Good Clean Reads

I spent most of my youth after my parents’ divorce trying to make a family to replace the broken, violent home from which I came. I didn’t just want friends, I wanted sisters to stand beside me and help me learn what unconditional love feels like. I longed for a best friend. I met Sarah when I was 21. Within a week of knowing each other I was driving her daughter in her car to a language camp that...

“In the last minutes of your life, it won’t matter what you have collected, where you have travelled, how much you have in the bank.  The only thing that will matter to you is who you loved and who loved you back…” 

If you have ever met me in person, it is likely that by the end of our conversation I may have said these words to you. I live my life by them and am convinced that the purpose of...

“Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible – it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.” –Barbara de Angelis

Becoming more intentional in your life, especially when it comes to matters that engage our emotional intelligence and heart opening is the only path to a meaningful...

I have spent the weekend putting old photos in frames. Some of the photos are images of people I have never met, pictures that I found while cleaning out my dad’s apartment after his death. There are images of him as a baby being bathed by his mother in 1933, and as a toddler and as a young boy riding a bike. I see a resemblance to my own son as I pick and choose among the moments of his life long...

“Love can, in fact, reinvent the world.” -Wendy Strgar,

Blogging days are over. And as much as I love to ponder and write about what it takes to make love real, it is clear that this weekly monologue of mine about sustainable love must evolve into something that actually impacts the experience of love in the world. Lucky for me that I met a social movement architect who has helped us conceive of...

Even for as long as I have been studying positivity consciousness and working on maintaining a daily practice, it still surprises me that the simplest, seemingly the most basic aspects recede from view. It was upon listening to a Pema Chodron lecture on joy that I realized what was keeping me from experiencing positivity lately. When she was explaining the basic experience of joy, she shared a...

“When you hold a grudge, you want someone else’s sorrow to reflect your level of hurt but the two rarely meet.” -Steve Mariboli

 

There are few things that make me ruminate like the abrupt endings of relationships. In fact, there is little that matters more to me than reconciliation, forgiveness and harmony with the people that I value and love. Still, I have my challenges, and like most of us...

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live...

The most effective mind-shifting, gratitude-awakening thought I have is when I ask myself to seriously consider how many more times I will have to do the thing right in front of me. I remember reading this thought somewhere where the author realistically assessed just how many more nights like this one would you see a sunset that makes your jaw drop? I can’t remember how many nights I watched my...