Discover Yourself Through Writing

Discover Yourself Through Writing

https://lovinginquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EP072-Make-that-Money-Hunni-Ahava-Shira-Reel.mp4 Listen to my conversation on the podcast Make that Money Hunni   with Host and Financial Coach SANDRA JOE. I talk about the beauty and inspiration and power of...
What is Mentionable is Manageable…

What is Mentionable is Manageable…

  “If there is someone that is there to listen to your story, there is healing.”    Nancy Slonim Aronie     I watched a movie with my husband the other evening called A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, based on a true story about the friendship...
What Makes You A Real Writer?

What Makes You A Real Writer?

  Eventually you will learn that the real competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit. George A. Sheehan, Running and Being Canadian feminist writer Betsy Warland, in her award-winning book Breathing the Page, describes the quality...
Writing Takes a Supportive Community

Writing Takes a Supportive Community

  “The places where we are seen and heard are holy places. They remind us of our value as human beings. They give us the strength to go on.” Rachel Naomi Remen Living with our friends on Butterstone Farm was comfortable. So comfortable that there was...
Dreaming Together through Writing

Dreaming Together through Writing

“Writers often experience exhilaration, fear, or dread… It’s both exciting and dangerous.”                                                                   Kristjana Gunnars   Have you always dreamt of being a writer? Have you often felt like...
Stepping into the Creative Unknown

Stepping into the Creative Unknown

It was August. After several months of intense purging and packing and planning, the day had arrived for us to finally leave the farm. We’d spent the morning doing the last of the cleaning, scrubbing the insides of cupboards that had lovingly held our kitchen...
Where Your Love Story Begins

Where Your Love Story Begins

It is up to the writer to recognize everything that happens to her as a gift, to love each thing that comes under the eye’s contemplation, inner and outer.  Jane Hirshfield   When I first moved into this new house, everywhere I looked there was something...
Womb Poem

Womb Poem

  There is a voice full of sound and fury wisdom resounding and yet I doubt, I fear I lose my way in the face of another   I forget the magic of my own miscommunication when patiently attended unfolds for me in meaning clearer than another’s words spoken...
Taking Care of Ourselves With Words

Taking Care of Ourselves With Words

Yesterday I wrote a very short story about a girl who was wide-awake. Today I fell into a deep sleep again. And now, with these words, the light turns on. I am flowing. Sometimes I can’t believe how much our bodies experience. Stress, the way it hovers in the chest, a...
We Need Each Other to Flourish

We Need Each Other to Flourish

This week’s post is a favourite passage from Nancy Houston’s exquisite novel An Adoration, in which the character Fiona says: Mama claims that people can’t exist in and of themselves, they’re a patchwork of everything they’ve seen and done, their heads are teeming...
Love is Light

Love is Light

I am writing on the eve of the third day of Chanukah, the Jewish festival that celebrates the victory of light over darkness. According to the story, more than twenty-one centuries ago, Israel was ruled by the Syrian-Greeks, who sought to forcefully convert the people...
Falling in Love with Spoken Poetry

Falling in Love with Spoken Poetry

The middle of September and I have finally found my way back here. A business mentor of mine with whom I recently reconnected when I was surprised by her presence at a friend’s dinner party in Kelowna  a few weeks ago expressed glee at the mention of my chosen respite...
It’s Done, Doc.

It’s Done, Doc.

  I can hardly believe that it’s done! I am now officially Dr. Ahava Shira or Ahava Shira, PhD. In preparation for my defense, I sat a 7-day silent meditation retreat at Stowel Lake Farm here on Salt Spring with teacher Adrianne Ross.  The silence was gorgeous,...
February Mirrors

February Mirrors

Winter has resumed here on the West Coast. After a few weeks of glorious sunshine, the rains have returned and with them, the nearly impenetrable fog. However, if there is one thing for certain about the weather, it always changes. When we resist change, we create...