How can we love them when they fail?

A struggle many parents face—and rarely talk about.

I have been working with parents of little ones, school-aged children, and teens for sixteen years. One of the most common struggles I see—especially in the highly academic community where I live—is what happens when a child doesn’t achieve at the level a parent hopes to see.

Or worse: when a child fails at school.

At the end of every school year—and often at key points in the middle—many of the parents I accompany enter an intense season of worry. They fear their child won’t succeed academically, or perhaps will fail altogether, and their minds fill with terrifying worst-case scenarios about that child’s future.

When this happens, parents often tighten, buckle down, and push harder.

Especially for those of us who survived difficult childhood experiences by achieving academically—and later professionally—the possibility of our child failing can stir up terror we learned long ago to suppress through achievement.

Now we are trying to parent with a nervous system stuck in fight or flight.

And here is the painful paradox:

The speedier we get, the slower our kids go.
The more insistent we become, the more resistance our kids express.

This can become a deeply painful cycle, especially between parents and teens.

I want to hold out another possibility.

When our kids fail to achieve at the level we wish to see, this can become a profound opportunity for the parent—and a chance to renew and deepen the parent-child relationship.

It can become an opportunity to heal our own nervous systems from chronic fear.

It can become an invitation to develop new ways of knowing and loving ourselves.

And from this new inner ground, we can open to deeper ways of knowing and loving our kids.

This is exactly what they need.

When kids are struggling—academically or in any other area of life—what they need more than anything is an adult who is calm, steady, rooted, loving, and genuinely curious about what is happening for them.

Yes, they may need guidance.
Yes, they may need concrete help with tasks, time management, or executive functioning.

But kids only truly follow the lead of adults with whom they feel safe, accepted, and loved.

Young people are smart that way.

Of course, we know we love our kids.

And we may even believe we accept them.

But our bodies may be communicating something very different.

As parents, our nervous systems are always sending signals to our kids. No matter what our words are saying, our kids are reading our bodies first.

If your body is flooded with fear because you are imagining your child’s future as a life of failure, your child feels that.

And the message they receive may sound something like:

Something is wrong with me.
I am a disappointment.
I am not safe here.

That kind of fear doesn’t help children function better.

It scrambles them.

The first step for the parent is to notice what is happening in their own nervous system.

Ask yourself:

What is my inner state right now?

This may be one of the most important questions a parent can learn to ask.

If you notice you are in a stress response, this is not the time to talk to your kid about anything important.

Not homework.
Not grades.
Not chores.
Not college.
Not getting a job.

When the impulse is strongest to lean in and control—unless your child is literally about to step in front of a bus—attend to your own inner state first.

And there’s no faking it.

Even if you force a smile and try to sound warm, your kid knows when you are in a fear response.

They know what it feels like when that energy gets directed toward them.

And they will do everything they can to get away from it.

Getting committed to caring for your own nervous system and inner life may be the single most important gift you can offer your kids—especially during the years they live with you.

This is your chance to become a trustworthy ally in this young person’s life.

And that is exactly what young people need:

An adult who loves them unconditionally.
An adult who listens.
An adult who is curious enough to want to understand them.
An adult who offers advice only after connection has been renewed—and even then, sparingly.

If we aim to become this trustworthy ally, we will undoubtedly face some inner demons along the way.

This is both the challenge and the gift of parenting.

If we embrace parenting as a path of growing in our capacity to love, our kids will reveal to us everything inside of us that still needs care and healing.

And attending to that—with loving attention to our nervous systems own younger selves—is one of the clearest paths I know toward becoming the people we were always meant to be.

So if you are struggling to accept and love your child when they fail, perhaps the deeper question is this:

Can I love and accept myself when I fail?

And if not—

Why not?

If you are struggling in your parent-child relationship and would like support with what’s coming up for you, you’re welcome to email me.

This summer, I am opening three additional slots for weekly Soul Care sessions with parents who feel ready to engage the inner work that can transform the parent-child relationship—and create more freedom for the parent, too.

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Dear friend ~

Last weekend, while still down with that relentless headache, all I could do was make little art pieces. By the time the weekend was over, so was my headache.

Art making has always been medicinal for me, the making of it and the gazing at it. If you’ve been to my studio in person, you know that my art adorns every bit of every wall. I surround myself with the colors, textures, shapes and symbols that I need to see. Until I don’t need them anymore. Then I send them out into the world to find new homes.

This time, it was the making itself that was the medicine, but I don’t think I need to live with these little guys. As much as I adore them.

Do any of these little sweeties sing to you? I’m selling each one for $125 without a matte, $150 with a matte, and $175 matted and framed.

Email me by hitting reply to this message and let me know if you are interested. I can mail it or you can drop by the studio here in West Berkeley to pick it up.

May you find (or create!) the medicine that sings to you in these challenging times!

Love,

Angela

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Dear one,

I have spent the better part of many days this week horizontal.

I have had a splitting headache for seven days that no medicine would touch. There have been a ridiculous number of trips to the bathroom. My body has been trying to sort something out, I’m not sure exactly what it is this time.

I’ve been on this healing journey for a long time. If you been following my writing and art and work for awhile, you know this is just part of what I deal with. And the truth is, I am SO much better than I was so many years ago, that sometimes I have hours, even whole days and weeks, where I “forget” that living with complex chronic illness is a part of my story. And then I have a week like this past one, and wow, how quickly I remember!

In the middle of this health episode, something really wonderful has been happening: I have been participating in a Transformative Justice Revival at McGee Avenue Baptist Church, where my dear friend, brother, and closest colleague, Rev. Dr. Michael Smith, is the Senior Pastor. I can’t fully explain right now what this Revival is doing in me, but it is a remarkable revivification and reintegration of my mind, body, spirit and soul… and a deeper understanding, in an embodied way, of the connection between my personal healing journey and the healing of our community—in the stormiest season of human history in our lifetime.

So, yes, the Revival is sure doing some things in me! And…

On the second night of the Revival, I was given the Todd Walker Legacy Award for Community Service.

I actually knew it was coming. I’ve been processing this honor for several weeks now. This is what happened:

Earlier this Spring, our dear friend and colleague, Todd Walker, suddenly died. The community has been reeling from his passing.

I have been wanting to honor Todd’s life and story by telling you about this beautiful man: a father, friend, coach, mentor, a mortician in a Black-owned funeral home—and an activist and community justice worker of great esteem. To do justice to the legacy of Todd Walker justice, I wanted to create a podcast, featuring the voices of those who knew him best. But producing that podcast has been taking some time. So, I am telling you now about Todd Walker, and there will be more to come… from other people, with a longer arc of knowing and working alongside Todd. Because I want you to have the gift of meeting this great man, and connecting to his legacy.

The day after Todd died, Pastor Mike and I were sitting together, still somewhat stunned, tears on our faces. I was thinking about when I first met Todd. It was the first day I met Pastor Mike, actually, in 2017, when I joined them for an early planning meeting of Voices Against Violence—a youth program designed for young men and women who were being targeted by local gangs. I also thought of the second time I met Todd, when we were standing together on the edge of the football field, where Lorenzo Grayson and his coaches were starting a new season. I got to chatting with Todd. I asked him what brought him to the mentoring and violence intervention work we were part of together.

I remember the feeling of Todd’s gaze. He made me feel seen, located. Even cared for, although this was just our second time speakinging to one another. Todd told me that day that he had been a football coach and a mentor to high risk youth in the community for many years. He told me that his day job was as a mortician at a Black-own funeral home in Oakland. I asked him what motivated him to become so involved in community violence intervention work.

Todd said he became devoted to violence intervention work after several years of having to prepare for burial the bodies of boys and girls, young men and young women, who he had previously coached or mentored, or those who had been the children of his own friends. His gaze shifted away from my face as he shared this, and he looked out across the field at the kids—ages five to fourteen—who were throwing the football and running, laughing and playing. I could feel the weight of all the young people he was remembering, the ones he had coached and mentored, yet last seen when their dead bodies were on a table in front of him. He told me that day that he would spend the rest of his life working to end the epidemic of gun and gang violence that was taking the lives of so many young Black youth in across the East Bay. And then he turned and looked at me, with a bit of a sparkle and said, “Tell me about you, Rev.”

All of this was going through my mind the day after Todd died, as I sat with Pastor Mike, who had known Todd for fifty years, and could not yet even begin to process that he was gone. And then Pastor Mike told me about the Revival they were planning, and how Todd had wanted to embrace the occasion as a chance to highlight and celebrate community leaders who had been long dedicated to young people, especially the most vulnerable youth in our community. He wanted to honor three leaders in the community with awards during the Revival.

“Babe, I need to tell you something,” Pastor Mike told me. He said, “Todd said he wanted you to receive one of the awards. He said he wanted to hand it to you himself.” And then Pastor Mike put his hands on his face, and I heard sobs.

I didn’t know what to do with the news that Todd wanted me to receive an award for community service. Honestly, it still feels a little mysterious to me. I sat there with Pastor, listening, wondering inside—

Why me?

There are people in this community who pour themselves out every single day — pastors, organizers, mentors, coaches, elders, artists, people holding entire neighborhoods together. Sure, I had been among them for nine years or so, and I contributed what I could.

Mostly I felt aware of how much more I wanted to do, but could not. These have been hard years in my life, and my contributions were far more modest than what I would have wanted to give. In the time we’d known one another, I was in and out of episodes—some of them quite long—of weeks like I am now in: mostly horizontal, hurting, needing to stick close to my own facilities. This condition has often left me with a perpetual sense of all I have not done, all I have not contributed.

When I finally asked Pastor Mike the question that kept tumbling around inside me, Why me??, he listed a range of things I had done and contributed over this near decade of our work together. But onely his last sentence landed with me:

“This is what Todd wanted, honey.”

I took that in and got quiet. A few weeks later, I mentioned the award to Lorenzo. I was a little shy about it, genuinely uncertain. He said,

“My sister, I know about the award. Pastor Mike told me. Now that Todd is gone, he asked me to be the one to give it to you.” And then he named a series of things I had done or contributed to over the years. And the last thing he said, same as Pastor Mike, was this:

“This is what Todd wanted, Rev.”

So I’ve had a few weeks to take in that I would be receiving this award, and this is what I noticed:

After nearly a decade of this community work, I have still been assuming that my real contribution would happen when I was finally better. I have still been waiting for the version of me that could do more, be more, sustain more. I realized this was a remnant of supremacy logic dressed up as patience. Or maybe dressed up as humility. I’m not sure which.

But Todd Walker had already decided I was more than enough. He decided before he died. While I was already living exactly this life, at this pace, with this body, and its uneven needs and abilities.

No one in this community was waiting for me to be more or do more, to become worthy.

Pastor Mike has said many times over the years, “We cannot judge our success on the world’s terms. Honey, God has God’s own timeline and terms.”

So, I’ve been realizing in the last few weeks, how much I am still in the ethos of the very worldview I critique: the one that values more, more, more, and faster, faster, faster, and better, better, better. The one that prioritizes achievement and speed over relationships and inclusion. Even my own.

I’ve been realizing this, all over again:

Beloved Community includes me. And not just the better me, the improved me, I might one day be. Me, with my limitations. Me, just as I am, giving what I flows from me because it is mine to give. Me stepping back when my system says, No.

So this week during the Revival, some self-judgment I had not even fully noticed before, has started loosening. I’ve realized that I have been living with the assumption that justice work, and to really build the Beloved Community I believe all our children deserve to inherit, requires me to become someone different than I am. Someone faster. Someone who doesn’t need as much space and quiet around every activity in order to process it fully and remain present. And even more than that, I realized the extent to which I have still been operating under the lie that to belong in human community, I have to be someone other than me.

But what if this is my way of contributing? Through listening. Through art. Through prayer. Through feeling and meeting people and circumstances energetically and somatically first and foremost; through holding space for deeper connection, across generations, across family challenges, and across lines of difference; for taking stretches of time to listen more deeply, on the page, on the canvas, and in the relational, spiritual field…where I encounter the Holy One, in whose Love we all belong….?

I may never be the preacher I thought I was here to be. I may never do many of the things I thought were mine to do. The books inside me that I struggle to get out, maybe they will never reach publication. My paintings may always remain my private spaces of devotion and integration. My community offerings may always be fewer, slower, quieter, than what I have imagine they should be.

And maybe, in God’s realm, this all just right.

As I mentioned last week, I’m entering what feels like a more deliberate season of Sacred Listening. There will be even more inwardness, even slower pace, and more silence. I don’t know what this will “produce,” but I simply know that whether I am sick or well, my way of moving in the world requires that I take this space and time to listen into the roots of things. I need to feel what is underneath the noise and the speed, in order to feel what Howard Thurman called the genuine, pulsing through me, through us, and promising something new and Revived that we cannot yet fully even yet imagine.

I was initially envisioning this as a season of silence, but I am realizing it really is more a season of sacred listening… perhaps with stretches of true silence. In fact, I think it is a season of:

Sacred Silence.

Sacred Listening.

Sacred Somatics.

Sometimes… Sacred Speech.

And through it all, Sacred Service, in my right time and way, toward the emergence of Beloved Community: the time and place where we all belong. Even me.

I’ll say more next week, if I’m ready.

For now, I am still digesting. And allowing my body to work through what it needs to work through… to clear this headache.

In love,

Angela

Dear friend,

Sacred listening is at the heart of everything I do.

If you became acquainted with my work through parent coaching, you know that listening to our children in various ways, at different stages of life, is the heart of how we work together to build limbic system connection with them. I’ve been teaching listening tools and practices, including when we need to set limits, for sixteen years.

But even before becoming a parent, listening was at the heart of my spiritual practice. We called it contemplative listening in the schools where I was trained.

I also practiced somatic listening while in seminary and beyond, from a school outside my seminary and tradition, when I realized how often Christianity spoke of incarnation while remaining estranged from the body itself. And if we cannot feel the body we live in, we cannot feel the collective bodies we are part of. And that is dangerous for everyone.

In our community organizing work here in Berkeley, listening is again the heart of it. We listen to fully hear and take in the reality of people in our community who we have been systematically separated from. We listen so we can rejoin, and move as one collective body (in theory anyway, it’s always messier in real life), toward policies and systems that support greater inclusion of all.

No matter the context, my work has always been a devotion to listening.

Privately, in all these contexts, I have known that to me, listening as I listen is Sacred Listening. This means that I listen as if something sacred is happening in the one or ones I am listening to. When we listen as if something sacred is happening (in our bodies, our children, our spouses, our neighbors), in time we discover that indeed something sacred is here, and moving. And when we see and hear and sense the sacred in someone, we welcome that sacred presence forth even more. And paradoxically, when we listen this way, that which is sacred in us also enlivens.

I am now entering the last six months of a two year training that I have been in on collective trauma healing through contemplative practice. This two year period is foundational for inner work in this area. When this is over, I may take an additional year of training to deepen my skills in facilitation of collective trauma healing and conflict resolution. We’ll see.

For this last six months of the foundational program, I am deepening my Sacred Listening practice. I have found myself drifting this direction already, waking earlier and earlier for more time in Silence before my day with others begins. I may now layer in whole days and weeks of intentional Silence. There will exceptions, of course. For my child. My spouse. Extended family emergencies. My inner circles of support. My community partners. My clients. I am working out relationally what this all means for my various relationships and streams of work and life, but the bottom line is this:

I am entering a season of increased Sacred Listening, with more stretches of Silence. To be clear, this is not to disengage from life, family, or community. This is just where I am being called in my life now. Something in me knows this deepening matters for how I want to live on an increasingly volatile and violent planet.

In this season, I will consider opening spaces, here and there, for folks to join me in the studio for various kinds of contemplative listening experiences. Listening through art making. Listening through the body. Listening through prayer. Some teaching, more experience and following inner wisdom.

I’m not sure yet if the podcast will continue or pause. I’m not ready to say anything definitive now. I think I will likely just create episodes when I feel called to Sacred Listening with specific people or on specific topics.

This is all experimental and will likely morph and change as I live into it.

Here’s to experiments in how to BE HERE in this moment of history, as a specific person, with love and devotion to the whole of us.

In love,

Angela

Dear friend,

As parents, we work hard to track and respond to what is happening for our kids. We know they need us in there with them. We do our best to allow what they think and feel to land in us.

We share our perspective and thinking with them, hoping to support the growth of good judgment, self-awareness, and care for others.

Having worked with hundreds of families over these many years, I’ve witnessed repeatedly what brain science suggests is true: when children have ample doses of being seen and responded to with care, they tend to feel more secure. They become more able to stay connected to themselves, so they make good decisions for their lives. They are also more able to take in the reality of other people with care.

Care begets care.

This is how we grow good people—not “good” in the sense of compliant or high-performing, but people who know their own intrinsic wholeness. People who draw out the intrinsic wholeness in others.

But providing this for a young person is no small thing.

As parents, we are trying to build attuned relationships with our kids in a society that moves faster than the speed of attuned relationships. Many of us are parenting while stressed, overwhelmed, distracted, isolated, overextended, or carrying wounds of our own. Parenting often asks us to offer forms of attention and presence that we ourselves may not have consistently received.

Last Sunday I spent the day with a small circle of parents exploring Parenting, ReParenting, and Building a Template of Belovedness. We reflected together on the invisible relational work of parenting: the work of slowing down enough to notice what is happening inside ourselves and our children. The work of listening beneath behavior, to the emotions and experiences rippling underneath. This is the love labor of building an attuned relationship.

What is an attuned relationship?

An attuned relationship is one where we regularly orient ourselves to notice—and feel with—what is happening for another person. We help them feel felt.

When you feel felt, it feels good. (As in, more whole).

As a social species, we need this. Especially young, still-developing nervous systems. Babies, children, and youth look to us to see if we see them, if we feel them, if what they are feeling is alive in us. It’s how they organize themselves inside, and become integrated, sturdy, true. This is how young people come to know:

I exist.
I’m here.
I matter.
I belong.

I have intrinsic worth when I succeed…. and when I fail. I know this because I continue to exist in the warm heart of my parent. So I have courage to get up and try again.

Children function differently when they feel accompanied. Their nervous systems settle down and hum. Their capacity to think, connect, learn, and recover grows.

And parents do too.

One of the things I continue to witness in my work with parents is that parenting is often reparenting. Our children don’t only need something from us; they awaken something within us. Parenting brings us into contact with our own nervous systems, our own histories, our own longings for connection, belonging, and care.

When we connect with a young person, that layer of our own development at the same age or stage, lights up in our long term emotional memory. All the richness and resource we received at that age is available. And the wounds and unmet needs are also there, sometimes igniting like landmines we didn't even know we carried.

We are never just parenting the kid in front of us, we are also always reparenting the inner parts of us that still need care and resolution.

This is why I believe strongly that all parents need spaces of attuned listening. We need places where we can slow down, reflect honestly, be supported without shame, and remember that we were never meant to do this job so alone.

Receiving support isn’t just good for us and our kids. When we help build an inner template of belovedness in a child, that child in turn becomes a cornerstone of Beloved Community. And when we allow our love for children to expand us inside, we too become living cornerstones of the world we long to see for future generations.

I left Sunday feeling deeply moved by the courage and tenderness of the parents in the room. Parents, when provided support, are continually willing to be grown and expanded by loving their kids. This never stops amazing me. The warmth of our day together has rippled through my week. I am grateful, once again, for the invisible, sacred work of building relationships where people can feel seen, felt, and loved.

If you’d like to be among the first to know when I offer another Parenting & ReParenting Workshop or Class, hit reply and let me know. I’ll add you to my list.

Dear friend,

Here’s a simple, sweet practice to reset your nervous system and support your peace.

Are you:

Anxious?

Bracing?

Stressed?

Enjoy this simple sequence to reset your nervous system with Jin Shin Jyutsu. Hold each step for 10-30 seconds (or as long as feels good)

~ Hold thumb

~ Hold pointer finger

~ Hold pinky

~ Hold wrist (with thumb and pinky in a circle)

~ Then switch hands

You can do this in 5 minutes, or take your time and linger longer.

Used daily, this short and simple flow can reduce stress, down-regulate your nervous system, and balance your emotions.

Use it on your own, or at the start of your meditation or prayer practice.

Enjoy!

~ Angela

P.S. Find more simple somatic practices for grounding, integration, and inner calm over in my other (more occasional) newsletter, Body Temple Time

Dear friend,

There are some places we need to travel, each in our lives, and no one can go with us.

Into the quiet. Into the dark. Sometimes into deep pain.

Yet we are—miraculously—never alone.

I am just out of eight days of silence. I don’t have many words yet for this experience, and all it gave me, but let’s just say, the silence took me to some of those places.

I made only very little art this week. This little ‘zine is all. It tells the wordless story of where I went in the silence, through the dark.

More from me next week. Maybe I’ll have more words by then.

In the meantime, in these fast and noisy times, where do you go to listen deeply? Who holds a line to you there? And…

Do you ever hear your name called out through the silence?

In love,

Angela

Mary the Tower: Witness, Presence, and the Beloved Community

Episode 7 of The Whole of Us Podcast

In this episode of The Whole of Us, I sit down with my beloved—my spouse—Rev. Dr. Niels Tunis, Senior Pastor of Hillcrest UCC in Pleasant Hill, California.

A few days before this conversation, Niels preached an Easter sermon that stayed with me. In it, he names what he calls the original sin of Christianity: sexism—and invites us to reconsider the role of Mary Magdalene, not as a marginal or misunderstood figure, but as central to the Christian story.

In this conversation, we follow that thread.

Together, we explore:

• Mary as “the Tower”—a source of strength, witness, and presence

• The historical and ongoing erasure of women in Christian tradition

• What has been lost—and what becomes possible—as that erasure is named

• The ways this pattern lives not only in institutions, but in our bodies and relationships

• Mary not only as a figure in history, but as a living presence available to us now

• The symbol of the red egg in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and what it reveals about life, mystery, and resurrection

This is not a teaching as much as it is an encounter.

A conversation about witnessing, staying, and learning to be more human together—in the presence of what has been silenced, and what is now returning.

Read or Listen to Niels’ Easter Sermon: The Tower

If this conversation speaks to you, I invite you to listen slowly… and to notice what you feel, in your body, as you do.

You might also gently ask:

What would it mean for me to listen… for what has been here all along?

Hello, friend.

There’s something I didn’t say directly in last Sunday’s podcast episode that I’ve been sitting with this week.

In that episode, I shared a story about a recent small gathering of clergy in my studio—how we are slowly, carefully tending something across lines of difference, and how I was noticing fear arise in my own body as I sat in that space.

What I keep returning to is this:

We were practicing being human together.

Not performing leadership.
Not solving the problem.
Not getting it right.

Just being human together, and letting that be enough for a moment.

And I notice how rare that is—especially in spaces where we are trying to talk about race, justice, and community.

So often, we tighten.

We try to think our way through.
We try to say the right thing.
We move quickly, sometimes without realizing it.

But what if the work begins somewhere else?

What if it begins in the body…

In noticing what’s here.
In softening it.
In making a little more room for our own humanity,
and one another’s too.

That’s what I was practicing with the kidney flow as I recorded the episode.

And it’s what I find myself returning to again this week.

If you haven’t listened yet, you can find the episode here:

Episode 6: Softening Fear, Building Beloved Community

And if you do listen, you might try the simple practice along with me—or just notice what happens in your body as you hear the story.

There’s no right way.

Just an invitation.

P.S. Want to try another amazing Jin shin jyutsu flow for calming and grounding the mind and body? In my other more occasional newsletter, Body Temple Time, I just published this guided Double Stomach Flow.

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In this episode, I share a real-time reflection from a small gathering of clergy here in Berkeley—an interracial, interfaith circle that has been slowly forming through years of relationship, repair, and careful listening across difference.

This was not just a meeting.
It was a moment shaped by history.

As we sat together and listened to the painful truth of what has been fractured in our community—and what it has taken to begin again—I noticed something unfolding in my own body.

Fear.
Tenderness.
The subtle pull toward urgency, control, and self-protection.

And the choice to turn toward it.

As I tell this story, I invite you to join me in a simple Jin Shin Jyutsu kidney flow—a gentle, hands-on practice that supports the body in softening fear and restoring flow.

You are welcome to follow along, or simply listen.

This episode moves between:

• the lived history of racial division in Berkeley’s faith community

• the fragile, hopeful process of coming back into relationship

• and the inner work required to stay present, open, and responsive as we do

Because building Beloved Community is not only outer work.

It is also the quiet, ongoing practice of tending what lives within us—
so that we can remain in right relationship with one another.

You’ll hear me wondering aloud in this episode about how this moment connects to a vision I’ve been carrying for many years. These are living questions, not conclusions.

Thank you for being here.
Thank you for listening.
And if you choose to join me in the practice—
thank you for softening fear in your body alongside me.

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If you’d like to come in closer, you can subscribe to my newsletter, Soul Care Studio News on Substack (link below).

10% of all earnings from this work are shared with local frontline leaders—friends and colleagues who are serving the most vulnerable in our community.

Hello, friends.

I’ve found my way back to writing my book.

Not all at once. Not in a rush.
But in that quiet, unmistakable way when something begins to call again from within.

When I write, I often find that I need to paint.

Not instead of writing—but alongside it.

As I shared in last week’s podcast episode, there are things my body knows before my language can express them. There are layers of experience that need to move, to break down, to be touched and rearranged, before they can become words. At least for me.

So this week, as I’ve turned back toward my book Thawing the White Body, I’ve also found myself on the floor with paint and paper and glue—working on a three-piece series:

Bed. Compost. Cauldron.

These are not illustrations of the book.
They feel more like companions to the writing process itself.

Places where something is happening.

I’ve been thinking again about what I’ve come to call:

Compost Theology.

Nothing in a human life is wasted.

What looks like failure, illness, collapse, grief, confusion, or fragmentation is often organic material being broken down so that life can grow again.

Compost theology reframes spiritual life from achievement…
to metabolism.

Not: Am I succeeding?
But: What is becoming soil in me right now?

There was a time when I lived mostly in bed.

From that bed, I looked out at the Berkeley Hills—green, steady, alive.
I couldn’t walk them. I couldn’t touch the earth.

And yet, I experienced that green life as a kind of blessing.
A reaching toward me.

Hildegard of Bingen called it veriditas—the greening life of God.

That greening never stopped, even when my life looked still.

This new series is emerging from that place.

The bed.
The heap.
The vessel.

The places where life breaks down…
and becomes something else.

I’m sharing a few images here from the process—still very much in progress.

Not finished pieces.
But fields of becoming.

If you find yourself in a season that feels like compost—

where things are unclear, undone, or falling apart—

you are not outside of the work.

You may be inside the most generative part of it.

More soon, as both the paintings and the writing continue to take shape.

For now, I’m tending the soil.

In love,

Angela

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In this episode, Angela shares the story behind a mixed-media painting inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of Beloved Community.

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Show Notes

Episode Description

In the last episode of The Whole of Us Podcast, I had the joy of introducing my dear friend and partner in ministry, Rev. Dr. Michael Smith. In that conversation we spoke about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of Beloved Community — a world organized around love, justice, and our care for one another.

After that episode aired, something interesting began happening. During Zoom meetings, several people started asking about the painting that hangs just over my shoulder. People were curious about the image — what it meant, and how it came to be.

In today’s episode, I share the story behind that piece.

The painting was created in January 2021 while I was struggling to write a sermon for Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday. At the time, I was still recovering from a brain injury caused by toxic mold exposure. Words — which had always been central to my life and calling — suddenly came slowly and unevenly.

But images still came.

So while I worked on the sermon, I painted. I found that I had to feel the truth first on the canvas before the words could follow.

The artwork that emerged became something like a visual prayer — a reflection on Beloved Community, on love and justice, and on the spiritual lineage that continues to shape us. Even now, the painting remains on the wall behind me. When I gaze at it, it still roots me in the values I hold most dear.

In this episode, I share the symbols within the piece, the story of its creation, and how art can sometimes help us see and feel what words alone cannot express.

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Watch the Creation Process

Below this post you’ll find a short video showing the process of creating the artwork. This video was recorded while I was preparing the sermon and working through the piece layer by layer.

Sometimes the creative process reveals truths before we fully understand them. I hope you enjoy seeing how the painting came to life.

Prints of the Artwork

Several people have asked whether prints of this artwork are available. If this piece speaks to you and you would like to bring it into your own home, prints are available through my art website.

You can find them here:

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A Question for You

At the end of the episode I ask a simple question, and I’ll leave it here as well:

Is there something in your life — an image, an object, a piece of music, a place — that helps anchor you in times of turbulence or change?

Something that helps you remember what matters most?

I would love to hear.

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Shownotes

Episode Title: Meet Rev. Dr. Michael Smith

There are some people whose presence reminds you of who you really are, and what matters most.

Rev. Dr. Michael Smith is one of those people in my life.

In this episode, you’ll meet the Senior Pastor of McGee Avenue Baptist Church in Berkeley. More than that, you’ll meet a man who has wrestled with his calling since childhood. Someone who has battled serious illness over the past year and a half (and decade!), and who continues to show up for young people on the edges of violence with what he calls “unspeakable joy.”

In this podcast, we talk about:

What it feels like to know you are called — and wish you weren’t

The difference between being “selfless” and being fulfilled in service

What Beloved Community actually requires

The Live Free violence intervention work happening on Berkeley’s streets

The power of credible messengers — young people turning trauma into leadership

Chronic illness, vulnerability, and what it means to build circles of care that include our own fragility

Pastor Mike speaks about Dr. King’s vision of Beloved Community — not as a dream we romanticize, but as an economic, relational, and spiritual reordering of our common life.

We also talk about friendship.

About what it means to have someone who can say, “I see you. It’s okay.”

And about what it might look like if Berkeley — from the hills to Fourth Street — truly became a place where everyone belongs.

This is a conversation about faith in action.
About justice braided with tenderness.
About joy that survives pain.

Dear friend,

I haven’t written much here about a two contemplative training I’ve been part of for the past year— focused on collective trauma healing.

A lot has been moving under the surface.

Recently, our learning community experienced an incident of racial harm that was not adequately addressed. Processing what happened — and discerning what repair requires — has been demanding, clarifying work.

In the midst of that process, I painted this.

I call it Tectonic Plates.

When pressure builds beneath the surface, the ground shifts. Structures crack. Light shows through windows differently. Nothing looks quite the same.

Engaging rupture — rather than bypassing it — is shaping me. It is clarifying my leadership in my family and in my local community. Even as this season has taken time and energy, it has also grounded me more deeply in being here.

Sometimes growth is not expansion.
It is integration under pressure.

More soon.

Show Notes

One afternoon, my nine-year-old child came home from school and named a racial disparity unfolding in plain sight.

In that moment, time slowed — and I felt invited to take what contemplative teacher Walter Burghardt calls “a long, loving look at the real.”

This episode reflects on how children can become our teachers, how awakening often arrives through relationship, and how listening deeply can redirect the course of a life.

Recorded as a quiet, contemplative reflection, this episode marks a pivotal turning point in my own journey — one that continues to shape my work in community today.

You are invited to listen slowly.

This story is shared with deep respect for the leaders and communities who have shaped my understanding over many years — and in recognition that this listening and unlearning is lifelong work.

During the pandemic, when our family was sheltering in place in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, my young teenager asked me to listen to dystopian podcasts together.

Every. Single. Day.

Dark stories. Collapsing worlds. Grim futures.

It was the last thing I wanted to take in.

To be honest, I sometimes found myself quietly practicing Jin Shin Jyutsu while we listened — stretched out together on the carpet of this kid’s messy bedroom — just to keep my own nervous system from spiraling as episode after episode unfolded.

And yet… I kept showing up.

Not because I understood why it mattered.

But because long before the pandemic, my parenting mentors had taught me a deceptively simple practice called Special Time — offering a child short, regular doses of warm, undivided attention while following their lead completely.

I began practicing this when my child was just three months old. Over the years, I watched it work quiet but unmistakable changes. When children receive our enthusiastic presence — especially around something they care about — they often grow in confidence, take developmental leaps, work through challenges, and regain a sense of safety when life feels uncertain.

So even though I could not grasp the appeal of these bleak fictional worlds, something in me trusted the connection itself.

I sensed that something important was happening beneath the surface.

And slowly — almost imperceptibly — I noticed shifts.

A little more steadiness.
A little more confidence.
A quiet strengthening.

It would be some time before I understood that those hours were not really about podcast stories at all.

They were about a young person gathering the inner fortitude needed to make a brave and life-shaping decision.

A breakthrough I never saw coming — but later recognized had been building, moment by moment, in the safety of our shared attention.

Sometimes our children do not need us to understand.

Sometimes they simply need us to stay close.

To hold a line of warmth toward them.

To accompany them into the worlds they are trying to make sense of — even when those worlds feel foreign to us.

When we offer our presence in this way, we help fill what I often think of as a child’s “connection cup.” And it does not require grand gestures. Small, steady doses of attentive care create the inner scaffolding young people rely on as they grow toward their own lives.

If you listened to last week’s episode of The Whole of Us, you may recognize this practice — following a child’s lead — as one of the quiet pivot points in my own parenting journey.

Next week, I’ll be sharing When A Child Leads, Part Two, where we continue exploring what becomes possible when we allow children to shape us as much as we shape them.

And if you are curious, below is a short video I made years ago introducing Special Time to my parent coaching clients. The recording may be dated, but the practice itself remains one of the most reliable tools I know.

If you are longing for support as you navigate your own parenting terrain, I will be opening space for a small number of new clients in the coming season.

What I have learned, again and again, is this:

When you don’t understand… stay close.

Connection often does its most important work long before insight arrives.

Show Notes

When a Child Leads, Part One
The Whole of Us Podcast — Episode Two

In this studio-style episode of The Whole of Us Podcast, I follow a quiet but insistent invitation to slow down, listen inward, and let a story unfold in real time.

What begins as preparation for a different episode becomes something else entirely. A heaviness in my body asks for attention, and beneath it, a younger self appears—five years old, holding an orange sled, asking to be seen.

This episode explores what happens when we let a child lead—not only the children in our lives, but the younger places within ourselves. Drawing from parenting practice, embodied listening, prayer, and art-making, I reflect on how play, creativity, and attentive presence can restore courage and movement when things feel stuck or heavy.

You’ll hear the sounds of paper, pencil, and collage as I make art while speaking. These sounds are part of the practice—an invitation into a slower, sensory, trauma-informed way of listening.

This is the first part of a longer arc. In the next episode, I’ll share a story from my life as a parent—when a child’s single sentence opened a door to deeper healing, belonging, and community.

This episode is for you if you’re longing to:

• move more gently with your own inner life

• listen without rushing toward answers

• reconnect with creativity as a form of prayer and medicine

• explore healing that honors the body’s pace and wisdom

When my kid was four or five, we were driving in the car. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a Sharpie marker in hand, drawing right on the car seat.

“Hey—stop! You’re drawing on the car seat!” I exclaimed.

My child looked up at me, then down at the Sharpie, then back up with BIG eyes.

“I’m sorry,” came the earnest reply. “I couldn’t help it—I had an art attack!”

I know this feeling so well.

Some days I get seized with a strong need to make something—like my body is saying: now. I can’t always explain it. I just know that if I don’t follow the impulse, something in me stays tight.

So here’s a little glimpse of my creative process: this is the cover of my 2026 planning journal.

That morning, in meditation, an image came as a felt sense—an eye and a flower with flame petals. I sketched it first on the journal cover, then added a layer of gesso. After that, I started “composting”: collaging scraps from my recycling bin—bits of old notes, fragments from projects I was working on late last year.

I love composting like this: using what’s left over, what’s ordinary, what might have been tossed… to enrich the soil of what’s new.

Then I added another two layers of gesso, feeling for the shapes between the words and scraps—making circles, letting certain lines emerge, letting others soften. I went back again with gesso dots, brightening spots that wanted light. I deepened the eye and the flame-flower with pencil and a little paint—just enough to let them speak.

For me, this kind of art-making is a form of listening on the page as I follow my body’s, Ah, yes! It’s a a way of praying with my hands. A way of letting what has been become fertile ground for what wants to grow.

If you’ve ever had an “art attack,” I’d love to hear about it. What happens in you when the creative impulse arrives?

Creatively yours ~

Angela

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P.S. Isn’t this texture YUMMY??

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Today is a special day for me — it’s my birthday, and it’s also MLK Day. I’m grateful to begin this new chapter on a day that invites us to remember a dream of love-rooted justice, and to recommit ourselves to the work of becoming more human together.

Host Note

I recorded this first episode in December, before I realized it would be released on MLK Day. So I want to name explicitly what is underneath the whole podcast: these conversations are rooted in a shared longing for what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called Beloved Community — a world shaped by love, justice, and belonging for all — and in the inner and outer work needed to make that world possible.

In today’s episode, I’m telling a very personal story — an early chapter of my own calling — because it’s part of what shaped the path that eventually led me into the work of listening, healing, parenting support, and community partnership that I now understand as my life’s vocation. My hope is that as we listen together over time — to many different stories and voices — we’ll grow our capacity to stay present to one another, especially across difference, and to participate in the building of Beloved Community in real life.

Episode 1: The Calling

If this episode resonates, I’d love to hear from you:
What part of the story touched something in you — or what kinds of conversations are you hungry for this year?

And if you know someone who might appreciate this kind of listening space, feel free to forward this post — it helps more people find their way in.

With gratitude,
Angela

P.S. Paid subscriptions are turned off for now while I find my new sustainable rhythm. When I turn them back on, 10% of paid subscriptions (in addition to 10% of all my income) will be shared with local frontline leaders serving the most vulnerable in my community — as part of my ongoing commitment to shared resourcing.

I’m beginning again after a quieter season, and I’m excited to share what’s coming next.

This Monday, January 19 — which is both my birthday and MLK Day — I’m releasing the first episode of The Whole of Us Podcast: a new space for personal stories and intimate conversations about becoming more human, together.

If you’ve been here a while, you know that listening is a central practice for me — and a central ethic in my work. I teach parents listening tools that deepen connection with children and teens. I hold listening spaces for parents, community leaders, and for other adults who are dedicated to being safe space for young people. And here in Berkeley, we’re learning how listening across lines of difference builds trust and relationship in our divided community; this podcast is another place to listen — together.

These episodes are rooted in a shared longing for what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called Beloved Community — a world shaped by love, justice, and belonging for all. Through personal stories and conversations with friends and colleagues on the front lines of individual, family, and community healing and transformation, we’ll explore an emerging story of human wholeness.

There’s a lot to be alarmed by in the headlines every day. And still, threaded through it all, ordinary people are responding to an inner sense of purpose — finding ways to usher in a world built on a different ethic: one where every life is ensured safety, dignity, and true belonging. On this podcast, I’m excited to settle into meaningful stories and conversations about what hope looks like, even in these turbulent times.

You’ll be able to listen on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and here — on the home of the podcast, in my newsletter Soul Care Studio News. If you aren’t yet subscribed, you can sign up below to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

What kinds of conversations are you most hungry for this year? I’d truly love to hear.

And if you know someone who would enjoy this kind of listening space, feel free to forward this note — it helps more people find their way in.

With gratitude,
Angela

P.S. Subscribing here on Substack is the best way to stay close — and to receive new episodes (and occasional reflections and practices) as they’re released

P.S.S. Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten who I am and what this newsletter is about? If so, here’s my About page for a refresher!

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