The Greatest Dream
But the greatest dream wasn’t really a dream at all. It was a gentle voice, waking me from sleep, deep in the night. It told me everything I needed to know in eight simple words: “Margo, you don’t need therapy. You need love.”
Second Chakra Trauma
Not long after my first dream, I had another. In it, I am on my way to a dance party in the basement of a warehouse in some unknown city. As I begin descending the stairs, panic overtakes me along with a feeling of being totally out of control. In the next instant, a friendly…
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Lifestream
One night I had a dream. And in that dream, I saw an image composed of bubbles and fibers; of bright pinks and blues. And for the first time of many more to come, I heard the narrator’s voice: “This is the lifestream, and you are part of it. But in order to fully experience…
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Five Steps to Vitality
While I encourage people to find support on the road to mental fitness, the good news is everything you need to heal is already inside of, and around you. The other piece of good news is it’s not about adding anything, but rather, pivoting away from that which depletes you of your energy, and toward…
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Windswept Life
I was nine years old when I found out I would have to do body maintenance for the rest of my life. “What kind of God would design my body to be such a make-work project?” I protested to my mother who, at this point, was used to me questioning everything about the world I…
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Women Rock Retreats
There’s a lot of focus on “mindfulness” these days, but what does it really mean? I prefer the term “present moment awareness” to describe that state of mind where we are so focused on what is directly in front of us, the rest of the world literally disappears. Whether you’re ice climbing, knitting, or walking…
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The Division Bell
The Division Bell Originally used to signal a division, or vote, in the British House of Commons, the name was adopted as the title of Pink Floyd’s fourteenth studio album with the intent to instead find a pathway to unity. Although voting is often seen as the height of democratic process across commonwealth countries, by…
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The Life That You Are
When I drove down the parkway to climb my first frozen waterfall, I was a young woman with an uninterrupted story since childhood. My inner narrative consisted of thoughts about myself (I am unloved, life is painful, I no longer want to live) as well as the emotions that accompanied these (hurt, anger, unhappiness.) I…
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Beyond Recovery
After decades of healing work, I am convinced that power is at the core of our personal and planetary issues. That is why when people ask me what I do, I tell them I am a Guide to Self-Empowered Healing. In our society, men are trained in the expansion and uses of their power, but…
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Still Point
In stillness there is freedom, a state where we are no longer caught in the pain of the past or in fear of future events. Freedom is intimately connected to sovereignty, because free people are harder to control than those who live in fear. And what do we fear? That our wealth will be taken…
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Polar Navigation
Several years ago, I worked as a guide in Antarctica. While it was standard practice to do everything for our clients, I made mine as self-sufficient as possible believing this would elevate the true wilderness experience they had come for. On one such trip, some of my clients wanted to take turns navigating the ubiquitous…
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Lords of Chaos
One of the hallmarks of mental distress is fragmentation. Emotions are heightened, especially fear, and the mind becomes disordered as it deals with a level of stress it has rarely, if ever, encountered. Meaning falls apart; confusion and uncertainty take its place. The once solid ground underfoot turns into shifting sands beneath one’s feet. Those…
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The Power of Attention
The most valuable asset you have is not your time or your money, but rather, your attention. It is so precious, in fact, trillions of dollars are spent worldwide to capture it. Add in the fact that we are living in a soup of distraction that includes being bombarded with more information than the human…
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The Power of Choice
The word addiction comes from the Latin addicere, ‘to surrender oneself.’ The opposite of surrender is to conquer, from the Old French conquerre, ‘to overcome.’ If you talk to enough addicts, or work with them as I do, you will notice a common current running through our stories: we lived through painful events that left…
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The Power of Now
For decades, I lived in chronic, deep depression. I had no idea why I was there, or how to get out from under the black cloud. So I did what a lot of people in that situation do: I self-medicated with drugs to numb the pain. Then, one day when I was twenty-eight years old,…
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