The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. – Socrates We were visiting friends at the beach this past week, and at one point I was with Grace in the ocean. Despite the heat of the day, the water was cold, and we were standing right at the edge of the waves’ breaking, tip-toeing [...]
Courage. I’ve been thinking about this word, this concept, this idea, all weekend. Trying to figure out what to share for this inaugural Five for Ten post. Certainly I don’t feel I have much, so that was easy to dismiss. I kept coming back, over and over again, to Susie. Susie was like a mother [...]
The effort to be present in my life has been the single most important thing I’ve undertaken in the past couple of years. Maybe ever. It has transformed how I think about the world and myself, and the relationship between the two. When I say “being present” I mean, literally, being engaged in and awake [...]
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” (Louisa May Alcott) This quote, long known to me, has been in my mind lately. It occurred to me yesterday that overall, though, I feel a strange combination of storm-tossed and run aground. Both whipped around in a frenzy of [...]
(apologies for reposting, this got inadvertently deleted and I care about this post so wanted it back on the site – I am so sorry to have lost all of your thoughtful comments!) you probably can’t tell, but the curtain has already come down around me (late fall 2002) After Terresa honored me by interviewing [...]
A song I love by Mat Kearney came on while I was running yesterday, and one line was stuck in my head all day: I guess we’re all one phone call from our knees. The song was referring to a phone call bearing bad news. And I thought of the phone ringing in the middle [...]
I have a friend who spent her 20s dabbling. For various unforseen personal reasons she wound up on a somewhat circuitous professional route. She went to journalism school, she travelled around the world, she wrote, she taught yoga. Things happened, bad things, and heartbreak. At 30 she decided to change her life and go back [...]
On our last day in Sanibel, Grace and Whit were horsing around in the pool. She dunked him aggressively and he was very upset. My mother immediately reprimanded her, asking her to get out of the pool for a few minutes. Grace, in classic form, dissolved into tears. She sat on a chair by [...]
I can’t put Devotion down. Run, don’t walk, to buy it. To say I’m obsessed is an understatement. I feel as though Dani Shapiro is speaking straight from my heart, albeit far more elegantly and eloquently than I ever could. I’m about 2/3 of the way through and I have underlined at least a big [...]
Danielle talks about our core desired feelings, and asserts that all of our behavior, conscious or not, is in search of feeling these feelings. It’s embarassing, maybe, that it’s taken me 35.5 years to figure this out, but I am certain that one of my core desired feelings, probably the primary one, is safety. This [...]
