The V-Word

Here is an interesting dilemma on being human. You can see that what you are doing is not working. You might be getting consistent negative results, which is to say you are stressed, overwhelmed and in doubt about your present course and still it is somehow easier to stay the rocky course than face the empty space of not knowing how to do it differently. Here is the thing, you have to stop doing what isn’t working and give yourself the time and space for personal development to figure out how to reinvent the process. It seems like a no-brainer. It should be easy actually.

There are days I long to look up and see an opening in the sky that would remind me of the truth about life. I work to see and to believe that life is good and our inclination to love is always one to be trusted. However, sometimes love and trust are not companions — affairs happen, partners are left, love goes unrequited, and accidents of the heart happen as frequently as they do with dishes.

I...

I have been feeling like something has been broken inside for a couple of months now. For a while it showed itself in a variety of back and neck ailments, but lately it is more diffuse and more amorphous. Sometimes it is a physical sensation, but just as frequently it is a visceral experience of being overwhelmed and exhausted. The drive part of me is stalled.

In part at least, it is impossible...

This week I had a near miss. The gynecologist’s office called to have me redo my mammogram because there was a lump present. Every woman’s worst nightmare and one that becomes a life transformation for one out of seven. After a few harrowing hours I learned that it was benign. A new lease on life. The sky seemed bigger and the relationships that define my life so much more precious.

Valentine’s...

Here is one of the sweetest stories to come across the front page of the newspaper in a long time. Not far from Mantua, Italy, the home of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, this neolithic couple who lived over 5000 years ago were found on their sides holding each other, a very unique find in that period. “Double burials in the Neolithic are unheard of and these are even hugging.” Menotti, the...

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."

-Mary Oliver

I am learning hour by hour what sustainable love means these days. It begins with me- in me actually. My lip service to the overwhelming level of activities and demands that drive my lifestyle is just not good enough. It isn’t possible to just keep saying how tired you are if you keep going at the same pace. The same is true with your partner. You can’t say how much you wish you had more time for...

Lying on my back staring up at the ceiling over the last several days has given me an opportunity to reflect. Enforced stillness will do that to even the most stubborn among us. Refusing all opportunities to create quiet in the hectic pace that I call my life, finally my body gave it to me- no questions asked.

A friend of mine suggested that I put my hand on my back and ask what it was trying to...

Our physical pain gives voice to all that we refuse to hear and say. On a recent visit with my mother, our emotional truce was based on an agreement to not say our real feelings or expect to be heard or understood. Before her arrival, I was convinced that I was over my need for anything from her. A couple of days into the visit, I slipped on icy stairs and fell squarely on my butt...