Author Archives: vanessaverlee

Happy Equinox week friends,  Today is the third day of Spring, and the air feels rich with hope. I’ve been sensing a turning point this last week, collectively and personally, with more spaciousness and potentiality available.  Thank you to all who reached out with love and care around the loss of my brother-in-law Jim in early February… andContinue reading “Spring Emergence”

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”   -James Baldwin Hello friends, Early on in lockdown I was texting with my seven year old sagacious niece, who is a real live magical fairy.  She and I began to chat online more often once quarantining started and herContinue reading “It’s All Love”

Hi Friends,  One trillion lifetimes ago, on December 31, 2019, we had an NYE party at our home. I went all out in a hot dress, fishnet leggings, huge lightning bolt earrings, a red wig and an over the top make-up job done by a fabulous 12 year old boy whom I adore. I experienced a powerful awakeningContinue reading “New Years Newsletter”

Hi friends, Election day in America is just a few short days away. Or, for many of us, a few excruciatingly long days – and potentially sleepless nights – away – with who knows how much time in front us of even more uncertainty. I hope beyond hope that we are all voting. Whatever yourContinue reading “Hocus-Pocus Focus”

Hello friends, Pre-dawn has always been my favorite time of day. The daytime hustle is still hushed, while most non-nocturnal animals, humans included, remain asleep. It is when I love to sip my matcha tea, explore waking dreams in front of my altar and present a water offering to my garden. During these rituals, theContinue reading “Out of an Orange Colored Sky”

“Resilience” is defined as…  The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity. Hi friends –  I write this while breathing in smoky air from yet another devastating string of wildfires and thinking about how this year, perhaps more than any other, hasContinue reading “A New Kind of Resilience”

Hi friends, Whatever your 2020 vision might have been on January 1st, this year has been a doozy no one could have predicted. The full range of emotions have been pounding through our collective and individual bodies like waves, bringing the debris from the depths of the waters onto shore to be reckoned with. I don’tContinue reading “Discomfort… Growth’s Essential Worker”

Hi friends, Sending you each so much love as we navigate this particularly important – and hopefully – tipping point in history. I do not sense this is the moment to share my particular framing of reality, as a white person. So I’m using the platform I have here this month to pass on some specific resources that have been passedContinue reading “listening.”

  Hi friends, In my last “Healing In Place” newsletter, in late March, I shared how it’s never been more obvious that we are ultimately all one, not “the only one” struggling or isolated in our pain. This new pandemically human experience has touched just about every aspect of life on earth.  But it isContinue reading “Same Storm, Different Boats”

Hello Friends, When a caterpillar is born, it contains all the necessary innate wisdom to one day, when the conditions are right, transform itself into a butterfly. Up until then, it just does it’s caterpillar thing, crawling and eating… crawling and eating… crawling and eating….with, I like to imagine, an occasional glance up; curiosity piquedContinue reading “Crisis… Chrysalis”