Courage, Dear Heart.

I had 45 minutes before the play, so I ducked into a shop to entertain myself. The words stopped me in my tracks. A simple phrase on a jewelry plate, tucked away on a shelf.

Courage, Dear Heart.

Yes. That was the answer. And I hadn’t even asked the question yet.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself what life and leadership are asking of us today. The world feels messy and uncertain. I’ve been sitting at a crossroads for a year. One path, the path I’ve been on, and the second, something new and bigger than I can dare to dream. 

I love my work, and when I don’t have something outside of work, I let work take all my time. It’s too easy to get stuck in the trap of allowing work to fill my need for purpose, meaning, and value.  During the pandemic, I saw the trap, and last year I dared to step out. 

Down the old path, productivity is the yardstick of worth. Pushed to optimize, perform, and prove.  This was before AI changed the landscape of work. Human value, worth, and productivity need to become disentangled. We’re living in a moment of collapse and creation. The old maps won’t hold. The pace is unsustainable. There will be consequences.  And still, we’re expected to show up, lead, use AI, plan, create, build, sell, parent, be politically aware, and be a kind human.

But what if instead of pushing harder, we rooted deeper? In the middle of this mess, something quieter whispers: there must be another way.

A way, a path that honors human worth and creativity, leaving us sovereign and whole. Leadership is one of the most sacred callings we can answer. To lead well, we must come into a relationship with our power and influence with integrity and care. It calls us to be the best human we can be. To do that, we need ground. Inner ground, every day.

Wholeness in a Culture of Performance

We live in a culture obsessed with performance. Leaders must be endlessly productive, relentlessly resilient, and always available. Hustle is glorified. Time management sells salvation as techniques promising to squeeze more out of every waking hour.

But the truth? My deepest joy has never come from being more productive. It came in the silence, in the pauses.

• Like the day I sat at my desk as 15% of my company was laid off. With a heavy heart, I realized strategy without soul leaves us hollow.
• Hiking through the Oregon trails, remembering that my body is not a machine. It’s earth with its own weather.
• Coaching a leader as they pause to realize that going slow now means going fast in the long run. 

It’s in these pauses that we return to what I call the ground of being. The ground of being is the place where we remember: we already have everything we need. We are already whole. From here, vision becomes clear and strategy flows.

Soul or Strategy becomes Soul and Strategy

For years, I’ve wrestled with the tension of the two sides of me. One that lives in intention, magic, and mystery. The other, sharp, strategic, and business-minded. For the longest time, I thought I had to choose. Be the soulful seeker or the practical leader. Write about wholeness or leadership.

The truth is, both live in me, both are me, and both need the other.

Courage, Dear Heart becomes the answer.  It’s time to go down a new path. This blog, In Practice, becomes my experiment. A place to practice where integration, not perfection, is the path.

Defining the Language

In this space, I’ll use words that have a religious connotation to many. I want to clarify how I use them: 

• Soul → Essence. The why beneath everything. The part of us that holds our clearest vision, desires, and truth.
• Strategy → Clarity. The how that brings the soul to life. Structure, choices, direction.
• Sacred → Something worthy of awe and respect. 
• Ground of Being → A phrase from theologian Paul Tillich. To me, it’s the center where we are grounded, present, and whole. A place of certainty, clarity, and alignment. A place of possibility.

Life and leadership are the territory. Soul is the compass. Strategy is the path. Together, they create movement that becomes the practice of life.

Practice, Not Perfection

Practice is not about performing well. It’s about showing up. It’s about having courage, trying, missing the mark, learning, and returning. In Practice is where soul meets strategy. Where life and business become reflections of inner truth. I write as remembrance. A reminder of what you already know. This is not a space for performance. It’s a space for presence. It’s a permission slip to live and lead from wholeness.

This blog is an invitation.

A place for those who sense a deeper calling inside their work and lives to find kinship. A space for reclaiming worth and for navigating complexity. A sanctuary where you get to pause and hear your own wisdom.

So much of our culture tells us that wholeness and worth come after. After we fix the problem, hit the goal, finish the project, and get the promotion.  But this space says otherwise. It says:

You are whole now. And from that wholeness, you lead.

Coming Full Circle

That day in the store, I didn’t buy the jewelry plate. But I did take the words home with me:

Courage, Dear Heart.

To me, that’s the invitation of this work. To lead and live from wholeness requires courage. I’m not talking about the kind of courage that conquers mountains. I’m talking about the quiet courage that chooses presence over performance. Soul and strategy as partners together. So, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s be in practice—together.