by Heather Plett | Jun 11, 2012 | circle, journey, Uncategorized
Thank you for visiting my new site! I’m excited to have you here.
It’s been an interesting journey that has brought me to this place – a spiraling journey that started out with my first blog, Fumbling for Words, which later morphed into my second blog, Sophia Leadership, when I started on my self-employment path. Finally I am here, at the site that bears my own name. It feels right, at this time, to be just me, beautiful, flawed, growing, emerging, good enough ME!
I believe that all of life is a spiraling journey – like a journey up a mountain that can not be a direct path, lest we move too quickly and sprain an ankle or get altitude sickness. Instead, we spiral round and round, often feeling like we’re back at the same place, but nonetheless getting closer and closer to our destination.
Hence the spiral that appears all over my new site design. We have much to learn from spirals.
We also have much to learn from circles, mandalas, and labyrinths. As I wrote on my “about” page:
Circles teach us how to gather – looking into each others’ eyes, sharing our gifts, leaning in, and supporting each other through change and growth.
Spirals teach us how to learn and how to live – going inward, seeking the source of our truth and our strength, and then going outward, serving the world with our gifts.
walking the labyrinth
Mandalas teach us how to engage our minds and our hearts – slowing down to the speed of contemplation, exploring our creativity, and trusting the intuitive truth that arises.
Labyrinths teach us how to journey through life – trusting the path, accepting the turns that take us in the wrong direction, and putting one foot in front of the other until we reach the centre.
If you’d like to learn more about circles, spirals, mandalas, and labyrinths, I welcome you to join my free 75 minute call on Tuesday, June 26th at 7:00 pm Central Daylight Time. Register below.
It will be an interactive call (in the spirit of the circle), so I hope that you will join us, but if you can’t, sign up anyway and I’ll send you the link to the recording once it’s done.
This is not a sales call. It’s a learning journey, and I welcome you to come with me as we explore the path.
Here are a few things you’ll get out of the call:
- a basic understanding of circle and how it can inform the way we meet and engage in meaningful conversations
- an exploration of how labyrinths and mandalas can deepen your journey and become valuable spiritual & creative practices
- ideas that will help you engage your intuitive, right brain processes for increased clarity and creativity
- lots of tips that will help you understand your own personal spiraling journey, including an exploration of the value of chaos
- time to explore these ideas in a safe, non-judgemental environment
Thanks again for visiting! Take a look around, and let me know what you think of my new digs! One of the things you’ll notice, if you visit the “work with me” page is that I’ve decided to put my coaching work more front and centre. I’ve had some pretty powerful coaching opportunities lately, in which I’ve seen some beautiful transformations in my clients, on the path through chaos to creativity. It made me realize that this is a gift I need to be more intentional about sharing. If you’re looking for coaching, contact me and we’ll have an exploratory conversation.
by Heather Plett | Jun 5, 2012 | Uncategorized
Hello there! Glad you found my space!
Things are kind of new around here. I’m still in the process of moving in. If you’re having trouble finding things, you’re not alone – I am too! Bear with me while I spruce up the space, and if you want to get in touch to ask about something you’d hoped to find here, contact me.
by Heather Plett | Jun 4, 2012 | Uncategorized
It was the last place on earth I expected to see my dad.
The middle of Union Station in downtown Toronto in the middle of morning rush hour was about as far from Dad’s reality as any place on earth. Yet there he was, looking lost and confused, and yet oh so gentle.
No, it wasn’t my real dad. He’s been dead for nearly nine years. And yet… it was one of those moments when he felt nearly as close to me as he did when he was alive.
The flesh and blood man standing in front of me didn’t look much like my dad, but there was something in his eyes that first caught my attention. Add to that the fact that he looked like he still had farm soil under his fingernails and was completely confused by the mass chaos that is a downtown train station in a major metropolis, and I was captivated. “Do you know where I catch X train?” he asked of several passersby, only to be shrugged off. I wanted to help him, but I had no idea where to catch my train, let alone his.
Eventually, I found my way to my platform, and he found his nearby. I sat down on a bench to wait, and he put a coin into the pay phone to call the daughter who was waiting for him.
“I hate the city,” he said, without bitterness or anger. “There are so many people rushing around and nobody will stop to help a poor guy out.” I smiled. Suddenly I had a flashback to the time when my dad took a bus trip from Manitoba to Alberta, with his tin lunch box, coffee thermos, and eight cents in his pocket. People probably laughed at the farm hick on the bus, but he didn’t care – for him it was an adventure, and years later he still told the story of the young mom on the bus whose child he’d held when travel crankiness set it.
“I love you,” I heard the man say at the end of his call, in a voice so gentle, it clashed with the din all around me. “See you soon.”
At that moment he stopped being the stranger lost in the train station and became my dad.
I started to weep. It felt like I’d had a message from the grave. Oh how I wanted to hear those words from the real live lips of my dad. “I love you. See you soon.”
For the next hour, as I rode to the meeting at my client’s office, the tears kept welling up in my eyes. Nine years he’s been gone, and it’s been many months since I wept for him. The pain doesn’t throb very often any more. He comes up less and less in conversation and when I think of him, it feels more like tenderness and less like jagged, agonizing pain.
But sometimes the jagged pain comes back. Sometimes it creeps up on me out of nowhere and…. BAM! I’m lost in a puddle of grief again, right there on a platform in Union station.
He’s still here. He still has a presence in my life. He still shapes who I’m becoming.
Grief doesn’t follow a timeline. We don’t get to go through stages and reach a finish line. We don’t follow any rules and we certainly don’t get closure.
What we get is a new story to carry with us. A story that’s heavy and complex and beautiful and ugly and painful and joyful – all kinds of complicated things wrapped up together in one unique package.
I’m glad I still carry the story of my dad with me. I’m glad the essence of him can still show up unannounced in the most unexpected places.
I’m glad I’ve known enough love in my life to know what grief feels like.
I’m also glad that there are people who are doing important work in teaching us about and guiding us through grief, like my friends Cath and Kara. We need wise, compassionate people who give us space for grief, remind us of the complexity of it, and don’t judge us for the fact that nine years after a loss we can still be found weeping on a train platform.
Grief is just part of the journey.
by Heather Plett | May 30, 2012 | Uncategorized
It’s true what they say – the things you loved in childhood are clues in the treasure hunt of self-discovery.
As Mary Oliver says, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
When I was young, I was passionate about horses. I couldn’t get enough of them. In church on Sunday morning, I would draw them endlessly on the backs of the weekly bulletin. In my high school yearbook, it says something about how I planned to grow up and own a ranch some day.
Luckily for me, my dad always said “I’d rather buy you a horse than a TV.” I wasn’t all that happy about the “no TV” part of that equation, but I was certainly happy about the horses.
Together with by brother Dwight and my best friend Julie, I spent my summers on the back of a horse. We rode every chance we could. We never used saddles. We couldn’t afford them, and bareback was more fun and challenging anyway. The soft animals of our bodies became one with the horses and we loved every minute of it.
One summer day, Dwight and I set out for our daily ride – he on Prince (our favourite, fastest and oldest horse) and I on Lady (a rather finicky horse who didn’t like to leave the driveway, but loved to gallop all the way home). We had just rounded the corner from our driveway onto the gravel road and started picking up speed when something went seriously wrong.
Prince, who was part race horse and loved nothing better than running at break-neck speeds along the straightaway, did something completely out of character. He veered into the ditch and started to stumble. Dwight tried to bring him back on course, but it didn’t work. Prince’s head went down on the ground, he tripped and somersaulted, throwing Dwight head first onto the ground about 5 feet ahead of him.
I yanked on my reins and turned to look at what had happened. Prince was lying there, feet up in the air and head pinned underneath him. Dead. Probably from a heart attack while he was running.
Dwight was shrieking, partly from the pain and partly from the grief of losing our favourite horse. I raced back to the yard and got mom. She did what a practical farm wife does when she has a dead horse on the side of the road that needs to be cleaned up – she called the local mink farmer to see if he wanted some horse meat. By the end of the day, Prince was just a stain of blood on the grass.
We mourned the loss of Prince for months, hardly wanting to ride again. Lady mourned too. She got even more finicky about leaving the yard and the few more times I rode her that summer the only way I could get her down the driveway was to tug on the reins and get her to walk backward.
After Prince was gone, I really wanted another horse. I begged my dad for another one, and he did something that, in retrospect, seems like a rather brilliant parenting move. “I don’t have enough money,” he said, “but I have lots of hay. If you can find a farmer who will trade you a horse for some of these hay bales, then you can get a horse.”
I started scouring the Western Producer, looking for a horse. I finally found an ad that actually said a horse could be traded for hay. I phoned the farmer. He had a young Arabian filly available and was willing to deliver it to our farm and pick up the hay. I was ecstatic. I wouldn’t be able to ride it for at least a year, but at least I’d have another horse. (Come to think of it, it’s rather telling that my first business transaction was for a horse.)
Dusty was a beautiful little horse. I was thrilled to call her my own. Sadly though, being a blossoming teen girl with other interests, I gradually stopped spending as much time with her (partly because I couldn’t ride her yet) and Dusty began to run wild in the pasture. The next summer came and she was uncatchable and unrideable because I hadn’t invested the time in building a relationship with her.
I was determined to change that, and that’s when I learned one of my greatest life lessons. The movies may show rough-and-ready cowboys “breaking” wild horses by dominating them and whipping them into shape, but I knew instinctively that wasn’t the way to tame Dusty.
Instead, I spent much of that summer simply sitting in the pasture near where Dusty grazed, talking to her and waiting for her to begin to trust me enough to approach me. For hours I just sat there, waiting. Some days I brought a bucket of grain to try to entice her. On many days, especially at the beginning, she simply ignored me. Gradually, though, she began to notice me and one tiny step at a time, she came closer and closer to me. At first, I left the grain about 5 feet away from me, to see if she could trust me at a distance. Then I moved it 4 feet away, and then 3 feet, and eventually I held it in my hand.
The first time she ate from the grain bucket in my hand, I didn’t attempt to touch her. I knew that if I spooked her, I might have to go back to square one.
It took forever, but eventually, I could reach out and pat her nose. Soon I was able to stroke her neck, and finally she let me slip a halter on her and begin to lead her around the pasture. Eventually – and again in slow increments – I climbed on her back and began to ride.
When I was eighteen, I took my passion for horses to the next level – I began to teach. I became a camp counsellor and signed up as one of the assistant wranglers. I spent that summer helping reluctant city kids get used to horses. On the weekends, I and the other wranglers would take our horses deep into the woods until we were almost completely lost and then enjoy the challenge of finding our way back again.
One of the most memorable moments of the summer was the final campfire of one of the week-long camp sessions, the night before the kids were leaving for home. A mentally challenged girl, who’d spent the week trying in vain to fit in and make friends, and who’d taken a special liking to me, stood up, and in her boldest voice said “I thank God for Heather, because she taught me how to ride a horse.”
You could say that “everything I learned in life I learned from horses”. I learned about death and grieving, trust, passion, patience, teaching, exhilaration, and sharing.
And then, after that summer at camp, I moved into the city, sold Dusty to a young girl who longed for her first horse, and didn’t go near another horse for far too many years.
Always, though, there was a little part of me that knew that something was missing. I’d watch movies with horses in them, and I’d get an ache in my gut. I’d hear other people talk about riding, and I’d say “I’m going to ride again some day too.” Once my siblings and I started having kids, dad got a docile little pony named Paco or Brownie (depending on which grandchild you asked), and we started taking our kids out to the pasture for little rides. But then Dad was killed in a farming accident, and Brownie and the farm were sold.
I longed for another horse, but having one while living in the city just seemed to complicated and expensive. So I never did anything about it.
But, as you know, these things have a way of resurfacing. First, when I was about to launch my business and this blog, I met a horse named Sophia. It was a powerful moment that I can’t fully explain, but I knew that Sophia had a message for me.
Then I met Sherri Garrity in an unusual way (though we live 40 minutes apart, and have actually worked in the same places doing the same jobs more than once in the past, we were introduced by an online friend), loved her instantly, and found out that she has a horse named Spirit and lives very close to the place where I met Sophia.
Sherri started talking to me about her ideas around holding horse workshops for personal development, and I was hooked. From the very first time we met, we knew that we needed to do something with this shared passion.
And that brings us to today. A few weeks ago, I finally met Spirit, and I fell in love. I’m ready to have horses back in my life again.
In just a few weeks, Sherri and I are co-hosting our first Horses and Mandalas workshop.
We posted the registration yesterday, and within 24 hours, we were 2 spots away from being sold out. (They’re still available, but there’s quite a bit of interest, so if you want them, sign up soon.) Clearly we’ve hit on something that people want and need.
In honour of Dusty, Prince, Lady, Sophia, Spirit, and all the other horses along the way who have taught me many life lessons, I’m opening myself up to this new adventure.
by Heather Plett | May 25, 2012 | Uncategorized
“You’re not going to have a lot of people you can talk to about this. There is never a crowd on the leading edge.” — Abraham
The above quote was shared on Facebook this morning by my dear friend and fellow edgewalker, Katharine. When I read it, I breathed a deep sigh of recognition.
Those of us who find our places at the edge, where we are ever watchful for what is emerging and always pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable and comfortable for the masses, do not hang out in large crowds.
Instead, if we’re brave enough to stay on that edge and do those things our hearts call us to do, we often hear words like “You’re doing what? What does that mean? Why are you wasting time with that? Aren’t there things you could do that you’d make more money at? I don’t understand.”
But edgewalkers can’t move back into the comfort zone where their loved ones want them to be and feel any “real” comfort. They need to be pushing the boundaries, living with the questions, embracing the risk, and being true to the restless wanderer at their core.
For an edgewalker, true comfort is in discomfort.
An edgewalker needs the edge. Like a bird needs the sky. Like a fish needs the water.
Finding your place feels authentic and energizing, but it can also feel awfully lonely. It’s hard to explain this driving need to be at the edge. People in the centres of the crowd don’t understand. They want to draw you back into the crowd, for their comfort and yours.
What do you do when you know you’re called to the edge and nobody around seems to understand?
Find other edgewalkers.
Reach out to people with common questions. Go to gathering places where edgewalkers congregate. Enter conversations on social media. Ask someone you admire out for coffee. Take relationship risks.
Dare to tell your story and ask your questions in public. Lots of people will look at you strangely, and sometimes you’ll go home feeling dejected and embarrassed, but more often than not, there will be at least one person in the room who will take you aside (possibly in secret) and say “you said the words I most needed to hear tonight.”
Chances are, there won’t be throngs of people, because the other people in the room are still clinging to comfort, but all you need is a handful of people to make a circle.
Find your circle and then take even more bold steps toward the edge.
by Heather Plett | May 11, 2012 | random, Uncategorized
These days, with a few transitions going on (ending my teaching for the season and starting a few new contracts) I’m having a hard time focusing on writing a blog post. Yesterday I remembered how much I used to love to write random posts. Brain dumps, I suppose they are.
So here you go… a few random things on my mind… and a bonus picture.
1. I wish the season of flowering trees weren’t so fleeting.
2. There’s a deer who seems to have made her home in the small piece of woods a block from my house, but I’m afraid she may be injured. Each time I wander through those woods I see her, and the last time she seemed to be walking with pain.
3. Speaking of those woods, I will cry if someone ever arrives to bulldoze them down.
4. I am happy to be immersed in the world of non-profits, sustainable living, and international development once again with my new contract work.
5. Yes, I have new work and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Plus it’s work that excites me.
6. I need a healthier routine for my mornings.
7. I need a healthier life in general. I’ve gotten lazy lately, in more ways than one.
8. The downside of walking 100 km last fall is that for about a month afterwards, my feet hurt too much for regular exercise, and then I got out of the habit again.
9. I think I will get off this computer shortly and go to the woods to see if I can find the deer again. I like to sit quietly and stare at it while it stares back at me.
10. I have had some lovely emails from students lately, and most of them say something to the effect of “You did so much more than teach us to be better writers. You taught us how to live.” That makes me very happy.
11. One of my students posted a photo of me and him on Instagram, with the caption “Favourite teacher of all time.” Smile.
12.Speaking of Instagram, I love it.
13. It’s like peeking through little windows into people’s lives.
14. My kids tease me that my iPhone isn’t really a phone, it’s a camera.
15. They’re right.
16. I taught grade 5 and 6 students how to make mandalas yesterday. It was great fun.
17. Right around grade 6, I’m afraid, we begin to develop our self-consciousness around whether our art is “good”.
18. Around that same time, we start losing some of our natural tendency for play.
19. We need to re-learn it, because play is transformative.
20. I think I may have found the perfect venue for a day of play time with grown-ups. A big comfy room with a huge wall of windows that looks out into the woods. Stay tuned.
21. I am working on a new website, combining this one with what I have at heatherplett.com.
22. The new website really represents a new business focus. I think I’ve finally found something that focuses me but still leaves wide open space for exploration and creativity.
23. As you can tell, focus is not my strong suit.
24. Squirrel!
25. That was a reference from the movie “Up”, in case you missed it.
26. What are you doing in August? I hope you’ll join me here.
27. I need to find some nearby office space for the summer. I won’t get much done in the house when my family is here every day. Any ideas?
28. I am aching for an overseas trip.
29. Really, REALLY aching. When I look at pictures from my trips to India or Africa, or someone tells me a story from some place interesting, the longing shows up in an instant clench in my stomach.
30. I have been incredibly lucky to travel to interesting places in my life.
31. I will be lucky again, I’m sure of it.
32. I hope I can take my kids on an overseas trip some day, before they start moving into lives more separate from mine.
33. I am not very good at blogging for business purposes.
34. I’m much better at just having conversations.
35. It’s the same way I teach – I prefer conversations to lectures.
36. I need to get off this computer now, go walk in the woods for a little while, and then dive into my work.
37. Today’s focus will be figuring out how I can help this amazing organization promote this incredible sustainable building apprenticeship program and this one. Know anyone who’d be interested?
38. I like you. Thanks for reading.
39. What’s happening in your life?
40. I don’t like ending lists on uneven numbers.
