The self you leave behind is only a skin you have outgrown Don't grieve for it. Look to the wet, raw, unfinished self, the one you are becoming. The world, too, sheds its skin: It's easy to lose this tenderly unfolding moment. Look for it as if it were the first green blade after a long winter. Listen for it [...]

"Inside each of us there's a river - placid and contained sometimes, but raging and overflowing its banks at others. There's a lot to navigate." -Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel The birds seem to sing more loudly these days. So, too, are emotions "singing" more prominently. I wonder how much is actually heightened and how much is the time and [...]

“When you look at a tree in a storm, you see that the top of the tree is very unstable and vulnerable. The wind can break the smaller branches at any time. But when you look down to the trunk of the tree, you have a different impression. You see that the tree is very solid and still, and you [...]

"Mindfulness has two functions. The first is to get in touch with the wonderful and beautiful things all around us. The second is to get in touch with the difficult emotions, like anger, fear, pain and sorrow inside and around us. Mindfulness can help us recognize and embrace these difficulties and transform them. Not only is paradise available in the [...]

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing, one below the other, one easier to hear, the other lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard yet always present. When all the other things seem lively and read, this one fades. Yet the notes of it touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound of the names laid [...]

"I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle. "Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me, and the fear of me leaves it. It [...]

"A practice of gratitude is not about dismissing sadness, anger, fear, or confusion. Rather, it offers us the opportunity to see that we often experience multiple feelings at once; to welcome joy into the same places where we hold grief; to turn our attention to what is quietly growing and breathing day by day, which, to our possible surprise, includes [...]

“Once in a while we stopped sprinting and just stared at what there was all around us... the tender next minute waiting for us to emerge.” -Brian Doyle

"If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath." -Amit Ray Soon after reading the first mindfulness post and making the transition to his home office, my husband told me he started "LISTENING" to his breath when he sat down at his desk in the morning and also scattered throughout his workday. [...]

“When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape.” ― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

"We can think our way out of feeling fear, but the price tag is that disconnection from ourselves leads to disconnection from those we love. When we turn away from fear we turn away from the deep and precious parts of ourselves... What if we spend this time learning to be with uncertainty and fear, learning to reach for each [...]

"Whether we are six or sixty, we can forge a new brain pathway that goes beyond former dead ends... let us join with children to imagine and wonder, to use curiosity as the guide to miracles in plain sight. Let us enter with them into wild wonder..." -Amy Tan In the essay "The Life Within" published recently in Orion magazine, [...]

Yesterday Isabella wrote, "Good and bad are just labels that individuals choose to put on their personal experience." I've been thinking something similar as I walk around town these days, Witherspoon Street in particular. For those of you local to our area, you might recall the precise time each spring that Witherspoon Street bursts into gorgeous snowy bloom while also [...]

"Always remember your focus determines your reality" - George Lucas What is worth your focus today and what might you invite to blur into the background?

"The idea of the pilgrimage was to get away from the endless and nameless circumstances of everyday existence, which by degrees build a wall around the mind so that it travels in a constantly narrowing circle." - Richard Jeffries "For pilgrims, traveling is a spiritual practice to access places of higher meaning." - Brooke Williams I believe this is, in [...]

"Mindfulness isn't difficult. We just need to remember to do it." - Sharon Saltzberg With so many ways to practice current moment awareness, which do we choose and how do we remember to do it regularly? Some people make it an early morning practice, taking a seat and setting a timer first thing upon waking. There are so many potential [...]

"Mindfulness isn't difficult. We just need to remember to do it." - Sharon Saltzberg With so many ways to practice current moment awareness, which do we choose and how do we remember to do it regularly? Some people make it an early morning practice, taking a seat and setting a timer first thing upon waking. There are so many potential [...]

Around the holidays, Isabella went on silent meditation retreat (something she thinks all of us should do, if she hasn't yet told you so - or bribed you into it, LOL). On retreat, meals were simple and served only twice daily, save a late afternoon tangerine or mandarin. She laughed when she told me about it, how she had sat [...]

"I met a tiny frail nun once, in Australia, while walking along a harbor, and we got to talking, and she said no one defeats cancer, cancer is a dance partner you don't want and don't like, but you have to dance... I never forgot what she said, and think she is right, and the words we use about cancer [...]

From Brian Doyle's essay "On Not 'Beating' Cancer" "I know a boy with brain cancer. He's 16 years old. He isn't battling his cancer. It's no something to defeat. He is enduring it with the most energy and creativity and patience he can muster. He says the first year he had cancer was awful because of the fear and vomiting [...]

"There is a great and awful lesson there, something that speaks powerfully of human character and possibility. For all that we speak, as a culture and a people, of victory and defeat, of good and evil, of hero and coward, it is none of it quite true. The truth is that the greatest victory is to endure with grace and [...]

"The words we use about cancers and wars matter more than we know" -Brian Doyle*** In the early months after Isabella's diagnosis, she grappled with what sorts of conversations to have with her self and this cancer that felt both OF HER and NOT HER. There might be something for us all to learn here. Wartime language is creeping into [...]

I spent the first 10 minutes of my day in "legs up the wall" pose, hands clasped behind my head, experiencing gravity... the Earth's weighty pull on my body. Mostly I noticed the tightness in my chest muscles. Perhaps I've been slumping a bit more recently, body curled toward laptop or phone. Perhaps the external tightening is a manifestation of [...]

MINDFULNESS "I can scroll and worry indoors, or I can step outside and remember how it feels to be part of something larger, something timeless, a world that reaches beyond me and includes me too." - Margaret Renkl, opinion writer for the NYT and author of the book "Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss"

If Isabella had a small library of books that had informed her spiritual path, I'm pretty sure A New Earth would be in it. I have her copy on my bookshelf. It sat there for several years before I was "ready" to read it. Consider this quote from the author, Eckhart Tolle: "The mental suffering you create is always some [...]

"There are little beauties everywhere. We just have to look for them... Everything always leads to something else and when you feel sad and empty and like it all means nothing, you might look out and see two shopping carts and you might remember: I just have to look, listen, and tell the truth and the beauty will be there. [...]

"The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." - Thich Nhat Hanh While we are advised to maintain more physical distance between ourselves and other people, perhaps we can close the gap with our presence. The need for connection is wired deep within us. How can [...]

"Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet." - Thich Nhat Hanh Staying grounded can be so helpful when it feels like our lives, what we know and count on, are constantly shifting. It might take some intentional practice to connect to a something that feels like stability. Connecting with the ground, the Earth itself, is one [...]

"Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience" - Jon Kabat Zinn Sometimes we criticize ourselves for the thoughts and emotions that are arising, especially in times of stress or when more is being asked of us. Anxiety is a natural response to perceived threat and yet it can also get in the way of wise action. Sometimes [...]

"Wherever you go, go with all your heart." - Confucius Our culture teaches and encourages us to lead with our minds. Recent events might be pushing us to lead with our fears. This brief practice not only offers a bit of respite from the news cycle and ruminative thought, it also reminds us to stay connected to our hearts. Place [...]