So many times, I have heard someone who is grieving say “I’ve lost my best friend.” I understand that feeling, especially when the person being grieved is a spouse. You have had someone you woke up and started the day with. You had common interests. You had someone you can turn to and talk to. […]
A prodigious act of congress was passed this week that requires the release of the Epstein files. These files would never have been released if it weren’t for the victims who came together after keeping their secrets for 30 years or more. They are women now, but most were children when they were taken advantage […]
We tell stories all the time. Sometimes we share them with others. Other times we keep them to ourselves. What often we don’t realize is that those stories we create shape our lives. Sometimes our stories come from what others say about us that we listen to and incorporate into our lives as they become […]
In Greg Hamer MD’s book The Mindful Teen, he says: “Our brains are wired in ways that tend to interfere with our ability to be more grateful—and happy. We are programed to have a negativity bias—we tend to remember the negative and forget or marginalize our positive experiences.” When I read that I remember thinking […]
We all probably have some form of a to do list. I have an app on my phone so that I can be sure to get everything done. I’ve developed so many sub-lists to the main list that it’s probably impossible to get everything done that I have written there, but I sure would like […]
We’ve all known someone like Debbie Downer of Saturday Night Live. She’s the person you walk the other way from when she starts walking toward you. Everything about her is negative. When she wants to tell you a story, it’s always sad. I can recall a time when I was Debbie Downer. It seemed like […]
Often when dealing with grief people just don’t know what to do. Often, they sit alone and ruminate, not motivated to reach out to anyone or do anything. That can become lonely fast. I watched movies, but even that didn’t help. My mind would drift to my loved one, then that cycle of tears started […]
Walter Cronkite and Jonathan Ward created the Great Books television series in 1993. On each episode, they chose a significant book and told the historic and literary significance of the book in a one-hour episode. Narrated by Donald Sutherland, they included interviews with historians and scholars, and they had actors create scenes from the book […]
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was credited with the concept of “the only thing certain is change,” so this concept seems to have been around forever. I was in high school in 1965 when the Byrds song Turn, Turn, Turn came out, and it helped me through some tough times. I had some of the normal […]
Do you ever have a morning when it’s hard to get out of bed? You think about all the things you need to do and maybe feel a bit guilty about not getting started. Or maybe you were planning to fix dinner and didn’t get around to it, so another frozen dinner for you. Procrastination […]