Seems every one is out of pocket for today so we will plan to not meet for book club today. Enjoy your Saturday!

I don't know about you but it's been some kind of March and I would love to hear from you if you are planning to participate in book club this Saturday. Don't worry if you haven't read the chapters. It's more important to be together and talk about what's on our minds than to have "finished an assignment". Let us know if you are planning to attend.

Oriah, in the chapter "Beauty", writes, “Finding and acknowledging the truth is not always easy.” Later she adds, “It is easy to fool ourselves into believing the most exciting story.” Those lines stopped me for a moment, not because they were new, but because they named something I’ve watched play out in real time, in my own life and in the lives of people I love. It reminded me of something a woman, fifteen or more years my senior, once said to me: “She’s just making up a story she can believe.” You know that moment when someone names what you’ve been circling around, and your whole body says, Well of course. That’s it. I was talking about my mother, how she would tell people things about a situation without ever asking me what was true. These weren’t small misunderstandings. They were stories designed to carefully craft perspective. Stories that shaped how others saw me, and how they saw her. What I realized, though, was that her stories weren’t random. They supported what she wanted people to believe about her. Her goodness, her sacrifice, her certainty. Whether they reflected reality didn’t seem to matter. The story was doing a job for her. It was protecting something she needed to feel. And that’s the part that landed hardest: We all do this, in our own ways. We reach for the version of events that helps us feel safe, or right, or justified. We cling to the narrative that makes our choices make sense. We tell the story we can bear. But real truth asks something different of us. It asks us to pause. To look again. To notice where our stories are stitched together with longing, fear, or old wounds. And to ask, gently: Is this what actually happened? Or is this what I need to believe? It’s not easy work. But it is liberating work. Because when we stop confusing the story with the truth, we make room for something more honest, more spacious, and more healing to emerge. Do you have faith in truths' ability to find you?

Betrayal is one of those words that lands with weight. It carries history, memory, and a kind of bone‑deep knowing. It’s no wonder literature, philosophy, and spiritual traditions treat it as sacred terrain. Betrayal touches the very thing that makes us human. TRUST. Can you be disappointed by another without betraying your own soul? It’s a question that doesn’t just ask us to look at what others have done. It asks us to look at the places where we abandon ourselves. And across time, thinkers and writers have been circling this same truth from different angles. James Hillman wrote that betrayal is the moment innocence ends. Like a rite of passage, not as punishment, but as initiation. Until trust is broken, we don’t fully understand what trust is. Betrayal forces us out of fantasy and into reality. It asks us to see the other person clearly and to see ourselves clearly, too. It's not easy. It's deeply maturing. Maya Angelou reminds us that people reveal themselves long before we’re ready to believe them. Dante places betrayers in the lowest circle of hell. Betrayal fractures the invisible threads that hold relationships and communities, together. It’s not just the act. It’s the quiet afterward. The look. The knowing. Shakespeare tells us, be true to yourself first. Most of us were taught the opposite. Keep the peace. Be loyal. Stay agreeable and don't disappoint. Self‑abandonment is still betrayal. It just happens quietly, in the places no one else can see. C.S. Lewis reminds us that only someone we love can betray us. Strangers can hurt us, but they cannot betray us. Which means betrayal is not proof of foolishness. It is proof that we dared to love. Where have you been more afraid of betraying someone else than betraying yourself?

I remember the day as if it were yesterday. I walked into our bedroom, looked at my husband, my now‑late husband, and said, with absolute certainty, 📣 “This… this life is everything I ever dreamed of.” 📣 I meant it. Every word. And then, less than two years later, everything I ever dreamed of felt suddenly out of reach. At least, that’s what I believed at the time. In the 28 years since, I’ve learned something essential about joy: It isn’t a destination. It isn’t a place you arrive and stay. Joy is a moment. Sometimes two. Sometimes three, when something inside you lights up. It might be your child’s first steps, your first job, the recognition of a hard‑earned accomplishment. Or it might be quieter: a deep breath, a sudden awareness that where you stand is exactly where you belong. What I’ve learned is that joy, much like grief, can wash over you in an instant and disappear just as quickly. And just like grief, it asks to be felt. Savored. Honored. Sometimes it shows up as a smile. Sometimes as a tear. Sometimes in the simple act of closing your eyes, spreading your arms, and spinning, just because you’re alive. And because I’m alive, I know I may experience something new at any moment. For me, there is joy in waking up to a new day with new hope for what may come. Not because life is perfect, or predictable, or anything like what I once imagined, but because joy still finds its way in. And I’ve learned to let it. How are you letting joy in?