Bio Bullets - A journey back to the center Born an artistic child in a blue bubble in my red hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

First career was a registered Landscape Architect with a West coast education, doing water and earthworks in OR, CA, OK, TN, GA & TX. It was satisfying until I moved...

San Francisco entrepreneurial explorations in the digital landscape creating bleeding edge projects in imagery, digital mapping...and time layers to see for yourself - when, and where we were. It was "proto-google-ian" and fun for a decade...

Then it all stopped working. Caregiving happened and everything changed, so I changed (eventually) with it. This is where the Fieldguide came into being.

My hospice chaplaincy and writing has been derived from and informed by all the above. The beauty and the challenge is that I use all of it, and need it all to serve at the edges of life, love and bedside.

 
For much of my caregiving decade, I did a stellar job with my mother and other times, I barely kept from misplacing her in some foreign city. My mother is gone now and has been for almost seven years. I hold both—the sadness from the loss-of her, as well as the joy of a new life. We will always miss our loved ones. Closure is holding them honorably, and having space for the new to grow.
 
We are all time travelers in the garden of change. This moment is quantum compost.

“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”— Albert Einstein, upon learning of the death of a lifelong friend, March 1955 letter
Much of what I planted previously (and grew) didn't last...because (no surprise) things change: divorce, bankruptcy, death (as well as general knuckle headedness on my part). Now I am rested enough, loved enough, and resolved enough to practice taking care each day.  I have planted new seeds. As a landscape architect, I knew how to do that—both physically and metaphysically. Yet, in my life as the CEO of (several) bootstrapped digital atlas companies with a partner (who grew not to be) and spectacularly bursting techie bubbles ahead, my earth became disembodied and geo-positionally unstable. I forgot how to plant in anything but fear. Yet, now in my encore career as an Interfaith hospice chaplain, I see my earth and the planting in it… as very different yet again.
 
We live in the garden of change.

My Website Intention: resilient master gardening 
Resentments and regrets are seeds which I do not want to grow...
 
Resilience allows me to renew myself even in the trenches of love and loss. Caregiving is a game-changer, but all loss is depleting. Remembering to first care well for ourselves and then others, is not selfish. To put on your oxygen mask first, is just responsible.  I remember to treat all as worthy (including myself) so I am able to care more. (How can I give a drink to others when my own cup is a sieve?)
 
The answer is always love. (But what was the question, again?)
Renewal is about remembering what I came here to do. It’s not always clear in the trenches of change. We must, somehow, get back to our center…our garden into which we can plant new stories. If we can remember the joy behind the sadness while we are in the throes, we are resilient.  How do we get to this place where we can hold them both?
 
The Fieldguide’s rules and this site is about finding that resilience for ourselves and in ourselves. This new website is about caring for people who care and caring better together—for each other.
 

Stay Tuned...
Whatever it will be, it will be more fun together.
 
When you sign up for a free membership, you get the Fieldguide’s first eight secrets for healthy caregiving. They will get you back to center—your center— where you will (probably) not be a caregiving health statistic, and you will make better decisions for your loved one who is infirm.  
 
You will also have more fun, get first crack at the podcasts, the audio meditations, stories and more.
 
Now What?  
Connect. Plant something good.  Grow. Join in. Sign up here.

Connect here...

...life is better as a conversation. You can't know it all. Let's talk.