Natalie Ogbourne

Gifts & Graces | Summer 2022

Gifts & Graces | Summer 2022

For more years than I care to admit, July 1 has settled in with a heavy sense of loss. Summer, I believed, was almost over. This is as unhelpful as it is untrue. How can a season that was born just days before be nearly at its end? Maturity is teaching me to take on...
Gifts and Graces | Spring 2022

Gifts and Graces | Spring 2022

One practice I use to keep me oriented to the features of the landscape of my life is to list the season’s gifts and graces. It’s a simple way to fix my eyes on the good so I can do my part to foster a hopeful perspective and healthy mindset. The list is...
One Way We Find Our Way

One Way We Find Our Way

“This way, Babe.” Late the night before, my husband, J, and I had checked into a hotel in Nebraska. Now it was morning, time to resume our road trip. I stepped out of our room and turned to the right, which, apparently, was wrong. “Really?” I asked. I was sure this...
Winter Gifts and Graces

Winter Gifts and Graces

Of the practices I use to foster a hopeful perspective and healthy mindset, keeping a list of the season’s gifts and graces is the simplest. Somewhere along the line, I started rearranging it into a bell shape and now I can’t really stop. This...
Gifts and Graces | Fall 2021

Gifts and Graces | Fall 2021

  I have a long history of believing the way it is today is the way it always will be. This is especially true when I find myself traveling tough terrain but it spills over into easy stretches, too. Maybe you can identify.  As a mindset, it doesn’t serve well. It...
One Easy Way to Miss Your Life

One Easy Way to Miss Your Life

We walked out of the bustling hotel lobby into the stillness of a crisp mountain morning. It was the end of September, well into the annual elk rut. Gone was the previous evening’s circus of bull-horn-brandishing rangers trying to keep space between territorial bulls...