Crazy Wisdom Journal asked a number of leaders in southeastern Michigan’s conscious living community to reflect upon times in their lives that they’ve left their comfort zones to venture out in new ways. In the distant past or much more recently, we asked, what did you do, what inspired you, did it change you, inside or outside, big or little? Did you attend a new class, take an adventurous trip, go skydiving, stretch beyond a long entrenched boundary, start a new relationship or end an old one, take a leap, retire, join the Peace Corps, go on a night trek in the wilderness, or just do something way out of your ordinary?
Posts tagged #personal growth
An Unexpected Journey
In 2016 my life started to transform. I was pregnant with my second daughter and I was joyous and terrified at the same time. My daughter’s father and I had been on and off for several years. He was in another relationship and I wanted to be with someone so badly. I believed if I were patient enough, kind enough, and quiet enough, he would pick me. Shortly after announcing I was pregnant, he admitted there was no choosing me, and the pregnancy would not change that. It was the biggest wake-up call of my life. For years I’d waited for him to choose me and make me a priority. The breakup slowly made me realize that I needed to choose and love myself. I gave birth in 2017 and committed to a journey of self-love, but it evolved into a deep spiritual journey.
Our Western Neighbors
Although Jackson has not traditionally been known for its spiritual community, it is a quickly growing region with a bright future ahead and many new opportunities blossoming on the horizon.
A Journey Through the Stages of Personal Power
Where do you derive your sense of “personal power”? How is it influenced by your environment, whether it’s a professional organization or a college campus? In her book Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations, Janet Hagberg explores six stages through which our ego travels in search of personal power, demonstrating that real power transcends achievements and external successes.
Rite and Recognition ~ A Crazy Wisdom Exploration of Rites of Passage
What are the significant milestones along a life’s path and how do we give them meaning? The deep human need for ritualization around life’s biggest transitions — most commonly at birth, coming of age, marriage, parenthood, and death — calls us to engage in personal and communal meaning making.
The ManKind Project — First Person with Callan Loo
The ManKind Project nonprofit (MKP) hosts a signature weekend retreat program called New Warrior Training Adventure. Callan Loo answers questions about his experience.
Abandonment Blues — An Adoption Memoir
I was adopted when I was six months old. My adoptive mother told me this when I was nine. Whenever I asked whom my birth mother was she said that she didn’t know. After she died at age sixty-one, when I was thirty-five, I found letters from my birth mother amongst her papers. I found her, we met her once, but she would never tell me who my biological father was.
Making Friends with Your Subconscious in Creative Writing
There are such depths within us all — how do we, as writers, access and use the material that is in our subconscious minds? In her book, Archetypes for Writers, Jennifer Van Bergen affirms that “Writing takes place in the subconscious…. The subconscious actually operates — in everyone — as an independent mind. It perceives, processes, and retains things that never enter the conscious mind at all.
Ann Arbor’s Interfaith Center for Spiritual Growth
By Rachel Urist | Photography by Maureen McMahon and Joni Strickfaden
Over the past seven years the Interfaith Center for Spiritual Growth has emerged on the Ann Arbor scene as a vibrant place for community events and a dynamic alternative to Sunday worship. Many have discovered the Center by attending one of their public music events, such as engagements with Kirtan singers Shantala or their Café 704 concert series featuring some of the area’s finest musicians. Others may have visited because of their calendar of speaking engagements with popular authors like Judith Coates or Rev. John Mundy.
