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Day 97: Acceptance not Apathy
“Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there’s all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.” -Arthur Gordon
My contractor, Robert showed up to build the shelves we had planned out yesterday. He...
Life That Works: Learning Acceptance
“Acceptance is not submission, it is acknowledgment of the facts of a situation. Then deciding what you are going to do about it.” -Kathleen Theisen
There is great beauty and strength in learning to see and accept things as they are. It is an easy and invisible reaction to look away from the facts, to refuse to see what the world is showing us in order to protect our own ideas about how things are...
Day 249: Belonging to Oneself
“The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.” ~Michel de Montaigne
Most of us are plagued with some degree of unworthiness. Even after close to 250 days of active work at creating a positive life, I still find the tendrils of connection to a belief that seems to be part of my genetic code. It equates my pain in life to something wrong with me. I know I am not alone in this...
Day 141: Seeking Balance
“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.” -Carl Gustav Jung
Today positivity means balance. The Buddhist teachings on equanimity are the texts I study, and today I realize that I need to double my efforts. The height of...
No Value in Separation
“All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.” -Lao Tzu
Recently, it has dawned on me that I have spent many years of my life keeping myself apart from other people in ways that I didn’t even recognize. Whether it is in my unseen judgments of other people’s choices and behaviors, or the ways that I am unavailable to listen to others, or...
3 Ways Gratitude Makes You Sexy
Sex appeal is the most vibrant form of gratitude that we embody. It is a magical alchemy of feeling good enough in your body that you can say yes to all the visceral and sensory life experiences that are the stuff of memory and the container of relationships. Trusting yourself to say yes is to open up to the constant.
Abiding in Intimacy: Making Love Sustainable talks with a Dudeist
After we posted “Relaxing: The ‘Big Lebowski’ Approach,” we got an email from a man named Gary Silvia. He introduced himself as a Reverend in the Church of the Latter-Day Dude, and said he thought Making Love Sustainable readers might be interested in knowing more about Dudeism and its relaxed approach to living.
We agreed, and we emailed Reverend Silvia some questions asking more about Dudeism...
Loving the Difficult (Mother)
A few weeks ago I started to feel a heaviness in my lungs that I was sure was pneumonia. I felt run down and my throat got irritated. I will be so sick in a few days, I thought, but then I wasn’t. I felt fine again. My mom called to tell me she had pneumonia.
I don’t believe anything spookier than coincidence happened here, except that it reminded me of what an intimate connection I still have...
Staying With Yourself
“The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.” -Michel de Montaigne
I am convinced that the most significant and meaningful change we can make within all of our relationships begins with our foundational ability to relate to our selves. This teaching is ancient and lies at the heart of every spiritual discipline. The Buddha summed it up saying: “You yourself, as much as...
Podcast 07: The Edge of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is giving up the possibility of a better past. It is the path of redemption where life can move forward from the present moment, where the past fades with memory and we have the internal space to accept the daily imperfections of life with those we love as they are. It is a true forgetting, this forgiveness that frees the victim as deeply as the perpetrator.
Sex & Chronic Illness
At first it may not be obvious how sex and chronic illness are related: what context could they possibly share? Yet spend any time at all not feeling well, or worse, and you’ll know intimately how sex and illness both depend completely on the body. And how, paradoxically, when the body is ailing, a desire for pleasure, any desire at all, can feel impossible.
As Wendy has written, “Our body...
Day 281: Willingness, Trust, Practice
Today I had the pleasure of being reminded of the three most important qualities on my journey to a positive, constructive life. More importantly I realized again that there is no there that I am getting to. Arriving is right here and now, this is as good as it gets if we are willing to accept life as it is and to go with the changes as they present themselves.
Paulo Coelho summarized the truth of...
If You Want to Climb a Mountain, Start at the Top
“We have to fully accept that we’re also starting from where we are, but we also have to accept that where we are is not a place. We are all arrows in mid-flight, where we are is a moment on a trajectory, not a position at rest.” -Bodhipaksa
Some doubts carries wisdom and insight. Having the capacity to reflect on our life choices and experience with intellectual honesty is a gift that brings you...
Choosing the Right Kind of Doubt
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. “ -Bertrand Russell
Some doubts carries wisdom and insight. Having the capacity to reflect on our life choices and experience with intellectual honesty is a gift that brings you more deeply in touch with your feelings and more honestly able to assess where you are in...
Remembering and Forgetting
“The most precious gift that marriage gave me was the constant impact of something very close and intimate, yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant – in a word, real.” -C.S. Lewis
Another powerful way to ground the idea of holding on and letting go in our intimate relationships is to reflect on our memory. The things that we choose to remember about the people we love, as well as what we...
4 Ways to Embrace the Work of Love
I am not sure if it is a primarily Western mentality that presumes that life will be easy, and as an extension it will require little effort. In fact, we belittle work as an encumbrance, instead of recognizing it for the value it brings to who we become as people. This phenomenon is true in many places in life, but none so much as in the world of relating.
Teach Yourself to Receive Love in 5 Steps
The holiday season is here, which means there’s more than enough love to go around. Families and friends are coming together to share the holiday spirit. It is the time for gift-giving and sharing love for one another.
The Heart of a Happy Marriage
“The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.” -Oscar Wilde
I know my marriage is an anomaly. Happy marriages are rare. For as much as we all long for a relationship that we can grow old in, we don’t really believe in them. I think this might be because many people confuse the early “in love” experience of relating with the ongoing effort of creating a love...
Where Definitions Collide
What does sex mean to you? While no one else can provide an intrinsic meaning to the concept or practice of sexuality we all struggle with defining this most basic and integral part of ourselves.
“We are the recorders and reporters of facts – not the judges of the behaviors we describe.”-Alfred Kinsey
What does sex mean to you? While no one else can provide an intrinsic meaning to the concept...
Practices for Emotional Resilience
The truth is that the most challenging and significant relationship in any and every life is the one you have with yourself. It is the foundation for all the other relationships that your life holds and, in fact, dictates both your capacity to love and be loved by everyone else. Seeing through this lens, it is clear that the circumstances and relationships on the outside are a mirror of the peace or turmoil that is present within my relationship with myself.
Getting the Hurt We Believe We Deserve
“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” -Buddha
I have come to believe that so many relationships are so hurtful because we believe that is the love we deserve. For years after my parents’ divorce, I watched my mother have a 30- year affair with a man who would never really show up for her in the ways she needed. She would end it over and...
Suffering’s Sweetness
“You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch your heart and your turn it into compassion.” -Gyalwa Karmapa
Part of the daily Buddhist meditation that is known the world over is “May you be free from suffering…” The tradition teaches that suffering is as much part of life is as love and joy, certainly you don’t have to dive too deep into world current events or even probably the...
Day 119: 12,000 Forms Of Imperfection
“If everything is imperfect in this imperfect world, love is most perfect in its perfect imperfection.” –Gunnar Bjˆrnstrand
We strive for perfection even as we would readily admit that we and life are far from perfect. Things gone wrong, small errors in calculation, misjudgments are all part and parcel of life in 3D on earth. Learning to see the imperfections and failures that our life...
The Opening Door – Show 47: Dr. Robert Augustus Masters, Knowing Your Shadow
The doorway to our deepest freedom comes through cultivating intimacy with our own emotional life. Don’t miss Dr. Robert Masters, author of 14 books including his most recent Emotional Intimacy walk us through accessible ways to identify, understand and befriend your emotional responses to life. We ignore our emotions at our own peril as the act of suppressing our truth clouds reality and...
A Vulnerable, Yet Confident Heart
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, here is an idea that not only promises to make the holiday more enjoyable, but also has the potential to benefit your relationship for months afterward: working with the contradictions in your heart by finding balance and even synergy between seemingly opposing emotions.
You Are Your Own Best Friend
by Kristin Neff
The golden rule tells us that we should treat others as we would want them to treat us. Maybe so, but hopefully we won’t treat them even half as badly as we treat ourselves.
“You’re so lame!”
“What a screw-up!”
“How can you ever show your face in public again!”
Would you talk this way to a friend — or even to a stranger, for that matter? Of course not. (Or at least I hope not!)...
Weeding the Relationship Garden
“You must weed your mind as you would weed your garden.” ~Terri Guillemets
I learned about weeds before I learned anything about gardens. For my 40thbirthday my husband built me a beautiful, secure deer fence and I was told to use straw to augment and lighten the heavy clay soil. The straw turned out to be hay and seeded itself heartily throughout the space. I was overwhelmed with weeds that I...
Seeing What Is – Clarity Through the Heart
The Buddha famously taught “With our thoughts we make the world.” True wisdom begins when we recognize the extent to which we are a captive audience to the voice inside our head. It is this inner reality and the often invisible relationship we have with ourselves that literally creates our lives. More surprising – and perhaps more subtle – is how this world inside our head also acts as a filter for everything we perceive outside of us. In short, the world happening around us becomes what we t...
Day 306: Small Steps
“True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice.” -St. Francis of Assisi
Today, my book Love that Works was accepted by an alternative publishing house/distributor for national distribution! I am overjoyed to be part of the 3% of the material that they accept and promote. I must admit that I had some shadows of doubt that I was continuously having to sweep aside about whether my...
Day 339: Confident Rendering
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lie within us.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most gratifying part of growing up and into our selves is the gift of trusting oneself. It is perhaps the most challenging of all personal development tasks, and there are many people who get stuck at various levels of adolescent insecurity for life. Having come to know this...
You Get What You Need
“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.”
That Rolling Stones refrain is playing in my head repeatedly of late and it seems clear that this is as true a love song as I have ever known. Although I would never have thought it in my earlier years, what I know of love that has staying power is that it is actually rarely about what you want. Growing up and...
The Vulnerable Confident Heart
“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.’ -Madeleine L’Engle
The life of the heart is one of contradictions. It is where our greatest strengths are often our most profound weaknesses. Finding balance between seemingly opposing forces or feelings is key to...
Day 336: Charting a New Course
“We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today, the winds shifted and opportunities for new beginnings were everywhere. After many days of trying and failing to get a job posting public, it finally went live and the response was resounding....
Everything Is Normal
Recently I watched Emily Nagoski’s Ted Talk “Unlocking the Door to Your Authentic Sexual Wellbeing.” Whether or not you believe you have such a metaphorical door to “unlock,” I highly recommend Emily’s talk — she’s funny, engaging, and supports her claims about sex with science.
At the start of her talk, Emily shares feedback she received from students in a 1000-level sexuality course she taught...
Day 29: There’s No Place Like Home
“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.” ~Charles Dickens
I love to come home. I love to say the word home. Just the feel of it in my mouth relaxes me. It is where I rest most fully and where I connect most deeply. My home is in the midst of big trees where the air always smells sweet and you can...
The Power of Powerlessness
So I promised to keep you posted on my vigil in the dark. Suffice it to say that it continues despite all my protestations and multiple calls to all the powers that be… no electric solutions, no alternative power solutions, just the dark and cold of the longest nights of the year.
This is one of my main weaknesses, accepting powerlessness, in both the literal and emotional sense...
Redefining Polyamory
by Tinamarie Bernard
When one is young, the idea of a real and abiding love tends to resemble a fairy tale, and there is little room in the predictable lines of a storybook romance for the messy truths that adults sometimes find themselves in. That is because love, by its very nature, surprises. It thrills and moves us in ways unimaginable, and sometimes that means our heart is tugged in two...
Safe Words and The Freedom To Speak
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” MLK, Jr.
All of the things in life that we have no language for recede from view. And yet our inability to express the feelings and experiences that happen to us don’t make those feelings disappear entirely. Instead they take up residence in our body, manifesting in everything from anxiety attacks to unexplained physical...
Growing Up, Growing Older
“The only way that we can live is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” -C. Joybell
I am coming to the end of an era in my life as my youngest daughter celebrates her...
Making Peace in Mothering
“A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.” -Dorothy C. Fisher
For me, Mother’s Day has always been a mixed experience. As a daughter in a long line of wounded mothers, I have long struggled to reconcile myself with the painful history that I inherited. Learning to accept the mothering that I got and all that I didn’t was the foundation on which I built my own...
It Gets Better
I remember one of the fathers of a little girl on a soccer team I was coaching years ago who came out to me and told me he was going to go through a transgender process. We were friends, so I was able to ask him about his motivations to go through the painful and expensive process. He said he wanted to finally look how he felt.
Change from the heart
“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” George Bernard Shaw
The day I met my creative designer, the first question he asked me was: “can you change?” I paused for a moment, not really knowing what he was wanting me to change and said, “yes, I think I can change.” That was the beginning of the Good Clean Love design as it lives today. It is also a moment I often go back to in...
Dying For Love
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead
Of all the sciences, the one that is most compelling to me is Quantum Physics. A year ago I went to this remarkable Science and Non-Duality conference, where leading PhD quantum physicists convened with spiritual teachers, confirming the scientific...
Never Stop Finding Yourself
by Anastasia Strgar
Back in the day, girls were sent to college to find a husband. Once they did that, their entire lives revolved around taking care of their husband and their families. Their identities became grouped with their husband’s and they never really had a chance to develop their own identities. Flash forward 60 years to the “Me Generation.”
Today, girls are told to go to college and...
Bleeding Gratitude
“Judgments that constrain your giving are the very demons that are keeping you from receiving.” -Martha Beck
Sometimes life demands that we bleed. It isn’t enough to feel our painful stories echoing around in our heads; and even the familiar spasm in our backs behind our hearts is not sufficient to release the historic injuries of our childhood, so deeply ingrained that they become us. Sometimes...
Becoming Curious with Dr. Todd Kashdan
Becoming curious is one of the most expedient mind tools we have to creating a positive life and healthy relationships. Curiosity is the often untapped exploration dial in our brain which balances our tendency toward anxiety and opens the gate to more connected and fulfilling relationships. Don’t miss Todd Kashdan, author of Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Lifeenlighte...
Living in the Dark
We are having a wind storm here that has knocked out the power almost everywhere. We live in the country so when the power grid is shut down, days can go by without restoration. A couple of storms later we decided to diversify our power and installed a generator and propane system. On both the first and second occasion that we could have felt the benefits of our energy strategy, the system failed....