Good Clean Reads

I remember many years ago when I was deep into the juggling mothering phase of life with my four kids. Back then, I was the only driver and their lives were filled up with games, lessons and play dates. Sometimes I would wake in the early morning, anxiously trying to figure out how I could cross town and get 2 kids where they needed to go within the same hour. One of my oldest friends who was...

“Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.” -The Dalai Lama XIV

It is an odd and painful irony that often just as things are really coming together successfully in life, we often lose touch with the love that had inspired us to get there. We expect just the opposite. In our longings for whatever we aspire to, we believe wholeheartedly that achieving our dreams and...

“The chains of habits are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”   -Samuel Johnson

To a large extent we are what we do every day. To an even larger extent, the human experience is a habitual one. This is why it isn’t that surprising that for the majority of us, even our thoughts are habitual. I have read that as much as 95% of our some 60,000 thoughts that fill our...

“What should young people do with their lives today?  Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”  -Kurt Vonnegut

Community is one of the values of living in America that has been shortchanged in our digital revolution. It’s demise began as our historic family structures have become dismantled as part...

I have learned how to care for myself. Yesterday was a painful experience of witnessing and releasing some of the hardest aspects of my childhood. I am grateful to know I am not being held by the story anymore and what a fortunate circumstance to have a chance to enjoy the gifts of being American that I have only enjoyed once before. Our nation’s capital is awash in cultural richness. Within...

I came to celebrate my mother’s 75^thBirthday. I was committed to not making it worse. I was just aiming for 5% better. The thing about letting go of the past is that you have to be willing to experience the emotions to release them. Anything else is a lie, a cover-up, a turning away. I came to let go of the past and be with my mother as she is. I wanted also to apologize for the disrespect and...

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”  -Victor Hugo

A new friend reminded me today that the patience and tenderness that I seek for my estranged family is in reality a search for love in myself. Most of us have been confused by the idea that forgiveness is primarily an action we offer for others. This is the juncture where we lose our intention to love, because we believe that by...

 “Forgiveness is the final form of love.” –Reinhold Niebuhr

Not long ago at a conference, a woman I was sitting with was saying how happy she is to have no contact with her children. The next day, another woman was describing what a relief it was to no longer communicate with her mother. These comments are not unusual. In fact, according to Dr. Josh Coleman, author of When Parents Hurt, the...

“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow men.” -Gandhi

We are basically good.  I trust this belief and try to live my life through this window of the world. All of my work on behalf of my beloved Positive Change Clubis my most recent training ground, and there are days when I lose sight of my mission. I question my sanity in the moments when it feels...