This week I swam the longest swim thus far in my life. I also got my official membership card from US Masters Swimming, after joining the Menlo Masters swim team a few weeks ago. When I got the card in the mail, I was nearly jumping for joy. I can't remember ever being that excited to receive a membership card in the mail. Why, you ask? Let me tell you about a lifetime of wanting to be a good swimmer. Swimming in the area of New England where I lived as a child is an outdoor activity that can be... Continue reading

Last night I went to a book reading by Gene Baur, the co-founder of Farm Sanctuary and the book Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food. What struck me about his talk is that the reasons for choosing food wisely are the same as they were when I became a vegetarian 30 years ago, and even far more imperative. What made sense to me at seven years old still makes sense. Here's a history of how the parental influence can have life-long effects on a child: When I was four years old, my mother and I lived... Continue reading

When I was in 4th Grade, we lived in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas. In the fall of 1980, Ronald Reagan had just been elected President, and Bill Clinton had just lost the election for what would have been his second term as governor (He was later re-elected). We lived in the newest house I'd ever lived in. Hot Springs Village was large gated community built in 1970, with man-made lakes, golf courses, its own supermarket, and several churches. This little suburbia with its community ordinances was close to heresy for my parents: Papa refused to mow the lawn because there... Continue reading

One summer day my mother called me down from my usual activity of reading, or perhaps playing with my dolls. We were back in the Benton, New Hampshire house after spending the winter in Florida living in yet another camper. I heard, "LeeAnn, I need your help with the laundry!" coming from outside as I sat in my upstairs bedroom. We had been doing out laundry at the laundromat in Woodsville, the nearest town 10 miles away, so I wondered if we were going to town, and got excited thinking about the possibility of an ice cream cone. I went... Continue reading

In the fall of 1978, when I was 6 years old and in second grade, we lived at the Colonial Innin Bath, New Hampshire. My mother and I had just moved in so that she could live with her new boyfriend, who I had begun calling Papa. He had taken over management of "the Colonial," as it was called - it was a bar, restaurant, and inn. The bar and restaurant had recently become popular with the locals, as there were few places in that rural area to go get a drink or see live music. The inn mainly catered... Continue reading

When I was 9 years old, in 1981, my parents and I moved back to New Hampshire to build a house on the land they had bought in the town of Benton before we left on our two year journey through the South. We had lived in Florida, in a series of different campers, and in Arkansas, in a big house with hardly any furniture. Over the course of a summer, Papa built the house almost entirely by himself, with some help from my mother, Cheryl, and minimal help from his friends. He drew up the plans, and did all... Continue reading

Writing about my life fills me with trepidation. I can tell you my story in broad strokes, and you might be amazed, at least amazed that I got to the point that I am now, writing on my MacBook Air in my tastefully decorated living room with its vintage mid-century furniture. You might never guess that as a child I lived in a VW bus, if you knew my more recent history: that I lived for years in the tony Pacific Heights neighborhood in San Francisco, held a director level corporate job, spoke regularly at conferences, and even appeared on... Continue reading

Recently I decided to clean out files that I had been collecting since the beginning of my professional career, and came across three pages of writing from 1997 or 1998. As I sat in my office, surrounded by creative briefs, positioning documents, and articles I had saved from jobs long past, and read these three pages handwritten on a yellow legal pad, tears streamed down my face with the pain of every failure, every mistake, every time I saw the right way do do something and was shut down or didn't speak up. I realized everything and nothing had changed... Continue reading

The medical need for certain substances is that we're all so incredibly magnificent that if we allowed ourselves to see who we truly are, we'd realized how fucked up the whole world is, how everyone is lying to themselves and each other, and we'd have to do something to change it. Continue reading

A six-year-old's perspective on Valentine's Day: "Valentine’s Day doesn’t make sense because people give out cards that say things they don’t mean." Excerpt from Escape from Nowhere, a memoir of an unconventional childhood, embedded. Continue reading

Life is always proving your intiution right. Why not listen to it, instead of learning your lessons the hard way? And why not confront that little voice of fear that prevents you from doing the things you really want to do, the things that could open you up to a more joyful existence? Continue reading

"We make our own grief by choosing to align with one side or another of a duality." As the Yin-Yang symbol reminds us, it is the complete embracing of both the positive and negative states that make us whole. Yet, duality is the force from which our creative initiative springs. Krishnamurti calls one side of this duality which motivates us to do things discontent. By embracing our discontent with joy, we spring into the flow of creation. Continue reading

You don’t need anything. You don’t need that cookie. You don’t need a vacation. You don’t need to buy that book, or that dress, or those shoes. You don’t need to look at that picture or to read that article. You don’t even need to read this article. Because everything you are looking for is in you. You will look and look at everything outside of you until you realize that. Continue reading

We are infinite beings. What does is mean to align with our infinite potential? Experiences in vibrational transformation with Panache Desai, Rikka Zimmerman, and Sebastian Dudley showed me how to get out of my own way and embody more of my true self. Continue reading

These three encounters with sound and vibration served to get me out of my mind and into my being: The Integratron, an upload from the soul; Miranda Macpherson, the space of compassion; and Amma, the embodiment of unconditional love. Continue reading

The theory behind vibrational transformation is that any state of consciousness has a corresponding frequency, and the more we align with the higher states (such as joy and love), the more the lower states (such as fear and sadness) fall away. Continue reading

According to David Whyte, there is a central conversation occurring inside most of us based on "questions that have no right to go away," My central conversation, "WHAT am I supposed to be that will be ENOUGH FOR ME?" had been going on for 20+ years and was transformed into a new one, a much more viable one. Continue reading

The art of writing is in touching the infinite expanse experience and rendering the right events, details, and perceptions into coherency, in service of the larger story. There are 1,000 ways to write a memoir, but only one way it needs to be written. Continue reading

The experience of being in an introvert in a world full of extroverts is to to live with a general sense of bewilderment, with the question "what's all the fuss?" constantly hovering in the background. The general problem, as I see it, is that extroverts process experience by talking, while introverts process experience internally. Continue reading

A few weeks ago on one of these runs a fact of my life hit me: I've made every major life decision involving location based entirely upon access to running trails. Why? While gym exercise is good for the body, it does almost nothing for the soul. Continue reading

While listening to a dharma talk from Tara Brach in 2009, I furiously jotted down on the sticky note pictured to the right, "There is nothing wrong with me any longer." I stuck it on the bulletin board above my computer and stared at it. For a very long time. While my bank account fluctuated between zero and barely paying the bills; while a parade of pimples came and went on my skin; while a roommate who inexplicably hated me and my dog asked me to leave; while I started graduate school and watched my writing get torn up in... Continue reading

As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a series of essays for Esquire in 1936 called "The Crack-Up, "I began to realize that for two years my life had been drawing on resources that I did not posess, that I had been mortgaging myself physically and spiritually to the hilt." My résumé and salary said I was somebody, but I wasn't buying it. Continue reading

I should post again. Damnit, I started this blog almost two weeks ago, and there's still only one post! Who the hell do I think I am, starting a blog and not writing? I should write about this, I should write about that; something, anything from this pile of sticky notes accumulating on my desk. The "I should write about this" was especially big on this one particular idea that's been brewing in my brain—I even snapped the photos of the corresponding stickies. But...no writing. So let's take one of these other notes, the one pictured here, the one I... Continue reading