What's Your Story?

I am part of an online class where class members write stories about their lives and experience. Being witness to these stories as they develop is an awesome thing. I show up everyday to receive the words as they rise like incense. The page seems to me an altar. The stories are like medicine, healing both writer and reader.

I see an astonishing movie, Sweetland, a delicate unlikely love story. Told through extraordinary photography, it is inspired by the line, “Let us hope that in this world, we are preceded by a love story.” The story onscreen mingles with the stories of the women in my class and alongside stories imagined of my rural grandparents and my parents who after 65 years of marriage are shriveled in stature but not in passion for each other.

Sobbing as people exit the theatre, I seek to convince my Sweetheart, Chip, I am not crying at the concluding scene but at something deeper, something primal, catching me off guard.

My friend Judith calls the next day. Speaking about relationships in her life and from her many years of a counselor’s perspective, she says, “Stories prove the power of love and how it can heal and how relationships are eternal, they never end, they just change form.” It is a holy fragment torn from the holy places in her life. I quickly grab a pen to write it down. I treasure it like balm poured out. I remember words written by a friend, David Kopp, enclosed within a small brass box, given on my birthday long ago. It is cut with holes to match that particularly vulnerable time:

“The closest we might get to sorrow is when we cradle this small box of dreams, perfectly cut with holes. The wind blows through. We wait. Then God drifts in to brood in every corner. He listens to stories we might have told; trembles at the severity of these his own gifts, to think such bleeding hands could hold them up like incense in his courts.”

I wait. God is brooding in the corner.

Seeking the Kingdom

Seeking the kingdom of heaven is a concept I ingested, wonderfully, along with the soup of my childhood. I can’t remember ever not wanting to know God. I now call God “Grace,” and my seeking for the kingdom has taken me near and far on many levels—and to many places.

I wonder what you are seeking with the kind of seeking that comes from the deepest part of your spirit. What do you really, really want to have known, achieved or experienced before you leave this earth?

My hunch is that in some way it has a spiritual core and is connected to Grace in your life. There are many of us who are seeking to light one little candle and to give back to the world part of its lost heart. We will do this in millions of different and creative ways. We will do it by being transformed ourselves.

Coaching is really just about creating a space for you, with the purpose that you participate in being transformed. I’d love to hear from you about what you are seeking, the questions that rise in you as you seek, and what you are doing and being that is making a difference. Write to me at marlee@gogirlcoach.com.


The life-giving power that life itself comes from is not indifferent as to whether we sink or swim. It wants us to swim. However inanely and blindly we are seeking the kingdom of heaven…it is also seeking us.
Frederick Buechner

Caring for an Elderly Loved One

Even after Alzheimer’s descended like a cloud over my father, he used to tease everyone around him. He loved making people laugh—especially at him. As his disease progressed, the tease dissipated. He became cantankerous, trapped in a world he did not recognize and could not escape. He was doing what, as a Kansas farm kid during dust-bowl days and an infantryman dodging shells among French hedgerows, he always did, fight for life. Ten years, later, he has given up. Now Dad is silent. Vacant.

I wonder, where does the human spirit go when Alzheimer's arrives on the scene?

Tomorrow I will travel across two states to be with Dad. He won’t know me. He won’t talk. Bewilderment will be our common ground. My greatest challenge may be in changing the way I perceive the changes in the man who is my father—and the way I name those changes. “Devastating?” “Dark?”

Or might they be “profound?” “Purposeful?”As Dad fades away, does he hear something I can’t hear? Though he doesn’t recognize me, does he recognize some things I cannot?

I’ll never forget not too long ago when I heard him singing late one night from his darkened bedroom at the top of the stairs, “home, home on the range…" over and over again.

I wondered, is he singing himself a lullaby? Is he singing himself out of this world?

Perhaps there is a reason Dad is taking his leave s-l-o-w-l-y. If I sit beside him and listen to the silence instead of trying to fill it, perhaps I will hear something he already knows.

Live from New York City

Just back from a fabulous first-time trip to NYC. Who should know that a shy country girl like me would fall in love with the Big Apple?

While there I had the privilege of being the first guest in a line up of women launching Debbie Nigro's talk show at FirstWivesWorld.com. The Empire State Building was the setting for a festive atmosphere where Debbie's fun and warm-spirited welcome (with all the trimmings!) was a highlight of an awesome city.

Next day, I participated in an event for my daughter, Tirza's, PR business, BrandBloom.com in Times Square. We met editors from major magazines including O, Self, In Style and Country Living. Representing her clients, my job was to pitch the high-end products produced on a lavender farm in my hometown, Silverton, Oregon, and sold at Havenhilllavender.com.

Middle Daughter, Leyah, was a super guide through the streets of Manhattan. From her apartment on the lower East side, we traversed the island and saw everything everywhere. This included no less, a 15-minute running tour of the Natural History Museum just before closing!

We saw stars galore in the most amazing outdoor theater, Shakespeare-in-the-Park's Romeo and Juliet, and other star-sightings in Greenwich Village quaint streets. There were gourmet meals at candle-lit sidewalk cafes, a walk-about at Ground Zero, Happy-hour Harbour Cruise (top right photo), and our fair share of scary/hairy taxi rides! Just hours before leaving NY, I got the very last ticket to Broadway's The Color Purple: beautiful and moving. Not least was meeting Leyah's eclectic selection of friends and especially her darling boyfriend: Hi Eric!

I'm resonating with affection for this wonderful, friendly city. Thank you New York!

What's Your Personal Brand?

Do you know you are bearing a characteristic brand about you into the world? The truth is, whether or not you are aware of it, you are sending a message to everyone whose path crosses yours. The brand or persona you are projecting is that sense of presence that others experience when they are with you, and even when you walk into a room. It is a combination of the values, gifts, and passions connected to who you are. Your brand is being communicated with every action you take, the way you speak or write, the way you wear your hair, shape your wardrobe and accessorize it—and even with your body language. Think about this: if you were an online movie trailer, what kind of people would hurry to see it? Is this pleasing to you?

We’re going to be talking about shaping your personal brand in the weeks ahead, so check back for more conversation on projecting your best persona. And if you would like to interact, send me a line at marlee@gogirlcoach.com.

Change Your Life Without Spending a Cent

Dare to be remarkable: embellish life with enthusiasm.

Get over it! Invalidate offense by refusing to be offended.

Just ask. We have not because we ask not.

Release endorphins: Laugh. Walk. Give thanks.

Open mind, insert imagination; give ideas time to play.

Offer your fears no attention and watch them implode.
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Wonder: How are even your flaws and foibles fabulous?

Seek the illumined life. Engage spiritual sensibilities.

Conundrum? Shift it by reframing in a positive light.

Live as if life itself were the lover (indeed, it is).

Silver Shoes Become the Ruby Slippers

We're told by Garrison Keillor at NPR's The Writer's Almanac that today is the birthday of Lyman Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, born in 1856 in Chittenango, New York. Moving to South Dakota as a young man, Baum ran “Baum’s Bazaar” in Aberdeen, and was often found entertaining children on the wooden sidewalk out front. Telling them made-up stories abundant with fanciful characters, he interrupted the telling of Wizard of Oz in the middle so he could start writing it down. An instant classic of 1900, the tale embodied some of Baum’s dreams for a place where everyone works half the time and plays half the time, and where work is as much fun as play.

Dorothy’s “Silver Shoes” of the original book are known today as the "ruby slippers” made famous by MGM’s 1939 motion picture. In reply to Dorothy’s plea to return to Kansas, Glinda pronounced, “Your Silver Shoes will carry you over the desert. If you had known their power you could have gone back to your Aunt Em the very first day you came to this country.” Footnotes by folklore specialist Jack Zipes in a 1998 edition of The Wizard of Oz tell us: “The point of the entire story is that Dorothy does not realize her own powers. It is through the journey of exploration that she comes to recognize how powerful she is and what her qualities are…and finds home in herself.”