Summer mornings in Northern CA are usually hot and can melt your body pretty quickly. Yet the weather today is weirdly cloudy and cool.  It’s Monday, and this morning is another beautiful, cloudy sunrise. I love hiking and just did my favorite Sacramento River trail on Saturday and Sunday. I save it for the weekends because it’s a good 4-mile hike and I can take my time. Hmmm, I might need to change things up today. I grab my coffee and sit my butt down on the comfy deck couch to watch the sunrise, and a hummingbird whizzes right by my head. That was a close one. I swear they’re…

I almost didn’t write this today… Alice and I just got back from seven days in Sedona, AZ. If you’ve not ever been, I’d highly encourage you to go there. It’s a pretty magical and special place. It’s known as “Red Rock Country,” and for me, it’s always been a place of spiritual healing and energy work. I’ve traveled here when my life and relationship fell apart back in 2012. The guides I worked with helped me come back to myself.  So after so much loss, change, and identity shifting, going back to Sedona felt like part of my healing journey. And coming home late Monday after being away for…

Have you ever lost something, and then watched your mind turn it into a full-blown kind of crazy thought-story chain? Not just, “Oh crap, where did I put that?” More like, “How could I do this? What is wrong with me? Am I getting old? Am I losing my memory? Why didn’t I pay more attention? And now this thing that means something to me is gone forever.” Or is it just me? When I started to write this, it felt more like a continuation from last week’s post, “What Happens When Enough is Enough with the Lie Your Mind Keeps Telling You.” Let me start by saying that St.…

I’ve been doing a lot of hiking lately and have had lots of early-morning time to think, and I’ve been listening to Joseph Goldstein’s podcast, who wrote Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening. This morning, while I was drinking my coffee and doing my morning pages, I noticed how loud some of my thoughts were in my head, and the same stories my mind keeps telling me. Like, “Shannon, why are you writing now? You need to get out on your hike before it gets too hot. You don’t have time to do this right now, be responsible, write tomorrow.” What was interesting was that these stories are loosely based…