“In my own worst seasons, I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window.” – Barbara Kingsolver, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, essayist […]
Some wellness websites are now touting the health benefits of steeping poppy seeds into a strong brew to help with everything from anxiety and insomnia to workout recovery. Appealing to the “more is better” fallacy to drive sales, some poppy seed sellers are promoting their […]
I couldn’t believe it when I read the New York Time’s headline. I knew it. Gluteal amnesia, aka “Dead Butt Syndrome,” is a real thing. I’ve been going around for years polling family, friends and physical therapists about whether they engaged their glutes when they […]
Being able to navigate the overwhelming nature of distress is complicated by the way it focuses our attention right down to a pinpoint, confining us to a very small parcel of real estate in our mind. In this reduced space our entire field of vision […]
I’m writing this while under the influence of a meager five hours of sleep which means I am seriously under-resourced. (Not my fault; I gave a full 8-hour allotment my best shot.) Five hours may sound like a bonanza of sleep for some* but at […]
We all want to feel alive and feel the vitality of life coursing through us but lately my hands have made me aware of the very opposite, aware of vitality slipping away. Lately, these hands have become a big problem in my life. I’ve got […]
The worst part about life under the dominion of a toxic friend is the way that person manages to move in and take over your mind and body. A co-worker caught in that toxic dynamic started having chest pains so severe she had to go […]
That phrase, “Just getting through the day,” has always seemed like a lousy way to live, and yet that’s often my sense of how it’s done, how we talk about it, how I do it, using little stepping-stones of pleasure to keep me moving along. […]
It used to be that people in wealthier nations were happier than those in poorer countries and that those folks from the wealthier nations got even happier over time. But starting about 20 years ago that began to change. Why this is the case isn’t […]
There’s a line from The Dubliners, a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, that gets batted around frequently, leading me to believe it touches a nerve: “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” Never having read The Dubliners myself, I don’t […]
This is a story about a panic attack that threw a top-level, high-performing, rock-solid leader for a loop. For decades she’d been the person — at work and home alike – everyone turned to for steadiness, for staying power, for perspective, for answers. I will […]
When I was younger, I was overtaken by premenstrual syndrome (PMS) in a way that sometimes made me nervous to get in the car for fear I might do something impulsive when PMS was behind the wheel. I made an appointment with my OB/GYN but […]
Be cool. 