Recently I decided to hike the Falls Creek Fall trail in Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Part-way up, I found that the USFS had locked a gate across the forest road to the trailhead . There was minimal snow and I was curious to understand the closure. I soon found out. Blow down. It looked like some giant had spent days angrily throttling the trees, and the road was covered with shattered branches and entire tree trunks. I moved a few smaller branches aside and then decided

I was at my barber for my quarterly haircut. I’ve known Travis now for about 3 years and he’s the only one I’ll go to. As the writer Saki said, “I regard one's hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter” (The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope). Hair cutting is an intimate process and a matter of trust: someone is holding sharp implements against your neck. So, after three years, we have what I’d characterize as a co

Original photograph, February 10th, Trail of 10 Falls, Silver Falls State Park, OR Like many other providers, empowerHER runs programs offering strategies to combat micro-aggressions, marginalization, isolation, or prevention of access to professional development opportunities. These are practical workshops with tools to establish boundaries, handle interruptions, being spoken over, addressing the appropriation of ideas and being stereotyped as the Strong Black Woman.  As suc

View from Hawthorne Bridge. Original photograph. Joan Didion’s  The Year of Magical Thinking  mentions Geoffrey Gorer’s essay “Death, Grief, and Mourning.” Her book title is taken from a description of the death of his father who drowned when the Lusitania sank in 1915. Gorer describes how even while he knew his father was dead, he created a fantasy that somehow he was alive on a desert island:  “… it was only by such magical thinking that my father could be kept from extinct

We know that the shapes and sizes of grief span the depth and breadth of humanity, but we often think of grief as something "large" such as the loss of a loved one, or a diagnosis of a medical condition. In the face of these “large” griefs, we tend to suppress “smaller” griefs because we don’t feel they deserve space – slipping them into a back pocket. We also think comparatively: the grief of others is more extreme, more annihilating, more deserving of attention, and we ofte

Annaghmakerrig Lake, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, County Monaghan, Ireland. 2018 Grief is commonly associated with the response to “significant loss,” defined as a result of a death, divorce, loss of a home, or illness. These are societally recognized losses. But grief has many shapes that can occur daily, that seem small and easily dismissed, such as being moved to a different office space, not being able to attend a friend’s baby shower, outgrowing our parents, memories of a lost

For many entrepreneurs, the prospect of a conference is filled with joyous anticipation. The meeting and greeting and discussing speaker events and laughing and talking and dressing up and going to parties. I’m in not in that demographic. I recognize how valuable the conference is but I feel overwhelmed. Large, chatty groups make me nervous. I don’t know if I can connect with anyone and during the most recent conference I attended the prospective client connections I made wer

The classic start to – what – a joke? An anecdote? A casual story? Nope. It’s the classic start for any female leader of color who enters a meeting, a conference, a board room. An African-American woman, an Asian, Indigenous, mixed-race woman walks into a room, and stands in front of a white-board, a slide presentation, holds notes, holds charts, holds her hands tightly together before she remembers to loosen them. Unlike a white male who steps into the same room, the woman o

Last week I led a 2-day workshop, Transitions: Embrace Change With Confidence, for professional women. As usual, I’d prepared notes and a...

My daughter, Aliya, performing "Undefeated," her MFA thesis In a study with a group of women, brain activity was observed through a semantic session and a physical sensation of pain session. In the semantic session, the women were exposed to “positive words, negative pain-unrelated words, physical pain-related words, and social pain-related words.” The nociceptive session involved a skin activation that could be painful or non-painful. Each participant reported their personal

I inhabit a racial liminal space since I am Sri Lankan, Portuguese, Dutch, Anglo-Indian and Scots. I recently realized that I inhabit...

This summer we’re experiencing hurricanes, heat domes, flooding, water shortages. People in Arizona are trying to cope with the month-long 110+-degree heat. Out with the old weather, and in with this screeching, toothy, earth-beating harpy that’s decided it’s had enough of us. It’s impacting the choices we must make in how we protect and insulate our houses, how we adapt, and implement energy alternatives. It will also increase the stress on health and work productivity, and

Entrepreneurs and small businesses are vulnerable to cancellations and buyer’s remorse, hence the use of terms and conditions that don’t permit refunds.  When I first started my business I also used a non-cancellation policy. Now I offer a customer satisfaction clause and, so far, it appears to be working. Yes, I'm wary of clients who sign up and then decide to cancel. However, there’s a difference between buyer’s remorse and genuine difficulty. So we need to address where ou

Like many coaches and practitioners, I witness incredibly gifted, highly intelligent and innovative women demeaned and reduced because of...

Women of color have experienced the frustration of being excluded, and have long felt the pressure to become academically successful. We’ve bought into the white-controlled game: to gain admission to the club we have to pile up the number of letters behind our names. Leaving aside that fallacy – because what the white club means is that white people with letters can join the club -- education and intelligence are not correlative. I’m not stating anything new: it’s a well-know

How Women of Color Can Leverage Emotional Intelligence to Level Up As Leaders” (Ashley) underscores the necessity of learning how to receive critical feedback so Women of Color can develop and advance our careers. This is good advice AND… WoC often feel more vulnerable to critical feedback because (a) we’re used to EXPECTING bias – isn’t that a trip? And (b) we don’t know exactly what the feedback is for or if it’s valid. And (c) sometimes we receive criticism from a boss who