In the spirit of beginning anew, each of my past five years have begun with setting a one-word intention rather than a resolution. An intentional approach does not have to begin at the strike of the New Year. It's flexible and allows time for thought and creativity. Ra...

Daisy inhabited a well-respected, prominent place in our family hierarchy of five dogs and five people.  With a loud bark and at times, a body block, our resident matriarch managed a sense of familial harmony with 80 pounds of firm and gentle wisdom. Both humans and do...

You Can't Have It All

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.

You can have the purr of the cat and th...

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.
Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full tradit...

Five Pointed Star - This pose is everything - Courage, Joy, Love, Life, Balance. Even when you are not feeling any of them - they are in you. The Star pose calls their names. 

See the revelationary talk below from Amy Cuddy, the Harvard social psychologis...

A poem by Derek Walcott about self love.

An uncommon force pulled me to Sarah Manguso's meditative memoir, Ongoingness, The End of a Diary. In my search for engaging memoirs I found it quoted or suggested multiple times. Since I have kept a journal for years and even when not writing, I'm often thinking...

Poem of hope by Nancy Wood, "Hold On To What Is Good".

Balancing your life after major change.

We all share the work of finding balance in a world with stunning violence and beauty. 

I began writing the piece below knowing there was a mass shooting the day before. I don't have answers, but a deep sadness and fear that many people are feeling hopeless. My fir...