Hi Everyone,

It’s been about a month since my last blog post, and I just wanted to pop in and give regular readers an update as to what I’ve been up to. This spring I committed to posting blogs once a week, and found that a really fruitful decision. For the past couple months, however, I’ve been devoting my attention to a bigger project - a book that I hope to have available this summer!

Being grounded is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately - maybe because it is such a simple thing to wrap my head around and do, that’s so profoundly healing and important. In today’s post I’d like to explore what it means to be grounded, why it’s so profound, and how we can be more grounded as we move through our days.

For much of my life, I protected myself from others, and from the world, with boundaries made out of anger, fear, insecurity and frustration. I imagine many of you reading this might be able to relate in your own way.

For much of my youth I kept a journal, and although it was often the sole witness to many of the secrets and feelings I was too scared (or didn’t know it was possible) to share with any other human, the role of my journals was never solely therapeutic.

While there certainly was something deeply beneficial about having that private space, those pages in which to write my life down, there was something about my process that was almost expressly non therapeutic. To be completely honest, there was always a sense in the back of my mind that one day I would be a very important person, and people would be reading through these journals to see how smart and important I was even at an early age living in obscurity.

Late last year, I went through a difficult break up. Despite a lot of love, things weren’t working on some important levels with me and the woman I was seeing, so we decided to step away from our relationship, and were able to come to a pretty good place together initially. Over the following months, however, through a series of messy interactions, things got progressively less clean, and a part of me that had been comfortable letting go of this relationship was no longer so sure of itself.

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well and taking good care of yourself during these unprecedented times we are moving through together.

This winter I began hosting local group events in Vancouver, BC, focused on sharing and supporting one another on the journey to living in a deeply authentic, heart centred way (and navigating the challenges that arise on this path). As is the case nearly everywhere at this point, group events are on hold for the time being, the positive side of this being that I am going to be offering the same experience online, meaning anyone anywhere can attend.

Vulnerability can act like an edge that cuts two ways: At times it can be an elixir that unlocks doors to extraordinary levels of connection, and in other situations it can slam doors shut so hard it leaves us reeling, in a state of shock or worse - bruised and battered in the most tender place. When we don’t know how to take care of our vulnerability, the latter is often our experience - bringing it out into the open is synonymous with rejection and wounding. That’s why we so often simply don’t - we’ve learned at the deepest level to simply not be that honest, to not get that real, to the point that it might take a massive excavation to break up the frozen feelings and go there even if we wanted to.

After all, even with all the flowery stuff self help gurus speak about the virtues of vulnerability, actually going there carries the very real potential of leaving us exposed to injury. When it’s done right, opening up our vulnerability is a pathway to heaven on earth, but damn it can hurt when things don’t flow.

Today that’s exactly what I want to talk about.

Last year I found myself in the position of supporting a very close friend who was going through an incredibly difficult and dark period in their life. I was their primary support person through this challenging chapter, and as such I would speak with them on the phone at length every day, sometimes several times. They were struggling with a serious illness, the fallout of a relationship gone awry, and ongoing financial difficulties. There was no question that I wanted to be there to support my friend in any way that I could, but as their situation progressively deteriorated, and they increasingly needed my help, I found myself beginning to unravel - my own psychological and physical health began to fold under the weight of my friend’s situation. I was taking on their trauma.