There are two dance schools in town.

There is the older, more established school that creates ballerinas. My eldest granddaughter attended that school when she was four. They spent months perfecting the choreography. The costumes were expensive. The recital was held in a professional, state-of-the-art theater. Every hair was in place. The makeup was perfect.

And my granddaughter, who loved to dance, hated every minute of it.

She refused to go back.

Yesterday, I attended the first recital of my youngest granddaughter. She attends what I have come to think of as the School for Less Than Perfect Children.

One school teaches children how to dance. This one teaches them how to be themselves.

The recital was held in a high school auditorium that had seen better days. The costumes were a bit homegrown. The children were barefoot. Hair was slightly awry. Makeup was less than perfect.

As we stood in the rain, huddled under umbrellas, waiting for the doors to open, there was an air of expectant excitement in the crowd. My four-year-old granddaughter, normally shy and a bit timid, grabbed my hand and urged me to move faster when they finally let us in.

The house was packed with proud, expectant, slightly anxious parents and grandparents waiting for the show to begin.

For many families, mine included, this was the first time their young child would be stepping onto a stage alone, showing up in the world without a parent or grandparent holding their hand.

I imagine many of us were holding the same silent question: Will my child be okay?

The recital was divided into three shows by age, and this was the youngest group: one hundred fledglings, ages three to eight.

At the appointed hour, the owner of the dance school came on stage like a loving field commander of childhood – T-shirt, sweats, dressed not to impress, but to do the hard work of tending unpolished children.

She commanded the stage.

She told the packed crowd how proud she was of these children, how hard they had worked, how much progress they had made. Then she stopped, put one hand on her hip, wagged her finger at the audience, and sternly told us, “I expect you to clap like you mean it!” because these children deserved nothing less.

And then the first line of shy, awkward, mostly uncoordinated young children was led onto the stage.

Barefoot.
Uneven.
Uncoordinated.
Trying.
Forgetting.
Remembering.
Looking around.
Feeling brave.
Being seen.

Most of the children looked a bit wild-eyed as they stared out at an audience staring back at them. They were reminded where to stand. More than once, a wayward child was physically picked up and moved to the correct spot.

As each new piece of music began, the pattern was the same: a moment of hesitation, and then the familiar music took over.

Some children danced joyously.

Some hesitatingly.

Some shyly.

Some fearfully.

And some were so overwhelmed by the experience that they did not move at all.

But it was the little girl with dark pigtails and thick glasses who undid me.

She had Down syndrome. But there was no need to pretend we did not notice, because she was not asking to be noticed for that.

She knew all the steps. She danced with her whole body, joyously and freely, the stage belonging to her as much as to anyone else. She was happy to be there. She belonged. No asterisk. No apology. No diminished expectations. Just a child dancing. And when she had clearly had enough, she turned toward her mother in the front row and signed that she was done, even though the music had not yet stopped.

That was when my tears came.

I cry easily, so my tears did not surprise me. But then I looked at my daughter, and she was crying too. And when I turned to my husband and saw him blinking hard, trying to hold himself together, I understood that something important was being witnessed on that stage.

I cried as one group after another of children barely beyond toddlerhood came onto the stage.

There was the little girl so overwhelmed that she stood motionless in the middle of the stage, her fingers in her mouth, while her classmates danced around her.

There was the boy who could not do a somersault until his teacher came on stage and gently rolled him over — to thunderous applause.

There were the children who could not quite do cartwheels, but put their hands down and hopped instead, as the audience cheered them on.

There were the children who went left when everyone else went right.

There were the children who stopped mid-dance to admonish their classmates for doing the step wrong.

And there were the children who had no idea what came next and did not seem to care. They were just having fun.

At one point, I turned and looked at the audience.

Many were wiping away tears.

But…. Why were we crying?

On the surface, nothing “big” had happened.

No virtuosic performance.
No polished production.
No dramatic story.
No obvious tear-jerker.

Just a line of small, awkward, barefoot children walking onto a worn high school stage.

And yet the tears came.

We were witnessing innocence being protected rather than corrected. We were feeling the tenderness of children before the world had fully taught them to hide – children being invited into the full dignity of being seen.

And maybe we cried because something in the room bypassed the intellect and went straight to the heart: This is how it should be. When did that stop being true for me?

I cried for the raw beauty of what I was witnessing.

I cried for my older granddaughter, now eight, who loves to dance but hated being shaped into performance, and who is already measuring herself against her peers.

I cried for the child I once was.

I cried from the relief of seeing innocence not exploited, not polished, not compared — but welcomed.

In that auditorium, we were watching human beings at the beginning of becoming — still awkward, still exposed, still unhidden — stepping into visibility before they had learned to hide.

And when the room responded with real applause, the adults were not just clapping for a dance. They were affirming something much deeper:

We see you as you are.
You can be imperfect and still be celebrated.
You can belong before you are polished.
You can take your place before you are ready.

None of these children were pretending to be other than they were. And we cried because we knew, as adults, that pretending came with a cost.

The tears in that auditorium were communal, elicited by barefoot, unedited children who were not polished enough to protect us from feeling them. We remembered the beauty of such innocence, and the cost when it’s lost.

As adults, we have learned how to stand on the stage of life and appear composed. We have learned to say the right thing. Do the right thing. Meet expectations. Play the game. But perhaps, underneath, there still exists in each of us a frightened child, fingers in mouth, trying to self-soothe in a world that feels too much.

So why did we cry? We cried from the purity of innocence and the ache of knowing how temporary it can be.

But does it have to be that way?

Yes, innocence tends to be temporary.

Yes, the world teaches children to edit and hide.

But there are adults determined to delay that lesson.

And perhaps our task is to celebrate anyone willing to be seen.

So when you see someone brave enough, young enough, innocent enough, awkward enough, unpolished enough to stand before you as they are – clap like you mean it.

Because maybe, just maybe, if you clap like you mean it, others will learn there is no need to hide.

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“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud

was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

~ Anais Nin

I have been feeling a growing restlessness. Old forms of expression no longer feel fully satisfying. Years of writings saved, but unpublished, are calling for exposure. But sharing my voice publicly is not a small pivot. It is transformation from private musings and reflections to public embodiment. After a lifetime of hiding, pretending to be less than rather than more, I am scared.

Private reflections are protected. They are raw and experiential. Intimate. Hidden. And forgiving if my thoughts don’t stand the test of time. Public embodiment asks something different of me. It asks for coherence under public scrutiny. Because once my voice becomes public I can no longer retreat into invisibility without feeling the cost of remaining tightly curled into a bud.

In the words of poet e e cummings – “it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” It has taken courage to examine myself truthfully, and even more courage to share what I find. I am revealing my humanity, a humanity that is not always neatly packaged, not always pretty, does not always have the answers, and sometimes struggles to land. Revealing my humanity requires honesty, depth, discernment, presence, emotional literacy, and the courage to examine my struggles and claim my successes. But in so doing, you may see yourself in me, and together we can step more boldly into our fullness. And as I’m stepping into the third act of my life, I’m still becoming who I really am.

Twenty years ago I attended a workshop that opened the door to my becoming. In the opening moments the facilitator read the words of Marianne Williamson from her poem, Our Deepest Fear:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves,

“Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?”

Upon hearing those words, gut-wrenching sobs erupted from somewhere I did not yet understand. My embarrassment over my messy crying was not enough to stop them. They came from a soul-level yearning I did not know I carried.

Something inside of me knew –

The fear,

The concealment,

The longing,

The future unfolding,

The cost of shrinking,

and the inevitability of the emergence – long before my conscious mind could articulate the experience. I have spent twenty years exploring what those sobs have meant.

My body instantly recognized the battlefield of my childhood wounds - a childhood where being seen was dangerous, and where strength only unleashed the power of another. I learned to hide, to shrink, to turn away, to live in the safety of my inner world.

But I knew. I knew the day would come when I could no longer remain hidden.

For twenty years my mind, disguised as humility, has whispered, “If I do not fully reveal my magnitude, I will remain safe.” But the day has arrived when protection feels stifling, and the urge to sing my own song feels too overwhelming to ignore.

Twenty years ago I had a dream. I was alone in an attic – secluded, safe, and protected. Although safe, it was limiting and lifeless, and I had explored every inch. At the back of the attic was a staircase, leading to the freedom of a bigger world. I yearned to explore that world, but I knew there was a lion at the bottom of the stairwell guarding the door to freedom and preventing me from leaving. Passing beyond that lion seemed impossible, and I resigned myself to stay where I was.

Days passed and my boredom and yearning to escape the confines of my safety became so overwhelming that I was willing to risk the danger of the lion. To stay where I was, locked in the safe nothingness of the attic, was more than I could bear. I knew the risk of annihilation was worth taking for the possibility of more.

Very slowly I opened the attic door at the top of the stairs. It was a long and curving staircase and I could not see the bottom. I pressed myself close to the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible as I slowly inched my way down the stairs. Step by step I crept downward, unable to see the lion but able to hear it sleeping at the bottom of the stairs.

As I reached the lowest steps, holding my breath so as not to wake the lion, I finally saw the creature that had kept me locked in the safety of my emptiness. And what did I see? Not the ferocious lion I had imagined for all those years – but a small kitten sleeping peacefully at the bottom of the stairs. I stepped over the harmless creature and walked out the door.

Hiding has served its purpose. It has allowed me to develop

discernment,

integrity,

coherence,

humility,

wisdom,

groundedness,

and emotional depth.

But just like in my dream, the balance is shifting. The constriction that once protected me has become painful. And that is the crossroads upon which I stand.

My old forms of living no longer feel satisfying. A quiet restlessness has emerged. My work and avenues of self-expression no longer feel enough. My archives of unpublished writings, meditations, teachings, and recordings are weighing on me. Shrinking has become stifling, and the tension between depth and humility born of fear is becoming unbearable. The inner season is changing.

I am currently on retreat in my little camper, a refuge from the responsibilities of life. It’s where I feel nurtured, soothed, and my creativity comes alive. I spend my time in meditation, contemplation, and journaling, exploring the questions that always seem to appear.

Yesterday I grabbed one of the many black and white composition books I like to use when I write, choosing it simply because it had more blank pages remaining than the others. I poured out my frustrations and yearnings. Pausing in my writing, I became curious about what else I had explored in this notebook and was taken aback to discover it was the same one I had used when processing the ending of the life of my beloved border collie mix, Sage, only a few months before.

Sage came to me early in my professional journey and was beside me during every client meeting, every phone call, every class I taught, every shamanic journey I facilitated. He sat with quiet presence, and his steadiness steadied me as I offered that same steadiness to others.

It was while on my yearly retreat to Cape Cod last fall that I knew Sage was dying. I had known that he was slowing down. I knew that he was getting older. I knew that his time with me was limited. But it was the morning after we arrived, when he looked sleepily up at me from his bed on the floor but didn’t rise, that I knew.

I was devastated. I could not imagine life without my beloved companion, this gentle soul who had walked beside me, shared my breath, my silence, my laughter, my becoming. He walked beside me along the beaches. Hiked beside me through the woods. He saw into my eyes with knowing.

With my hands resting on his tired body, I meditated, wrote, and prayed. I moved through my disbelief, into grief, into denial, finally resting in the peace that transcends understanding. And from that place, I felt the truth. I felt Sage’s essence. I felt his soft brown eyes. I remembered his smile, so radiant that strangers often stopped to comment on his joy. I remembered his delight running on the beach, with the wind ruffling his ears. And I embraced his calmness while lying motionless next to the many clients with whom I was doing healing work. I breathed in his steadiness, his sensitivity, and his ability to see into one’s heart. I honored his embodiment of his name. Sage the wise one. Sage the purifier. Sage the releaser of that which no longer serves.

It was Sage who was with me when I was uncertain. It was Sage who witnessed my growth. It was Sage who held a mirror steady until I could finally see myself. But I knew his stewardship was complete, and that he had served me well. I knew that moving on was not betrayal, but rather, moving on was the final expression of care. Sage came to earth to help me to grow, and letting him go would be my final act of love. I gave Sage, a wounded little shelter dog, security, love, honor, and respect. And Sage? Sage gave me myself.

My heart broke at the thought of letting him go. I felt uncertain that I could navigate the complexities of my world on my own. But just as no one truly knows if they can ride a bicycle while the training wheels are still on, I also knew the only way to experience my sovereignty was to stand on my own.

Sage brought me to this crossroads, and it feels no accident that I found his writing in the same notebook I had randomly grabbed for this trip. I’m still feeling shaky as I attempt to navigate life alone. But I also suspect that Sage knew I would eventually move beyond my shakiness and learn to spread my wings and fly.

Perhaps that is what standing at the crossroads truly means. Not certainty. Not fearlessness. But simply reaching the moment when the pain of remaining hidden becomes greater than the fear of being seen.

And so here I stand. Not knowing where this road will lead me. Not fully arrived. Not fully certain. Not quite sure what I will share. But there is a voice within me that wants to be heard, and for the first time, in a very long time, I don’t wish to turn back.

Thank you for reading The Art of Being Human. If this piece spoke to you, I’d be honored to have you subscribe or share, so that we may continue to walk this path together.

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While preparing to share my writing with a wider audience, I stumbled across a prayer I had written during a season of profound transition. I was tickled to discover that this unexpected breadcrumb once again had relevance. As an Interfaith minister, I thought it was appropriate to begin this new endeavor with a blessing.

I invite you to step into stillness with me, as together we create a sacred container to explore the art of being human through stories, meditations, reflections, and essays.

Welcome. I am glad that you are here.

Reflections from the Threshold

A Prayer for Becoming

I stand at the quiet edge of my own becoming.

What once served me has done its sacred work,

And now the wisdom that once flowed through others

Awakens within me.

I honor all that has brought me here –

Every mentor, every method, every name.

I release them with gratitude,

Knowing that the essence they pointed to

Now lives within me.

I am no longer seeking permission to be who I am.

I am the minister, the teacher, the counselor, the guide.

Through stillness and surrender,

I become the instrument of the Divine.

Through authenticity,

I become the lesson itself.

Today, I let life breathe me open.

I teach by my presence.

I serve by being.

I lead by listening.

May life continue to reveal

The form that best serves love.

May I continue to walk through life,

As the truest expression of who I have always been.

Time to Sing My Own Song

My father died last week.

While going through his papers, I came across an unexpected gift — a short reflection entitled, What I Want to Leave My Children. I’d like to share it with you.

I think it is important to enjoy life.
Be grateful for all the good things.
And deal with your head held high,
With all the unpleasant things.

Life is a balance
of both good and bad events,
But I think the good events
Far outweigh the bad.

Enjoy the beauty of nature —
The blue skies,
The warm sun,
And the green trees.
Be grateful, and appreciate being alive.

Speak to God every day,
And say, “Thank you for my life.”

Be honest and moral,
(even when no one is looking).

And as my mother would always say,
“Always do the right thing.”

Love,
Dad

My Dad was gone.

And even though our roles had changed and I had become the parent, somewhere inside me I was still seven years old, and I was going to miss my Daddy.

Through his simple words, my father left a legacy. He wanted to be remembered. He wanted to leave us with something meaningful. He wanted us to know that his life mattered, that life mattered, and that he hoped we would appreciate it just as he did.

And suddenly I found myself asking:
What is my legacy?
How will I be remembered?
What am I going to leave behind?

With the passing of my Dad, I instantly became the family matriarch. I began to feel my own mortality in a new way. Not with fear, but with clarity. The realization that time is not guaranteed. That if I am going to leave something meaningful behind, I had better begin.

The only thing stopping me is the fear that no one will care.

And so… here I am.

A student of the Art of Being Human.

I have been asking the questions:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
How can I live with greater ease?
for as long as I can remember.

Over a lifetime of living, loving, grieving, failing, healing, questioning, and beginning again, I have searched for those answers. And the funny thing is — the answers have changed over time.

Life itself became the teacher.

I have come to see life as a sacred curriculum — one filled with experiences that shape us, challenge us, humble us, break us open, and ultimately invite us into deeper authenticity.

I have learned simple truths.
Easy to speak.
Much harder to live.

Truths found beneath many wisdom traditions, regardless of the language, metaphors, or rituals used to express them. Because beneath all the things that separate us lives the common bond of our shared humanity.

I have come to learn.
I have come to teach.
I have come to receive.
I have come to give.

And perhaps now, I have come to share.

My father left behind a few pages of wisdom for his children. In his own way, he was saying:
“This is how I saw life.
These are the things that mattered to me.”

I wish to do the same.

Not because I have everything figured out.
Not because I have arrived.
But because I have lived.
And what I have learned along the way feels too meaningful to keep entirely to myself.

I have spent much of my life helping others navigate this sacred curriculum called being human. Celebrating. At times lamenting. Sometimes grieving. Always growing.

And now I find myself feeling the pull to step out a little more boldly, to venture beyond the privacy of my own journals and conversations, and to begin recording the breadcrumbs I have followed along the way.

Because unlike my Dad…

I have not yet finished singing my own song.

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Thank you for reading The Art of Being Human.

If this piece spoke to you, I’d be honored to have you subscribe

and continue walking this path with me.