Category Archives: personal growth

Words and Actions

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“Please never doubt the light you bring to my life. I am a new garden and you
are the sun that gives me my reason for blooming.” –JPG
“Darling, there is no tomorrow without you. If I ever lost you,
I would live forever in all the days I had with you.” –JPG
“Oh how great is the depth of my wanting for you.” –JPG

What do the words in these images do for you, friends? What do they bring forth?

If you are not already acquainted, I highly recommend finding and following Josh Greene, @typewrittenlovenotes on Instagram and on his Substack. His writing is thoughtful and evocative, keenly astute to all things human. He engages his audience with the most admirable integration of openness, earnestness, and appropriate boundaries.

I read the three expressions of his post above and commented, “Wondering… what are the day to day actions that go along with these words? It’s lovely to imagine.” Two avenues of reflection emerged from the question:

How do I walk the talk?
If I tell you how much I love you, care about you, and value you, how do I show you in our everyday interactions? What does it mean to live these words? How do I treat you such that you believe me when I say them? It makes me wonder which people in my life feel a gap between what I profess and how I behave. How do I delude myself, believing my words and actions are fully aligned when they are not? What needs to happen for those who feel the gap to tell me so I may correct, either the words or the actions?
It’s so easy (for some of us) to say the flowery words. They make everybody feel good with instant gratification. When things are harmonious it’s easy to act lovingly. How do I show up when it’s hard? Do I live up to my own standards of integrity, compassion, and self-regulation? Perfection is not possible. But how much is good enough? How do I keep myself accountable?

What words/stories drive my actions off track?
I make generous assumptions about most people most of the time; I place myself pretty far on the right side of the curve compared to the general population here. And yet, there are those for whom I hold only sparse generosity. I justify my attitude and seek validation for it. Thankfully, I have dear friends who will provide that emotional validation, remind me of my own standards of conduct, and challenge me to reconcile my actions accordingly.
I come back to the words. How do I label these people and thus prime myself for disconnection rather than connection, the exact opposite of what I always say I want most in life and relationships? It’s an uncomfortable and humbling irony, and one that I am grateful occurs only occasionally. So I am determined to suck all possible learning from each occurrence, in hopes of prevention in future. Disconnect will always happen of course, but my high dream is to look back and see that I did my best to present my best self whenever possible. What do I need for that to happen more reliably?

These questions feel important, but not necessarily urgent. I’m reminded of Rilke’s admonishment to ‘live the questions‘, to simply be alive to them, let the answers reveal themselves over time. I have trained my observation and reflection muscles well; they are tone and strong. So I don’t fear the heavy self-awareness lifts when they cross my path. I can slow down, take a breath, and assess. I get to decide whether and how to approach, detour, confront, or take other action. I’ll know when I need to know, and I am well supported with excellent counsel.

So let’s live some good questions, shall we? The world needs us all to speak and act more thoughtfully and reflectively, and be much better self-regulated.

Clearing Space

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*sigh* So much better!

I require a good hard shove to declutter these days, my friends! Always something else to do—I am a master procrastinator.

I wonder what I was doing before with the six hours a week I now spend in the pottery studio? Maybe cooking, possibly cleaning, or just keeping up with life—emails, etc? It was definitely not keeping my house from getting overrun by *stuff*.

The last month or so found my mind laden by time management and tasks, namely packing the house for new carpet, then traveling abroad, to the point where this past week I was finally taken down by some ambient virus, opportunistic little bugger. But as I climb out from illness a new energy emerges, one that breathes easier now that the carpet is installed and I can move back into my spaces with intention and organization.

It’s too embarrassing to show the before photos; suffice it to say my house has been *dense* for many years. I took a carload of stuff to Goodwill a few weeks ago, and there is at least another half load accumulating. I think my nervous system has relaxed significantly since getting my closets out of the bathtub and books back on the shelf today. The latter now bears a cohesive organization for the first time in years. *sigh*

All my stationery in one place.

The first thing that called to move back, however, was my stationery. In excavating my prior spaces I discovered packets of it squirreled away everywhere, and I took the time to box it up together so I’d know exactly where to find it all. I felt positively giddy to unpack it onto that empty shelf right next to the desk that had been too buried to use. Then I moved all of my washi tape boxes on top, and my craft drawers back in place, and voilà, now all I want to do is sit and write snail mail.

Snail mail central

It will be some weeks before the whole place is back to full operational status. I’m confident I can get there steadily, and the journey will be at least as rewarding as the outcome. Come to think of it, I’ve been clearing space and opening more than just floors and closets lately. Money, emotions, and relationships are all getting a good evaluation and adjustment, all in refreshing and reinforcing ways. Pottery has reignited some creativity as well as stimulated openness to trying new things in a safe and familiar setting.

We live in our stagnation because it’s the status quo, no? It’s organic and insidious, just happens. I could have continued living in that state indefinitely, I think. And it has certainly cost me to disrupt and reorganize it. But it’s already worth the time, attention, and energy (physical, emotional, and relational) spent. The challenge now will be to establish and maintain a new, more mindful and intentional environment that reflects how I want to show up to myself and my life.

Clearing space. Opening. Reorganizing. Oh, this could be good and big.

Transitions OMG

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Photo courtesy of J. Stahlhut, September 7, 2026, near Georgetown, Colorado

What changes move you today?

It’s leaf peeping season in the Rockies; I will go eagerly back to Summit County, CO next weekend for aspens and friends–can’t wait! Hoping to get lots of photos to use here in the coming weeks. This is my 799th post–let’s see what I can capture for #800!

This made me laugh while scrolling Facebook today:

Baaahahahahaaaa TRUTH ;P

Summer to fall, youth to maturity. The Fourth Turning. Everything changes. How do we meet it all? What choices do we make?

Hubs decided this summer that we will replace the carpet in the whole house. The kids dutifully cleared their rooms before going back to school–it looks so sad, like they’ve moved out. My mental load increases the closer we get to installation, as 90% of the stuff in the rest of the place is mine and I must now clear 20 years of living off the floor and out of the closets–big lift for packrat me. I know I will be happy when it’s over and the process has already illuminated so much, for better or worse. I am who I am, have been so forever, with remarkable consistency, o.m.g. But after this project I may likely reorganize and reset, decluttered and refocused. Looking forward to it (but I’ll complain about it in the meantime). Makes me think about other things that are the same and also changing–my favorite paradox.

What have you noticed about menopause lately? I bet you hear or see something about it a lot more often now than ever. I wrote my most focused piece on it two years ago this week, which I still share with patients, but I really need to update it, as the landscape around this life transition has itself shifted significantly even since then. It’s still great that women’s health gets so much more attention and discussion now, no question. We have also swung well into pathologizing the normal in a lot of spaces, where unqualified influencers make money by sowing fear and mistrust of legitimate medical science and doctors in women of all ages. It’s all part of a larger societal transition, no? Social media has given everyone equal access to express and sell anything on various public platforms with little if any accountability. Menopause is a vastly different social experience now compared to even five years ago, let alone a generation.

Speaking of which, how is Gen X menopause different from that of our mothers? For many of us it hits when our kids are about a decade younger than we were when our moms went through it. We had much better access to birth control, and many of us delayed childbirth while getting our careers off the ground. So while our moms’ menopause happened after we were off at college or beyond, we’re going through it with teens and kids still at home–a very different, and I would argue more difficult, scenario. We are also the largest generation of working moms, primary breadwinner moms, and executive moms. We will or have hit our professional pinnacle around middle age, many in male-dominated fields, right when our adolescent kids’ brains and behavior devolve into chaos and our own bodies stage the second most significant physiologic revolution of our lifetime. Oh and don’t forget that our parents are also in their seventh or eighth decades of life, another pivotal transition that we also attend.

So to my fellow perimenopausal sisters: Holy moly, we are HEROES! Not only are we living every day in our own involuntary bodily transitions, but we’re doing it in a period of social and generational transition that is more complex than any timeframe to date. If you’re reading this and you have a woman leader anywhere in your life (and believe me, you do, even if she doesn’t have a formal title or designation), just thank her now. She’s holding all kinds of shit together and probably making it look easy.

What other monumental transitions do you observe now? What transformations? As we move from summer to fall in the Northern Hemisphere, entering the season of harvest and impending equinox, how do we feel and what do we need?

Multiple coincident and intersecting transitions can feel like a maelstrom. Can we find a quiet and stable center within it? Can we cultivate that dynamic balance that allows us to move more fluidly, with less friction and drag through it? What serves as our rudder, that which reliably stabilizes us on our life course, despite the inevitable weather changes? I know what mine are, and writing this post helps me reidentify and reinforce them.

Everything changes. Some things remain the same. May we always maintain clarity about the paradox of both, and exercise our agency to transition ever toward our most aspirational selves in each phase of life.