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I started my day today with this surprise in my inbox, and it brought me so much joy!

I remember how much reading as a child brought me feelings of happiness, comfort, safety. and excitement at being transported into other worlds. My mother brought that love alive in me, with her love of reading books and poetry, her love of language and enjoyment of storytelling and writing.

Yesterday, as the Ethereal Foundation's directors shared how much they enjoyed the enthusiasm and explorations I encouraged around the book I read to their first group of children, I felt thrilled. But it actually sparked nostalgia and gratitude, so much gratitude for my mother's formative role in many of the things that actually spark joy for me.

I'll be telling my mom about this experience, and saying heartfelt thanks for giving me the ability to play through interaction with books. Some books brought lots of schoolwork and responsibility and even pressure, and she insisted on excellent performance at school, but she also helped me to carve out a transformative relationship with a second set of books. That second (but not secondary) relationship keeps me excited to wander into bookstores and ooh and aah around new books, to share my books with others, and to tell stories so I can see eyes light up and excited conversations spill out of eager mouths and hearts.

I truly hope reading was one of your childhood joys and has stayed alive in you. I invite you to follow the Ethereal Foundation and come join their activities, all focused on making childhood joyful for children from all walks of life. They're focused on creating more opportunities for children to play, laugh, create, read, and connect, though they say it better than I can on their website. For now, they will have virtual events, but they plan to expand to in-person events as well.

When you find yourself mourning declines in the love and connection we see in society, remember that there are regular, simple people who actually put long hours and their own funds into changing things for the better for people they don't even know (yet). These are the people we should be posting about, rallying excitement and support for.

You choose the society and world we live in through your actions. You decide what people talk about and you shape what is valued in society. And if you, like me, feel thrilled that this foundation is going to support children locally and all around the world through their works, please consider:

(1) telling them your thoughts and

(2) supporting their work by telling friends about their events, becoming a sponsor or partner (by sharing your time, donating books and materials, offering a venue for an in-person event, or even providing funding).

And today, find one person who shaped the best part of you as a child, and reach out to tell them thanks and how they changed your life.

It's our first episode since I took a mental health break, and we're back with an especially hard-hitting and much-needed episode. We're exploring Disability Pride on the Special Needs Parent Podcast with Meagan Tehseldar-Hage, Brooklyn Fury, and Latrea Anita Russ and talking about some challenging and empowering issues.

Dive in to the video episode at https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/N6JIrz7oALb and please vote on our poll after you listen/watch:

We'll be exploring more of the issues covered in this episode inside of the Lighting the Path Community, so come join us at https://www.facebook.com/share/jG6JEHafR3TWTyqG/ to be part of it!

Disability Pride - Special Needs Parents with Disabilities by The Special Needs Parent Podcast Join us to explore what disability pride means to parents who not only have children with disabilities, but have disabilities themselves. Three guests speak with me on the panel for this episode, sharing their thoughts and experiences about disability identity, navigating neurodivergence, breaking g...

Reminding you that you are loved. If you don’t feel it, look again. From this corner of the world, and from the core of your own wondrous self, you’re loved.

Some days, we seem to be chasing life’s demands so hard but unable to catch up.

That’s the week I’ve had: handling work demands, seeing to the needs of my home circle, rushing from meeting to meeting, arranging for medicines and therapies, magically finding time to get the last minute things my son forgot he needed for his activities, and using every spare moment to tackle random demands that cropped up.

In the middle of the rush, I’d promised a few friends I would show up to support them and I did a pretty good job of doing that, but sometimes it happened by choosing my friends over what I needed in the moment.

That’s exactly what life’s about. Sometimes we give to someone else and it reminds us we also need to give a little more to ourselves. So, I’ve decided to give everyone (including me) a beautiful gift we all would benefit from.

I’ll be running a free 5-day meditative art workshop at 5-5:30pm EST (6pm Trinidad time) from Monday February 12 to Friday February 16. That’s the week of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day around the world, and Carnival on top of that here in Trinidad and Tobago.

So many participants loved it when I ran it a couple of years ago that I couldn’t think of a nicer gift to give everyone in this month that focuses on romantic love and Divine love.

The Meditative Art workshop runs inside my group, The Thrive Collective. Just follow this link and ask to join us:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/ourthrivecollective/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF

Looking forward to welcoming you and enjoying some shared time to look after ourselves. The group brings extra opportunities for connection and sharing our art and reflections. If you don’t want to join the group, DM me so we can create a way to let you join the workshop.

STOP IT!…

…If you see someone who’s physically crushing it, and immediately inventory all the ways you fall short.

…if every twinge in your muscles makes you stress about the fact that you’re aging.

…if you’re comparing yourself to others and feeling shameor harshly judgmental of yourself.

Give yourself the gift of:
1) feeling gratitude for the wonderful things your body helps you do right now
2) loving your body
3) starting to allocate some time for loving and caring for your body in ways you haven’t been able to, recently.
4) looking forward to additional capabilities you will develop as you take more care of your body.

This is what I’ve been doing. And it feels good to be adjusting my relationship with my body in this way.

Are you really choosing your direction and actions and living the life you want? Or are you chasing what THEY told you to, doing what THEY expect you to, thinking as THEY showed you to?

For decades, I lived in the second way, racing to earn approval, prove my worth. My efforts earned qualifications, promotions, better income and more. But, something critical was missing: my ability to know me, hold space for me, do what I truly wanted.

I’d started to feel stuck and demotivated.
I hated the emptiness of my existing routines.

Eventually, I set out to find joy in my career and personal life. I began rediscovering myself, asking myself why I believed certain things, whether my mindsets and habits fit me. I ripped many out and planted some new ones, then put in the time to shift and grow.

How about you? Do you look successful but feel deflated? Do aspects of life ring hollow to you? Find out: dig deeper into yourself, find more meaning, turn up your mood.

DM the words LEVEL UP if you’re overdue to create the joy and fulfillment you long for.

25 years ago, my close friend accused me of something in a blowout verbal attack right in our shared kitchen. Looking up during the onslaught, I saw two housemates gleefully laughing in the stairwell at my pain and confusion.

My heart broke that day; hateful seeds had been sown to hurt me and dismantle my friendship. Though the accusations were disproven, I never received an apology from any persons involved. That fiasco shook my capacity to enter into new friendships for quite some time.

I and my old friend got back into contact over the years, but it sadly never returned to the previous level.

A few years ago, I started interacting with one of the other two girls again. Someone asked me if I’d forgotten how much she’d hurt me. I can’t forget; the event took the last bit of innocent childhood I’d been holding on to. However, I no longer carried resentment of her. I answered that I was choosing to trust that she had grown emotionally and mentally, just as I had. Our friendship has since developed nicely.

The New Year is a great time for new beginnings. We may feel safer hiding away after hurt, but that limits bigger joys and fulfillment that could come.

We can take the opportunity to review what we’ve learned, see how past pain grew our resilience, and let go of old pain that no longer serves us so our healing moves even further along. We all deserve this kind of freedom.

Maybe, you also have a friendship that could use a second chance. Maybe you could benefit from extending an olive branch or making a long-overdue acknowledgment or apology. Or, maybe, you could find more freedom by clarifying some boundaries or putting distance between you and someone who repeatedly brings you pain.

It all starts with training up your ability to love yourself. With that ability will come an increased capacity to take risks and extend love as well as place limits that look after your needs.

I’d bet you’ve been through life events that reflect some of the challenges mentioned above. How did you make your way forward? I’d love to learn from your experience, too.

If you’ve worked hard to create professional success but instead it just feels empty, you are likely asking yourself, “What now?”. You may be feeling frustrated because you thought when you got here, achieved this, life would feel so wonderful - but now you find something else missing. You want more from your personal life, your relationships, your excitement to get up in the morning, your fulfillment - something.

The emptiness, doubt and pain doesn’t last forever. In my work with my coaching clients, here are 10 common elements that make a big difference as they create lives of considerably more joy and fulfillment.

1️⃣ You are not alone in feeling this way. Keep going.
2️⃣ Know that you are still worthy, even if things don’t feel great right now.
3️⃣ Construct a vision of the better version of life that you desire, and draw motivation from that.
4️⃣ Stay reflective: note what feels off and what upsets you, and identify what changes you need to make to create a preferable reality for yourself. Asking questions and searching for meaning are GOOD things, even if it really hurts to do it.
5️⃣ Note the negatives, instead of hiding from them. You need to acknowledge what’s unacceptable to be able to replace it with better.
6️⃣ No matter how bad things may feel, see the positives. Sometimes it takes time to build the skill, but there are positives on the flip side of most negatives.
7️⃣ Prioritize yourself. Once you learn how to do it well, you’ll find you are much better resourced to see to the needs and demands of everyone else.
8️⃣ Draw your line in the sand and mark it with a flag. Take a look at whether your boundaries need adjusting and how well you enforce them.

Read the rest in the images…and be sure to save for when you need this list again.