The Mask Whisperer

“The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions.” - Parker Palmer  Who are you? Do you even know? Authenticity is something I value tremendously, but not everyone knows what being authentic means. Not only that, but even if you do know what it means, it can be scary to live from that place. Openness and vulnerability aren’t valued in our culture. Somewhere along the line, we were taught to hide behind masks and become the people we think people want us, or need, us to be.  Don’t show your weakness! Don’t ask for help! Don’t be anything less than perfect! Don’t cry in public! Don’t tell anyone you did that ! Don’t tell anyone you are scared! I could go on, but you get the point. We spend all of our time hiding our true self, afraid to be judged. Even worse, we don’t even know who our true self is. Take some time to ask yourself, who am I? What do you come up with? You might say, I’m a teacher or a parent or ­­­ (fill in th...

You cannot think your way out of a box made of thoughts - Krishna Das Have you ever been by hijacked by emotion? I talking about the kind of hijacking that happens when you least expect it. You’re going along with your day, just fine, and BAM! you hear someone say something, or you read something, or you hear a song that evokes strong emotions such as grief, anger, or maybe, if you’re lucky, love. I was going about my day a couple of weeks ago feeling pretty good. I had some stress but it was low-level stress and so I wasn’t overly anxious or sensitive. Then, in a moment of downtime, I checked Facebook. I read something that someone had written and suddenly I felt intense sadness. Intense isn’t even doing the feeling justice. It was overwhelming. The person’s innocuous post about something they were going through (that was similar to something I went through recently) brought back feelings of grief that were lying just beneath my surface. I had dealt with my grief, as one ...