Yesterday as I was crouched down arranging this before the rain, an older Chinese woman approached me. We always pass each other on our walks, but this was the first time she acknowledged me.
“This is…for kids?” She asked in her broken English.
I nodded. “Yes. Actually, it’s for all of us.” I explained simply that nature, creativity, and slowing down are for everyone.
I invite her to sit with me. It turns out she’s 79 years young and not on any medications. She walks “because there’s nothing else to do.” We arrange the maple leaves and she hands me acorn caps. I place them down while we weave our distinctive stories and histories together. When we finish, we stand and admire what we created.
“Now we release it and let it go.” I motion with my hands. She nods. We linger, witnessing the magic of the moment and what was created between us just from slowing down in a chaotic world.
Made in honor of Cam, the sweetest dog who was a guiding star and light. Even now, in her own way, she continues to connects strangers together with her love. 🐶🌈⭐️
My Book is Officially Out!
Photo: M. Lujano
It’s been a whirlwind of a journey. As an endurance athlete, I can honestly say that writing and illustrating this book was a different kind of endurance event. It required more physical and mental stamina than anything I’ve ever done in life. Which makes this launch so incredibly rewarding. I’m grateful for my tribe who has supported me through eleven rounds of edits, countless hours of formatting and designing, and for watering this seed into fruition. Thank you to everyone for all your support, and for the hundreds of people who have already ordered their copies. Like an athlete crossing the finish line after years of preparation and hard work, I’m overwhelmed with emotion- feeling thrilled, proud, exhausted, and mostly- truly grateful.
There are some fun events coming up in the next few weeks. Feel free to read more HERE.
Peas and Love, Julianne
The Tree Rings of Life.
Photo by M. Lujano
Freshman year in college, I heard a knock on my dorm room door. I opened it to find Brian, a well-built senior, politely asking to borrow my lecture notes. We became fast friends. His birthday is two days after mine. That first year, I baked him a brownie cake in the dorm kitchen, decorated it with Betty Crocker frosting, and wrote his name with licorice rope.
After he graduated, he started a tradition. Every year on my birthday, he sends me a message asking questions about my year and includes his annual life update. I reply back two days later on his birthday. This year marked 25 years of this special tradition.
In trees, the patterns of wide or narrow rings reflect what the tree endured that year. Thinner rings signify a year of drought. Thicker rings indicate when rain was abundant and the tree was well-supported in its environment.
In our 25 years of annual updates, we have created our own mapping of tree rings. There have been years of hardship, relationship strain, job changes, and financial stress. And there have been years of flourishing, expansion, and growth. Our stories continue to unfold. Years when I thought my story was over, it was simply taking a sharp U-turn to redirect me to something better. Our annual messages illustrate that anything and everything worthwhile takes a long time. That life is never perfect, but sometimes it’s good enough, and that’ll do. That we need a bit of fire and water and stress, however uncomfortable, to deepen our roots and build strength and resilience.
The best friendships in life are those that have stood the test of time. That honor tradition despite drought, fire, and adequate rain. That encourage you to keep growing and reaching for the sun. That perhaps started with a simple knock on a dorm room door.
Full Circle.
I gave my first sports nutrition lecture ~10 years ago to a group of teenage rowers. I remember feeling nervous and reading mostly from my PowerPoint slides.
So imagine my delight when I received an invitation to speak to a group of high school rowers. It was truly a full circle moment. I’ve now come to love teaching and presenting, especially when I can fuse my own art into the materials to make it more relevant and engaging.
Starting with a story…
I re-imagined the “Plate model” in order to create a visual that could illustrate the components of their meals based on training load.
For much of my career, I followed a straight path of strictly ‘nutrition and dietetics.’ But in the past few years, I’ve ventured out more, exploring my curiosity in the realm of art, writing, and storytelling. It makes me happy to now see how these skills are weaving together in a way that allows me to bring so many parts of myself into my personal and professional work.
So continue to follow those sparks in your life that make you come alive. Pursue the hobbies and interests that make you turn your head with curiosity and wonder. Give yourself permission to go down a new path and explore and discover. You may find all of these paths lead back to the same place. Home. To yourself.
Beyond the Familiar.
My sweet friend Catherine posed these two questions at the start of the fall season:
What are you shedding?
What are you inviting in?
My morning walk now begins in the dark. I listen to the leaves crunch beneath my feet. Walk into invisible spider webs that were spun overnight between the oak trees and the ivy climbing across the walls. The ravens fly overhead, announcing my presence. Squirrels scurry across the tree branches. Slowly and gradually, the sky begins to lighten. Clouds turn cotton candy pink as the sun peaks over the horizon line. Dawn illuminates the trees. They’re also in transition. Slowly shedding their leaves and exposing bare branches. A metaphor for my own internal journey.
I am shedding and releasing my fierce attachment to timelines and future plans. And instead, relaxing and swimming with the current, instead of against it. Allowing what is meant to unfold, to unfold. Continuing to work hard while simultaneously surrendering to the big mystery.
A cozy little spot along the cliffs of Big Sur.
I am inviting in people and experiences that spark curiosity, openness and wonder. Individuals who teach me aspects of life I never considered because their history, culture, and stories are so different from my own. I’m learning to trust and follow them to the edge. Beyond the familiar. Discovering magic and mystery that I’m seeing for the very first time.
Containing It All.
I’m transported back to my waitressing days in college. The Noodle House, nestled in the corner of a shopping center on Convoy Street in San Diego. There was Tom, the regular who routinely sat at the back table at exactly 12pm. I’d scribble down his same yaki udon order as soon as he set his hat down.
I witnessed a few awkward and nervous (and dare I say hopeful?) first date conversations. And one dramatic breakup where a woman stormed out, leaving a spilled bowl of rice in her wake and an ex who simply shrugged at me.
There was a middle-aged, well-dressed woman who came in every Wed at 1:30pm and ordered enough food to cover the entire table. She’d consume it all while reading a romance novel, then would quietly excuse herself to purge in the bathroom. We exchanged polite smiles, but underneath I could feel the hell and shame she was living with.
That little restaurant contained it all- loneliness, sadness, rage, mundanity, celebration, and love. Just as the world can simultaneously hold deep pain and dissonance and horror while also containing tenderness and compassion and hope.
Sometimes I feel I’m back in that tiny restaurant- collecting orders, serving food, and bussing tables. Doing my best, moment by moment. Pausing when the door chime rings, not knowing what enters. But still looking up and greeting whatever is showing up with curiosity and openness. “Welcome in. Any table is fine.”
Enoughness.
My ‘enoughness’ altar. Weaving the physical offerings of nature with deeper questions: Where in my life do I feel ‘not enough’? Where in my life do I feel I am ‘too much’? What parts in my life feel like ‘just enough’?
What Is For You Will Find You.
Two years ago while browsing in a bookstore, a beautiful book caught my eye.
The purposefully faded title in certain places was an invitation to the nuance of loss and change, which I noticed and admired.
I flipped through it, noting the author’s name and appreciating his perspective on bringing ritual back into our lives. Something that’s been absent from our current cultural landscape.
A few weeks later while looking at Esalen workshops to attend that year, my eyes recognized a familiar name. Day Schildkret. I looked his name up, and sure enough, it was the same author of the book I’d seen earlier.
Fast forward one year, he has so generously blurbed my book Food For Thought. And this weekend, I started a 9-month Morning Altars Teaching Training course with him to learn these practices of weaving nature, art/creativity, and ritual together for healing and hope.
I am excited to see what will unfold in the next nine months, and ultimately incorporate these practices into my client work and group retreats. With the epidemic of loneliness and anxiety/depression skyrocketing, now more than ever, we need to reconnect back to nature and to ourselves. People are craving a tangible practice. Using nature allows us to weave together our inner and outer landscapes through wondering, wandering, giving, receiving, and most of all, remembering. Remembering who we are and why we are here.
One exercise today was to find an object in our house that we usually overlook. How can you cherish it again? How can you behold the ordinary and make it new again?
Afterwards, I released it and gave it back to nature.
What is for us will always find us. Stay open to miracles and magic. I would have never guessed that feeling a connection to a certain book in a bookstore would invite me into a journey of discovery and a deeper connection to nature and art that waters the seeds of my life purpose and path.
The Dangers of Certainty.
Wandering with wonder amongst the old growth Redwoods in Jedidiah Smith State Park.
Do you believe in past lives? Have you ever met someone and they feel strangely familiar and comfortable, like you already share inside jokes and memories? Or kissed someone for the first time and your body immediately recognized theirs as home?
I asked a pastor once if he believed in past lives. He replied, “Certainly not.” His certainty immediately shut down our conversation. It left no room for pondering.
I used to crave certainty because it calmed my lizard brain. But now I see how too much of it closes off other possibilities. Prevents us from wondering. From being curious and interested and asking deeper questions.
“Wonder makes the unknown interesting, attractive and miraculous. That’s why when wonder awakens in your life, it is the lovely subtle presence that is always at the threshold of your heart transfiguring the anonymous into the Intimate.”
I don’t want to be certain about everything. I want to live in a state of childlike wonder. To explore the unknown and mystery with wide eyes and an open heart. To make room for magic. I want to laugh and cry and kiss you, convinced that this visceral connection is proof we were sisters or lovers in a past life.
How to Save Your Female Friendships When You're On Different Life Paths.
Last week, I came across this article and while on my run, I thought about the author’s perspective and how mine differs.
I know nothing about feeding schedules. Or how it feels to spend time and energy making a meal only to have your child refuse to eat it. I have never experienced mastitis or had to worry about a leaking bladder due to pelvic floor issues after giving birth. Or juggling multiple to-do lists, school pick-up and drop-offs, while also making sure the dog gets walked and there’s clean laundry.
But I do know about loneliness. The solo exhaustion of making all the decisions, all the time. Funding 100% of living expenses, groceries, and travel. Driving and navigating to places without having the luxury of just relaxing in the passenger’s seat and choosing the playlist for the trip. Listening while well-intentioned people say, “You just need to get out there more,” and “Have you tried the apps?”
I believe it’s possible for women to stay friends even when they’re on completely different life paths. Stay open. Don’t write each other off. Be brave enough to share the light and the shadows. Share pics and stories. Celebrate first steps and first dates. We’re all running this race of life together, so we might as well be each other’s cheering squad.
Flower Piano.
For the past four years, I’ve been wanting to attend Flower Piano, where 12 grand pianos are placed all around SF Botanical Gardens. This year, I was finally able to go.
My favorite part of Flower Piano 🌸🎹 wasn’t seeing the polished performers with fancy dresses and music stands.
It was watching the shy, awkward boy settle and relax into his true brilliance as soon as he played the opening notes of his song.
It was listening to an unassuming teen dressed in a black hoodie and baggy jeans, absolutely rock the audience with his seamless performance of Chopin. The ordinary folks with extraordinary talent were the most fascinating for me.
It was feeling my own heart pound with fear/excitement (I know they both feel the same in the body!) as a pianist stood up from the bench to give the opportunity for other pianists to play.
It was listening to the voice of my friend, nudging me gently and whispering, “Now’s your chance to play!” as I watched more and more people trickle in and set up blankets on the lawn. Tentatively, I stood up and made my way to the piano, placed my fingers on the familiar black and white keys and played from my heart.
If life is like a piano, I want to hear everyone’s song. Young and old. Novice and advanced. I want to sit with my feet in the grass- smiling, surprised, and delighted by all.