What feeds you?

I just spent 4 days in the Michigan woods with friends I’ve known so long, they’re family.

There’s been a serious health crisis, and it was time for me to go and do my part.

Michigan in January–I moved to Colorado in part because of those long, gray, Midwest winters. I anxiously watched the weather ahead of time, finally facing the fact that there would be snow and cold and little sign of the sun. I packed my long underwear.

As much as I was there to help–I shopped and cooked and listened and supported–what I found was nourishment. My friends built their log home 23 years ago, two hardy women who wouldn’t be convinced it couldn’t be done. What could be more cozy, on a mid-winter day, than walking from the woods into a house built of logs, stepping onto pine-planked floors with warm rugs thrown about, warming up to the fire in the wood stove? This family loves Christmas so much that the tree and all the decorations were still up, making the inside a glittering fairyland.

I wonder what truly nourishes us? What is on your list of what feeds you deep down? What I notice is how easy it is to be fooled about this. Fast food, surfing the internet, racing around being “productive,” checking off the to-do list–these can easily become what takes over life. But this list is full of facsimiles, fakes. Nothing on it has real substance. We might fill our bellies, our time, but take in little that actually sustains us.

The memory I will treasure from these four days is the laughter. The intimate giggling during the late night medical procedure; the three of them upstairs laughing over the finally-recognized sheep in the pj bottoms; the guffaw when the beloved golden retriever  slid head-first into the snow bank. I fold those sounds around me like a cozy blanket, every cell satisfied by my family of friends.

Join me for my free teleclass, Introduction to Catalyzing Conscious Relationships, Monday, January 31, 6-7pm MST. To register, click