What good in the world can blogging do?

A lot of good. Maybe more GOOD than we can imagine. Why? Let me tell you how 7 teenage voices will change the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the game changers.

"Getting our voices out there matters? How do we do that?  [yada, yada, blogging]  Will you teach us how to blog?"

That was pretty much the gist of the conversation I had with this group of kids after a talk I gave in April 2015. The topic was youth ingenuity. The attendees, almost all adults, mostly educators, social innovators and social sector folks just happened to include this small group of 15 and 16 year olds. My message to the group was that we can't afford for their voices to be unheard. Why? Because they will change the world.

I developed a class for these kiddos and began teaching it as a volunteer on June 22, 2015.

Today is July 13, 2015. I will meet these kids at 4:30 this afternoon for our 4th class. How did we get here and where are we going with this? It is quite simple. These youth, facing many unimaginable hardships, had the excitement and curiosity for life that young people innately have. They also had a chance meeting with an adult who they thought might have something to offer them. That adult was me and, like every other adult in the world, I know that it is my job - and my pleasure - to teach children what they want to know. There is so much talk and frustration about the state of education in our nation and world that we often fail to hear the beautiful stories of our young people excited to learn. So here is that story, the first installment of many to come.

"Finding My Voice"

Not only is today our fourth class, it is also the day a film team is coming to class to help tell our story. What began as a small volunteer experience for me is becoming a beautiful example of a need for our youth. The class isn't just about blogging, as writing a blog is merely a vehicle, a communication tool. The lessons I teach the kids go much deeper. These are kids who have very deep stories and experiences of the painful truths that exist for teenagers in America. They are urban teens of color with the struggles, safety concerns and challenges that exist in their reality, almost completely unknown, unheard and undervalued by the rest of the world. And I do mean the rest of the world. Just as we don't hear about and easily avoid tuning into the realities for children all across this planet.

In my class, the topics we delve into include truth, integrity, vulnerability, boundaries, personal safety online, creative self expression, self-confidence and so much more. In a class of 7 students, I have seven entirely different voices, expressing themselves in seven beautifully different ways.

While my work is largely focused on teaching entrepreneurship, 21st century and "soft" skills, workforce readiness, career planning and the like, success with all of these lessons - typically triggering social-emotional issues for young people - begins with helping students find their self-confidence. There is no better way that I have found in my 15 years in education than to help students find their voices while they learn about and prepare for the real world. So, I named the class "Finding My Voice". And wow, they are doing that in ways I could never have imagined.

So why are we filming our fourth weekly class? Because the class has become bigger and more significant than we originally thought. What was at first a small summertime course has become a vision for a six month class that not only guides these students through the social and personal experience of stepping into confidence and expression of their truth, it will inspire others as well. It will be a peer-to-peer mentoring training that allows these super seven kids to learn personal gifts and self-management that they can then coach and inspire the next group of 7 students through, inspiring healthier choices for themselves and others. When students witness their peers doing well and achieving, the results can be a mixed bag. Rather than ostracizing the one kid who is choosing to do better, this is a small group who are, together, doing GOOD. Peer pressure is less likely when the kids have each others' backs. And what's more, the experience of these seven kids is something other kids can look forward to having themselves in six months' time, with their own small group of peers.

How do we keep this going? We need to raise money. A crowd funding campaign will be forthcoming, complete with a video and an appeal from all of us to support a small group of youth whose voices will do a lot of good in the world - the kind of GOOD the world desperately needs right now.

This class will be a powerful, fun and beautiful example of personal growth, empowerment and self-expression. That the kids are not at all isolated from the world in this experience - this is quite deliberately the point, actually. A self awareness of their place in the world has already been born for these kids, rooted in compassion for the readers in similar situations all around the world. And their hearts are growing: they hope to inspire other young people in every corner of the world simply by being themselves, speaking their truths, and using the medium of blogging on the great social equalizer that is the Internet.

The kids and I want to know:

Have you spoken your truth today?
It might just change the world.

A lesson on never crossing the finish line...

My lesson for this moment: The work is never done. The goal is never achieved. The finish line is never crossed. This is because of the ever-expanding nature of our universe and our human experience. When I work on or work towards something, the work I have done to this point affects the nature of what I am doing. My work then expands and becomes something else, something new, something brighter, something bigger. As much as my deep desire in life is to be able to check things off a to do list, this is not the nature of life. Sure, we can complete small tasks and bucket list items but even those "items" we've completed have changed the nature of everything else in our life - everything about ourselves. And we are prismatic - even holographic - there are so many facets to each of us that can be changed and affected simultaneously by one tiny movement in life. Even our thoughts change things.

So, I am challenging my belief that I *should have* achieved something else or completed something in particular by now. When I stop and think about, with each step I have taken to build what I am building in life, I have significantly enhanced, strengthened, altered and expanded my work - and my life. It is ever growing. I cannot feel badly about not being "done" by now. Because there is no done. When my work is done, I am done. The nature of life allows me to feel that crossing one finish line was only a step in being prepared to cross the next finish line.  All these finish lines take us to the final finish line of a life well lived.  By that time, and only at that point, will I be done.  And when I'm done, when my work is done, I return home to the other side. And I'm far from ready for that.

Our tribe...

Some indigenous cultures have a tradition of embracing and loving the member of the tribe who causes harm, pain or suffering to others. This is an act of treating pain (the wrong doer acted from his own pain) with love. They tell him he is loved. That he is made of divine love and he belongs. He may fight back but eventually the love (which never tires) wins. The community does not give up the battle to reclaim his goodness, no matter how long it may take. To give up on that member of the tribe is to permit darkness to infect the tribe.

We are facing the same battle today in many corners of our lives. It may seem that there is more darkness now than ever but that is not true. There is more love and light now than ever before because of all the hard work done by the generations that have gone before us and the work we are doing today. We, the light bearers, have brought so much love to the world that our planet has shifted and darkness can no longer hide. What seems like an endless series of scandals and injustice and war is the darkness bubbling up to the surface and into the light so it can be healed. It's overwhelming at times but we can bring love to all of this darkness. We are having the conversations, making stands for peace and learning how to have compassion in new and powerful ways. We must not give up, even if it takes generations. 

We heal this world every day with our acts of compassion and as we do, that energy ripples through the world and heals people we will never know. We are the wings of the butterfly and the hurricane is love. 

Just as the tribe does not give up on the evil doing tribe member, we cannot give up on humanity. Keep up the good fight. We are winning. And we are healing the generations before and after us by changing the story of our ancestor's children and our children's ancestors.

Namaste.

A birthday and a lesson after death...

Yesterday was my friend Jonathan's birthday. I've known Jonathan since sixth grade. He was kind and funny and seemed immune to negativity, peer pressure, hatred or meanness. He was quite simply the kindest, most positive and upbeat person I knew. Jonathan and I lost touch as many of us Gen X'ers did (we didn't have anything like Facebook when we graduated - life was very different). One day, at some point after I found Facebook, Jonathan did too and we became Facebook friends. He would send me messages now and then (not posts on my wall but actual, personal messages that often just said "Hi Amy, how's life? I hope you're great. I'm very happy that things went well yesterday at the hospital. I'm so proud of my boy! He's going to play soccer soon!"). You see, Jon had all the reason in the world to be down-trodden. His five year old son had cancer. He and his wife did all they could to have a happy, normal life as they fought against the cancer monster and celebrated his son's little milestones in the big battle and eventual victory over cancer.

Jon died a year and a half ago, suddenly, unexpectedly. Jon shouldn't have died. There was no reason for it. He was young, he was proud of his time spent working out at the Y to be healthy, and he had a son who needed him arguably more than any boy possibly could. I attended Jon's funeral at home and reconnected with old friends. We relived the pure beauty that was Jon. We mourned, we became closer to each other and I met his wife Sheryl and his son as they were saying their goodbyes to my childhood friend.

Sheryl and I connected instantly. I wanted to do something to support her. But I felt that there was nothing I could do. I was wrong. And I am telling you this - if you are reading - because you, like me, probably need to believe in a much greater power than what you and I can comprehend. You need to know that God/the universe/an energy greater than us is always at work in our lives - just like I needed to believe.

Jon died in the fall, not long before Christmas. I felt so compelled to do something for his wife and son but I couldn't imagine what - I barely knew them and I had no idea how it would be received if I did something. I wound up shopping for Christmas gifts for them both - surely, I thought, that was acceptable and welcome. While shopping for a woman my age and a five year old boy I was utterly compelled to purchase a pink feather boa that I tried many times not to buy.  I thought it was too silly, too inappropriate, too - something. But I just went with my first instinct and wrapped it up and gave it to Sheryl for Christmas mere weeks after Jon died. When she opened the gift, she was speechless. She smacked my thigh, looked franticaly around the room and then got up, searching for something. When she came back and sat next to me, she stared at me in disbelief. She couldn't speak and I really wasn't sure what was going on. She had a pile of photographs and kept telling me she had to find one. She found it. It was a silly photo of Jon wearing a feather boa. It had become a joke the two of them shared and laughed about often. I knew instantly: I didn't give Sheryl that feather boa, Jon did. But he needed a human to be quiet enough and trusting enough of her instincts to help him give this gift to his wife who missed him so much so he could say to her "I'm here." ...And I was that human who was eventually quiet and compliant enough to take a pink boa off a wall, buy it, wrap it and give it to someone who would, unbenounced to me, know exactly who it was from.

Yesterday we remembered Jon's entrance into this world in a now-Facebook culture. Many of us posted long messages on his wall about how much we miss him, how his positive outlook continues to teach us and what a gift he was to everyone. And while Jon is "gone," he is often present in my heart and mind because he has been my teacher, both in life and in death. He gave me my first tangible experience of connecting directly with the other side, with God. I took an action that came from deep inside of me, one I could not rationalize or figure out, no matter how hard I tried. That deep instinct (Jon's urging me) persisted and I acted according to that instinct. It wasn't mine to judge, just mine to act upon for someone else's benefit. I believe that this is what we are all given every day: A strong urging to do something that we may not understand, that may not benefit us directly but something that we know comes from a place of love so we go ahead and do it anyway. And so tonight, I share this with you all to suggest that we can all hear the guidance of God and our guides if we just listen to that knowing voice inside of us which proves to always be right, even if we never receive the evidence of just how right it is.

Jon, thank you. I celebrate your birth into this world and the gifts you continue to give us. We all love and miss you and I pray that we will all continue to grow in ways we cannot yet imagine because I know you are there helping us whether we listen or not.

Happy birthday, sweet soul.

The Divine Cycle: Birth, death and rebirth...

Hey, humans!  We are surrounded by nature and nature offers us lessons whether we are paying attention or not.  Today, I was presented a humble lesson on birth and death (and darn if that doesn't somehow also have the sneaky little lesson of letting go attached to it!)

Birth and death are two perceptions of the same process. Everything - every animal, every plant, every minute, every relationship, every breath, every idea you have - everything experiences the two sides of this dichotomy in order to grow, change, and be present in this moment as it is intended to be.

Today it was my orchid that offered me the lesson - by both being born anew and dying in part at the same time. Since 2004, this beautiful plant has blossomed every winter. Today, it has at least six purple blooms waiting to be born. It also has a decaying, dying leaf. The plant is not unhealthy, it is simply putting its resources into being born anew, and not into keeping one very old leaf alive. We, too, must focus our energies on the parts of us that wish to grow, and be willing to simultaneously allow what is no longer necessary - or what must be given up - to wither and die. It is part of the natural order of things to live and die and be born anew. Don't spend all your energy on keeping something alive that is simply ready to go.

As you see the things around you - beliefs, ideas, relationships, perceptions, and purposes that once served you - now decaying in your life, rest assured that what is leaving you will create the space for the energy to be born anew in your life.  And what will be born anew will be full of the wisdom you've gained and the love you've found for yourself so what's coming will only be better than that of which you are letting go.

Namaste.

Death of a leaf empowers birth of budding new life.

If it's not love, let it go...

I've learned a lot lately about love and about the people with whom we play this grand "game of life."  It turns out we all want the same thing:  Love.  But we aren't all playing by the same rules - and we certainly are not all starting from the same level of skill.  I learned long ago (and I'm still learning) that not everyone has my best interest at heart and not everyone cares to.  If you're a soft love giving thing like me this can be a hard, hard lesson to learn...

Sometimes love really does just fall out of the sky;
let go of what isn't love and be ready  for it!

While some people do give and share their love selflessly, some take too much and devalue the love you give.  Some love disappears and some love just dies.  Some people cause harm in the name of "love."  Some demand your love in a way that suits them - but not you.  Some manipulate in the name of love.  Some just plain hurt you.  But I've learned lately that the time has come for us, the members of this beautiful human race, to love ourselves first and give love in real time only to those who deserve it.

We can (if we are so inclined) still love someone who takes too much by sending them love and compassion on the wings of a prayer - and giving that love we wanted to share back to ourselves. But there is no need and no reason to do anything that makes us feel anything less than wonderful inside.  In other words, there is never a good enough reason to give your love to someone who does not give you the same love in return.  The more we let go of those people whose "love" isn't really love, the more space we open for the kind of love we truly want to come rushing in.  ...But we need to be empowered enough to close that "not good love" door and believe in our right to do so before the next one (or two, or three) will open.

Bottom line, if it doesn't make you feel good, it's not love - at least not the kind that is meant for you. Whether it's a friend, your family members, a lover or an acquaintance  it's time to draw the line.  And it's time to demand, expect and allow only love which makes you feel as amazing as you truly are.  And yes, you are that amazing.  <3