Below you'll find a list of all posts from 2017
I LOVE celebrating a new year. There is something about a fresh start and the prospect of change that incites optimism and hope in me each year. As I reflect on the start of 2018, I think about not only the changes I’d like to see in myself, but also the changes I’d like to see in the world. This …
When Dickens set up his novel The Tale of Two Cities with his famous line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of time….”, he may have well been describing December. December. A month filled with a myriad of emotion. For some, it’s their favorite time of year, for others their least. For some, a time of …
Day light savings has been hard on my family. Driving my kids home from school last week around 4:30PM, when the light was already waning and evening quickly setting in, my son Jack asked from the back seat, “When is the darkest day of the year?” I was surprised by the foreboding tone of my voice when I uttered, “Oh, …
I first came across the iceberg as a metaphor for the mind during grad school in the 90’s. It was also around this time that the movie Titanic was released making it all the more potent as fresh in my mind was Jack and Rose watching the Titanic crash into the iceberg sending shards of ice across the deck of …
Happy Fall Equinox! The 4 juncture points when the seasons change all carry their own unique energy. Winter is reprieve, Spring is rebirth, Summer is play, and Fall is surrender. Today marks the start of a period of letting go. I’ve always struggled with Fall, this season of death. Mid-August I begin to feel agitated and unsettled, that familiar sense …
I did something I’ve actually never done before (unless it came after birthing a baby). I took 6 whole weeks off. Last March I had the sense that I needed to take a chunk of time off this summer to write and create space in my life. I bounced the idea around in my head for weeks but usually …
You win the award, get the promotion, hit the bestseller list, marry the person of your dreams, move into the house of your dreams. 18 months. This is about the max amount of time we get to feel the euphoria of something great happening in our lives, and typically it’s even less time than that. Even lottery winners who often …
I’ve taken on an extra job of taxi driver this Spring carting kids every night to soccer, flag football, cello, golf, or running club. I’ve felt irritable and a bit crazed by the extra activities and my mind has focused solely on the downsides of these choices. It helped me this week when I ran across a book I read …
TTP. These 3 letters changed my life. My professor Dr Clay wrote them on a chalkboard 20 years ago in a graduate school class I was taking. TRUST THE PROCESS he taught us fledgling counselors filled with self-doubt on the cusp of seeing “real patients”. Whenever we are learning something new, or facing the prospect of change and jumping into …
I’ve been making Valentine’s with my daughter Gretta who is obsessed with hearts. She is drawn to anything with hearts: heart socks, heart cereal, heart stickers, heart hair clips. Gretta might be one of the most open-hearted and loving people I know, so her affinity to hearts isn’t shocking. What does being open hearted mean? When you are around someone …
