Thoughts From Annie

Thoughts from Annie You Have Enough, You Are Enough   Dear Friends, I have been living in a small house in the Blue Ridge mountains, up a long winding driveway for most of 2019. When it snows, I can’t get out of the driveway until my neighbor has time to bring his tractor plow up…

Thoughts from Annie Our Inner Toddlers   I recently got angry about an email I received in which someone explained something they did which annoyed me. My first reaction was anger and judgment: “Why would they do this? What were they thinking?!” Then, my Perfect-Mindfulness-Person part chimed in with a falsely sweet voice, “Oh, it’s…

Thoughts from Annie The Co-Arising of the Flower and Me While Roger Peed Walking my dogs up Mt. Weather in the Blue Ridge Mountains recently, I saw a little white flower that had survived our mild early winter. I would have easily missed seeing it, except that Roger, one of our feisty little Terriers, had…

Thoughts from Annie Enemy Images or Who Do You Hate? Dear Friends, My husband and I got into a dispute recently over our shared Google calendar. He hadn’t put something on our calendar and so that day I was surprised that he wasn’t coming home for dinner. I was annoyed, and right away a barrage…

Thoughts from Annie Grief and Despair: Don’t Stop Planting Dear Friends, During a Question & Answer session some years ago, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh was asked, “What is the hardest part of your practice?” I expected him to say, “stilling the mind” or “working with anger.” Nope. Thich Nhat Hanh answered that “not falling…

Thoughts from Annie A Formula for Resilience Dear Friends, Over the last week we have heard some extremely discouraging news about our irreplaceable planet. We learned that it would “require unprecedented changes” (40-50% reduction in emissions by 2030 and complete carbon neutrality by 2050) in order to prevent catastrophic climate change weather events. These events…

Thoughts from Annie Mindful Eating, It’s About Love Dear Friends, I wrote my first blog post about mindful eating in 2008. Since then I’ve written several more posts and an entire book (Things I Did When I Was Hangry: Navigating a Peaceful Relationship with Food) about mindful eating. Eating is not just something I love…

Dear Friends, While doing a day hike along the Appalachian Trail, I crossed paths with a young man and young woman, both looking very healthy, strong, and able bodied. They had walked nearly 1000 miles with more than another 1000 miles to go. They were confident that they would reach Maine by the fall. While…

Thoughts from Annie How to (Block, Build,) Be. I like to stay up with the news, for the most part. But, sometimes I get overwhelmed. Recently, several young adults told me that they don’t plan to have kids because the world is such a mess. Millions of refugees are fleeing violence and instability, there is…

Thoughts from Annie This month, Annie has invited guest blogger Alison Gray to share her thoughts. Alison is a long-time Circle Yoga student, a graduate of the Year of Mindfulness program, and regular attendee and facilitator of the Opening Heart Mindfulness Community. Saying Goodbye and Saying Hello by Alison Gray After my friend Leigh lost her…