The V-Word

“For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice – no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.”  ~John Burroughs

It is perhaps the deepest aspect of our human nature to seek security and assurance. This innate need is the foundation of our survival mechanism and fuels the multibillion dollar insurance...

by Elizabeth Spannuth

I am going through the painful process of sourcing independent health insurance. I have had group insurance for the last 10 years, so initially I was just plain confused by the terms and intricacies of each plan, as well as being shocked by the monthly premium. My insurance agent patiently explained it to me about 10 times and helped clear the fog. Then I started filling out...

by Tina Tessina

The skills couples need to keep intimacy alive in a long-term relationship differ from new relationship intimacy skills, and they’re not obvious because people don’t talk about them. Most couples need to lower their expectations of romance and glamour and raise the level of fun they have together. Regular weekly talks (I call them State of the Union discussions) keep the problems...

Ever wonder about the twilight years of human sexuality? Listen as Joan Price, senior sexpert and author of Better than I ever expected and Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex dispels the myths of aging sexuality and replaces the current medicalized notions of sexual dysfunction with a candid conversation about how sex lives and intimate relationships can change and heal us over time. Inspired by her...

I spent yesterday afternoon in the haunted cell block of Alcatraz with my curious teenagers. The boat ride over the sunny bay with the glistening San Francisco skyline as background belied the intensity of what was to come. Alcatraz, now a national park, is a shrine to the maximum security holding facility, infamous for being inescapable. Here was the solution for the mobsters and incorrigible...

Here is the remarkable truth about focusing your life on gratitude- you attract people who live the same way. Yesterday, my meetings felt more like the reuniting of my tribe than they did business meetings. The business was the context, but the gratitude consciousness was the true exchange. There was no convincing or selling any ideas, just a true and resonant sharing that what is most real and...

by Anastasia Strgar

My boyfriend, an avid golfer, is playing in a golf tournament this weekend and thus came to me in our new home the other day letting me know that if he’s practicing a lot it’s A) because he loves to golf and B) because he really wants to play well this weekend. However, he also had kept in mind that A) we’re in the process of moving in and B) didn’t want me to feel like my...

I was recently talking to some of my son’s friends who are all graduating from High school and they were telling me that no one uses birth control anymore. The boys said condoms kill all the feelings and the girls believe that the rhythm method is effective and less toxic than the pill. I was shocked and had no idea that the safe sex talk has reverted to the plan B pill in their mind. Is this...

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.”  ~Meister Eckhart

Travel is a compressed reflection of how we live in the world. Leaping out of our regular day to day and moving through new places and sometimes time zones amidst millions of strangers is an incredible opportunity to witness how you hold yourself in the world. It shines a direct light on how...