A collection provides a mission, a reason to visit new places, the excitement of the chase, a field of expertise (no matter how trivial), and, often, a bond with other people. (attribution unknown) After setting myself up to write this blog I PAUSED. What is this about? My five year journal that I write five lines in every night included the quote…
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Walking on Wednesdays
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer…
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Getting Your Childhood Self Back
Our teacher’s directive was to draw a tree. I was doing that when I looked over at my friend, Nancy. Her tree was better than mine. In that moment, which more than sixty years later is clear as a bell, I decided that I was not an artist. A singer, “yes.” I sang in the children’s choir in church; my…
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Brain frozen? Do this.
I feel sick. Not watching the news feed on my phone doesn’t protect me from knowing what is going on in the world. The social and political pendulum is swinging wildly in the opposite direction to what I hold dear. A kind of dizzying vertigo, the ground not feeling steady beneath my feet. When we feel afraid the brain protects…
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What to do with suffering
There is no way to avoid it. Pain of loss, someone you love dies, you lose a friend, a relationship ends, chronic illness, so many ways to suffer. Even pain that you know will go away but for now it’s right here and is terrible. During this pandemic we have all suffered what I call compound trauma: fear of the…
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