Approach

The Seasons of Life

My approach in my work explores the very idea that we go through seasons of life and provides a framework for how we can look back more mindfully and with more equanimity and compassion.

Each season asks something of us. Some seasons ask us to begin, and then build, strive, and achieve. Some seasons ask us to endure or change and engage in practices of care and repair. Others ask us to pause, look back, listen more deeply, loosen our grip, and make meaning from what we have carried.

In the middle and later years, this attention often takes the form of a life review - not as nostalgia or regret, but as a mindfulness practice. This is a way of meeting what has shaped us through clear seeing, steadiness, and compassion.

These are the legs of At the Tables of Life: Presence, Reflection, and Letting Go rooted in steadiness and compassion for ourselves and for others.

At the Tables of Life

How we show up at the Tables of Life determines what is possible

At the Tables of Life explores presence, reflection, and letting go in the places where life asks us to show up.

This includes the personal and professional tables where we gather, decide, disagree, grieve, repair, lead, listen, and change.

Much of this work grows from my years in the legal profession and from noticing what people carry after emotionally demanding work: stress, responsibility, unresolved questions, reactivity, grief, and the longing for a wiser way to meet complexity.

I use the image of the table because so much of life happens there.

There are the literal tables: kitchen tables, conference tables, classroom tables, mediation tables, community tables, bedside tables, and folding tables set up wherever people gather.

And there are the less visible tables: the table of memory, the table of responsibility, the table of grief, the table of repair, the table of decision, the table of becoming.

These are the places where we meet complexity. Where we hold roles. Where we speak or stay silent. Where we tend to others. Where we make choices. Where we carry what happened long after the room has emptied.

The work begins by noticing what we bring to these tables — and what we carry away.

This work includes:

At the Tables of Life: Contemplative Practices for Presence, Reflection, and Letting Go in Ordinary Life

and

At the Tables of Life: Guided Workbook for the Contemplative Practices

This foundational book and the accompanying Workbook are scheduled to be published in Summer 2026

The series of profession-specific field guides for the foundational At the Tables of Life book will be published in Fall/ Winter 2026-2027:

At the Tables of Life Field Guide for Social Workers

At the Tables of Life Field Guide for Lawyers

At the Tables of Life Field Guide for Mediators

Life Review Process

A life review is a time of looking back at our life, at the events and people and also at the ideas and events that formed us throughout the seasons of our life.

A life review done mindfully is fundamentally a practice of attention and also reflection. It can begin whenever we are ready to look with clear seeing back at the patterns, roles, relationships, losses, responsibilities, and turning points that have shaped us.

In the middle and later years, this practice can become especially urgent and especially tender. We may begin to ask different questions:

  • What have I been carrying?

  • What has this season asked of me?

  • What did I learn to protect, perform, or hold together?

  • What still needs care?

  • What might be ready to loosen its grip?

Engaging in a life review is not about judging the past. It is about making room for a new relationship, one based on clear seeing, with what has been, what is here now, and what may still be possible.

You can read more about the mindful life review process in my Messy Middle Substack and here on this site in the Essays section.

Presence, Reflection, and Letting Go

This work moves through three simple, but not easy, practices.

Presence is the practice of meeting what is here with clarity and steadiness.

Reflection is the practice of allowing attention to deepen so that meaning, pattern, and possibility can emerge.

Letting go is the practice of loosening what no longer needs to be carried in the same way.

These are practices to return to again and again, in different seasons and at different tables. This work asks us to show up, start, and engage with ourselves with equanimity and compassion. These practices do not demand perfectionism or for reality to be other than what it is.

The Questions

Across my writing, teaching, practices, and books, I keep returning to three questions:

  1. What helps us meet complexity with steadiness?

  2. What supports wiser action under pressure?

  3. What becomes possible when we are present, attention deepens, reflection ripens, and reactivity begins to loosen its grip?

These questions guide the book, the essays, the notes, the practices, and the larger living library taking shape here.

Begin Where You Are

You do not need to enter this work through a single doorway.

Begin with what is asking for your attention now: a note, an essay, a practice, a book, a question, or a quiet moment of recognition.

Read slowly. Practice gently. Return when something asks to be met.

FAQs

What does Presence, Reflection, and Letting Go mean?

Presence is the practice of returning to what is actually here. It helps us pause, notice, and meet the present moment without immediately reacting or turning away.

Reflection is the practice of looking more honestly at what we are carrying, how we are responding, and what a situation may be asking of us. It supports discernment, responsibility, and wiser action.

Letting Go is the practice of releasing what is not ours to carry, what no longer serves, or what cannot be controlled. It does not mean indifference. It means learning how to move forward without dragging every residue from one table of life to the next.

Together, these practices offer a grounded framework for ordinary life, especially during seasons of responsibility, conflict, grief, transition, and change.

What are "contemplative practices" and how are they different from ordinary mindfulness?

Ordinary mindfulness often begins with present-moment awareness. Presence, Reflection, and Letting Go includes awareness, but also asks what a situation is revealing, what wise response may be needed, and what emotional residue can be released before moving into the next part of life.

Contemplative practices are ways of slowing down, paying attention, reflecting, and returning to what matters. Meditation is one contemplative practice, but it is not the only one. Contemplative practice can also include reflective writing, prayer, mindful walking, silence, deep listening, life review, reading, ritual, and simple pauses woven into ordinary life.

Mindfulness often begins with present-moment awareness: noticing the breath, the body, thoughts, emotions, and what is happening now. Contemplative practice includes that kind of awareness, but it also makes room for meaning, memory, discernment, compassion, and release.

In my work, contemplative practice is organized around Presence, Reflection, and Letting Go. Presence helps us return to what is here. Reflection helps us listen more deeply to what our lives are showing us. Letting Go helps us loosen our grip on what is not ours to carry or what no longer needs to come with us.

The goal is not to escape ordinary life. The goal is to meet ordinary life more honestly, steadily, and compassionately.

What are the "tables of life"?

The tables of life are the places where ordinary life happens: family tables, work tables, conflict tables, grief tables, decision-making tables, community tables, and the inner tables where we return to ourselves. The phrase also points to the question of how we show up in each of those places.

How is Presence, Reflection, and Letting Go different from ordinary mindfulness?