On Sunday I will leave for the woods of Vermont for one whole month: To rest, to read, to restore. The approaching school year always brings to mind, change, new beginnings and exciting possibilities. It is engraved in my bones, my muscle memory and my heart. I look forward to it, but first the fallow [...]
I often ask my students, as Mary Oliver asks us in the poem below: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” As I plan for a month in the country, I ask myself this same question. This is my prayer for today, for my life, and [...]
Sexual misconduct creates suffering. Period. Whether we are the ones engaging in it or are the victims of it, everyone involved suffers. To understand just how corrosive and harmful this is to forming a true partnership and how it interferes with an intimate connection to another person, we only have to look at our own [...]
There are so many things in my life that I never would have experienced or accomplished without first having the dream. To name just a few: writing books; living alone in Paris for a summer; becoming a life coach and working for myself; creating a loving, lasting, intimate relationship; cycling through Ireland and Mallorca. My [...]
On an unfamiliar road, Don’t pretend you’re Not lost. Just ask where you are: It’s a real shortcut. Japanese Folk Zen Saying “We ought to listen to music or sit and practice breathing at the beginning of every meeting or discussion.” Thich Nhat Hanh “Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual [...]
“All of man’s woes derive from the fact that he cannot sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal “As long as you are conscious of yourself, you can never concentrate on anything.” Buddha (by way of Walpola Rahula) “Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.” Lao-tzu “Real strength is not [...]
This week I received a lovely email from a reader thanking me for my book Serenity in Motion, which was first published in 2003. “I got your Serenity In Motion book many years ago, and it has been one of the only books I can pick up and receive a blessing from, even when in [...]
It’s always a good season for love, but spring and Mother’s Day add a deeper dimension. Love was not a word that got thrown around too much in our house when I was growing up. There were eight of us kids and our parents worked hard to make ends meet and raise us right, according [...]
There is a tribe in Thailand that has no words for hello and goodbye. I like that. For the past month I have been present to the fact that the community I have been a member of for the past eight months will have its last day together on Saturday, May 3. So I wanted [...]
This is not an easy paper to write*. It is the day before our group meets and I continue to resist doing it, finding anything else to do but this. So, here goes. Since first signing up for the Foundations course I have been wrestling with the why and the what of it. Why did [...]
