TRIGGER WARNING: This post includes a brief mention of childhood physical abuse and may be triggering to some readers. “The person who tries to keep everyone happy often ends up feeling the loneliest.” ~Unknown It’s Christmas morning. I’m seven years old. I sit on the hardwood floor with my sisters, in my nightgown surrounded by crumpled wrapping paper. I…
“Feelings come and go, like clouds in the sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh On the day my daughter Zoe turned seven weeks old, she burst into tears while I was changing her diaper. But why? What had I done? I remember panicking, confused, scared, and instantly guilty. Eventually, I noticed her pinky was twisted up…
“If you have ever followed a rainbow to its end, it leads you to the ground on which you are standing.” ~Alan Cohen There’s nothing more exhilarating than riding in a Jeep through masses of standing water. With each push forward, my friend Angela expertly maneuvered through enormous puddles, sending fountain-like arcs of aquatic glory past my passenger-side window….
“If you don’t like something, change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~Mary Engelbreit “So, what do you think?” my husband asked, the dinner table lit by the soft glow of the overhead light. He’d been talking for a while, and I knew I should have been listening. “What do you think?”…
“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.” ~Akshay Dubey The realization came to me during a chaotic day at the Philadelphia public school where I worked as a counselor. A young student sat across from me, her body language mirroring anxiety patterns I knew all too well—the slightly hunched shoulders,…
“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” ~Dan Millman For as long as I can remember, my mind has been a never-ending maze of what-ifs. What if I make the wrong decision? What if I embarrass myself? What if I fail? My brain worked overtime, analyzing every possibility, replaying past…
“Happiness in simplicity can be achieved with a flexible mindset and nine hours sleep each night.” ~Dalai Lama It happened again. I got up after being awake all night, wondering where I’d gone for the past nine hours. I remember laying my head on the pillow, exhausted, happy to finally close my burning eyes. My body settled sweetly into…
The news: everything is bad. Poets: okay, but what if everything is bad and we still fall in love with the moon and learn something from the flowers. ~Nikita Gill My dad died when I was thirty-one. I wasn’t a child but barely felt like an adult. He had reached retirement, but only just. Mary Oliver got it right…
“Being free isn’t actually that easy.” ~Unknown I’ve always been an achiever. I’ve worked hard to reach goals: I was good at school, then got a good job, and ended up making good money. My colleagues valued my clear view of the goal, my ability to break down the big task into parts that one can work on, casting…
There I was, eating cereal and watching a CNN documentary about Kobe Bryant—yes, I mix deep life reflection with Raisin Bran—when his old speech teacher said something that made me pause mid-chew. He described Kobe’s approach to life as giving everything—heart, soul, and body—to his craft. No halfway. Just all in. I sat there thinking, “Yes! That’s it!” That’s the…
