09/11/2026
Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year , always marked by the new moon. We are pagans after all. There’s something fitting about a new beginning that starts in darkness, before anything is visible yet.
I’m eagerly awaiting a visit from my dear friend Heidi, who’s flying in from France.
Heidi and I have had exactly one conflict in our 12-year friendship. It happened during a class we were co-teaching on codependency , which, in hindsight, feels exactly right. We’d never had a real conflict before. We were friends, business partners, and co-conspirators in the healing arts world. So it caught me off guard when we got on our debrief call and she confronted me about something I’d done while teaching that really bothered her.
Being open to a friend’s disappointment is a hard pill to swallow. My go-to nervous system response is fight, but I’ve spent enough time with myself by now to not just go there with someone I love. Still, the defenses showed up. We were in a real tussle, two different opinions, neither of us backing down easily. It took a while to work through.
We didn’t fully resolve it. Some conflicts don’t. But it wasn’t a train smash of a fight, and we agreed to move forward and make some shifts for the next class together.
I’m telling you this because it’s part of what’s inspiring my next Friendship workshop.
This time, we’ll spend part of the class working through a process for a specific friendship pattern or curiosity of your own c something real, something you bring in with you. I worked out the shape of this one with my wife, because at the end of the day, relationship strife almost always shows up as a pattern, and patterns are things we can actually work with.
I’m genuinely excited about this one.
Join me in October. 1, 8 & 15th October. 12-1:15pm EST. Live and recorded.
P.S. You can still join my upstate retreat as a commuter. Drive on over for all programming at Menla, Phoenicia, NY.