Hello 💗

I’m so glad you’re here.

I started SOULCANDY to be a friendly voice for anyone who feels like they are lost, struggling and alone. It took a train wreck and ten years of slogging to get here. I can laugh about some of the bad times now, but ten years ago, I was blown to smithereens.

In one terrible year, I lost my job, my marriage, my sense that I could count on things as fundamental as when you put your foot on the brake, your car stops. On a snowy night, my car didn’t stop and I slammed into oncoming traffic.

All of my control-freak, overachieving, people-pleasing ways — to prevent bad things from happening, to play it safe — didn’t save me.

Instead, I was an out-of-work single-mother, the custodial parent 24/7 to three beautiful kids, surrounded by icy roads.

Freaking out

Money had always been my life-line. More than financial security, having an income was my true safety net. In a world where I always felt unsafe, like I needed to keep one eye open all the time, money was the one thing I could count on. I didn’t need a lot — this wasn’t greed — I just needed the assurance that came with a steady income that everything was going to be OK.

But everything was not OK.

I had moved for the job which downsized me, leaving me stranded in a place where my skills (and nonstop hustle for work) fell on deaf ears. I didn’t have the stomach to move my kids back to the city, so I started selling myself as a consultant, bouncing from gig to gig.

Mr Busy-Busy, ex-husband and father to my children, stopped paying child support shortly after we got divorced — despite signing legally-binding documents. Most people would get mad and get a lawyer. I was stuck in people-pleasing and patience, afraid to rock the boat.

It was an ugly, painful, confusing, humbling start.

But it got my attention.

Finding the X-factor

Life has a way of meeting you in your mess and showing you a new way forward.

For more than thirty years, I’d been an editor in chief, working with the “best of the best” experts in health and science, curating the “best of the best” information and practices for millions of readers, leading the world’s largest women’s health magazine, running National Geographic’s book division, leading Mindful, with the top neuroscientists in the country.

But it takes more than all of that when something is missing deep down.

For the past ten years, I’ve been digging deep.

I’ve studied spiritual wisdom, faith traditions, the process of spiritual awakening — deep into the world of woo-woo — and I’ve explored the outer edges of science, where new findings seem to defy our basic understanding of reality.

The result is a new kind of “best of the best” insights and practices which are just as essential, although they may seem elusive at first.

You need all three - health, science and spirituality. Body, mind and spirit.

I believe in an X-factor.

And I believe in your power to unlock it.

You have a tremendously powerful force-multiplier — an X-factor — that is unleashed with you live in alignment: body, mind and open up your heart to “spirit.”

Calming your body, clearing your mind, opening up to spirit creates an internal combustion, an inner happiness and fire energy, that encourages and guides you to discovering how to live in a way that you feel genuinely happy inside.

Helping you unleash your X-factor is the mission of my new SOULCANDY substack.

It’s like a breadcrumb trail of wisdom, insights, and practices.

A snack mix — sweet, wholesome and probably a bit nutty — with the best of the best for your mind, body and spirit.

I hope you’ll join me.

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