“Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have.” -Unknown

These days I feel swallowed up in the experience of grief and loss. Even as there is a part of me that recognizes the massive changes that are happening inside Good Clean Love are fulfilling my dreams, I can’t seem to explain or move through the heartbreak of losing control of a...

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” -Robert McCloskey

Again I am facing the painful awareness of the places where I continue to fall short in my capacity to relate. The ability to communicate at home, at work, and in life is a strong barometer and predictor of our success in the relationships that...

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”  -Alan Lakein

The idea of business planning used to make me cringe. I knew it was the respectable thing to do, but I couldn’t get my mind to think that way. Raising four children had taught me over and over again that planning is what you do while life is happening and redirecting you. I tried a couple of...

“A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.”   -Leo Rosten

Communication is the essence and primary vehicle for most everything in life. Everyone does it all the time, with and without agreed upon signals, words, expressions. Communication...

“Whatever you are willing to put up with, is exactly what you will have.” Anonymous

It is never too late to learn about your boundaries. I am coming to believe that it is perhaps one of the aspects of living that most defines our maturity and facility for accomplishing our goals. Boundary issues are common to most of us, but for some of us, like me, their absence colors every relationship I have...

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.  ~Victor Hugo

Like millions of other young girls in this country, my daughters were raised with the Disney girls. My eldest was a long-time fan of both Lindsay Lohan and Hillary Duff and witnessed with disbelief as their girl-next-door appearances slipped into sex symbol and their lives slipped out of control in...

Most things in life are developmental. Human lifespan has programmed continuous growth and maturation into our genetic code, which acts as an imperative that makes skill building one of the richest aspects of daily living. Nowhere is this truer than in our foundational relationship to our sexuality.

“There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant...

“A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” ~Lois Wyse

Lunch today with my friend Lucy was a great gift. Our friendship started through the friendship of our sons and has grown well past theirs. She is one of the most optimistic realists I have ever known. Ever the voice of thoughtful reason, her positive spin on...

“After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life” -Evelyn Underhill

I should have been feeling great after all the rich meditation time I had over the weekend. Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect and the intrusions and details of life, the seemingly never ending responsibilities that I have collected...

“Children are one third of our population and all of our future.” ~Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, 1981

I grew up in an unfortunate family with parents who were unhappy and dissatisfied with themselves and each other. There was little left for the kids and no real relationships developed or were fostered in the house. Culminating in an ugly divorce, the distance between my...

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” ~Albert Einstein

My kids taught me to text. They all have cell phones that they rarely answer except if I am calling, the condition that I set for paying for all their texting. But if I want an immediate response I know better, I text. Texting is actually quite convenient for taking care of the mundane details that...

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts…” –William Shakespeare

The distance between our public persona and our private selves defines our lives and relationships in ways that everyone experiences, but cannot always name. The truth of this was written large at the middle school talent...