My Writing

"Whatever" upon waking. "Oh well" upon going to sleep. This is how the lovely writer and speaker extraordinaire Annie Lamott describes her daily mantras. But, as we know, she meant something more profound. She is certainly not cavalier about her day, her work, her life. Here's what I think she meant: We do the best we can. Every day. We plan. We show up. We consider. We try to be better. We choose. We move on. Sometimes it works out well. And sometimes our efforts are not suc

“I would say that happiness is the sweetness of desiring what you have, fully aware of its fragility, its brevity and its limits. Happiness isn’t the absence of sadness, but the capacity to hold reality without needing it to be otherwise.” This quote by Stephen Grosz makes my heart happy. I have always felt that the word 'contentment' captures the sweetness of desiring what I have. Likewise, I have always felt that the word 'acceptance' means to hold reality without needing

What if rain drops had names? When they splashed down to the ground and broke apart, would you grieve them? Would you memorialize each drop by name? There are 8.3 billion people alive on the planet right now. Each of us was born, lived, cared for (however well or badly), and will die. Each of has a name. Let us honor all life. Let us honor all death. We die because we were born. Every raindrop existed, exists and will exist again.

When you are in a conversation with someone, do you feel connected or like you are each giving a monologue? Shortly before his untimely...

"The silence of this place is as real and solid as sound. More real, in fact." Written by Admiral Byrd in 1934, alone in a shack near the South Pole for five months. He received messages by radio from his friend President Roosevelt. Though close at times to death, he "felt more alive," he confesses, in his solitude, "than at any other time in my life." To feel alive because of silence, reminds me of the silence of death in a weird kind of way. Byrd's solitude, by definition,