Compassion Doesn't Mean You Approve

I believe compassion is one of those concepts that gets misinterpreted A LOT today.

I remember when I experienced true compassion for someone that, to put it bluntly, I despised with every fiber of my being.

I disagreed with her on pretty much every level. She was in my extended family circle, so she was in my life periodically due to who she was married to, but I tried to avoid her as much as possible.

Her husband was having severe health issues, and I knew that she was cheating on him.

In an unguarded moment, I witnessed her emotionally fall apart while he was in the hospital having surgery.

That was when I experienced compassion, I believe, authentically, for the first time.

In a flash, I could see her entire life.

She had a rough childhood, and she was someone that was stuck in survival mode all of the time. And I watched her emotionally cycle through what it might mean if her husband didn't make it through the surgery.

She was scared out of her mind.

Maybe for him, maybe for herself. Most likely, both.

I don't know, and it didn't really matter.

The interesting thing was how it affected me. I completely shifted in a way that is hard to put into words.

I didn't forgive her for the years of bullshit I'd observed and experienced, and I know I won't ever forget any of it either.

But for a brief period, I was present with her in a loving and quiet way.

I didn't try and tell her he'd be fine, and not to worry. I didn't say anything that I remember.

I was just present without judging her.

And surprisingly, I watched how it affected her as she disintegrated.

Something was exchanged between us that ended up being life-altering for me.

I believe compassion is holding the shared space steady for someone that is falling apart, and needs a bit of shelter so they can reassemble themselves for what comes next after they get through their own storm.

But what strikes me the most is that I was able to shift my own emotional landscape from one of turbulence and repulsion to a serene and, dare I say, caring one.

Compassion is tricky to understand. It's not feeling sorry for someone or trying to take a moment of pain and teach them a lesson about themselves.

It's not saying all the things we've been conditioned to say, like "It'll be OK," or "I've been through something similar and it all worked out."

Showing empathy for someone is part of compassion, but only if they ask you for your own experience.

It has nothing to do with offering to help, either, unless asked. And then, only if you really want to.

All those 'nice things' we try to say and do aren't about the person actually suffering are they?

Nope. It's usually about us trying to prove to them and everyone else that we're nice and caring.

Compassion came up again recently for me as I tried to console someone that I care deeply about, and had to resist not trying to fix the problem, tell them that I know exactly how they feel, and all the blah, blah we tend to go through when we see someone suffering.

I'm not going to lie...I still get it wrong a lot. I have to work on this, especially when my emotions are running strong.

But I continue to try.

I try and go back to that moment with her, and bring the me back who saw her for who she is, accepted it all, and stayed present while she was in the storm.

I did it once...surely I can repeat it, right?

The irony is that she is the one person that enabled me to have one of the most profound experiences that I think about often, in a good way, about compassion.

Life is cool like that.

Random fact about me: My college roommate had to have her entire side of the dorm room decorated with Seafoam Green. It was like living in cotton candy. And I can say there is nothing in my home that is Seafoam Green.

Time for a new pair of earrings

Every year in August since my mother passed, I fly out to Arkansas and my step-father and I drive to the 4 Corners area of the United States for a couple of weeks.

This is our 4th trip. Mom died in 2021, and this year we will be staying mostly in the Crested Butte area of Colorado. We'll be doing a lot of exploring and my step-father has a little gold-panning set-up that we will be having fun with during our daily excursions.

This is the time of year when I make myself a pair of earrings for the trip. Last year's pair, pictured below, was great fun and really captured the spirit of the trip since we spent most of our time around old ruins. I promptly sold them, however, around Christmas, and now they belong to a lovely lady who is a pottery instructor.

What design will be born this week?

I think I want some color for this trip, since the flowers should be beautiful in Colorado this time of year.

Today, I'll be doing some more experimenting with porcelain clay jewelry, and the batch of earrings I made last week go into the kiln for their first fire.

I'm really looking forward to seeing where that direction in jewelry design goes, and trying not to get too impatient with the learning curve it requires.

This week has been rough for me physically. I am dealing with a die-off reaction from the newest protocol I'm on for psoriasis. I was in the clear for 5 months, but when we started to go after the fungal stuff, my body became overburdened and I have a mild breakout on my body, and a severe breakout on my head.

Healing takes time, but man, this sucks.

I get a hair cut today and I've debated off and on all week about canceling it. Fortunately, my hairdresser has psoriasis too, so she's pretty cool about dealing with my head when I'm having a break out. I'm still self-conscious about it though.

Thank God for nice people!

Random fact about me: I would rather drive a standard shift than an automatic.

Gratitude Isn't Just Nice, It's A Survival Technique

How to Actually Practice It

Gratitude has saved me from making a shitty experience even worse during many times in my life.

I know what you may be thinking. How practical is it to be grateful for something that impacts you initially in a negative or painful way?

I learned about true gratitude when I was 17.

I had a 1967 Mustang that was a functional piece of art. My grandmother owned it before it was gifted to me for my 16th birthday. My father had it painted a beautiful blue and that car was my ticket to freedom in so many ways.

One morning, I was driving in an unfamiliar part of North Little Rock and I ran stop sign, which resulted in a a sports car t-boning me, totaling his car, and seriously damaging mine on the driver's side door.

We weren't hurt, but my car was trashed; and I felt terrible about the driver of the other car, as he was driving it home from the shop from a previous accident.

When I got home, I had to make a plan to get the door fixed. I didn't have the money to fix the car, so I made a deal with my step-father for a loan. I also had to find a door so that the repair shop could replace it and paint it to match the body.

I found a door in a little town called Cabot, 30 miles north of Little Rock. I grew up in Cabot, so I had some old friends there ( I moved to Little Rock when I was 15) and I called my best friend to let her know that I was driving down to pick up a car door.

She said that she and some of her friends were going swimming that day and when I was done getting the car door, to come to the lake and swim.

So I did. And while there, I met the boy that was to become my first love. Our relationship was a significant event in my life because that's how first loves go. Mine happened to be a very happy first love, and one that taught me the importance of relationship in my life.

So where does gratitude fit into my little story?

I learned about how powerful true gratitude can be if you approach calamity in a practical way.

Gratitude is a state of being that endures and gets stronger the more you practice it.

What's the opposite of gratitude?

Entitlement.

I could have looked at this accident from an entitled viewpoint when I was 17.

Why me? I didn't deserve this! If only I had more money, I wouldn't have to sign a contract with my step-dad to pay off the $500 for the door and the repairs (it was 1984!).

How embarrassing is it to drive around with a busted door! Why can't someone give me a car that doesn't look like shit until I get the Mustang fixed?

Entitlement is the resistance to what is. It's a state of mind that when something goes sideways, your mind is constantly saying, "This is how it should've been," and you aren't grounded into what Actually Is.

When you act entitled, your mind is constantly looping with the thought, "This is what should have happened, how it should be now, and why me?"

Entitlement means you'll miss the gift of the disaster.

And when you stay in a state of gratitude about your life, you'll always get the gift at some point in your journey.

So what's gratitude look like from a practical point of view?

Step 1: Quit your bitching!

• When something bad happens, be aware of your tendency to spiral out of control with thoughts of entitlement.
• Instead, ask yourself: "What if this happened to set me up for something wonderful that I just can't see yet?"

Step 2: Stop the drama, and get still.

• Neutral is the space between breaths. Let things just be for a minute. Don't judge the experience.

Step 3: Find one thing in your environment that is solid, functional, and whole.

• Anchor yourself once you are neutral to something that is functional and intact in your immediate environment. In my case, my car still ran. I could still drive it to get from A to B. And I wasn't seriously injured or dead!
• If you are still breathing, anchor to that. You are still breathing for God's sake!

4. Let the moment of impact sink into your consciousness.

• When something monumental occurs, let it come into your mind fully. Let the moment matter. In order to survive the impact, you have to accept that the impact has occurred.
• Take a deep breath and just sit with it, and then your mind will naturally go to "Now what?"

5. Take the "Now What" approach and act accordingly.

• You are still alive. You survived another day!
• Gratitude is taking what life throws at you and being grateful you get another day to see where the gift might be. When I was 17, my gift was meeting my first love at the lake. And, I watched him pull out a drowning swimmer! He was a lifeguard and quite heroic!

Gratitude isn't about saying thanks all of the time, or pretending everything's ok when it clearly isn't. What gratitude is really about, at least for me, is being in tune with life enough to know that shitty things are going to happen, and you have two choices:

1. Act entitled and make yourself miserable and everyone else around you annoyed, or
2. Get grounded into the reality of what is, and say to yourself, "Now What?" and work with what you've got.

I was writing recently about the gifts my father(s) gave me regarding life.

Well, my mother gave me a gift one day when she told me to stop fighting life all of the time, and she began teaching me how to move with life and not against it.

When you resist what is, and refuse to work with what you've got, you'll miss the gifts that inevitably come when you choose to stop feeling entitled.

Gratitude reminds us that 99.9% of our lives are humming along pretty well. Not everything is bad or broken. And that's why gratitude is so functional and everlasting.

I believe the universe runs on gratitude, not entitlement.

Random fact about me: I bought the metal detector and can't wait to use it! Yay!

Human Design: Facts and Faith Week

I’m a Human Design Guide, and I’m starting a simple weekly series here. Each Monday, I’ll share the current Human Design transit of the Sun and Earth, and how I’m personally noticing it show up in real life. Human Design helps us tune into both our own natural rhythm and the shifting energy in the collective—and my hope is this space helps you do just that, too.

Want to learn more about Human Design?

Jovian Archive and MyBodygraph

Sun: Gate 62, Gate of Details

Earth: Gate 61, Gate of Inner Truth

Transits for Week of July 12th-18th, 2025

You know how you feel when you know something deep within your bones, but are unable to express it in words?

Welcome to this week!

This week's energy is about dealing with the tension to find the right words to describe what you know inwardly.

The Gate of Details is summoning us to dig deep into our inner truth and bring it out into the world via self-expression.

The tension to find the words will be front and center in your conversations with others as well as how you express yourself sincerely and creatively through your art or writing.

Over the weekend, I experienced this in a conversation I attempted to have with my husband about something that I've noticed in our relationship, but I couldn't organize my thoughts, or the details enough to adequately make myself understood. He asked me over and over what I was thinking about and instead of responding with "I'll talk about it when I've got the right words," I jumped in and made the water quite muddy. Whoops.

This energy is trying to express patterns or connections you are making inwardly about something to share with others, but that tension to find just the right words so that it sounds logical and somewhat objective can be a real source of frustration across all energy types.

When you consider the energy needed to make something clear that is based more on intuition you can see where you can get gummed up in expressing it.

We see this in movies all the time as a plot line. The hero detective intuitively recognizes a pattern to the investigation, but has to wait for all the pieces to come together in their mind before they can successfully articulate it to their superiors because it sounds crazy at first. But the detective knows inwardly that the information is true.

So what's the key move this week?

Patience. All types will feel the pressure to explain what you know even though it can't be proven. Wait for the words by respecting your energy type and inner authority.

Manifestors: You may experience this energy with an urge to express your thoughts to initiate something new even if the people that you tell don't understand your vision. Watch out for getting angry when people want more details than you may be prepared to share. Inform with clarity before you initiate something this week.

Generators: You're going to feel this pressure to organize your ideas or explain your process on how to do something when asked, but if your body gives you a "meh", don't feel compelled to comply. Wait for something to really light you up to respond to, and the words will be there when the time is right.

Manifesting Generators: This energy is very 'bouncy" for you. Slow down. Wait for clarity before responding to an idea that may not be fully formed yet before quickly acting upon it. You may feel like your time is spent translating what feels very intuitive into something that is logical and makes sense so it can get done. Honor the time it takes to turn those ideas into action.

Projectors: You may experience sudden insights and revelations about others when asked to guide them into a new project or process. This energy will pressure you to share your insights before someone asks you to, though. Wait for that invitation, and your right timing to clearly state what you see in others so it will land on fertile ground with the right words. There's nothing worse for you than jumping in too soon without being recognized.

Reflectors: Everyone around you this week will be pressured to express what they know, but can't find the right words. You will experience this energy as a deep yearning to understand the mysteries of life, catching glimpses of deep meanings and connections, but the words feel just out of reach. Stay true to yourself and stick to your environment. You will be reflecting for others this deep need to know how to say what's just out of reach.

Ok, let's see how we all experience this week's transits!

How I experienced last week's energy of Initiation.

Wow, last week was fun!

I had my session at the pottery studio on making jewelry with porcelain and my three hours flew by! Starting something new brings all of our human emotions up to the surface as we face ourselves in unfamiliar territory.

I realized that when I am being initiated into something new, my first concern is safety, which is another way to interact with fear.

I'm sure that is universal! For me, I experienced it by wanting to make sure that I understood what the medium (porcelain) requires to safely interact with it.

In this case, safety wasn't so much about ruining my project because I don't know what I'm doing yet, but when the porcelain dries, and you mess with it, it produces dust that has silica in it. Lung health and silica dust are important to consider! So, no sanding it unless I'm outside and masked up.

For me, starting something new brings about a deep need to know and understand the steps required to get to the finish line. I found myself repeating one shape and slightly differentiating the design so that I could fully understand the process of making a particular shape, what its limitations are and how I can repeat something I like.

That's the builder in me as a Generator. My energy wants to master something, and it takes baby steps and a lot of trial and error to master anything. So I tend to work incrementally. That was a nice realization to have with going slow and easy with my process.

I hope your week was filled with lots of new experiences as you were initiated into whatever your energy type steered you toward.

Random fact about me: I didn't find my love for exercise until midlife. Better late than never!

Gifts of the Father(s)

My father was ill on and off for 10 years. After a serious heart attack, I wasn't sure if he was going to be around much longer when he arrived home from the hospital. He ended up living another 8 years, but at the time, I was told by his doctor that a sneeze could take him out because his heart was in such bad shape.

My father and I had a deep relationship. But when you have a deep relationship that often means you have to go through some tough times together, and boy, we sure did.

I'm also close to my step-father. My parents divorced when I was 15, and my step-father stepped in as a father figure when I needed him to. He was a Navy captain when he was still in service, and his steady hand in rough water has always been a valuable resource to me.

Shortly after my father's heart attack, Dad and I were sitting at his kitchen table and we started talking about some past events that I felt needed to be brought to the surface.

One event that I brought up had to do with a decision he had made that had deeply hurt me. Up until that point, I'd never discussed it with him, but it was something that had made my heart heavy and I thought I needed to clear the air in case a random sneeze happened and I wouldn't have the chance again.

He acknowledged my pain, and gave his reasons for the decision, and we got it resolved.

But then the tables turned. He decided to confide in me about a decision I had made that had deeply hurt him.

I was taken aback. Not by his honesty, but by my total and complete unawareness that this decision that I had made years ago had left him so hurt.

At the time, I thought my decision was a good one, and it never occurred to me that it had impacted him in such a hurtful way.

My surprise was complete. "My God," I thought. "how many decisions have I made in my life that I thought were good, or even without much significance to others, that hurt someone so deeply that they never let it go?".

It was one of the most sobering moments I've ever experienced.

I was talking to my step-father this week about the pathway of grief, and he said something that has stuck with me all week.

I shared with him that for the first time, I was able to think about my parents without automatically going to my memory of their time of death.

He told me, "Try and remember the gifts your mother and father left you, and don't think about the pain of their passing."

Looking back, that conversation with my dad taught me more than I expected.

I brought something to the table that I had carried for years, and it felt good to finally speak it out loud. But I didn’t expect the table to turn. I didn’t expect to hear how something I had done had left a mark on him.

That moment stopped me in my tracks. It reminded me how easy it is to hurt someone without ever meaning to. I was just living my life, making what seemed like the right choice at the time.

We both showed up that day with our own stories, and we both chose to keep our butts parked in the kitchen chairs facing each other with the pain. That’s what grace looks like to me now.

I didn't know, and I'm truly sorry.

Random fact about me: I've been covered in whale snot in Alaska.