Saddle up and shine.

Author: Malena Putnam

  • Get Out: Dance Like Nobody’s Watching

    Ritual, romance, expression, healing, entertainment. Dance has no known beginning and will likely see no end. While it’s incorporated into culture and styles, dance is universal as well as personal. Some of my earliest memories involve dance: watching my grandparents two-step in our living room; my grandfather teaching me to two-step; car dancing with my “Fab…

  • Get Out/Get Real: What do you do with your freedom?

    I’m writing a novel about a young Marine amputee coming back after war in Iraq to a sleepy town in Texas and I’ve had the privilege of interviewing several vets – a Navy Seal, two Navy pilots, two Marines and two Army vets. I’ve immersed myself in research about amputees, Iraq, military deployment, PTSD and a…

  • Get Out: She’s Gone Country

    If you’re new to my blog, “Hey!” I started the year blogging about “getting real” about our lives as I worked to transform the Big Six: body, mind, spirit, work, home, relationships. So you can scooch on back through the posts if you’re interested in those. I also post #getReal inspiration on Instagram and Twitter…

  • Get Out: A Girl Goes Solo Camping

    To say my family doesn’t like camping is an understatement. They are okay with cabins, but I’ve only slept in a tent with my Cub Scout – two of us amongst the pack. Prior to that I slept in a tent with my then-boyfriend (now husband) in the Grand Canyon in the ’90s. That was…

  • Get Out: Hike This, Hear That

    I grew up with weekends at the lake, my fishing pole sitting idle while I scrambled through the tall grass looking for horned toads and fleeing from crickets. Summer vacations were on the road, in the RV, bunking with my sisters and playing cards until it was time for us to tumble out and play…

  • Get Out Series: Inspired by Walter Mitty and Marina Keegan

    On a scale of 1 to 10, how adventurous is your life? How many new places and new experiences have you had recently? I’m shifting my Get Real series to Get Out for the summer, which goes with my own shift from more introspection to extroversion as spring turned to summer and I realized I…

  • Get Real: Owning our Energy and the Art of Shifting

    What energy do you bring to your interactions with others? What about your energy when you’re NOT around other people? Everything has energy and the more you research how energy affects us (from the planets to the phases of the moon to human interactions) the more I’ve become aware of the energy I’m bringing to…

  • Get Real: What refuels moms?

    It’s Mother’s Day weekend 2014 and I want to celebrate Motherhood, but since this is my Get Real series where we search for our authentic truth, I wanted to share mamas occupying my heart this week and Mom Fuel: 1. Wanda Wonder Mama.  Wanda Pratt was a single mom and did what most moms do in sacrificing…

  • Get Real: Finding Flow and Navigating Transformation

    In today’s final mediation in the Finding Flow series, Deepak said, “beautiful truths that lie dormant are not enough.” If you REALIZE something but do not ACTIVATE it into the world, then we are not taking the crucial step necessary to being true to who we are.  I radiate light. That was today’s centering thought, but…

  • Get Real: What does living with intention mean?

    After I set this year’s theme to “live with intention” with the call to action to “get real”, I found the following poem from Mary Anne Radmacher whose book is actually called, “Live with Intention.” Obviously, I’m meant to share it with you. Even if all we did was live by this poem, we’d be in…