One winter morning last December, P walked into the kitchen asking me when I planned to “start my stuff.” 

Usually, I’m a fan of brevity.

The satisfaction in replacing four or five words with one can be hard to beat. Some people like playing golf and hitting the ball just right, others like leveling up in video games, me – I just want to see how few words I can use to communicate something.

Why do stories make people lean in? Chad Littlefield was running a session teaching facilitators how to design for contribution.

There is a buffalo on a ranch I drive by almost every day. I’m not sure, but the buffalo looks sad and lonely. I wish it were free to roam around and that it had friends.

Why are we, as women (and it’s not always women, but let’s be real, I think more often than not it is), afraid to speak our minds? 

In Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey contemplated the lives of ancient cliff dwellers who made their homes far up above ground in caves in the rock of the Utah desert:

When we try to fit in or be the way that we think we should be, we tend to hold our stories back. But our stories are the very thing that makes us memorable and creates connection. 

In sixth grade, I played on the soccer team and secretly hated it. But all my friends were playing, and there had to be something wrong with me if I didn’t like it.

I consider stories to be small gifts that individuals exchange with each other (one-to-one or one-to-many). Gifts, you might wonder, how?

Much of my work centers around helping people step into their leadership, showing up as themselves (I’m intentionally not using the term “authentic selves” here),