Today the next installment in “Outside Higher Ed” appears in Inside Higher Ed, focusing on career discernment: As the title promises, this piece shares seven steps for career discernment. These include: Talking with confidants. Making lists, and writing to learn. Pairing downside with upside risks. Finding my “strong yes.” Taking steps toward a new career. Seeking a reality check. Processing grief and other emotions. For each, I describe how the ... Read more ...
Contemplative Practices
These posts share a range of contemplative practices, including guided meditation, reflective writing, and everyday divination. Practices can be used for healing, visioning, mindfulness, and more.
Loving to Read Again
During graduate school, there were many weeks of being so overloaded by assigned reading that I couldn’t do it all and felt constantly behind. I recognized that the goal was to learn to skim and to put my hands on more and more research, even if I couldn’t savor many pieces. The trouble was that the more I couldn’t savor what I was reading, the more I associated reading itself with feelings of being overwhelmed and behind. When I shared with a mentor how stressful ... Read more ...
Blessed Change
What does it mean to turn our lives upside down? How might looking at the world differently inspire new perspectives? What new perspectives are needed to enact more equitable relations? In recent weeks, I’ve been pulling this “Blessed Change” card whenever using Doreen Virtue’s “Marginal Mermaids and Dolphins” oracle deck as part of everyday divination, a meditation practice for grounding and interpreting lived experience. I started pulling divination or oracle ... Read more ...
Beyond Self-Care: How Hiking Invites Self-Work
Time outdoors and along hiking trails is especially important time to me. As I’ve written previously, it’s time to consider the steps involved in making change, including learning to tread alternative paths. It’s time to slow down, notice beauty, and appreciate life, even in the roughest of conditions. It’s also time to do important intrapersonal work toward disrupting biases and internalized inferiority + superiority. It’s possible to consider activities like hiking ... Read more ...
A New Spell for a New Space
These past few weeks I’ve been focused on moving and settling into a new home. The move has called attention to all sorts of stuff, habits, and emotional swings—things I’d like to keep and release, to shore up and tear down. This process has reminded me, too, of the contemplative practices that contribute to a sense of grounding: grounding needed to stand TALL for justice. One of these practices is spell-casting, which I learned from activist-writer-healer adrienne ... Read more ...
When Everything Is Horrible, Try Slowing Down and Noticing
On a recent hike, I found myself complaining about the heat and mosquitoes. I was walking quickly, speeding up to get off the trail, and failing to notice my surroundings. It wasn’t until I took a break on the ground—literally sitting in the middle of the trail—that I noticed blooming mayapples underneath large leaves. All around me but out of sight when walking were flowers promising spring and the summer to come. The more I slowed down and took breaks on the ... Read more ...
Today Healing Looks Like …
I was only a few hours into Monday morning, and I’d already had three friends text me about grief, a conversation about not just anger but full-on flaming rage, and multiple conversations about how the word heartache doesn’t even come close to capturing the intense pain of seeing families separated and incarcerated. One friend wrote that “the horrors of this administration are making me physically ill,” a statement that caused me to stop and think about my own bodily ... Read more ...
On Choosing a Writer’s Life
I’m writing. Daily. On scraps of paper and printed pages. In email boxes and google docs. On business cards and birthday notes. In calendar entries and comments, too. I’m writing. Daily. For a co-authored article. For a friend’s affirmation. For a series of pieces. For an apartment to be. I’m writing. Daily. In a bustling café. On a park bench. In a quiet room. On a hotel floor. I’m writing. Daily. Some is due now. Some is due later. Some is not ... Read more ...
Crocheting Granny Squares, Connecting to Grandmothers, and Crafting a More Just Future
Recently, I felt inspired to pick up crocheting again, after many seasons without touching a needle, hook, or yarn. Feeling the call for creative self-care, I ordered vegan yarn in the colors of the 7 chakras and laid them out, planning a small afghan of granny squares. Thread yarn onto hook. Chain five, and connect stitches, making a circle. Days after purchasing the yarn and only a few stitches into my first granny square, my mom shared some news. Betty, the woman ... Read more ...
Triangulating the Heart, Head, and Hands for Justice
This spring I’m teaching a new course titled “Contemplative Writing.” I’ve visualized the course design through triangulation, or three intersecting points that rely on the others for fuller understanding. Like a compass, triangulation helps with navigating complicated terrain. It shows locations (or ideas) in relation to each other, highlighting multiplicity. In the case of “Contemplative Writing,” triangulation brings together three semester-long focuses, audiences, ... Read more ...
