There have been a couple notable times in my life when I felt the sheer terror of not having a future. It’s the sensation of staring into a black abyss instead of seeing a well-defined path before me. Over a recent family vacation I was again struck by deep fear for my future, and until I started to breathe into it I judged myself for going back to a place I thought I’d already worked Read more…
Dear Dad, Can you believe it’s been two years since your death? In that weird way time has of warping our sense of its passing, it seems an eternity, but also just like yesterday. I can still feel your hand in mine and hear your labored breathing, as if it were only moments ago that I stood by your hospital bed. But that person and who I am now are substantially different. Since your death Read more…
The topic of identity keeps popping up in conversations with people in different areas in my life, which signals to me that it’s time to pen my current thoughts on it. Two questions drive this investigation. The first from friends, peers, and colleagues on the brink or in the midst of transition, wondering what will happen to their identity when they find themselves without institutional attachments to define their place in the world. The other comes from within: When we loosen our grip on identity, what takes its place? This is the story of how I journeyed into the Place of Nothing and found my center.
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There is something especially touching about the earnestness of a young person’s search for purpose. I have the great fortune of knowing young adults in their early twenties who hunger with every fiber of their being to express their unique essence and be of service to some particular corner of the world. There is a sense that once they figure all the details out—who, what, when, where, and how—all will be well. They will have Read more…
One of the hard-won lessons of burnout for me is that unless I make huge, sweeping changes in my life, I will keep hopping right back on the hamster wheel—not because I’m a workaholic per se, but because I have a certain aversion to moderation. Consistency, predictability, the daily plod…yeah, not appealing. I’ve come to recognize that, for me, avoiding burnout doesn’t mean doing everything in moderation. I still go through my crazy creative cycles Read more…
I can check another item off my bucket list: leading a workshop at a staff retreat! (Old readers may remember when my dream of leading workshops at a youth retreat came true.) And what’s even better is that I just found out that the audience will be a mixed group of professionals and young adults, which is really my ideal teaching scenario. I firmly believe that what’s good for the goose is good for the Read more…
There’s been a lot of hankering in my social and professional circle for a greater feeling of community, and at the request of a few friends and colleagues I’m calling together a regular event conceived as an alternative to mastermind and networking groups. As youth development and non-profit professionals, so much of the work we do is heart-based, yet professional events tend to be focused on cultivating ideas from intellectual or pragmatic standpoints. Bringing things Read more…
I am the type of person who is always cleaning house, so to speak, but the end of the year is an especially auspicious time to survey my internal landscape, as well as the exterior demands on my time and energy to assess if anything needs letting go. It’s quite difficult for me to release people from my life because I am ever hopeful, easily see the best in a person, and practice being as compassionate and non-judgmental as Read more…
This past Sunday Minds On Fire hosted its first Self Care Shakedown for youth development professionals. By all measures, the event was a success! We were at capacity, and all attendees brought their best selves to an afternoon of challenging internal work. The premise behind the Shakedown is that getting further along in our self care is not a matter of “doing more.” We won’t really be taking better care of ourselves if all we aspire to is to be able to go to the gym more often, meditate for longer, or get more massages. No: The self care journey is about transformation. It’s about figuring out and committing to a new way of being in the world. That’s why it’s a shakedown: We aren’t messing around here! (more…)
Today I had the pleasure of volunteering for the Heart Gallery‘s annual exhibit at Penn Station. The mission was to raise awareness about youth in foster care and encouraging passersby to sign up to receive more information about mentoring, fostering, or adopting hard to place children and youth. The most illuminating interaction I had this afternoon, however, was with a young mother who herself had been placed in foster care and who now had three very young kids in the system. It was one of those conversations that threatened to drag on, but I sensed that she really needed to have her story heard, and I’ve gotten much better at being able to hold space for people without getting pulled into the drama of their stories. The upshot for me was that I got to learn a lot from what may be the most overlooked entity in the foster care ecosystem: the birth parent. (more…)