A sunlit forest clearing surrounded by tall trees, with warm light opening through the center.
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Holding the Room Without Owning the Outcome

One of the hardest and most liberating truths of facilitation, mediation, coaching, consulting, and leadership is that brave space cannot be held by the facilitator alone. Our role is to create the conditions where bravery becomes more possible.…
A rocky uphill trail winding through sunlit grasses and hills.
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Brave Space Is the Right Kind of Hard

My own journey into the arena of brave spaces began long before M E Clarke Consulting existed. In my early twenties, I studied peace and conflict resolution at American University, where I first began to understand that conflict is not simply…
Descriptive image of a bridge near water
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What Gets You in the Door, Won’t Keep You in the Room: A Reckoning with Burnout

Burnout is rarely a personal failure. More often, it is a signal that the way work is structured, decisions are made, and success is defined is no longer sustainable. The grit that builds an organization in its early stages can quietly become the very thing that exhausts the leader who built it.
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Your Leadership Matters

Your leadership still matters. Your presence, your care, and the way you tend to your organization and team matter. In fact, they matter more than ever. Yes, action is needed, but it may not be the action you think. Often, what is most needed…
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Significance and Value

Have you ever spent time looking at individual grains of sand up close? Microscopically - wow! Even to the naked eye, they are remarkably different and beautiful. All together with the other grains of sand, they make up the beach. None of them…
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Lessons in Letting Go

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” ~ Eckhart Tolle In the spring of 2021, I said yes to the opportunity of a lifetime: linking arms with Meghan to step into the heart-centered…
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Surmounting the Job Hunt: Anecdotes of Home and Work

I am watching the sun set on La Jolla Shores beach for the first time in over ten years. I moved into my studio apartment 17 days ago, and I slowly exhale the salty ocean air, relieved at the thought that my new bed—albeit cheap, inflatable,…
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Trails of Life

I am grateful to have the opportunity to be able work with such awesome people on incredible community building projects with M E Clarke Consulting. Life takes us on a journey of various trails throughout life, sometimes those trails are through…
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Fifteen Years of Learning…and Counting!

It’s almost unfathomable that this small, impactful practice has existed for 15 years. After years of working with others, in 2008, I set out with a fierce independence to create this practice. To say that it - that I - have morphed and grown…
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Thoughts on Consumption

Lessons from a Weekend Trip to the Mall A few weekends ago my husband and son were out-of-town. When they’re gone my daughter and I typically have a “girls weekend.” Usually we cook one of her favorite meals or order takeout and watch…
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Stepping Into My Calling

Recently my friend Tina asked me to speak to the Parents of Addicted Loved Ones (PALs), a group of folks who are in the midst of the anguish and darkness called addiction. I thought “what could I possibly have to share with these people…