The V-Word

“Keep constantly in mind in how many things you yourself have witnessed changes already. The universe is change, life is understanding”. – Marcus Aurelius

One of the most profound wonders of raising children is the seemingly effortless capacity of change that comes within the territory of childhood. Before your eyes and not infrequently over night, my children will wake up changed. Sometimes it...

“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...

“Your boundaries are the measure of your friendship with yourself.”

An old friend once told me that your boundaries are the truest measure of how you love yourself. I thought I understood the meaning at the time. Raising four children should have bestowed on me a mastery of setting limits and protecting my personal space over the last two decades. It hasn’t. I realized that the places where...

“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.” –Arnold H. Glasgow

There are still moments when something inside me refuses to just go with it. Air travel provokes some deep seated impatience in me. I am spending eight hours connecting and reconnecting to go a distance that should take two and half flight hours. Boarding, de-boarding and sitting...

“Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity” -Henry Hartman

I am getting ready for a very exciting opportunity tomorrow. I have a meeting with a large chain store buyer to inspire him about the virtues and potential of Good Clean Love products in his stores. I have been envisioning this meeting for years, taking the steps and preparing all the way, so that I can go into the...

“It’s so easy to think of the days gone by,

It’s a hard thing to think of the days to come,

But the grace to accept every moment as a gift

Is a gift that is given to some.

(Refrain) What can you do with your days, but work and hope

That your dreams bind your work to your play

What can you do

Every moment of your life, but

Love til you love it away.

There are sorrows enough for the whole...

“My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” -Henry Ford

We are not given many best friends in a life. Even if you don’t ascribe to the belief in reincarnation, there is something unique and extraordinary about how a best friend hears exactly what you mean when you speak. They laugh at all the right moments and can crack your heart open just by the tilt of their head in the middle...

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” -Ryunosuke Satoro

For me there is probably not a more intense interaction that I can have with humanity than when I become an air traveler. While I am intellectually conscious of the enormity of the world’s population, it is when I move through airports that I experience the vastness of humanity trying to move through space. It is in...

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.“ ~Robert Louis Stevenson

This is a very quick quest as night time is brief. I leave in the middle of the night to go see my oldest and dearest friend in the city where I spent the first decade of my adulthood. Leaving home is increasingly challenging for me as I have come to treasure the comforts of...