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.
I have children who are in elementary school and of highschool age, and I don’t know if you remember what it’s like to be in highschool, but it’s a daily practice of confrontation because there is nothing but group dynamics going on.
Things happen in groups.
There is momentum in groups.
Stuff goes down in groups.
You are either outside the group, or inside the group.
There is often an alpha personality who runs the group even if he/she doesn’t want to. It’s just part of their personality, so it happens by default.
I was at a conference table once where there were 30 year olds sitting on one side, and 45+ year olds sitting on the other. Some of the voices were wanting to emerge while others were wanting to share wisdom.
And out of love and nourishment, these over 45 year olds watered the shit out of these emerging buds of voices. They were just trying to come out of the ground, and they got blasted by a whole bunch of well meaning wisdom…
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 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.
I listen to what you are saying but isn’t on the surface yet.
Today I want to talk about the word Moment. And words are powerful things. Words are condensed experiences, meanings, thoughts, and vibration, all of it.
All of it.
All wrapped up into letters.
The letters we are jumping into today is: moment, because these are the moments.
We are in dense times.
Thick times.
There is actually nowhere to run.
There is really nowhere for the thoughts in our head to run.
We are spending more time alone.
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 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.
This little rumination comes to you on a day where the world is just a little bit different.
This is the new normal.
We are in it.
Some of us may be walking around with a few more scratches and bruises to our belief, and I suppose some of us might have put up some extra layers of protection as well.
Today I want to talk a little bit about our gifting, and for those of you who don’t know my work: I am TinaO, and I’m a Core Story specialist. I’m a listener and in my gifting, that’s what I do. I listen.
In that space, I hear the narrative that is of you, and the language put on that narrative.
This is just my fancy way of saying you’re going to say stuff, and then I’m going to feel it and reflect it back to you in a ding ding ding ding ding.
Let’s talk about your gifting.
Have a 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 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.
These stories from the car are a listening in to one particular word we really want to dive into and today the word is VALUE.
Truthfully, I get hits on things when a word just rumbles in and doesn’t want to leave me.
So this word of value is what I invite us into today.
Even as I say value, it seems kind of mundane. Kind of boring. I have this box of chicken strips and two tubes of ground beef in the back of my car, and I am fortunate enough during this pandemic that the local pub has agreed to place orders on behalf of us islanders to offset the pressure on the general store, but also to keep us from having to go into the city to shop.
That is value.
But I’m also a single mom to three kids and I need to get value for my money. That’s a different kind of value. But it’s always an in and an out. Isn’t it?
Or is it?
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 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.
