Midlife Evolution

09/28/2026

Hey folks!

I’ve been quiet this summer, as I’ve been healing from knee replacement surgery in June. It’s humbling to admit that despite 30+ years in the healing arts, while I was prepared (as much as one can be) for the physical pain, I really was unprepared for the impact that healing at a deep level has on what I’ll call “capacity.” For those of you who’ve been through major surgery or a major illness, you likely know what I’m talking about, but for me it was a shocker.

It’s been mind-boggling to me how the body quietly goes about the process of coping with all that life throws at it, working away beneath the level of perception to heal and keep on living. So much of my process has been, and will continue for the foreseeable future, to be one of slowing down and doing my best to listen to my body, to discern its needs and perceive its quiet messages, before they become LOUD messages telling me that I went too far.

In my healing process this summer, I was "invited" to go yet more deeply into the kind of work I invite women into in their own lives. And I was reminded, once again, why the practice of sacred pausing has been central to my work for so many years.

Because this is what I’ve come to know: most of us don't slow down until life insists.

We keep adapting, coping, carrying what needs carrying, often without realizing how much we're holding until something asks us to stop.

We don't always get the luxury of choosing the pause. Sometimes illness, loss, burnout, or life's unexpected turns choose it for us.

And this is exactly why my fall retreat, A Sacred Pause, exists.

It's an opportunity to step away intentionally. To create space before life has to shout. To listen deeply, reconnect with what matters most, and return to everyday life feeling more grounded and present.

What began as a simple invitation to step away and reconnect has evolved over the years into a five-day retreat where women are given the time, space, and support to slow down, listen deeply, and tend to what is asking for attention.

Since 2010, women have gathered at Hope Springs Institute to pause, reflect, and reconnect with what matters most. We gather as a small circle of women, each carrying something we're ready to set down, each hoping to reconnect with our own wisdom and deeper selves.

What makes this experience so powerful is not pushing toward a particular outcome, but creating the conditions for something meaningful to unfold.

Now more than ever, I believe in the power of creating intentional spaces where we can slow down, listen deeply, and remember what matters, without needing surgery, illness, or burnout to force the pause.

This retreat is an invitation to step away from the demands of day-to-day life, work, caregiving, expectations, and pressure, and allow yourself to fully exhale.

We rest.
We reflect.
We feel all our feels.
We create and collage.
We laugh, cry, witness, release.
We remember who we are.

Is this experience for you or someone you know?

Some women come because they’re in transition.
Some because they’re carrying grief.
Some come every year.
Some just feel the pull.

If you suspect that perhaps this is your year to join us, I urge you to trust your knowing and give it your serious consideration. If someone came to mind as you read this, please pass it along to them. There are no requirements, no special qualifications.

A space or two remains in the circle for 2026. You can learn more here:

Join us for a transformative 5-day women's retreat at Hope Springs Institute in Southern Ohio. Experience a sacred pause filled with soulcollage®, creative processes, guided reflections, and nature. Reconnect with yourself and find renewal in a compassionate community.

03/17/2026

Happy St. Patrick’s Day ☘️

Since the world is collectively tipping its hat to Celtic culture today, it seems like the right moment to say a bit about the retreat I’m offering this spring.

Reclaiming Your Sovereign Self
A women’s retreat rooted in the Great Mothers of Celtic myth
You might be wondering why I’m suddenly talking about Celtic goddesses… and what that has to do with your life.

I’ve been asking myself the same question for the past year and a half.
What I can say right now is this:

This work is needed in the world we’re living in.

Not just personally.
But collectively.

Personally I’ve come to experience it as a kind of detox.

A slow unwinding of what it has meant to live as a woman in a world shaped for millennia by patriarchal structures.

So that something more whole can begin to take root.

But the “how”... it’s honestly hard to explain…

This weekend I was trying to find the words for what has shifted in me through this work.

The best I could come up with was:

magic.

Not in a sparkly way.

But in the sense that something reorganizes at a level the mind can’t quite track.

Something I experience as both energetic and cellular.

This work seems to call to women who are already doing the inner work.

Women who have insight, awareness, language…
and yet still sense that something essential hasn’t fully shifted.

Women who feel deeply, who care about the world, and are tired of carrying it in ways that leave them depleted.

Women who know, somewhere in themselves, that there is another way to inhabit their lives.

This is the work we’ll be stepping into together at a small retreat this spring.

It’s not for everyone.

But for the women who feel the pull of it, it can be profoundly transformative.

If you’re curious, you can learn more here: https://www.midlife-evolution.com/spring-womens-retreat

03/07/2026

Hey folks. It’s been awhile.

The truth is I’ve been away from social media for quite a while.

Over the past year or two I’ve become increasingly ambivalent (at best) about social media. The pace and polarization of many online spaces often feel at odds with how I need to cultivate my headspace, and with the kind of thoughtful conversation I care about.

At the same time, I’ve also been moving through a deeper internal shift in my life and in my work — one that has been difficult to articulate while it was still unfolding. Sometimes the most honest thing to do is step back for a while and let something reorganize itself before trying to speak about it.

That period of reflection has slowly been giving rise to a new chapter in my work, and I’m just beginning to find the language for it.

And now I have to acknowledge that after the recent loss of my dad, the messages of care I received here reminded me that there is actually good that happens in these spaces too.

So maybe it’s not quite as black and white as I thought. And for those reasons I'm dipping my toe back in.

For about the last 20 years my work has lived at the intersection of psychology, creativity, and a fair bit of “woo.” I’ve often leaned on my background in developmental psychology as a way of helping women orient themselves during seasons of change.

But over the past couple of years I’ve been recognizing more clearly that the deeper arc of my work has always been about something larger: how we meet the initiatory passages of life — midlife, aging, loss, uncertainty — as opportunities to grow and evolve. To inhabit ourselves more fully.

To allow life’s thresholds to deepen us rather than simply harden us.

In other words, less about fixing ourselves or endlessly analyzing our stories… and more about becoming more whole, more present, and more deeply rooted in who we actually are.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more about what’s emerging, including a free online conversation later this month and a small retreat this spring that feel like the first expressions of this shift.

If you’re feeling the pull toward deeper reflection in the midst of these complicated times, I hope you’ll join us.

More soon...

11/11/2024

Early Friday morning some of us had the delight and honor to be guided into the womb of Hope Springs Institute, deep in the Ravine, by founder Suzanne Stevens. It was magical, profound, and rich in metaphors that seem relevant to now. What I "heard":

1) The descent can be treacherous, especially when the path is unclear - or hidden.

2) You can't really know if there's solid ground, so test your footing before you commit.

3) The climb out is easier than the descent if you lean into the land.

4) You can't go wrong following a Crone

11/09/2024

I love walking the Labyrinth. It always helps me return to Center.

11/06/2024

Grateful for the steadfast and healing land here at Hope Springs Institute as we get ready to begin our Sacred Pause retreat

11/04/2024

Took this photo in my backyard one day, when I was struck by that spectacular yellow against the blue sky.

Then I caught myself going down a rabbit hole about the ugly poles and wires “ruining the view”, which spiraled into annoyance about all the downsides of living in the city.

Allowing the negativity of my mind to take over erased the beauty I was seeing and changed the felt sense in my body from one of gratitude to irritation.

Noticing this I shifted my perspective and focused on the tree and the sky, accepting the poles and the wires, allowing them to just be. With that they faded into the background of my attention, rather than the foreground.

Ahh. There was peace and gratitude again.

I think this is a metaphor for how to navigate the coming days. So much fear and anger over the election. Heartache and overwhelm of the ever-expanding humanitarian crises in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti—the list and the horror feels endless.

So it is crucial that those of us who can be are intentional about where we put our focus.

Can you shift your focus from the ugly parts and instead choose to contribute to the kind of feelings you want more of in the world?

Can you find things to celebrate?

Can you find hope?

Trust?

Even love?

Where can you put a little kindness or gratitude out into the field?

And if you can’t quite get there, can you at least inhabit a neutral space?

This is a way to make a difference no matter what else is going on, no matter what time, energy or resources you have to contribute. I yourself and in the world.

To be clear, I don’t mean that you ignore your emotions.

Feel them. Literally.

Where do they show up in your body? Breathe and stay with them a bit, allowing them to move through by focusing on the felt sense.

Notice when your mind wants to keep ramping them up and come back to the felt sense.

Maybe even find some way to move them out, like movement or some kind of creative process.

And then come back and choose to focus on something with a higher vibration.

We are evolving, the old systems and old paradigms falling away. But entrenched patterns and power don’t easily give up their place.

That’s what we’re in the midst of; that’s the bigger picture.

It’s up to each of us right now to be a “point of light” and provide a counterpoint to all the darkness and negativity, and I believe that as mature women we are especially adept at this. We have the wisdom, the life experience and the fortitude to wrangle our wonderful minds and put them to work for us, rather than being led around by our triggered emotions.

This is just another example of what it means to Age Fiercely.