I offer an autumn retreat for people drawn to pause and reflection during this season.
About This Retreat
Spend a full day at a lakeside retreat during autumn’s beauty (10 AM – 5 PM). Located near Sydenham, Ontario. Maximum 4 participants. Facilitated by Tracy Riley, an experienced registered psychologist.
Your day includes: Guided reflection that invites you to pause, listen to yourself, and consider what might be supportive for you over the coming season; creative expression through collage; opportunities for sharing in a supportive small group setting; and generous unstructured time to walk a tree-lined lane, sit by the water, or simply be still by the warmth of fire in the wood stove inside.
This retreat is a space to pause, bring care toward yourself, and give yourself room to breathe.
Bring your own meals; hot beverages and materials provided. Investment: $225 for the full day experience.
Upcoming Dates: Friday, October 3; Saturday, October 4; Thursday, October 9; Friday, October 17; Saturday, October 18 – final dates will be confirmed based on participant interest
As we move through late August, September, October, November, and December, you’ll notice the qualities of daylight, dark night, and outdoor colours and temperatures shifting. What else do you notice moves and shifts? Things in the external world? Things in your inner landscape? Is now a time in your life when things feel like they are speeding up or slowing down? Is it a particularly painful time for you? An apprehensive kind of time? Or is it energetic, exciting, encouraging, or mixed?
The Autumn Intentions: A Seasonal Reflection Guide is a resource I designed to help you meet yourself with listening and friendship in the season(s) you are in — whatever and all that that may entail — and specifically as you go through the months of late August through to the last day of fall.
I will begin by asking, what internal radio station are you listening to right now? Is it the All Anxious Messaging All The Time Station (W-O-R-Y – where the worry never stops)? The Greatest Hits of All Times from the Bullies and Self-Critics? Or maybe it’s Endless To Do Lists FM, or, potentially, Mentorship at its Finest?
You will have your own particular radio stations and perhaps your own particular names for them. Whatever they are and whatever the particulars, the radio station that you are listening to matters.
A journey is a web, a collage, a choose your own adventure series you did and didn’t write.
You build pieces of the web, strand it out. Not bad. Oh. Someone just walked through your web as they went out the door (or arrived) – as they crossed a threshold, now wearing your web. Okay. No matter. Memory lives inside – the learning, the skill, the growth. Maybe you decide to build a bit differently, just a strand here or there, or, waaaaay over there. You realize certain configurations are no longer working or needed. (You may realize also that no longer working and no longer needed are not necessarily the same thing.)
Each year, I plant a garden – keep one going – regardless of failure or success. Each year, I feel this undeniable longing – an impulse, an urge, a life force – to plant seeds. Each year, I plant seeds. I observe what happens. Some seeds are the literal seeds, the literal, visceral things that can sprout. Other seeds are essential support partners like water, compost, nutrients, pollinator habitat, shade and/or light, (and periods of dark nights). This year, for the first time, I’ve had zucchini to harvest. Cucumbers, on the other hand, still have not grown fruit. Last year, there were a small number of cucumbers and zero fruit of zucchini, though beautiful leaves for a period of time…. another first….. then powdery mildew, not a first.
We are always gardening whether we realize it or not.
This blog offers wisdom and practices for conscious gardening of your influence. Here you’ll find reflections on noticing goodness, working with your attention, cultivating self-compassion, and recognizing the beauty and interconnection that surrounds us. You’ll discover resources for developing the emotional intelligence and inner clarity that allows you to influence in ways that are helpful and wise.
Whether you’re drawn to mindfulness practices, nature’s teachings, or explorations of what it means to live with greater intention and care, these offerings support you in becoming more conscious about what you’re already cultivating.
This is wisdom for gardeners who are ready to tend their influence with awareness, compassion, and purpose.
In this post, you will find an impressively non-exhaustive, small, fluid compilation of links to guided loving kindness meditation practices generously recorded and offered by various individuals for personal use. Some of the meditations are focused primarily on the practice of offering loving kindness to oneself, while others include the practice of offering loving kindness to oneself and others.
Practicing noticing goodness does not mean the invalidation or denial of all that is in contrast (and stark contrast) to goodness (to kindness, beauty, generosity, hope, wonder, awe….). Practicing noticing goodness is simply practicing noticing goodness. It is the cultivation and allowing of noticing, breathing in, savouring, appreciating, even celebrating, of goodness in any given moment—without minimizing or dismissing it and without inserting any other add-ons, at least/even if just for a brief while.
I had the pleasure and good fortune to experience Jann Arden and accompanying musicians in concert this week. It was wonderful. For this post, I offer four lines of lyrics from her song, Good Mother—lyrics that stayed with me after the show (among others). Reflecting, I thought of life; of the journeying humans do; of various people I have met; and of you, too, readers.
I will also post below a video Jann has shared of a live-streamed performance of this song, which you can find on her youtube channel.
If you have the opportunity to see her on tour, I whole-heartedly recommend doing so.
Today during the winter solstice, I had the pleasure of witnessing a symphony of trumpeter swans and geese creating music together. Their music echoed into the stillness of the surrounding landscape while the sun lowered and set beyond the horizon. It was magical.
Also today, a poem by John Welwood came to mind. Some lines from the poem include
