It’s 10 days before Christmas. I look at my beautiful tree, the Christmas village and other decorations I put up with so much love and excitement, and I just want to sit down and enjoy it all. I want to ‘give up’ or ‘surrender’ the pressure of getting the end-of-year...

This past week, my son, Dante, had his wisdom teeth pulled. He did great. But I NEED TO BRING THIS UP, because through my work I’ve encountered too many tragic addiction stories. Before we left, the young nurse handed me two prescriptions - one for an antibiotic and...

The word ‘Hope’ spelled out on a string of Christmas lights was the first thing I noticed last weekend when I walked into a church. I was there to perform an Advent concert, and I loved seeing ‘Hope’ welcoming people in. What do you hope for? Do you hope this...

We were running late. Still, I pressed ‘Pause’ to kiss my boys goodbye and watch them leave for school. (I wrote about ‘pressing pause’ in last week’s newsletter. Evan gave me a hug that without words said: “Don’t worry, Mama, we’ll be OK.” He got into his car and...

When I was little, I loved to write in my journal. I’d write for hours, cut little butterflies and hearts out of magazines and paste them into my diary. Thinking back on it, it seems like the world was on hold while I wrote and reflected on my experiences,...

“You are a strong lady, Mama,” Blais said as I handed him his heavy school backpack with one hand. While driving. “Yes, I am” I replied, even though I haven’t always thought of myself that way. It’s been exactly a year since my husband Matthew passed away. Today, a...

Whether you like it or not, our world is structured around competitions, achievements and trophies. It might be a trophy that sits on the shelf and, apart from making your proud, it requires frequent dusting. Or it might be a trophy you can’t see - an academic honor,...

I have a question for you: Do you like silence? When you find yourself immersed in silence, what do you do? Think about it for a minute... that deep silence in which you can hear your own heartbeat. A kind of silence in which there are no distractions. Maybe it's in...

What has changed for you over the past week? This week, I worked on ‘leaving the past behind and moving into the now’ with everything I did. I set my intention to do that, and noticed how, every day, there was something that gently pushed me into putting that into...

As I write this, I'm packing and preparing for my annual transformational cruise in Croatia. My friend and editor Mike said to me as he wished me bon voyage: “You are on a precipice of something great!” I smiled. Yeah, this is a big ‘getting out of my comfort zone’...