Love & Relationships Archives - Allison Evans Coaching

The Enneagram: Distinguishing the Person from the Persona

Who are we? Why do we do the things we do? I’ve always been fascinated by those questions, as curious about myself as about others. So when, as a girl, I encountered systems for describing types and decoding behavior, my imagination was captured. I wondered, “Could it really be this…

Allison EvansMarch 1, 2024

Love & Relationships Parenting & Family Life

The Spiritual Path of Motherhood

There are many paths to transformation, all of them hard and none superior to any other. I labored industriously as a student, relentlessly as a military officer, and tirelessly as a schoolteacher. But nothing changed me like motherhood.I recently wrote admiringly about the French approach to mothering that I encountered…

Allison EvansMay 9, 2024

Love & Relationships Parenting & Family Life The Work

Sexy Moms and Toddlers Who Dine: Lessons from the French

The MILF is not a thing in France. That was my biggest takeaway from the book Bringing Up Bébé, by Pamela Druckerman, an American journalist living and raising her kids in Paris. My children are grown, but I had to read this book because it is a Venn diagram of fascinations:…

Allison EvansApril 26, 2024

Love & Relationships Parenting & Family Life

Mind Your Busy-ness (Be Present Instead of Worried)

Mind your own business! I was a child the first time I heard that retort. I was leaning toward two girls in a tête-à-tête, straining to hear their whispered conversation. I understood the clapback immediately: I was prying into things that did not concern me. How, then, does it make…

Allison EvansApril 5, 2024

Love & Relationships

Marriage as Serious Play

Everybody knows that marriage is “hard work.” But is it? I mean, is that the best way to think of it? Maybe not. “Marriage is hard work” is not an immutable law of nature. It’s a manmade concept. A concept is a shortcut for the brain, a tool to help…

Allison EvansFebruary 16, 2024

Love & Relationships

A Valentine From Your Future Self

As I write, it’s early February – deep winter for those of us in Northern Hemisphere four-season climates – and we’re feeling it. The post-holiday glow has faded, and the excitement of New Year’s resolutions may be wearing thin. You may even be feeling nostalgic for the old (comfortable, easy)…

Allison EvansFebruary 2, 2024

Love & Relationships Potpourri

The Heroines Retreat

My coaching group, Be the Heroine, just had its first in-person retreat. We met for a long weekend in beautiful Ojai, California. It had been a cold, wet winter there, but spring sprang on the day of our arrival. The rain stopped, the sun warmed, and the hillsides from Los Angeles…

Allison EvansApril 11, 2023

Communication Love & Relationships Stop Suffering, Start Living

Underground Desire, Mangled Request

Dining room curtains recently taught me how complicated my relationship with desire is and how bad I am at asking for what I want. I bought the curtains a month ago, to complete our kitchen and dining room renovation. But it was another month before I bought the rods. I…

Allison EvansOctober 7, 2022

Love & Relationships Stop Suffering, Start Living

Finally Free

What you judge, you’re attached to. What you’re attached to, limits you. To release yourself from the limitations of attachments, release judgments. In other words: forgive.Forgiveness is close to my heart because last March I forgave something very big, and the results have astonished me: I feel freer than I ever have in…

Allison EvansSeptember 23, 2022

Love & Relationships

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