Allison Evans Coaching

This week, Guy and I celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary. I am happy and grateful to report that we are better than ever. People have asked, “What’s your secret?”

We were lucky to be madly in love with each other when we got married. Being so in love gave me a palpable feeling of connection with my husband. I could feel in my body when our connection was “on,” and it felt good. I could also feel in my body when our connection was “off,” and it felt bad. I felt lucky to have such a strong guide built in. Not only was this guide infallible, it motivated me powerfully to work out our differences and re-establish our connection, because I physically hurt until we did.

That feeling was the genesis of our secret. Early on, as we were forming our relationship, it guided us to prioritize our connection over our own egos. This grew into a habit of turning towards, rather than away from, one another in thousands of small moments in the years that followed.

That’s our secret: turn towards your partner.

You can read the full story in “Our Secret to a Happy Marriage” on my blog at the link in bio.

The poem “Aunt Celia, 1961” by Carl Dennis captures my feelings about my husband – my love for him and what our marriage has been for me. The gift of it – the “blind luck” of meeting him, the clarity with which I recognized him, the unearned happiness of our life together – still fills me with wonder.

I share inspiration in my newsletter each week. Subscribe at the link in bio for more.

You create an outcome you don’t want when you believe in limitations. You create an outcome you want when you believe in your desire. This formula is true in all aspects of life, but I want to focus on family. One of the most painful beliefs I had as a mother was that children are picky eaters.

I never gave it much thought, but I saw kids’ food on commercials and in restaurants and grocery stores. So, when I had a child of my own who was a picky eater, I was chagrined but felt that was just the way of it. I couldn’t make him eat, and I didn’t want food to be a battleground. So, I gave up and meekly hoped he’d grow out of it. The end.

When I eventually did The Work on that thought, it was not so black-and-white.

What result in your family life are you dissatisfied with but settling for? Find the belief under it and dissolve it – make it “not a thing” in your life! It’s the first step in creating what you really want.

You can read the full post, “Sexy Moms and Toddlers Who Dine,” on my blog at the link in bio.

This is one of my favorite passages from Alison Gopnik’s gorgeous book The Gardener and the Carpenter, a beautifully researched and deeply humane exploration of what it actually means to be a parent. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.

“The love we feel for our children and the love they feel for us is simultaneously unconditional and intimate, morally profound and sensually immediate. The most important rewards aren’t your children’s grades and trophies – or even their graduations and weddings. They come from the moment-by-moment physical and psychological joy of being with this particular child, and in that child’s moment-by-moment joy in being with you.”

- Alison Gopnik

What if the most transformative spiritual path you’ll ever walk isn’t found in a monastery or a meditation retreat – but in a 4am feeding, a diaper change, a baby’s unself-conscious gaze?

This Mother’s Day, I’m revisiting a piece I wrote about what motherhood actually does to us – not the Instagram version. The undoing, the humbling… and the unexpected bliss hiding inside the tedium.

If you’re a mother, have one, or love one, I think this one’s for you.

Read “The Spiritual Path of Motherhood,” on my blog at the link in bio.

When I found this David Whyte poem, “Sweet Darkness,” something in me went quiet. I felt held.

I share writing and poems like this in my weekly newsletter. Subscribe at the link in bio for more!

We arrived in Paris this morning and are in a café opposite Montparnasse train station, happily awaiting our noon train to Bordeaux!