Hello reader,

I am thinking about you. YOU.

I have found it that (another) an item in short supply right now is emotional presence and empathy. As a coach, emotional presence is something I do with you daily -- sharing an emotional space, connecting so that we can identify emotional assets and blocks, acknowledge them, and using or dissolve them to better serve us.

I love connecting to you. We all need to be heard, felt, understood. Especially now.

And so, like some slightly-less-creepy Elf-on-the-shelf, I am taking a moment to connect with you. I am looking at your name, thinking of you, remembering our time together. I am think of where you are now and what you might be experiencing and sending you love.

It's a prayer of sorts, a connection.

If you take a moment, you can feel me connecting with you. We are together now. Bringing the past into the present. Like the 3 Good Things Exercise. We are connecting on a shared positive experience.

Below you will find 3 tools that I found useful over the last week. They are not designed to "buck up" "be productive" or "chase the blues away". They are designed to process where you are.

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For this week's newsletter I am have another trio: a podcast, a tool, and a poem.

THE PODCAST
As you know, I launched my Personal (R)evolution podcast in the beginning of 2020. You came, you listened. And I thank you for that. Well, now it's FREE.

I'm adding weekly, timely bonus episodes that are also free. Here's this week's episode: Resetting Your Baseline In The Pandemic. If you want to connect, hear my voice, and lower the pressure, from me to you with a big old kiss at the end.


THE TOOL
Here's the tool. Thank you to Liz Lavinsky Shaw (a mother, social worker and neighbor from the block where I grew up) for posting on FB:

Each day, have a daily plan that consists of:
- something relaxing
- something productive
- something social
- something entertaining
- something meaningful


That's it. Notice there's no work out, healthy eating or project. There's no distance learning. There's no gardening or bleaching of the bathroom. Or homemade jam or sourdough starters. There's just what works in your world. Fill your cup with these actions. And if your productive/relaxing/meaningful is taking a nap, then have at it.

THE POEM
"And the people stayed home" by Kitty O'Meara has been making the rounds. So viral in fact that Oprah's magazine interviewed her. A less pressured approach to now. Thank you to my dear friend Harry Eastwood who sent this to me at the right time.

And people stayed home
and read books and listened
and rested and exercised
and made art and played
and learned new ways of being
and stopped
and listened deeper
someone meditated
someone prayed
someone danced
someone met their shadow
and people began to think differently
and people healed
and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,
dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
even the earth began to heal
and when the danger ended
and people found each other
grieved for the dead people
and they made new choices
and dreamed of new visions
and created new ways of life
and healed the earth completely
just as they were healed themselves.



Although this newsletter is distributed to a global list, my coaching practice is physically based in the center of the crisis, so a larger percentage of my clients are here too. Sending great love and support to some very hard hit clients. I see you and I am with you. Reach out, as always if I can be of support.

Great love to you,
Allison