see so much of it we become desensitized. We see so many people on the street, it’s hard for the mind and the heart to open up to that. To really take in the fact that we are not taking care of each other. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” (MLK). It matters when we “turn a blind eye”, but it’s not surprising that’s a tendency, because the heartbreak in the world can seem so overwhelming it’s hard to know where to begin. I think clear seeing is a good start. We have our ideas and we cling to them and fight for them with such passion; we’re so interested in being right and in labeling everything. I’m “this” kind of person, I’d never do “that”. Our need to define ourselves by religion or race or gender or philosophy, as if you could ever sum up a human being in a word. We create borders and say, “If you live on that side you’re this kind of person, and you believe X, Y & Z, and you’re different from me.” We’re threatened by people who think differently because we take it as an attack on our feelings, our choices, our beliefs. Until we can respect each other’s divergences and really wrap our heads and hearts around the reality that we are one family on one round planet, until we can recognize the beauty in our differences, we are going to be at war within ourselves and each other. Because this is not natural to us, this isolation. This competition. This snarky, tough exterior, this mouth full of should. We are hardwired to love each other and to care, to cooperate and to nurture. And when we repress those totally natural tendencies, we break our own hearts, and close ourselves off to our very own light. Being full of light doesn’t mean you’re in some dream world full of positive thoughts and unicorns, okay? It means you are seeing clearly what is happening around you, and you care. You extend yourself. Whatever you’ve got, whatever way you can help, you act. Spontaneously, with your heart wide open. In this world it requires courage to do that. Wishing you a soul on fire and a mouth full of yes, and sending so much love, Ally

“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.” ~Rabindranath Tagore

Right now, my six year old son wants to be a “nature photographer” because, “wild animals are so cool.” Last week he wanted to be a paleontologist and the week before that, archaeology had his attention. Sometimes he dresses up as Luke Skywalker, and other times he wants to be Darth Vader (He hasn’t seen the film yet, but he has pop-up books and legos, and that’s enough to have him completely enthralled). My three year old daughter is happy to be his sidekick on any chosen adventure, which means sometimes she’s required to be Princess Leia, other times she is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and still others, she’s digging in the dirt with him as they excavate fossils. My point is, we all knew how to be present, engaged, and immersed from moment to moment as children. Unless tragedy strikes, or we enter the world and are not nurtured, it’s rare to find a child who doesn’t understand joy.

Life ties us in knots, and we also do it to ourselves. Thinking we ought to be something other than who and what we are, believing we are supposed to do what everyone else is doing, having our uniqueness crushed out of us, being taught that some feelings are appropriate, and others should be pushed down because they make people uncomfortable…all these things tie us in knots. Being inundated with messages that we are not enough, that we don’t measure up, that if we could just change and get it right, then we’d be happy…all that stuff ties the knot tighter, until our spirits are reduced, our light dims to almost nothing, and we don’t know who or what we are anymore. We become chained and lost in the dark. In a world where we are taught to believe vulnerability is dangerous, and people will go for your jugular if you express weakness, confusion, despair. Our hearts are broken and we are left to deal with it in isolation. Not a fabulous combination.

“Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot…” I call this healing yourself. Acknowledging your pain. Opening to the vulnerability of the human condition. Asking for help when you need it. Do you want to know how to heal? You won’t like it; no one does. Head straight for the center of your deepest pain and have a seat. Open your eyes and your hands and your heart and breathe it in. Run your fingers over it. It will hurt, but running hurts more. Pushing it down or denying its existence feeds your pain more power. It’s not going to go away and there’s no reason you have to live with it as your constant companion. You could get back to joy if you haven’t already. You could love your life and yourself and you could even dress up as Luke Skywalker today if you felt like it. Life is too gorgeous and mysterious and heartbreaking and incredibly beautiful to be taken so seriously.

Open to your gifts. What lights you up? Maybe paleontology isn’t going to happen, but you could go for a hike. You could go dig in the dirt in your own way (I believe adults call that gardening). You could go ice skating or rollerblading or for a ride on your bike. You could go to yoga. Play again, is my point. Knowing yourself well is essential, and to know yourself, you’ll need some quiet and some space. It might sound strange, but breaking a sweat is good for healing. Getting out of your head and into your body, connecting to your breath, being fully present. Dripping sweat is better in my book. Wring yourself out until all that is left is the love. It’s in there because you’re made of it, it’s your natural state. And then the path becomes obvious. Move in the direction that feeds your soul. Wishing you love, and the strong pull of the song in your heart. Ally

We all face pain and darkness at certain points along the path, and yet life keeps coming, even when we aren’t seeing clearly. Even when we don’t know ourselves well. And even when we haven’t yet figured out how to love, respect, and cherish ourselves. If you can’t do it for yourself, you won’t be able to do those things for anyone else. Life doesn’t stop and wait for any of us to catch up. Sometimes we really screw it all up and hurt people we love, people who’ve been good to us, there for us, rooting for us, even. If you haven’t figured out who, exactly, you are, and what lights you up from the inside, if you’re stuck in darkness, there’s no way you’ll be making loving, conscious decisions.

Very few people set out to hurt those they love. We can only be where we are, with what we’ve got, at any given time. If you happen to cross paths with someone who’s lost, confused, in pain, and/or numbing out (those things tend to go together), if you happen to open your heart to someone in that condition, you are probably going to get hurt. (If you’re continually doing that, you probably need to look at why you’re being careless with your heart.) If you’re the person who feels huddled up at the bottom of a cold, dark ditch, you may unwittingly bring pain to people who love you. When you feel lost, you’re going to make lost choices. It’s like flailing around in a cave with your arms out in front of you. It’s not personal, it’s just that anyone who comes near you will probably get smacked in the head.

It’s hard to face, but there are some things you may never be able to “make right”. We call those places that heal but leave a mark, scars. You’ll heal over the thing, but it’s never going to be exactly the way it was before, it’s just something you’ll live with that will eventually add to your character. We will all break someone’s heart at some point, in some way. The only thing you can do in those instances, is examine what happened with clear but compassionate eyes, and that kind of seeing may not happen for quite some time if you’re in darkness right now. If your pain caused someone else to be hurt, owning that can take the sting out of it, acknowledging when you haven’t acted from your highest self is a brave and compassionate thing to do. Maybe you’ll find forgiveness, and eventually you will have to forgive yourself. The bottom line is that until a person heals themselves, they’ll keep hurting those around them. And words won’t help. “Sorry” loses its power quickly when it’s over-used. Action is the thing. If you want to figure out how to stop inadvertently smacking people in the head if that’s what you’ve been doing, you’re going to have to take a serious look at what’s happening within you. And if you’ve been the “smack-ee”, know that it’s rarely intentional.

There was a time in my life when I justified poor behavior with my “sad story”. Any limiting storyline about yourself, and why you are the way you are (when that isn’t the way you’d like to be), needs to be discarded. Sad events from your past do not justify hurtful choices in your present. And you are worthy and capable of so much more. You have this huge heart and the capacity to shine the kind of light that would astound you if you let it. Letting yourself off the hook is not the same as forgiving yourself. Letting yourself off the hook means going back to sleep, being careless with yourself and those around you, while forgiving yourself is something you can do only after you’ve examined your pain, your rage, your shame, your darkness and your guilt, after you’ve leaned into those things and shed your tears until the heat of all that stuff is released into the air, the earth, the water. Your past will shape you and inform the person that you are, but it doesn’t have to define you. You just have to be ready and willing to slay your own dragons, get back to love, and move forward. Sending you a ton of love as I always am, Ally

I’d add prejudices, anger, addictions and “stories” to the list of things people hold on to in order to avoid pain. It’s easier to be furious than it is to be vulnerable, broken open, with no shell left (except it isn’t). And yet, that is what’s required if you want to be awake. An impenetrable shield is like armor around your heart. We’re taught to be hard and tough, but that’s no way to live; you can’t let the light in like that. Life will break your heart in two, or three, or more sometimes, it’s true. It’s an ebb and flow, and there are times like a hurricane that will blow right through you, sweep you up and spin you in circles until you don’t know which way is up or down, you don’t know your name, the pieces of your life are scattered everywhere, and you are left to sift through broken glass and old pictures. When the unthinkable happens, the mind reels in an effort to process the loss. The heart closes, the light goes out for awhile. It’s okay. It’s okay to be angry, to shake your fists at the sky, or to pound them into the earth, to claw at it, even. All you can do is face reality as it is, know that how it is now is not how it always will be, and hope those people in your life who really love you, show up (they will). Sometimes there’s the kind of joy that feels like sunlight just spilled directly into your heart. We are in the middle of a mystery we’ll never fully solve, and we don’t get much time to figure out that love is where it’s at. Some people exhale for the last time without ever realizing their purpose here, without ever opening their gifts. The gifts are there, they’re yours to discover and to share. The joy in life comes from that sharing, from that connection. We all want to be seen as we are, with all our humanness, and be loved and embraced, anyway. Cherished and understood.

Drop your stories, your blame, your rage, your fear. Fight your addictions, your desire to numb out, to sleepwalk through this thing. Because you might think you’ll avoid the pain, but anything you push down owns you and gains strength and power. You also miss all the incredible beauty if you’re sleepwalking. And as importantly, the key to your freedom lies within your pain. The longer you run from it, the longer you’re imprisoned. Your pain will not do you in, it will open you up if you lean into it. If you hold it up to the light and examine the places where you’re threadbare and raw, or still crying the cry of your four year old self. Your eight year old self. The self you were before everyone started telling you who and how you were supposed to be and what you were supposed to feel and want. Find that you. That you had no story, no addiction, no blame, no need to be right. That you was just open and curious and full of so much love. If you’ve lost that you, walk through your pain and reclaim yourself. Drop everything, get naked, and head into that fire so it can burn off anything that isn’t serving you, and open you back up to love, to your authentic self. Sending love to you, and the hope that we can all make this world a more loving and peaceful place by remembering who we are. Ally

Your very existence renders you worthy of love. You are here and you are you, and no one else walking this planet is you. Can you take that in for just a second? There are 7 billion people and only one you. Without meeting you, I love you, and wonder about you. What breaks your heart, and what lights you up and sets your soul ablaze? What’s happened on your journey so far, and where might you be stuck? Do the same patterns keep showing up? Do you blame, are you angry, confused, lonely? Or have you found your resounding YES, this is it, this is what I’m doing here with my blink of time? (Those are not mutually exclusive states, of course. You may have found your purpose but we will all experience moments of doubt, fear and despair because life can be so heartbreaking sometimes and because this work of being human is not easy). What’s your favorite thing to do when you have a day off, and when was the last time you laughed, like, a really good laugh, that made your cheeks and your stomach hurt in the best way?

There is no greater feeling than the feeling and the practice of love; giving it, receiving it, and having it at your center. Because it will open you and challenge you and lead to your full expansion and expression. It takes courage to love, to make yourself vulnerable. And sometimes you will be hurt and disappointed, and other times you will be amazed and delighted. But caring about each other is where it’s at. (In case you were wondering where it was ;)). You can spend your days amassing stuff, or you can spend them giving love. At the end of your life, I do not believe you’ll be focusing on how much stuff you have; I believe the measure of a life well-lived is defined by the amount of love you allowed to flow freely from your heart.

Love everyone. Trust that each person you meet has his or her own fears, struggles, doubts, confusion, pain, loneliness and difficult trail to navigate. The person smiling at you may have wept into their pillow last night. Remember that your first job is to protect the expansion of your own heart, so you have that well to draw from wherever you go. Sometimes this will mean that you will have to say no, and “no” may be exactly what a person needs to hear for their own growth. And it may be the word you need to release for yours. If love is at your center, you cannot go wrong. And, love IS at your center. We are built to share it with each other. To spread it gleefully and fearlessly in every direction. If you want to be happy, see what you can do to uplift someone else. That’s a shortcut to your own feelings of purpose and light and joy that has never failed me. Sending you love, and hoping you uncover your gifts and give them away to everyone you meet, because you’ll never run out! Ally

Left to its own devices, these are the two places the mind will take you: those situations from your past (sometimes very recent past) that bring you down in some way, either because something back there feels unresolved and didn’t go the way you wanted it to, or you’re longing for something or someone you once had; or imagined anxiety-producing events in your future that may never come to pass. We humans are funny. We get attached to stories about ourselves or other people, or about the way some event happened, or might happen in the future, and we boil ourselves. We go back and re-do the thing in our minds, coming up with the perfect response, or replaying an event as it actually happened, reliving the experience with all its pain, discomfort, and disappointment. Or we start planning for an event in our future, frequently worrying about the worst case scenario and how we’ll handle it. Your nervous system can’t differentiate between an event that’s happening, or an event that’s happening only in your head. Much of the pain we deal with comes from our thinking (not that devastatingly painful things don’t happen…). So if you allow the mind to do as it pleases, you will very frequently find yourself in a state of depression or anxiety.

The trick is to start to catch yourself as soon as you realize you’ve taken off to do a little mental time-traveling, pick yourself up, and come back to the now. Shut down your mental “flux capacitor”, regroup and recalibrate your inner compass, and point it toward all the blessings in your life. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re in the midst of a painful event, go ahead and feel all your feelings whatever they may be. But if you find yourself traveling back to a situation that brought you heartache, but nothing productive will come from replaying it, get out of there! Start to pay attention to where your mind travels when you’re doing those mundane things, like folding laundry or taking a shower. Notice your patterns of thinking, because every thought you have creates a chemical reaction in your body. If the groove you’re in keeps taking you to the past and future, see if you can use your breath to bring you back to the present, because every inhale and every exhale always occurs in the now. The moment you realize you’re somewhere else, take a deep, conscious breath, hold it in, and then let it all go. Repeat at least three times, and think of one thing in your life that brings you joy. That makes you feel grateful. That reminds you of all you have. Gratitude is an amazing feeling, but it’s also a practice in and of itself. Training your mind to stay present takes a lot of discipline and desire. You have to want to gain some mastery over that monkey-mind, and then you have to work, because the monkey doesn’t stop swinging from branch to branch easily, and fold itself into lotus position just because you want it to. A regular yoga practice helps a lot. So does seated meditation. But the first step is just to be aware. To notice your mental habit patterns, and to start to throw a monkey wrench (haha) in there if you need to! Sending you lots of love, as I always am, Ally

Healing is not easy or fun; it’s a painful, uncomfortable and lonely experience, which is why so many people avoid it. But any wounds you refuse to acknowledge, face, sit with, and hold up to the light, any wounds that are festering in your unconscious mind, simply own you. Until you lean into and examine those parts of yourself that feel unlovable, unworthy, unseen, unheard, discarded, neglected or abused, until you truly know yourself and can accept all parts of yourself (even the stuff you wouldn’t want to share with most people), you’re just going to act that stuff out in every area of your life. Particularly in intimate relationships. In fact, the very relationship you run to in an attempt to avoid your pain, loneliness or rage, is very very likely to bring all those feelings to the surface once the hormones wear off and the fantasy is over. Denial and distraction don’t work, and neither does trying to fill the void with “stuff”, or drugs or sex or a fast car or huge house or big biceps or anything else you can imagine. “The truth will out” as they say. And if you walk into a relationship with the expectation that the other person is going to “complete” you (or both people have that expectation of each other), it’s just a matter of time before it all falls apart.

When you find yourself in a relationship that is deeply painful, there’s an excellent chance that something from your history is being tapped. Yogis call these, “Samskaras”. Something in the interaction or dynamic is creating echoes from events of long ago. The reason it’s so hard to extricate ourselves from relationships like that, is on some level we’re trying to rewrite history. If we can just get that happy ending this time, then it will heal that original wound. But any relationship with a shaky foundation will collapse in on itself eventually, unless both parties get to work digging, knocking down walls, and raising the roof together. If that doesn’t happen (and it’s not likely if two unhappy people come together), when the bricks start to crumble panic sets in because it’s as if that original heartbreak is happening again. And again, you’re powerless to stop it, except you’re grown up, and your rational, problem-solving mind is going to have a very hard time walking away. If only I could get this right, solve the riddle, manage the outcome, manipulate the other party until they do what I want, then I could fix this.

You cannot fix your stuff with someone else, although you can certainly learn a lot about where there is room to grow when your buttons get pushed. I’m not saying a relationship is doomed if either or both parties have work to do individually, I’m simply saying you will need to figure out what is “yours”, what you’re bringing to the mix, and be accountable for it. And not just able to identify your stuff, but also actively working to make changes. The people in your life can be a source of comfort, support and love, but at the end of the day, you have to walk that path to healing alone. Sometimes a relationship is just not healthy. You have two people who come together, and instead of helping each other to grow, they tear each other down. You know if you’re in something like that, because it feels awful. Draining. Like the light is being crushed out of you. Holding on anyway is an attempt to avoid that pain that is yours underneath all the issues of the relationship you’re in. Participating in a situation that brings you nothing but heartache does a great disservice to your whole being. Every part of you suffers: your heart, your mind, your physical health. When you’re in a relationship like that, you really have to find the strength to get out. It’s like breaking an addiction, you can actually get hooked on the suffering. You may be totally convinced the pain you’re feeling is a result of loving this other person so much, and being devastated that they aren’t showing up the way you’d like. But if the scene is that dark, I guarantee you something else is at play. Let go of the relationship, and head directly toward your pain. I mean, truly, open up to it, shed your tears, talk to people you trust, get help if you need it, but face the dragon. It’s not going to kill you. Staying in a relationship that’s crushing your heart and your soul might, though. Not literally, but in the sense that you won’t be shining. You’ll have to numb out to get through. So much better to be in intense pain for a brief period, than endless pain for a lifetime. And if you’re on the other side of ending something like that and just feel devastated, that’s perfectly natural. It will pass, you will grow and heal and strengthen, and be better for having had the experience. Sending you so much love, and a hug, Ally

Growth of any kind takes time; it’s a process, and any living creature must not only endure growth, but open to it in order to blossom. Seeds are buried in the dirt, in darkness, and anything that sprouts out of that dirt must struggle, and keep moving toward the light, even if by millimeters. We live in a world that wants, and is used to, instant gratification. I want something, I want it now, and my job is to figure out what I need to do to get that thing I want as quickly as I can. But really, the work is to open to things as they are, in each moment. To accept as natural that there will be times of (growing) pain, and to embrace the process. The birthing experience can be shocking and violent and deeply uncomfortable.

We are taught that “light” feelings are good: happiness, joy, gratitude, love, excitement, feelings of connection; and that “shadow” feelings are bad: fear, doubt, shame, rage, grief, loneliness and lethargy. But we are all going to experience feelings across the spectrum, because we are all human, and life is full of ebbs and flows. When you push those shadow feelings away, when you resist your own process, you deny yourself a chance to grow and blossom. But that’s exactly what we’re taught to do. Even the most loving parents will say to their children, “Don’t be sad” (or angry or scared), and the message is that certain feelings are not okay. We’re taught to distract ourselves, to push the feelings down, and that it’s more important that things look right on the outside, than that they feel right on the inside. Sometimes we’re incredibly impatient with life, with love, with ourselves, with our feelings. From time to time I get emails that go something like, “I’m doing everything right, why aren’t I happy yet?” Life is under no obligation to move at the pace we want, or to meet our expectations. There is no quid pro quo, as in, I’ll do everything right, and then life will give me what I want.

It seems we are all racing all the time. We have gadgets that store our calendars, we can text each other and expect to hear back quickly, we can check the Newsfeed while standing on line at the bank, we can Google any question about anything, ever, anytime we like. We’re so used to this everything-at-our-fingertips-feeling, that having to wait for anything leads to feelings of frustration. Eckhart Tolle defines stress as, “being ‘here’, but wanting to be ‘there'”. Embrace where you are whenever possible, because anything else is a denial of reality. Do your best to relax into your feelings, even when they’re painful. Especially then, because the growth during those times is exponential and accelerated. Love yourself, do your best to be gentle, kind and patient with your heart, and allow life to unfold. Maybe it will surprise you. Sending you love, Ally

What’s stopping you?

I think there are some really useful questions to ask yourself once in awhile: What do you want, and why do you want it? And what would you do if you weren’t concerned about what other people might feel, or think, or do in response? Just so you’re clear, and not necessarily so you’ll turn your entire life on its head. Although maybe that would be a good thing in some cases.

If you start thinking honestly about what you want, from the mundane, to those big dreams you might not share with anyone, you’ll really learn a lot about what’s driving you. And sometimes what’s driving you, and me, and everyone else, has been programmed, and underneath the seeming motivators, you will almost always find two things: you want to be happy, and you want to be loved. Why do you want to lose ten pounds (if you do)? So you’ll feel better and really feel the feeling of taking good care of yourself? (The feeling of loving yourself and treating yourself well?) Or so that you’ll look better and attract someone? Either way, love is driving you, or unhappiness with yourself the way you are (translation: you believe you’ll be happy if you lose this weight. But if you aren’t happy already, it’s not going to work. You’ll lose ten pounds, and think, “Hmmm, maybe ten more would do it? And ten more. And maybe I should just stop eating?”).. If you want to lose ten pounds but don’t need to, then chances are you’re trying to control your life, because maybe things feel out of control (they are), and you’re struggling with that reality. You want to be happy, at peace. If you want a lot of money, think about why. So you can live in a huge house and drive a particular car and buy whatever you’d like, and attract someone amazing, because that’s the kind of money you need in order to do that? That’s certainly what we’re taught, but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Do you know people with an insane amount of money? Do you truly believe things make people happy, or that any relationship based on your ability to buy things will bring you joy? Can you cuddle with a car? Can you make someone feel loved if you throw enough money at them? As long as you’ve got a roof over your head and food in your refrigerator, exponentially more money is not going to make you exponentially more happy.

What would you do if you weren’t confined by what other people expect you to do? Would you get off the path you’re on? Carlos Castaneda has a gorgeous quote, “A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.Then ask yourself alone, one question. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.” Sometimes people realize many years in, they’ve been working a plan for all the wrong reasons. To live up to some ideal. To please other people. Or because the plan used to fit, but no longer does. Abandoning a plan can be very painful. Resistance is likely to come from within, and from those around you. But if you know in your heart it’s not the right plan, you must let it go and find a different plan, a new one.

Sometimes people feel afraid to ask themselves these questions. “What would I do if I wasn’t concerned about what other people would feel?”. Maybe you’re stopped dead in your tracks by that one, because you’re in a committed relationship, but if you didn’t feel confined, you’d pursue someone else on the side. Look at that, don’t act on it. Figure out what’s happening. Do you feel taken for granted? Are you bored? Do you feel trapped? Angry? When you act on feelings without examining them, you miss a huge opportunity to know yourself better, and deeply. And knowing yourself will bring you so much peace, whereas acting blindly on feelings without examining them will bring you pain. Perhaps it’s time for a conversation with your partner. Maybe you need to regroup, to get honest, to start seeing each other and hearing each other again. Maybe you’re suffering under the delusion that you know everything there is to know, as in, “I’ve got your number. I’ve known you for years. Snore.” But we are all always changing, always in process, always growing. The person you were five years ago is almost definitely very different from the person you are today, just as there is always the possibility of knowing your partner deeply, honoring her or his own growth, observing the changes, and seeing someone you’ve known for years with fresh eyes and an open heart. Or maybe the truth is your relationship can’t be saved. The truth of a thing is always better than living a lie. Than sleepwalking.

As much as possible, clarity is the thing. Knowing yourself, understanding what lights you up and feeds your soul, what sets you on fire, what’s driving you, is really key. Because love and happiness come from within. If you keep searching outside yourself, you’ll never be at peace. And although we’re all unique and human and have our own particular gifts to share, although we have to find our own paths, as Hafiz understood, “When all your desires are distilled; You will cast just two votes: To love more, And be happy.” What’s stopping you? Sending you love, as always, Ally

Love makes us vulnerable like nothing else. Love is the brave acceptance of the reality that we might get hurt, and the understanding that without love, life is a dark and cold experience. Love is a choice, and we are built to say yes to it. Sometimes life teaches us to say no, but that’s just a result of pain, disappointment, fear, betrayal, or abandonment. If you were treated recklessly or carelessly, if you were raised in an unstable environment, if you were taught to keep your emotions buried, you may have to gather up your courage and dig deeply to be able to choose love again. So grab a shovel if you need to, because time is ticking away! Human beings and furry creatures and anything living will eventually die. People will change and grow, and not always in the same direction. Eventually we will all exhale for the last time. Built into love, if you’re awake, is the knowledge that at some point, there will be suffering. But living without love is a worse fate. Let my heart open and bleed out if it has to now and again, but don’t try to sell me on life without love. The you that you see at the end of the day as you brush your teeth is the most vulnerable you there is, that’s the you of you. If you have children, that’s the you they know because children see through masks, and they will become what you are and not what you say. There are no masks in parenthood, and if you allow yourself to love any other being deeply, there are no masks there, either. Because that you of you is your inner kid who is still peering out with wide eyes and confusion and sometimes with fear and doubt and sometimes with total, utter glee. That’s not a you to hide.

When your heart opens and you invite people in (and you must, or life will be lonely, indeed) discernment is a key ingredient. This applies to family members, friends, lovers, colleagues, and acquaintances. Because love requires trust, and I’m a fan of trusting everyone unless or until there’s a reason not to. But that doesn’t mean you have to strip down to your birthday suit and go cliff-diving right away (although once in a blue moon, that might be totally appropriate). Loving yourself well means sometimes you’ll need boundaries, not masks. Your heart and your light are precious and you need to treat them with care, and honor them as the gifts that they are. Familial relationships grow and evolve over many years. You may be related to someone, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be connected to them. Love is a choice, and it’s a verb, it requires your participation, your attention and your care, and the same from the other people in your life. You need to have people in your life who know you and see you, who celebrate you, and also kindly hold up a mirror when you aren’t showing up as your highest self. And forming those relationships takes time, and effort and courage. But to live life with a mask on, is really not living at all. Your heart wants no part of masks. That incredible light within you shines best with no obstacles, no lids, no places where you’re holding on, or managing yourself, or trying to make things look good on the outside. Drop the mask and let love in. Love does not require that you be perfect, love celebrates your humanness, it invites you to explore it and to dig deeper, to open more. Love is accepting and liberating and full of yes. It will never hold you back or say you can’t or you shouldn’t. Masks are for Halloween, they’re not for life. Sending you love, as I always am! Ally

It’s really seductive to think life will begin when things calm down, or you have a different job, or find the right person, or move into a new house or drive a different car, or have more money, or lose ten pounds. As if happiness is conditional, and if you can just get it all “right”, you’ll solve the equation. The thing is, life is going to keep coming with all of its ups and downs; it’s a flow, it doesn’t stop. And it’s happening right now, this very instant, this is your life. The flow can feel like waves crashing down over you, and sometimes you may feel like you’re treading water, or being pulled under by strong currents, or thrown up against the rocks. There are going to be circumstances you’re hoping for, and some that will break your heart open, mercilessly, blindingly, with no notice on a Friday morning or a Tuesday morning like any other, or at anytime, really.

Thinking that things will calm down or be different in the future is a delusion. YOU may be different, but life will never bend to meet your will. There are always challenges, and you’re a human being, so you will always feel all kinds of emotions: joy, fear, elation, depression, frustration, giddiness, shame, excitement, doubt, embarrassment, hope, guilt, curiosity, despair, contentment, gratitude and love. Since you can’t control the tides of the ocean any more than you can control the circumstances you’ll be dealing with in this life, you may as well work on becoming more responsive to them, and less reactive. Reality has no obligation to meet your expectations, hopes or plans. If you allow yourself to be swayed by external factors, feeling happy when things are going the way you’d like, and miserable when they aren’t, you’re allowing yourself to become a victim of circumstance, and there’s just no power in that.

Reactivity comes out of fear and control. Things don’t go as planned, and we wave our fists in the air, or feel sorry for ourselves, or lash out at those closest to us. We want things to go a particular way, we have a plan we’re working, and when life throws a monkey wrench in those plans we feel angry or scared or frustrated, thrown for a loop, or lost at sea, or we shut down completely. Responsiveness comes out of love and truth. Unwanted things happen and we allow the feelings of heartache or disappointment or rage or grief or fear to wash over us and through us. We don’t flail and try to push back the tides. We just swim and know that the sun will peek out from behind the clouds at some point, and one day it will blind us once again with all its power and brilliance and light. We accept the stormy weather when it comes, we treat our scrapes and bruises if we’re thrown into the rocks, we find some sandbar to rest on when necessary, and when the clouds part and the sun shines and the birds chirp once again, we open to that as well. We say, thank you, this is so gorgeous. Life is a mysterious, miraculous experience, it’s not a problem to be solved. The more you resist and fight and lash out, the more exhausted and defeated you’ll become. And the more you open and accept and breathe, the smoother the ride. You can move through this life clinging to your ideas about how things should go or look or be, or you can let go of the should, and move through your life with an open mind, and open heart, open eyes and open hands. I really recommend the latter. Sending you so much love, Ally

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver, from “Animal Dreams”

Happy very first day of the brand new year! There’s something first-day-of-school-ish about it, like you can just wipe the slate clean and begin again. Beginning again is a regular theme if you have a seated meditation practice. Every breath is a chance to start over. But there’s something energetic and cleansing and hopeful when everyone is celebrating renewal at the same time. It’s like a canvas, wide open, untouched, full of potential and promise. Here’s the thing. Life is going to provide the paints this year, as it does every year. Maybe the paint you get is random, and maybe it’s the palette that’s meant exactly for you. Either way, the brush strokes are yours, and the picture you paint can come from a place of love and hope, or bitterness and blame. Two people can work with exactly the same colors and paint completely different pictures.

The determining factor is how deeply you open to what is true for you, how much you accept all aspects of yourself, how far you’re willing to go to heal those places within you that are raw and in need of your kind attention, how accountable you’re willing to be for the energy you’re spreading and the choices you’re making, and how able you are to face reality as it is, with no insistence that it meet your expectations. We have a lot of healing to do, individually, and together. We have undervalued our greatest asset, which is our ability to take care of each other. To extend ourselves, to lend a hand, an ear, a shoulder. We’re at war within ourselves, and if we don’t address that, the painting is going to be dark and violent. Opening to the unbelievable amount of love within you gives you the power to paint with dark colors, but still leave space for the light to dance all over your canvas. Live under the roof of your hope, and paint wildly from your heart. Make this year beautiful by remembering who you are, and realizing what you know. Sending you so much love, and wishes for a new year full of love, hope, laughter, joy, hugs, connection, truth, and yoga! Happy 2013!

As we say goodbye to this year and welcome in a new one, I want to say thank you for all the beauty and pain and laughter and tears and love. I say thank you to those who let me down and to those who had my back (sometimes they were the same people because life is strange and human beings are complex). I say thank you for the incredible joy and little chubby arms around my neck, the squeals, the 9 billion questions that began with the words, “Mommy, why…?”. For awesome and boring dates and full inhales and complete exhales, and look at all you amazing people sweating it out with me in here, again. For all of you who took the time to comment here, to participate in these conversations, to send messages and emails that just blew me away, and even to the person who emailed to let me know she hated my writing. Yes, that happened and it was painful to my ego for a minute, and then really sort of funny, in the way that people can be with all their stuff, and in the way that makes you want to crawl through your computer screen and give the person a hug because you can tell they really need one. I say yes to every single time I’ve had my heart broken, because that’s when the growth happens. When you’re sitting in a pile of glass that used to be your house and realize all those shards reflect the story back to you so you can pick up the pieces, hold them up to the light, and really see, even if you bleed a little. Or a lot.

I say thank you because I have two healthy, happy, amazing children who show me how to go deeper all the time, so no matter what, I have no problems. And because I wake up and get to do something every single day that inspires me, that fills me with YES, and of course, this is it, this is why I’m here. I say yes because I do not expect to be positive and optimistic and happy and joyful every second of every day. I accept that sometimes I’ll be angry, or scared, or confused, disappointed, lonely, frustrated, ashamed. I say yes to all of it, and I say thank you because most days, most moments, I am just so blown away by it all. It’s such an insane ride, filled with constant opportunities to keep learning and growing. To be curious about how much your heart can open and expand. How much you can give. How much you can love. How willing and able you are to face reality as it is, to accept everything and to keep showing up with your hands and your mind and your heart open wide.

I say thank you, because every single moment in my life has led me to where I am right now. I have work to do, I believe we all have work to do, and will until our final exhales. I think we’re always in process, we’re never “done”. We’re human, not perfect. But I love the humanness, the messiness, the falls and scrapes and truth of the thing. Those moments of absolute connection, of genuine hugs, of real conversations, of presence. The staring at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day as you brush your teeth. The final overlapping thoughts right before you finally sleep. I think human beings are incredible, and have the potential to spread love that would rock this world if everyone got on board. I say thank you because I’m enjoying this ride immensely, even the parts that hurt, that I don’t understand. Not all the events themselves, but the chances to learn more. I used to be hungry for happiness, and now I’m hungry just to be awake.

I hope you can let go of anything that isn’t serving your own personal evolution, whether it’s a story you tell yourself, some painful thing you’re feeding and nurturing, a relationship that isn’t healthy, or a way of being that’s preventing you from recognizing how much you could be shining. Sometimes the work is figuring out what to throw overboard. Because, truly, you could blind someone with your light. I hope this next year is full of joy and truth, and when there’s pain, I wish you the strength to open to that, too. Happy, Truthful New Year!! (PLEASE don’t drink and drive!!!) Sending love, as I always am, Ally

A river cuts through rock because of its persistence, its constant motion, and its fluidity. We live in a culture that is more likely to think about overcoming by picking up an ax and hacking away at a thing until it’s shattered in pieces. But much of the time we’d accomplish more with open hands, open hearts and open minds, than we do with a giant hammer. Sometimes that hammer shows up in the form of words. I see people using anger and judgment to get their points across, seemingly without realizing this causes nothing but polarization and alienation. You’ll never win an argument by belittling someone who feels differently than you do, whether you’re talking about something personal, or philosophical.

If you feel the world could be a more peaceful and loving place, you have to start with your own inner world. Because if you’re not full of love and patience and compassion, you can’t spread any. Doing the work to heal yourself is painful and lonely and very uncomfortable. Looking at yourself honestly, with kindness, acknowledging those places where you have some work to do, and also recognizing your strengths are all part of knowing yourself. Things that can get in the way of seeing clearly are rationalizations, justifications, blame, rage, bitterness, and stories we cling to in order to excuse unhealthy choices or behavior that causes pain to ourselves, or to those around us.

Being human is a messy, complex business. No one is going to show up as their highest self in every moment. Forgiving yourself but examining those moments when you’ve done something that hurts someone, is when growth occurs. Not doing that is a recipe for more behavior that will ultimately cause you, and those around you, more pain. Loving yourself is as challenging as truly loving anyone else. It requires acceptance and honesty and a willingness to open to what is true for you, or for those you love. Those truths may not coincide. Ultimately, loving everyone is the thing. That doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone. That doesn’t mean abandoning your feelings and beliefs about all kinds of things. It simply means at your center, there is love. And everything that comes out of you, whether it’s your opinion about something, or your desire to express concern, or your overwhelming feeling of gratitude or fear or anger or confusion or delight about a thing, is still coming from love. Sending you a ton of it! Ally Hamilton

Many misunderstandings in life would be avoided if we could all become more responsive and less reactive. Too often we allow past experiences to harden us, (particularly if they were painful), and to inform the way we perceive future events. We all want to organize our journey, to make sense of it, to categorize situations as “wanted” or “unwanted” and people as “friends” or “not friends” and bring order to this whole mysterious and uncertain world. We want something we can count on, but there are really only two things you can count on for this ride: everything is in a constant state of flux and one day you will die. That’s it. (I know, you’re probably like, “Geez, Happy Holidays,” but I’ll get to that, I promise ;)). I mention this because often we allow ideas to harden and take hold of the mind, and sometimes those ideas create a filter through which we receive information. The ideas are there because they make us feel like we are somewhat in control, like we “get” what’s going on, but a lot of the time the filter is really causing trouble, because no two events are the same, nor are any two people. I often hear people saying things like, “Men___”, or , “Women___,” as if all men or all women do, or are, or feel any one thing, as if it’s easy to put people into neat packages. Do you want to be the recipient of anger that really belongs to someone else? I’d put a “Return to Sender” on a gift like that.

This business of being human is not easy. Life is messy and unpredictable and frequently amazing and sometimes devastatingly painful. It’s an adventure, an exhilarating ride, a lesson in uncertainty, an invitation to open and expand and practice being present which naturally leads to gratitude. It is not something you can organize or control. As much as is possible, try to open to each day with the wisdom of yesterday minus any hardness. Allow yourself to be curious and surprised. Sometimes, yes, you will be disappointed – heartbroken even, but don’t doubt that life might bring you some incredible gifts as well. Try not to close yourself off to that possibility, because without hope, the world becomes a very dark place. Sometimes the filter needs a serious wipe-down, and other times it really needs to be shattered. If you’ve got a tinted window over your heart, I’d vote for a shattering.

Hoping that you open to all the light and love within you if you haven’t already and wishing you very happy holidays. Peace to all, and continued prayers for those who are missing people around the table.

So much love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

Over the past week I’ve felt more vulnerable than I ever have before. I feel cracked open, and I’m not sure I’ll ever really close up again, not that I was very closed before. And maybe that’s a good thing. Being a parent is the greatest gift I’ve ever known, and in one way it’s also the most awful. Because if you’re honest, you know that there is no way you can protect your child every moment of every day. And there’s no way to guess how long you, yourself, have. Elizabeth Stone has a quote, “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” And even if you don’t have children, you either accept that life is an undertaking that makes you vulnerable, or you live in delusion.

We’ve all had incredible bliss at one time or another. Heart-opening love, and joy and absolute delight. And most of us have experienced the loss of those things as well. When we’re young, we define certain endings as “heartbreaks”, and sometimes age and experience teach us those were really just Junior Varsity versions of actual heartbreaks. Profound loss puts everything into perspective. We really spend so much time and energy focusing on stuff that is truly, absolutely meaningless. Somebody said something, or did something, and we boil ourselves and become fixated. Hours might go by, days even. That’s time you can never have back. There is no rollover plan for wasted moments, they are simply wasted, lost, gone.

You cannot live in fear, that’s a sickness. It’s a soul-sickness. Because the heart can’t open and the love can’t flow if you are in the grip of despair. Of trying to control or manage or predict or manipulate. The things you hold most dear can be ripped away from you, senselessly, violently, without warning. Or slowly, painfully, with warning and with the heart-wrenching reality that you cannot stop it no matter what you do, or how you hope or pray. This is the truth of the thing, and I will not pretend otherwise. So how to live? I worked this one out in the months after I had my first, my son. Just a couple of weeks before his birth, my dog, my very best friend for a decade, died suddenly, violently, and without warning in a matter of hours one sunny morning. I watched six people try to save him on a cold metal table, while he stared at me and they did chest compressions like they do on people. To no avail. I miss him every day, and I try to dwell on all the years before and not those awful, final moments. A couple of weeks later, I was on the cold metal table, having a labor that was full of fear, and panic, and alarms going off, and nurses running in and a respiratory team waiting, and it resembled nothing, nothing like what I had envisioned or worked toward. There were moments when I was not sure either of us would make it. There’s a saying in Swahili, “At the moment of birth, the mother’s grave opens for a moment.” I relate to that, although I had a much easier time with my second.

Anyway, I was in love in the way you can be only when you look into the eyes of your child. But I felt the tremendous vulnerability of the thing weighing on me. And I couldn’t, nor did I want to, push it away. For awhile, I struggled with how to open to the reality of a love like this, and the understanding that nothing is promised. And I realized the doorway to living and breathing and rejoicing and receiving was gratitude. However long I have to open to love, let me celebrate it. Let me say thank you and thank you and thank you a million times, every moment of every day. You let the reality of the thing harden you and close you, or you allow it to soften you and open you and inspire you to not miss any opportunity to love.

I am so hopeful we can make this world a safer, more loving and peaceful place for our children, and for ourselves. I’m hopeful about it because I know from my own personal experience, making your inner world a loving place to be is doable. It’s not easy, it takes work and a willingness to sit with your pain and find the path toward healing that will work for you. It feels to me like enough people are starting to realize that anything else leads to violence. If we aren’t loving ourselves, we’re rejecting ourselves. That’s a violent act. And pain inside leads to pain outside, just like love inside leads to love outside. We don’t need everyone, although it would surely be nice. We just need enough people to start to tip the scale. And I feel like we’re getting closer. If you need help, support, love, if there’s anything I can do, let me know and I will try. You can practice yoga with me on-line if you aren’t local. I’ll give you a coupon to try it for free if you want to…practicing yoga transformed me and my life, and that’s one thing I can share. I want my children to grow up in a world where people lend a hand, an ear, a shoulder, whatever they’ve got. I’m sending you so much love. Ally

You cannot force a person’s heart to open, nor can you compel anyone to see things your way. Peace can never exist under duress, and love cannot bloom in a vice grip. Living in fear is not living. Life does not have to be this way. It’s a crazy state of affairs when we cannot hear one another. When the only reality we see is our own, when the only truth we’ll open to is the one we’ve worked out for ourselves. We are not built to take this ride alone. We come in to the world needing love and affection and nurturing. Without those things we die. That really doesn’t change. You may be old enough to feed yourself and clothe yourself, but if there’s no real connection in your life, you are dying on the inside.

If ever it was obvious that we’ve been getting this thing wrong, it is now. The world does not need further polarization; people feel alienated enough. One of the most useful questions I’ve ever heard is, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”. When I see people getting entrenched, taking sides, I know we are in trouble. It may sound too simple, but the truth is, there are no sides. This is a round earth, and we are one people. We really need to get that.

We’ve created a violent world, based on a violent premise (be strong and compete with your neighbor, or die). If you live in a culture that pounds it into your brain that you must compete to survive, and that the measure of your success as a human being is how much stuff you have, what has any of that got to do with your heart? With your softness? Your compassion? Your ability to open to love and to spread it madly? These are the things that are natural to us, but we are not taught to value these things, we are more frequently taught to reject them. Girls less so than boys, who are still widely raised to be tough and strong, but we make our girls sick, too. We are built to care and cooperate. But we’ve shut ourselves off to that, and we are helped along by incessant messages that we haven’t gotten anything right. We need pills and creams and enhancements and toxins and dyes to fix the way we look, and pills to fix the way we feel (NOT talking about people who have genuine brain chemistry issues here, or the mentally ill people we are letting fall through the cracks! I’m talking about people who feel anxious in a social situation, or people who may end up at the hospital due to erections lasting over eight hours). We are barraged with images of the “good life”, and ways we can buy into it if we make enough money and lose enough weight. We have most of our people in a state of such misery, that all they want to do is check out. And there are a plethora of ways to do that: drugs, alcohol, sex, the internet, television (where you get hits of those messages about how awful you are or how much you don’t have in 15, 30, and 60-second commercials), shopping, or working every hour of every day. We distract ourselves with gadgets and miss the actual chances to connect, not virtually, but in the flesh, in the moment, eye-to-eye. The news is full of violence, pain, poverty, war and injustice to such a degree we become numb to it. And this is the environment in which our children grow. This is the food we’re feeding them. They do not need more of that, they need less. A lot less. And so do we.

If you want the world to be a more loving and peaceful place, the greatest power you have is in working on your inner world. Everything around us is a reflection of everything within us. There is so much beauty within you, and when you open to that, you will find there is so much beauty around you. There is an insane, limitless well of love within you, and there is a limitless amount of love around you. Seek out the gorgeousness of your heart, and see if that might allow you to loosen your grip on all your opinions. Just for a little while. Love can’t exist in a vice grip, right? Peace cannot be enforced, that’s a conceptual oxymoron. I’m sending you a huge blast of love, right through my fingertips, smack into your heart. Hope you feel that. Ally

One thing I know for certain is that you cannot outrun your feelings. You can certainly try; people do it all the time. But, as Jon Kabat-Zinn so profoundly put it, “Wherever you go, there you are”.

The depth of our lives and the way we relate to everyone and everything is directly related to our ability and willingness to open to things as they are, which is not always as we want them to be. Sometimes you will stand right smack in the middle of joy, and other times you will stand in the eye of grief. Those profound losses are like hurricanes. They tear everything down, knock everything over and leave us shaken, cold, and struggling to breathe. The landscape looks different, barren, colorless. The eyes burn as the wind rages on. There’s no north or south, everywhere you turn it looks the same. To stand and be the soul of that place takes courage. It takes an inner knowing, a realization that the heart can hold limitless love and it can also withstand shattering pain.

Denying or avoiding what you’re feeling is a sure way to disconnect from the flow of life. It’s the path toward drowning out your intuition. It’s the same as throwing your compass overboard when you’re out to sea and need it more desperately than ever. Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place. If you’re standing in your kitchen and are suddenly overcome, let it happen, open to it. If you run, it will catch up with you and hit you in the face, in all your exhaustion and vulnerability. Knowing yourself is not something you can avoid if you want to be at peace. Accepting and acknowledging your pain is the only way to release the heat of it.

If you’re lucky enough to stand with your child on a sunny day, on a windy day, on a rainy, thunderous ANY day, stand there all the way. When you’re with those people in your life who know you, who love you, who see you and root for you, be there. Nothing is promised. None of us knows how long we have. How many hugs we get. How many moments we’ll be gifted to say what’s in our hearts. I really wouldn’t wait. If there’s a song in your heart, I would sing it, today, right now. If there’s a call you need to make, or a letter you need to write, today is the day. This is your life, it’s happening right in this moment. Please make it beautiful. Truthful, open, compassionate. Let the you of you rise up and flow out of every cell in your body. Sending you so much love, Ally

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” That would be the beautiful Fred Rogers.

I believe if we lose hope, we lose everything. If we shrug our shoulders and shake our heads and walk away deciding the problems are just too big to solve, then we are in real trouble. If we are afraid to stand up and fight back, then I worry. And yes, no matter how peaceful you are, sometimes you must fight. Fight like Arjuna on the battlefield. Fight against your desire to go back to sleep, to numb out, to deny, to distance or distract yourself. Fight against anything that is preventing you from tapping that enormous well of love you have within you. Fight against the idea that it is too hard to figure out how to lend a hand, an ear, a shoulder, anything you’ve got to help someone who is in need. Or to help someone who’s just fine. We could all do with more love and more light.

I worry when people are afraid to have a conversation about where we are and where we need to go for fear we are feeding the epidemic of violence. I’ve seen people saying we should stop talking about what happened because it will encourage other mentally ill people to act out. But I do not believe ignoring the problem is the answer. We’ve tried that. People who are mentally ill are motivated by all kinds of things. The desire to be famous, even for something heinous, may be one of them. But to suggest we shouldn’t weep for the loss of life unless we’re directly affected is exactly the problem. We are directly affected. And this issue won’t resolve itself if we stop talking about it and walk away. It’ll come back to bite us harder. Do you have a child, are you someone’s child, do you have brothers or sisters with children? Do you live on this planet which is being eaten alive by wars and greed and the desire for dominance? It may be easier for a parent to grasp the incomprehensible loss of a child, but none of us, not one of us ought to feel we aren’t connected to the families who are grieving. I live with a six-year old, so maybe the enormity and incomprehensibility of the loss is in my face. I also went to the funeral of a six-year old family member many years ago. I know what that tiny coffin looks like, and I know what it feels like to have your whole being filled with “No, not this.” So I will keep weeping until all the tears are out. I will do whatever I can to lend a hand. I will feed a loving voice as I move through my days, and I will teach my children about compassion. I’ll write letters and sign petitions, and I will keep going in the hope that one voice makes a difference, and in the knowledge that many voices get it done. What we need is empathy and love. We need to extend ourselves and recognize we are a family. We need to stand up and say, “Enough.” It IS enough, don’t you think? We need to figure out how to love each other and help each other and support and accept and respect each other. To listen with attention, and not to hold our breath and our thought until it’s our turn to speak. To open our minds and our hearts and to understand we don’t have to agree on everything to work together, to heal. We’ve separated ourselves from each other, and it’s the most unnatural thing in the world.

It’s not easy to sit with pain and lean into it. But if you want to heal, there’s no way around it, under it or over it. You just have to open to it. Let it wash over you and through you until you are so familiar with it, it doesn’t have power over you anymore. It’s the things we push down and deny that keep coming back. Usually they come back harder, because it’s exhausting to repress stuff. To deny reality. To ignore the truth. Be a helper. Do the work to heal yourself so you have access to all that light within you, and then shine it all over the place. Because we really need as many people shining as possible at this point. We need to bust down the walls and burn down the bridges and hug each other, love each other, look into each other’s eyes and say, “I’m sorry. We can do better than this.” And then we need to go do it. I won’t stop talking. I won’t stop doing whatever I can to spread some love and some light. I will not walk away, and I hope you won’t, either. Sending you so much love, and sending love everywhere it’s needed, which is everywhere. But right now, I’m still sending extra to Connecticut, and I will be for quite some time. Ally

Some wounds cut deeper than others. Pema Chodron has a quote, “…nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know…” I realize it’s exhausting to hold the weight of the pain from the loss of life at Sandy Hook. It would be so much easier to put it down. I really haven’t slept much. I close my eyes and see those little faces. I haven’t been able to write, and I’m still struggling now. Weeping, however, is no problem. Whenever anything tragic and incomprehensible happens, it’s so challenging to lean in to all the feelings that arise. Helplessness, fear, despair, total heartbreak. The mind can’t make sense of something that has no logic, so eventually it gets tired and looks for distraction. Or we go to blame. But we really need to sit with this and do better this time. We need this wound to let the light in. Or it’s going to happen again.

It’s hard to know where to begin right now. I have wept a lot, and I expect I’ll continue to do that every time I think about all the parents who don’t get to hug their children anymore, and all the children who had their lives ended tragically, senselessly, violently, without warning yesterday. It’s so devastating no words can do it any justice. This is not a political issue. This is an issue that affects all of our children equally. We are raising them in a violent culture and a violent world. We’re so desensitized to it, we don’t even realize anymore. We are at war within ourselves, and it’s reflected back at us all day long, on television, in film, in the violent video games parents brush off as “just for fun”. We are inundated with messages that we are not enough, that we are not okay, that almost nothing about us is right. That if we would only work harder, and make more money, and have more things, and weigh less, or buff up more, if we’d only make ourselves “right”, then we’d be good enough, then we’d be happy. We feed our children a diet of this information as well. During their most formative years, when what they need is love, acceptance, reassurance and open arms. We have a culture that is increasingly disconnecting, where people hide behind technology to express things that are challenging to say. Where families go to dinner and spend more time on their gadgets than with each other. Where moments are lost, and chances to see that something is not right are missed. We keep ourselves busy, distracted, scheduled to the point of exhaustion, because that’s what we need to do to run from our own truth. We live in a world where we bomb each other and build walls and fight over differing beliefs, and oil and power. As if we are not all in the same family, on the same planet. This is no way to live, and we know it but it seems the system is in place, right? So what if we feel alone, separated from each other, alienated and lonely? Seems to work for everyone else, it must be me. Except it’s not just you, it’s all of us, we all feel it, we all know it’s not supposed to be like this. There’s no humanity in a gadget. There’s no warmth living life in a box, driving to work in a box, sitting in a box, staring at a box, and going home to stare at another one. We foster this idea of survival of the fittest, of never exposing our vulnerability for fear someone will go for our jugulars. Because, you know, it’s a dog eat dog world. Even though dogs don’t eat each other, and Darwin, when he spoke of human evolution in, “The Descent of Man”, spoke of “survival of the fittest” only twice, and of LOVE ninety-five times. We’ve gotten the story wrong, but we insist on sticking with it.

Pain is part of life. We want the joy and the love, and all the stuff that feels good, but the pain will also come. In my experience, pain opens you like nothing else. When you get so uncomfortable you can’t go on, pain will force you to make changes and go deeper, and explore places that almost definitely need some healing.

The holidays can be a time of fun and love and laughter and family. Of slowing down and enjoying time with friends. But for many people, this time of year can also bring up profound feelings of sadness and loneliness. You might be mourning for something you’ve never had, or for something you once did, or for an idea in your head of how the holidays should look. We get inundated with images of families around a fireplace, everyone smiling and hugging, mugs of hot cocoa in hand. Images of couples ice skating, and proposals under the mistletoe. If you’re having a holiday season like that, that’s a beautiful gift in itself and I hope you soak in every moment of joy. But if you’re feeling alone, or struggling with family dynamics, or missing a person you can no longer hug but only remember, my heart truly goes out to you. And I just wanted to reassure you that you are not alone.

Everyone is working with what they’ve got, what they’ve learned, and where they happen to be on their journey, which is all subject to change. There is always potential for growth, for new understanding, for deeper compassion. Sometimes people behave in ways that are difficult to comprehend. Try not to take things personally. I know it’s hard, but most people are not trying to hurt you. In the context of intimate relationships, it’s good to remember you’re dealing with a person’s deepest pain, and you’re likely to tap areas that may not be healed yet. If things get heated, give yourself and the other person some space and a little time to breathe and figure out what’s happening. Pain will spin a person until it’s hard to figure out which end is up. In day to day interactions, just do what you can to “play well with others”, whether that means not losing your center when someone cuts you off in traffic, or not allowing a person’s indifference to make you feel all people are indifferent. They aren’t. The flip side of that coin is to be open to all the people you may pass in a day who are ready with a genuine smile, the care to hold a door open, the willingness to connect on an elevator, or on line at the bank.