Yes. This. I walk with this daily. It’s my latest companion, as is friendship. They came as a package. As I let my heart soften, let the broken bits through, and came apart a number of times over the last four months, I also landed in some amazing laps of friendship.
Grief and Friendship came as a package deal for me this year.
What is your word for 2020? Mine is Devotion… every week I get why that word chose me a little bit more.
Feel
Breathe
Cry
Feel your feet in the earth.
Every day:
Earth
Water
Fire
Sky (stone).
We are always home.
Xt
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
My heart pleads out to those who are still in the ‘game’ of hierarchy within the dominance model. It’s not capitalism which is the ideological problem, and it’s not socialism which is the idealistic solution (therein also a problem), its dominance as a ‘structure’, where we believe we can play alpha with nature/god/creation itself which is where we are stuck.
Whatever motivates us to lay it down, to give it up, to simply STOP believing we can WIN over anything… like anything… (like there’s anything to win OVER anyway), is our call now.
Nature always wins.
It isn’t about paying penance – not in my way of thinking anyway, and it’s also not random.
My guess is that most of us in North America think we are ‘beyond it, or or have been so far removed from what survival actually feels like that we forget the importance of taking care of each other with each word and action.
I’m praying, chanting, breathing, storytelling – for well-being.
No one deserves pain, or this virus, or violence.
I have a bit of a thing about ‘justice’. I wonder if the word justice exists beyond a model of dominance?
Hierarchy I understand – it’s a container for our safety.
Dominance – not so much. That’s power ‘over’ and in that someone always feels ‘less-than’, or ‘owned’.
I wonder if this time of great impact is a reminder to all of us that we are never, ever, like ever going to be ‘above’ the true force of life itself.
Call it God, nature, source, creation, the mystery… whatevs…
We are not stronger than life itself.
Be well.
Soft hearts.
Grace to all.
Practice equality.
Xt
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
About to jump on with PowHERhouse Media Group for their 7×7 powHERcircle challenge to speak in to the importance of deep listening.
The human psyche can only hold so much.
The body can only perform so far.
But the spirit of us is limitless. It is fuel is limitless when we keep ourselves ‘plugged in’ so to speak.
It’s January. We have set goals. We have closed doors. We have cast a vision. Our focus and ‘work’ (and I use that word lightly) has begun.
We are going to get tired. You can count on it. We live in a human body.
We are going to be heart broken. Great risk of true heart and grit will take us into the unknown where we will grow and you can’t grow in a marshmallow. There IS resistance. There will be disappointment and choices to stay down or get up.
So we nourish our body to hold us.
We feed our minds to discern for us.
We listen to our spirit, like we would a lover, someone we hold dearer to ourselves than we ever thought possible. We listen. We listen. We listen.
We honour.
And we follow out inner wisdom.
There’s gonna be days where we’ve given ‘rrrrr and are triumphant and days were face down in the mud and the part of us who picks ourselves up and dusts ourselves off and notices the insight from what just ‘happened’ is the part of us who can ‘hear’.
It’s a practice.
And it’s a fuel tank which is never empty and will never leave you.
Spirit is in our business.
Our work is sacred.
Your instrument of a ‘self’ is made for what you do.
Listen.
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
We can always remember the love we are capable of.
Because hope matters, and speaking it, branding it, preaching it, and buying it or selling it is not how we believe it.
we gotta live it.
we gotta live it to give it.
This is the story of us.
Now is always the time to live it so we can give it.
Hope is living with a heart which is always big enough to share…
xT
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
Over a year ago a group of us gathered at UBlossom retreats as facilitators of various workshops: breath, story, creative journaling, social media and more.
In the gathering lodge on Saturday night one of us stretched out across the floor and starting rolling.
Another one of us groaned and followed and pretty soon there were five of us rolling across the floor giggling and breathing and letting the weight of our body melt into the board beneath us, massaging our spine and out shoulders.
When we sat up we landed deep into a diverse conversation about our understanding of God. And let me tell you, it was a broad swath of a story.
One person is a Jesus follower, another Stardust, another Story, another Creator, and still another, the Universe. And there we were talking about our businesses, our revenue streams, our goals and manifestations and our relationships, all through the lens of our very unique interpretations and experiences of God.
Might I mention, we ate cheesies, drank wine and pulled chocolate out of our pockets.
At the next retreat, it happened again, except this time in a cabin by the fire talking about patriarchy, what is personal power, how to read scripture, poetry, what is prayer, and kegals (yes – the vaginal floor kind). Again, with so much laughter and depth in all the same moments.
And tears. I was just going through a break-up and my heart felt like it had been ripped out of my chest.
Since then we’ve been gathering in a private online group to support each other, to pray into each other, share entrepreneurial clarity, and to reflect about our energetic hits on certain decisions we’ve made. We’re a circle.
And this year we’ve decided to meet on purpose as a wisdom circle for each other.
We met this weekend at my little cabin by the sea. Out of the weekend came a message for me: ‘Calling up the Myth you are Made For’.
It was un-mistakeable like a direction, so that is what I will continue to do…
…Only this year – it has become the focus of my impact.
In times of great global change, it’s who we are at the core of our making which is called upon.
All of our painful and exquisite experiences has made us.
It’s part of the myth of us.
Imagine if you lived your life in the grit and greatness of your myth. What then?
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
I usually tear out of my house in the morning as I run for the ferry. Yes, I admit, I’m one of those women who is a panic to get out of the house. I’m not saying that men aren’t like that too, I’m just noting I haven’t met one. Honestly, I’m a bit of a thrasher – or have been.
Transitions are hard for me and as I get older and accumulate more endings and beginnings I’ve noticed a prickliness, like electric barbs shooting through me and around me when I come home, and when I leave. Gathering my things as I leave the house triggers feelings of not belonging. I have been forever ‘gathering my things…’ When I travel, the placing of my bag by the door, the loading of stuff into the car, as I touch my phone, my passport, my keys, my wallet check check check. Triple check check check. The hugs to whomever is or isn’t sending me off sets off tears. I shake a little as I say good bye and walk on the boat.
But then as soon as I’ve left, I’m free.
This morning as I was prepping to leave the house, the light not yet full in the sky… warning of a storm coming and ‘better watch the ferry announcements’ in case I can’t get home, then this view… I had to stop, and look.
I’ve made a decision this year, for 2020 to close the cycle of panic when I transition. To let doors close and open with less friction, to soothe the sparks as they light up in me when I step out or step in, and I think this pic is how it started.
I’m pretty sure I’ve yelled at my kids every day I come home, and I’m a super reasonable mom. Like the kinda mom people judge because I’m too damn ‘permissive’ but let me tell you, when I’m walking in the door at the end of the day and the dishes aren’t done, the dog has eaten a tub of cookies off the counter and I’ve tripped over four sets of shoes at the door, let me tell you, I go from zero to f*ck you in less time than I can blink.
But it’s not the dishes, or dog or shoes fault (tho that is blast worthy), it is the pain of not being welcomed, or feeling received, of transitions, of walking these particular moments alone that are the culprit.
It has been a pain point for me.
And it had become unconscious and reactive.
Not anymore.
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
What are your thoughts on organized education? I do love me some Gary V in the morning but I can only take sound bytes of him because he swears more than I do. I happened upon a bit of his last week where he named our education system as obsolete. And I couldn’t argue against it. As far as information goes – education is irrelevant. There is absolutely NOTHING out there I can’t gather information about on my own. NO – THING.
However, in terms of LEARNING, I am an external processor. I also a physical processor. The more IN my BODY I am, and the more I can workshop, witness, bounce things on and off people – socialize as I learn, laugh as I learn, get angry and frustrated as I learn, reflect as I learn while being HELD in a sacred circle, the more I retain and embody knowledge.
For some people, organized education makes sense for that.
I’m beginning to believe – not me.
I’m about to embark on a massive path of learning. I am creating a Ministry of Story, and it is sacred to me.
Sacred, like I will never ‘fight’ for it. I will LIVE it instead, with every fibre of my being. There’s nothing to fight for, it either IS or it ISNT. And there is much knowledge to be gathered.
Myth
Religion (multiple)
Indigenous Story
Kabbalah Mysticism
Shamanic Journeying
Earth Story
I will not find this in a school.
I will not find this in ‘organized education’. I will find this information only by living it.
It’s a pilgrimage. And only I know where to place my feet when I listen.
This sounds great for me because my world is in the ‘woo woo’ world (I don’t call it that, but you probably do). But what about organized education? This morning I realized that it’s not for me, but I have three sons. One got through it, another can, but one is literally coming to pieces and losing his connection to his own wisdom in it, but the system is strong, and sometimes I don’t even know what to offer him.
Because what if I’m wrong?
Organized education isn’t right for me, and never has been, but I can’t decide that for him. He’s only 16 years old.
What I know for sure is today’s systems will not sustain tomorrow’s structures.
I’m open to your thoughts.
Xxt
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
I was still fresh into the new year when I had my first almost wig-out as I left the house.
You have a routine. I do too. But routine is different than rhythm. We each have a personal wave of music within us, it’s our signature of how we move. I am not a sprinter. I have always been a long distance runner, hiker and one day (help!), a swimmer too. I’m immersive. I descend. I climb. I rest and reflect on the flat parts.
When I remember that, my days are easier for me. I can find the sweet spot I am made as rather than reach for.
There is no sweet spot.
We ARE the sweet spot.
This year I’m unpacking and unpinning the habitual pattern I’ve created which is NOT my rhythm, but has been my pattern for years called: muther f*k’r panic and pandemonium as I leave the house.
I haven’t changed my timing yet, which I may, but not yet.
I am changing what I honour. This year my word is devotion. I am devoted to living.
Punctuated panic reminds me… oooops, take a breath of love Tina. Take a moment of air. Take a second… have a second of devotion. Like mini prayers of yes.
Mini prayers of yes.
I like the sound of that.
This is my hair flying down the hill as I’m almost, but not, running for the boat. I even managed to consciously chat with my son before I dropped him at school.
So much so that he hugged me (like he initiated) before he left me for the day.
Meanwhile I was rummaging through my bag and muttering… damn… where’s my wallet? Did I forget my wallet? Oh no… but I didn’t, it was on the seat.
That was a 7 out of 10 rhythm morning with just a titch of panic. Not bad.
I am devoted to living.
Nailin’ it this year..
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
This is morning sacred to me. I light three flames: tea, fire, candle and then I read, and then I write. This is prayer for me.
It’s been a ten day journey of expression since my birthday, and I have to say, this might’ve been my best birthday in a long long long time. I might even say my best birthday ever, but I gotta give that a bit more of a think first.
I did nothing but follow my impulses for ten days.
I’m an expressive, so while I’m super introverted and require absolute solo-cannot-do-not-reach-me time, if I don’t have a healthy, daily dose of pouring OUT each day, my mental health will suffer and I can roll in.
If you’re in my inner circle you’ll know because those messages of pouring out via text, or voice, or messenger to you feel like falling to me and I will close my message with ‘thanks for catching me’, which is code for no need to respond’. I needed to be caught.
And thankfully, I’ve cultivated a circle of loved ones who know what that means.
The last ten days I’ve had the space, time and energy to catch myself. I took myself off ‘mom-duty’ for almost two weeks. You should see my house. And it changed me.
It wasn’t a retreat.
It wasn’t ‘time with the girls’
It wasn’t a bath, or a run, or a good book, or just chillin’… It was time to listen, and then permission to follow, and with absolute ZERO accountability to anyone but me, and another big old ZERO of explanation to anyone else either annnnnnnnd a big 100% permission to be misunderstood by everyone and anyone.
Like me
Don’t like me
Receive me
Don’t receive me
Understand me
or don’t
And you know what happened?
I could feel and hear and walk within my own rhythm again.
I came home.
Sacred time of mornings is where this permission to listen and follow began.
What is your sacred?
How do you carve out space to hear?
Xxt
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
It’s supposed to be until you see the pieces which want to be heard.
Some of us hear.
Some see.
Some feel.
Others sense.
And still others just know.
And then there are those who can’t speak because there are no words or senses of this ‘plane’ – and they follow.
I’m serious.
And totally not crazy.
Some people hear without any communication at all.
I get you.
I get the blur.
Story speaks in our language not yours.
Listen
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
