Ideas to put you on the path to your future self.

Word to the Wise: Short Essays on topics related to the soulful path

Wellness Writing Prompts: Try this simple and proven technique for reflection & healing
Walk & Talk Podcast: Musings and messages from nature, dream & synchronicity
Books & Websites: An annotated list of valuable tools and insights

Rebecca Armstrong 4/14/25 Rebecca Armstrong 4/14/25

Coming Home to Yourself

There comes a moment—perhaps at forty, or fifty, or beyond—when a woman looks at the path behind her and sees the footprints of everyone she has carried. Children, partners, aging parents, colleagues, friends. The echo of countless responsibilities. She sees meals cooked, appointments kept, crises navigated, the invisible labor of love and duty stretched like a long, winding road. But where, she wonders, are the markers of herself?

Rebecca Armstrong 4/14/25 Rebecca Armstrong 4/14/25

Confidence, Faith in One’s Self

Confidence is not a monolith. It moves in different ways through different arenas of life. Here are the four major pillars where confidence plays a vital role—and how to strengthen them.

Rebecca Armstrong 4/14/25 Rebecca Armstrong 4/14/25

Clarity & The Dance of Unknowing

The quest for clarity presses upon us like an urgent drumbeat. If only we could be certain—of what is true, of what is good, of what we want. . . If clarity has a shape, it is a crossroads. There are four great signposts—questions that haunt our days and nights, that shape the map of our knowing. . .

Rebecca Armstrong 4/14/25 Rebecca Armstrong 4/14/25

Courage

Some forms of courage leave no footprints in the ash, no ripples on the water. They are the quiet, invisible forces that shape a life from the inside out. . .

Rebecca Armstrong 4/2/25 Rebecca Armstrong 4/2/25

A Dream about a Path

Is there a way to escape when all seems lost? This is what a dream told me.

Rebecca Armstrong 4/2/25 Rebecca Armstrong 4/2/25

New Beginnings

Last night and this morning I have been doing calligraphic meditations on the Zhun hexagram, CHALLENGING BEGINNINGS from the I Ching. In times like this when so much seems to be ending abruptly, it is good to remember that every ending heralds a new beginning . . . even when it is not yet visible.

Rebecca Armstrong 4/1/25 Rebecca Armstrong 4/1/25

What does “Follow Your Bliss” Mean to You?

What does it mean to Follow Your Bliss? Is it a relinquishing of worldly ambition? A turning away from daily life towards something more esoteric? Or is it a subtle shift of perspective?

Rebecca Armstrong 4/1/25 Rebecca Armstrong 4/1/25

Saying “Yes” to Life

So much of the time we are dying to be in control of what happens to us, when we would do better to let go of that vanity. When I am feeling stuck in the doldrums I think back to that moment and am reminded of the power of simply saying Yes! to life. ..

Rebecca Armstrong 3/21/25 Rebecca Armstrong 3/21/25

At the Altar of Techne

This is one of the curious ways that the religious impulse follows us into secular society - In front of the computer screen most of us are brought to our knees - worshipping at the altar of Techne.

Rebecca Armstrong 3/21/25 Rebecca Armstrong 3/21/25

Becoming the Wave

The most enduring and important insight of this “riding the wave” experience was the deep sense of having been truly and fully alive – being neither in the remembering past nor the hopeful future, but in the immediacy of the present, I knew myself to be alive, to be unique, and to be joined to the great surge of Life itself…

Rebecca Armstrong 3/21/25 Rebecca Armstrong 3/21/25

Little Serendipities

The serendipity of an unexpected meeting; a book falling open to just the right page; a missed train that allowed you to finish a conversation with radical results . . . any event or series of events that gives you the feeling that an invisible hand is helping to play this round in the game of life may be a sign of serendipity.

Rebecca Armstrong 3/20/25 Rebecca Armstrong 3/20/25

Hope & Despair

Jean Erdman Campbell, wife of the famed mythologist, Joseph Campbell, and a famous dancer- choreographer in her own right, passed away at age 104 on May 4th of 2020. Although she is now eclipsed by her more-famous husband, for the greater part of their marriage it was Jean who was the famous personality. Hopefully, her own enormous contributions to the world of dance and theater will come to the fore again as we remember a century of glorious creativity…

Rebecca Armstrong 12/11/22 Rebecca Armstrong 12/11/22

Power of a Dream

My belief is that the soul - another word for the psyche or the totality of the self - communicates most readily and most frequently through the nightly journey into the realm of dreams. It is no wonder that Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious or that Jung spent intense hours unfolding and amplifying the meaning in his own and clients’ dreams. It is because dreams are so valuable for receiving messages from the soul that I encourage all my clients to keep dream journals.

Rebecca Armstrong 8/13/22 Rebecca Armstrong 8/13/22

Belonging and The Great Resignation

I have a sense that the American worker in the pandemic and The Great Resignation are linked in the same way that a frog is linked to the proverbial pot of slowly boiled water: There does come a tipping point when the frog notices the heat and reacts by leaping out of the pot. The pandemic gave us the chance to lift our heads long enough from the desk to notice we were uncomfortably warm at work… and we’ve jumped… and we’re still hopping!

Rebecca Armstrong 8/5/22 Rebecca Armstrong 8/5/22

Finding Soul Amidst the Digital Deluge

I suggest we need look no further for a diagnosis of our current mental and emotional predicament than this environment in which we are flailing and failing to flourish in a flood of information: a digital data deluge!