About

Hello and Welcome to Life with Alegria

where I savour the joy in our world through words, wanderings and a writing community. Here on my website and on my Substack Soullionaire, you’ll find soulful reflections for those longing to live with joy, notice nature’s magic, and create with courage in the second half of life.

Words offers you lyric essays and poetry that explores the sacred ordinary, often overlooked moments, and the beauty of life with its magic and its potholes. Hopefully more magic than potholes.

Wanderings is where we slow down to explore. Here you will find slow soulful travel experiences that immerse you in the magnificence of our world. This isn’t about travel guides or crowded itineraries. It is an invitation to experience the real sensory heartbeat of the places I visit, experiences that you may find some joy in, too.

The Writing Community is a place where we gather online once a month to journal together. I call it Ink + Soul and it is free for all my Substack subscribers. It is a warm generous place where we write freely from the heart, letting the ink flow and setting our souls free. This is not a place of perfection, but a safe and supportive space of presence where we allow our love of writing to thrive. Come meet some writerly friends.

I am a retired finance executive (yes, I know!), former professor, and now a writer who finds joy in writing from the heart and believes in the magic of the sacred everyday, noticing the tiny intricate details that bring joy to life.

Literature and language have always held magic for me. I love both reading and writing. Though I am still a writer in the season of becoming, I have diverse writing experience. Beginning with poetry and journalling as a child and then later as an adult, I founded and sold a healthy lifestyle magazine, wrote a column for an established city newspaper as part of their community editorial board, and have written a custom finance book for my students. I’ve also been writing here for close to a decade. And I still love writing and commonplacing. Don’t get me started on notebooks, stickers and washi tape.

Most recently I published Bloom, A Poetic Journal for Writers in the Season of Becoming. You can find it and other resources here, some free.

If you are the kind of person who finds joy in old books and ethereal sunsets, in the shape of a flower’s petals and how the sun glints off resting waves, in clouds that drift by an airplane’s window and warm tea sipped from vintage teacups, in the scent of cut grass and the slow unhurried exploration of a new place on our planet, then we are kindred spirits.

Subscribe to join this beautiful community and live life with alegria (joy).

Find free resources and my books here