From Delays to Deep Conversations: A Day of Perspective

Travel days are often filled with delays.

Yet, they also offer glimmers of humanity while you sit around waiting.

Here are some of mine from yesterday.

My first travel day was devoid of much conversation, as I wrote about in the last post. But man, things changed on the second day.

Around noon, I went downstairs for a cup of coffee at the hotel I stayed in before the shuttle arrived to pick me up to take me to the airport.

I struck up a conversation with the manager, who was sitting next to me.

He was a very large man, and he shared that he was recently in a car accident. I expressed my sympathy to him.

He looked at me and said, "Thanks, but it was the best blessing. While I was in the hospital, they found a huge goiter on my thyroid. Now I understand why I couldn't lose any weight."

I saw that he was quite emotional about it, and that his life was already changing for the better. We had a nice conversation about faith. We talked about how everything happens for a reason, and how sometimes, God gives a little push to get us going in a new direction.

When I got to the airport and survived the TSA gauntlet, I immediately looked for a restaurant. I wanted to eat something other than protein bars and Venison Epic bars.

I found one, and the hostess seated me next to a couple about my age. And they weren't on their phones! We struck up a conversation and they shared they were heading to the Mile of Music Festival in Appleton, Wisconsin.

They went last year and had so much fun, that they were returning.

They loved the weather and said the festival goers were fantastic. The music was new and exciting and their son was also in one of the bands performing.

They shared that the festival was easy to walk to from the hotel and easy to navigate once there. They were surprised at how well organized it was.

I called Shayne and told him to put this festival on next year's calendar. When you find something that middle-aged Gen X'ers like, it needs to be noted.

It was time to get to my gate to Little Rock. When I arrived, I sat down next to a man with a big, shiny cross on his necklace.

He's a preacher. He related a story about a trip he just took to Michigan for a conference, and at the last minute, he found out that his nephew only lived a mile from the conference. His nephew has been estranged from his father, the preacher's brother, for years.

He was so happy to connect with him while he was up in Michigan, and he expressed real hope that his brother and his nephew might reconnect.

We discussed forgiveness and perspective.

He felt that its crucial to mend fences with a close family member as soon as you can, and he was afraid his brother would wait until it was too late.

We then reminisced about growing up in Arkansas fishing for crawdads and running over snakes on our bikes. He grew up in West Helena and preaches in Hazen. This area is flat farmland, very delta. I grew up in Loanoke county which is very similar.

As kids, we both had a couple of square miles to explore. We both laughed about surviving what kids got into back then and how it's so different now.

When I boarded the plane, I was in First Class because of being bumped the day before. I was on the aisle and a man was slumped and sleeping next to the window on my row.

We were on the tarmac for about an hour because a kid in the back threw up. The back of the plane was in turmoil before hazmat came to clean it up.

He slept through it all.

He woke up when we took off and I asked him what time it was because my phone was in the overhead bin.

That was how we started talking. We were in a deep conversation until the plane landed in Little Rock two hours later.

He was from the same town as my mother's family and I joked we were probably related somehow. My family's roots grew deep there.

We had a remarkable conversation about spirituality. He was also a part-time preacher. He was about to open up his own machine shop, since his job was now done. He had been a lead engineer for a company but this company was merging with another. He had been traveling weekly to North Carolina since January, and this was his last trip home.

We talked about spirituality and how to apply God's lessons daily.

How we fall short and also how we soar.

We also talked about perspective and the reach of our words and actions on others and how humans have a great capacity to love one another instead of reverting to hatred.

He just married the love of his life 4 years ago when he was 44. He said it already felt like a lifetime because when you love someone so fiercely and so completely, time bends back on itself.

This is what I love about traveling.

I love connecting to random people that after the connection, you realize it wasn't random at all.

I made it home.

As I was telling the day's stories to my step-father, we reflected upon my mother's death.

At the end of her life, she shared with us her experience that God was revealing to her what her impact was on others.

I would often find her gazing when I went into her room to adjust her position, or rub her legs.

When I disturbed her, she was often miffed.

She shared with me that she was getting a 'download' from God. He was showing her stuff that she found hard to express.

She said she was experiencing how she influenced those that she met in life. She saw how her essence rippled out into the world by the people she interacted with. She was awestruck by it, and it was one of the last things she talked about before she stopped talking.

She didn't have the perspective to see this during her life, but I guess God gave her a glimpse before she died.

The thing is, she wasn't a religious person in life at all. She was always searching for God, intellectually trying to figure out if she believed or not; but in the end, He found her as he was preparing her for the next adventure.

This is the exclamation point on my post from yesterday. Amazing things happen when we disconnect from our devices, and worries, and engage with the people we are around.

Who knows how your life impacts others when you care enough to share. Something you don't deem important may the be the lifeline someone needs. Random events during the day can lead to new insights when you put them together with the bigger picture of your life.

Perspective is a mighty thing, and when you get a glimpse, it can change your life.

Random fact about me: I was a snare drummer in my school's marching band.

Rediscovering Human Connection in the Digital Age

I sat in the airport yesterday for 7 hours, and had a total of 3 conversations.

I was among approximately 150 people. I had two conversations with the gate attendants. They frantically tried to get me an alternative flight because I volunteered to be bumped due to a weight restriction.

I was supposed to leave around 2, but ended up leaving at 9 PM.

I had another conversation with a woman sitting next to me. She laughed out loud at something she was watching on her phone.

But her laugh was so...unique. It sounded like a sound a mouse would make if it could laugh. She looked at me when she realized she laughed out loud and the look on my face disarmed her.

Then, she disconnected and we chatted for a while.

I watched as three groups of passengers came to the gate. Nearly all of them, maybe with 2 exceptions, were plugged in and cocooned.

We’ve gotten good at building little walls around us made of earbuds, screens, and disinterest.

Other than grouse about how collectively we've become zombies, I want to explore this in a somber, reflective way.

What is going on collectively?

I've given this a lot of thought.

I think it has something to do with what happened during COVID.

We all took a pause from each other for a very long time, not talking to others because...fear of germs, sickness and death.

Casual, spontaneous conversation was considered dangerous.

And devices stepped in and filled the gap.

A pause can be beneficial for any number of reasons. The pause is there to re-calibrate and reassess. But I think it has now become very distorted.

It's become normalized.

My evening wore on. I was waiting to get on a flight to Charlotte. The airlines provided me with a room for my next flight today.

We were supposed to start boarding at 7:45 PM. My app was saying it was time to board. But the boarding doors to the ramp remained closed.

20 more minutes pass.

Tick-Tock.

I noticed people were now emerging from their cocoons, and becoming agitated. I watched them frantically search their phones for updates.

Nothing.

The gate attendants started assisting those needing to adjust their flights. We had no way of getting to Charlotte on time.

A slow murmur started to build. It was alarming because it had been SO QUIET at the gate all day. There were 45 or so people starting to talk and it was getting loud.

The gate attendants finally came across the speaker and said the pilot hadn't given the signal to board yet.

They weren't really sure why.

The apps were not updating with new information, and now our apps were saying we were preparing for take-off.

Ahhhh....there it was. Humanity connecting again.

Our lives were no longer centered around apps telling us what's next. The digital distractions were no longer in play.

People were talking to each other, sharing stories of travel woes. I overheard a conversation between two couples. They figured out that they lived in the same neighborhood.

There's another story about meeting a neighbor at the airport, but I think it further illustrates my point.

My observation was that we started to harmonize to each other again. When the apps failed, when the oracle was down, we had to switch from digital to analog.

We were forced to be relational to each other and present to the moment.

That's what's beautiful about life.

It's spontaneous.

It's unpredictable and it's alive in a way that a digital existence can't give you.

We were finally able to board as soon as the pilot gave the thumbs up. It ended up, I think, being a lightening issue.

I was seated next to a young man. He was on his way to Fayetteville, Arkansas. He is living there now, but is from Staunton, Virginia.

He works in the same industry as my brother. They are in the same town, hundreds of miles away.

We were having a great conversation. We discussed how 40% of our food is wasted. It is thrown away every day.

We can grow enough food, but people waste so much of it.

He's running a company that's trying to put that food waste to a good, sustainable use.

Just as this connection was getting fascinating, the flight attendant interrupted us. She asked him to move to the middle of the plane because of a weight distribution issue.

And he was gone.

But that connection, although brief, gave me pause. It made me realize how valuable it is to connect to others when there is nothing you need to do.

Like waiting for a flight, or in a doctor's office, or in a line waiting for an experience to begin.

The silence of the device becomes the womb of re-connection. You never know what might happen when you step out of your cocoon.

You learn you're more connected than you can imagine.

It's time to re-emerge and engage again.

Balance out the digital and analog.

We've incubated enough.

Random fact about me: My favorite flavor is GT's Sacred Life Kombucha. If you've had it, you get what I'm talking about. It's my childhood in a drink.

I'm A Gold-Digger

Yep.

I'm heading on a three week trip to Arkansas, with a road trip to Colorado, where I intend to pan for gold.

Today's a travel day, so the flurry of activity getting ready for a long trip almost trumped getting my post written this morning, but I found a spot of time.

I don't go through the AIT machines at the airport, so I have to really make sure I abide by the two hour recommendation before boarding.

The 'pat-down' takes some time, and I get the side eye from passengers and airport personnel, but I don't care. Last year, I was held for two pat downs because the tape thing that registers bad chemicals went off. It ended up being the lotion I used on my skin for psoriasis.

So I switched lotions immediately.

My general distrust of any large body of people agreeing that something is safe when it feels very unsafe is my reasoning.

There's a long list of ooppsies, our bad! in the history of really knowing whether or not something is harmful or not, so I just go with my gut.

Hair color on the scalp...not cool with that, either. Hence why I don't color. I saw what that stuff did to my hands when I was hairdresser for 2 years, and figured I better stay away from putting it on my head as I got older.

I never thought breast implants sounded like a good idea, or talcum powder down south.

No to trans-fats, no saccharine, and a big nada on tanning beds.

I use an app called Yuka to check bar codes when I'm shopping for something that goes on my skin or in my mouth. It lists out all the ingredients and tells you whether they are going to harm you eventually if you keep on using them.

It helps me make better decisions on the fly at the store, even though I look like I'm doing an inventory count. I highly recommend it, though.

Ok, that's it. The next three weeks will be interesting!

Embracing Change: Life Lessons from 58 Years

If a photo is worth a thousand words, here's 20,000 words of personal evolution over the course of 58 years.

The top row is the story of my beginnings. I was born with a cone head. My father said it scared him to death when we first met, but my mother was in labor for like 24 hours, and my head showed the effort she made to get me out.

So what tone did the circumstances of my birth set for me for the rest of my life?

I believe it led to me wanting to understand pressure and the growth that comes from tight places.

The photo of me smirking in my cool 70's attire is a big memory for me. My mother was making a framed piece of art out of felt letters she had painstakingly cut out with her good sewing scissors.

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill becomes any of us to find fault with the rest of us.

First of all, that was the first time I had ever seen my mother do something creative. I was mesmerized by her process. And my father, who loved photography, was using his brand new Pentax camera circa 1972 to capture this moment in time.

That was a day that I remember very clearly. I was basking in an atmosphere of love and self-expression.

Moving on, there is the photo of me in my 1980's big hair with the striped sweater. I was sitting on the couch on Christmas morning, waiting for the day to get going. My parents were divorced, and the merry-go-round of Christmas travel between parents had just started.

Those years were a pressure cooker for me in many ways.

Navigating new family dynamics with my parents' remarriages, step-siblings, moving to a new place and trying to deal with my own internal changes due to being a teenager was chaotic and filled with emotional drama.

I emerged from it understanding that life was unpredictable. After graduation from High School, I kicked around for a couple of years, then moved to Chicago with my best friend, Wendy.

Chicago was frightening and exciting to me.

I was 21, and legally able to drink. And I did. A lot.

And as a result of some things that happened, I decided it wasn't for me, and I left for Alaska.

The land of pressure and what it that looks like in a landscape was illuminating!

It changed me...and I emerged from that period of life learning to be more self-reliant.

On the second row, you'll see a progression of me growing through my love of the outdoors.

I started traveling solo and saw many things around the world that left me more curious about our water covered planet.

I lived on a couple of boats working as a Steward, and on my off time, traveled to Europe and walked a lot, looking at castles and drinking warm beer in pubs.

I discovered that I like to wander around in my mid-20's, and I moved a lot.

I ended up married to another wanderer and we explored various places for the next 20 years. We finally ended up in Roanoke, Virginia and it has become home.

My wandering over the last ten years has been more internal than external. That's the third row. I went through a period of coloring my hair blonde to hide the gray.

Menopause. Talk about a pressure cooker. All of those juicy hormones decided to take a siesta. I went through a period (ha!) of trying to get it back.

But no. Another lesson on the pressure to stay young.

Then I decided, fuck that, let that silver shine. Becoming authentic became very important. I wasn't chasing anything much externally anymore.

The experiences I was craving became focused on integrating all of these versions of myself that I'd experienced in the past into some wisdom for my future.

It was a time of deep reflection.

I was the girl looking to laugh. I was the teenager trying to shrink herself because of the changes that swept her up and tossed her around like a boat with no motor in a sea of tall waves.

I see different cities that led to different versions of love, different kinds of laughter.

Some of those faces I see in my photo collage feel like strangers. Some feel closer than ever.

Funnily enough, none of those women are fully me anymore. But they’re not gone, either.

Just a few days ago, I looked in the mirror at my studio and saw my mother and father smiling back at me. My mother's eyes, and my father's chin, live on my face.

I now see not just different versions of myself on my face, but others, too. I've spent so much time with my beloved, that we are now starting to resemble each other.

Integrating all of my life's experiences into what I am now is a trip!

Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to become someone. I started allowing myself to become.

There's a difference.

So who am I now?

I'm here. That's all that I know anymore. I'm here, I'm always changing and have learned to appreciate the pressure of becoming, and accepting the death of what once was.

Even if I have to live with temporary distortions from those tight spaces, like my birth story, it's been worth it.

And maybe that’s the beauty of looking back... not to define ourselves, but to witness the cycle of birth, and death, and rebirth over and over again.

And understand that "I" am still here.

I find that comforting.

When the body I am using is used up, where do "I" go then?

And what do I want to leave behind that lasts indefinitely?

Random fact about me: My first job was working on a frog farm in Arkansas. I was 12.

Human Design: Leadership and Dreams

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 31, Gate of Influence

Earth: Gate 41, Gate of Contraction

Transits for Week of July 24th-July 28, 2025

I just finished up watching Game of Thrones this week, so the Human Design transits were illustrated beautifully for me through that show.

Gate 31, the Gate of Influence, is one of my favorite gates. Influence and leadership, in general, is often misunderstood, especially by politicians.

True leaders are recognized, and once recognized for their ability to take an idea and logically lead others to manifest the idea or agenda, they are then democratically elected by those in the collective to take the role.

This is not leadership driven by the ego's need for recognition. In the show, Game of Thrones, Jon Snow is the leader that is recognized. He never wanted the title of king. He just cared about making sure the White Walkers didn't murder everyone in the world. He did what he needed to do personally to insure that the Dark Knight didn't win the war.

Daenerys Targaryen was a composite. She was recognized, then her ego kicked in and Jon Snow killed her at the Iron throne.

Brandon Stark became the King through recognition, and his ego was pretty much wiped out becoming the three-eyed raven.

Cersei Lannister was pure Ego. Boy, was she a piece of business. Ugh.

The entire show was a masterclass on leadership arising from Ego or Recognition, and how that dance between ego and recognition to lead others towards an ideal oscillates.

This is paired with Gate 41, the Gate of Contraction.

This energy is about the emotional juice required to start something new. But it requires contracting that emotional energy enough so that a focus can emerge. Emotional energy is very powerful, but to start something new, one has to get rid of the distractions and get a singular focus to begin.

This means start small with just the essentials to start a new chapter in your life, or begin a project.

This blog is the result of me moving through this energy field last year. I had this seed of an emotional pull to begin writing again on a blog, but I wanted to simplify the container. It took me almost a year to finally decide to focus on writing daily about my life, merging personal insights into the collective field of awareness. You'll notice there aren't any distractions on this site, and I am just focusing on what is essential to write daily.

Together, Gate 31 and Gate 41 are calling us to start something new only if it really matters, and consider taking on a leadership role, but only when others are genuinely asking you to.

Generators/Manifesting Generators: Wait to respond to new ideas about a project, and be aware of feeling the pressure to step into potential leadership roles. Watch out for initiating stepping into a leadership role and not waiting to be asked. Wait to be asked, wait to respond; if emotionally defined, wait some more and make sure your body is giving you the go ahead. What are others asking of you right now? Is something calling to you to begin?

Manifestors: You're stuck between a rock and a hard place this week. Your natural inclination to lead and initiate is being slowed down by understanding that you need to be asked to lead first, and there needs to be a recognition from others that you are clear-minded in the group objective. You'll experience emotional pressure to start something new, but wait for it to align with your deeper feelings on whatever this thing is. It needs to be emotionally true and grounded in reality before you open your mouth to get something started.

Projectors: Your big question this week is, "Who is inviting me to guide a new process?". You all are great at guiding others, but only when recognized for your skills and knowledge about a subject or system. This energy may bring some emotional pressure to act on your creative visions, but this pressure needs to be tempered with patience to wait for the right platform before you act. Rest and wait for the right invitation, the right recognition. The seeds are there, but they need fertile soil to sprout or they won't grow.

Reflectors: This week brings the topic of leadership into your world. Who is leading from Ego and who's being recognized for being aligned and clear in their ability to lead? You are tapping into this feeling from the collective to start something new, but it's still in its infancy. People are stirring with this urge to 'do something', but questioning who can lead them in their desire for something new.

This week asks all of us to consider how we use our voice, our direction, and our dreams. It’s not about charging ahead and doing something to relieve the pressure to act; that's reckless and won't be fruitful. It’s about being recognized, and THEN choosing to act or not based on your inner authority, and starting only what matters.

Last week's energy was in alignment with where I'm heading this week. I was ready to get to of town last week, but I literally had to attend to the mundane details of life to prepare for the trip. I'm leaving for Arkansas on Wednesday, then driving to Colorado.

My grand adventure this summer will be documented on this blog daily, with photos, and I'm excited to see what happens and what I learn.

Random fact about me: My favorite scent to wear is Arrogance, which is a men's cologne. I like to pair it with White Shoulders, a very old scent that is floral. Smells delicious and I always get comments.