What feels like aliveness lately

Hi {{ first_name }},

I've been paying attention to what feels like aliveness lately.

Not what makes me productive. Not what keeps the wheels turning. Not the systems or routines that make it do my work in the world and write here every week.

People sometimes ask what that's actually like, as though there's a formula I could hand over. No surprise to you- there isn't.

So instead of teaching this week, I thought I'd simply show you the list.

The things I make room for.

The things that feel like aliveness to me.

• Co-creating and facilitating with Sirius Bonner, Dana Sturtevant, and Meg Bradbury at Center for Body Trust, and with Carmen Cool through grief work. Co-facilitation is underrated.
• Strategizing with EMBER folks about what they're building next. There is something deeply satisfying about watching an idea become something tangible in someone's hands, and then hearing them say how much fun they had building it.
• Telling the truth about working in our helping fields, even the parts that we don't say out loud enough.
• Building communities of care and support, and tending to the wonderfully ordinary, unglamorous maintenance they require.
• Becoming a reader again. Land by Maggie O'Farrell, and Briefly Perfectly Human by Alua Arthur, are my current reads.
• Painting badly, because that's what happens. Nothing soothes my nervous system more than pushing paint around. Michelle Armas's Catalyst Academy is perfect for my foray into art.
• Embroidery in the evenings, and the progressive readers that make it possible so I can also watch TV.
• The summer schedules with my teenagers. Staying up too late. Sleeping in most days.
• Life on my small lake with Arrow (my beloved golden), the resident beaver family, herons, eagles and their wonderfully awkward juveniles, turtles, and mornings that ask me to look up.
• My squash tunnel and growing tromboncino squash for the first time.
• Summer dinners on the grill.
• Afternoon popsicles. Grape Outshine, specifically.

That's the list. Pretty simple, but exactly what helps me stay rooted in a year that's asked so much of our hearts.

I think people in the helping professions are often handed a story that meaningful work has to consume us. That caring enough means sacrificing evenings, hobbies, creativity, rest, and eventually ourselves. And then we're told the antidote is self-care. That sounds a little boring? Something isn't right.

This isn't a list of self-care activities. It's just me.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I care so much about helping practitioners build work that belongs to their actual lives. Yes, we talk about groups, workshops, consultation, writing, offers, and income streams. But underneath all of that is a quieter question:

How do you build work that lets you stay in relationship with your own life?

One that leaves room for painting badly.

For reading books that change you.

For teenagers who suddenly want to stay up talking.

For popsicles.

For beavers.

For whatever belongs on your list.

That's the conversation at the heart of EMBER.

Registration for the next cohort opens this Saturday, August 1, and early bird enrollment runs through August 7.

The cohort begins September 1 and runs through February, with 24+ live calls, twice-weekly office hours, ten learning modules, and a (truly, not kidding )wonderful community of practitioners who are all trying to answer some version of the same question:

How do I build meaningful work without disappearing inside it?

If you've been wondering whether EMBER might be your next step, I'd love to talk with you. You can book an EMBER Curious call, and we'll simply explore what's on your mind. No pressure. Just a conversation.

Until then, I'd love to know:

What's quietly making you feel more like yourself?

With care,

Hilary