You're in my posse

I have written a book for myself that serves as guidance for me. It contains the deep wisdom that I have gathered through my Beyond Yoyos blog, through Leadership, and through many other profound influences in my life.

It's called Compassion Speaks, and I created it on Lulu.com and printed a beautiful hardback copy for myself. Here's the wisdom from one of the pages from my book: Call upon my posse.

That's you. If you were invited to view this blog, you're part of my support system.

And I'd really like some support as I embark on my summer adventure: behavioral coach at a weight loss camp for girls and young women aged 11-24. It's part of my counseling internship. And even bigger than that, it's part of my journey to alignment with myself and my higher purpose.

I'll be working 10-hour days 6 days/week from June 10-July 30 so I created this blog to serve me while I'm there. I anticipate the need for a place to process my experiences, and I want to know that people who know my best self and will speak to that part of me will receive what I write. I want to be free to process, to vent, to hope, to say my gut level truth and to know that it will be received with love and care and compassion and a calling-forth energy for the sake of my growth and journey and for the sake of the journey of the girls and young women at the camp.

Will you help me hold my center during these next three months?

I'm starting the blog now because I have agreed to track my food and activity beginning on April 29 as a precursor to the training weekend that I'll attend in early May to learn the curriculum for this camp. All of the staff at the camp use the same protocol as the campers.

Through that process of tracking my food and activity, I want to be in integrity with myself and in alignment with myself. I want to act from my center. Geneen Roth says that with food, "In between compliance and rebellion is freedom." I want that freedom, and I will need support from you to hold that energy while I'm preparing to attend the camp and while I'm there.

Thanks for being such an integral part of my journey.

The energy on this blog allows great latitude. As I learned in leadership, both you and I have full permission to act on impulses, to blurt. And, yes, both you and I will make mistakes here on this blog because we will be reaching for something bigger than ourselves. Here, we are reaching for truth in process of healing from emotional eating and recognizing the whole selves within our bodies that carry extra weight.

Technical note: I guess blogger doesn't handle photo captions that well. I'll put photo captions at the end of the posts.

Here's the one for the photo here: Many of you know Laura Whitworth, a magnificent leader who co-founded CTI and lead my Otter leadership tribe through three retreats before her death in February 2007. Through her words and her actions, she embodied fierce leadership. She literally got up out of her deathbed to come to our third retreat and wallop us with her powerful impact. If she could do that, I can do anything.