Blog
Spirituality as a Resource – and Beyond
In the world of counseling and psychotherapy, we are often seeking ways to help clients develop their own “resources” to deal with life’s challenges. If they are struggling with some kind of pain or difficulty, so we may support them in exploring their inner...
Focusing: Exploring the Wisdom of our Bodies
An Introduction... As we navigate the challenges of life, learning to listen to our bodies can be surprisingly helpful. I'd like to explore a simple but powerful practice called Focusing. If you've come across Focusing before, that's not surprising because it...
Do You Have Time?
Invitation Oh do you have time to linger for just a little while out of your busy and very important day for the goldfinches that have gathered in a field of thistles for a musical battle, to see who can sing the highest note, or the lowest, or the most expressive of...
Listening to Body Wisdom
Over the years, in my work with clients and spiritual seekers as well as in my own experience, I have learned the importance of being in touch with our bodies. This premise may lead in a variety of directions, but my particular interest here is in “ways of knowing.” ...
Weather Metaphors, Weather Realities
Weather is…. ... a common and powerful source of metaphors for our emotions, feelings, states of mind. (I would guess that we rarely think about the underlying realities that enliven the images.) ... and – if we pay attention – weather is a prominent focus of news...
Me, Myself, and I: Exploring Identity
“Know thyself.” “Who am I?” Growing up We begin to develop our sense of identity in childhood. An infant explores her fingers and toes, and we interpret her actions and responses as reflecting an implicit...
“Part of me” – Exploring Subpersonalities
If you often find yourself saying something like, “Well, part of me wants to do this, but part of me is leaning towards that,” you are not alone! We often feel divided, of two minds - or more! This is not about dissociative personality disorder: this is simply the...
Waking Up in the Darkness and Despair?
Recently, on the fourth day of not feeling well – I don’t really know how to describe what I was feeling, because it didn’t seem to fit a simple label, just involved some achiness, no appetite, low energy, a weak feeling (a weak feeling? What kind of illness is...
Opening to the Mystery
The Wisdom of the Mystics Richard Rohr shares how studying the mystics can transform us and help us meet the needs of our times: We live in a time of both crisis and opportunity. While there are many reasons to be anxious, I still have hope. Westerners, including...
Curious about Personality Styles?
Sometimes (often?) we find ourselves struggling to understand other people: he is a mystery to me, she behaves in ways I don’t understand, this person makes me uncomfortable, why does he/she/they do that? Many of us have explored theories of personality, especially...
New Beginnings 2024
I’m sitting here on January 13, 2024, surrounded by a powerful winter storm. The temperature is 12 degrees, which apparently (I’m staying inside!) feels like -10 degrees. I can hear – and almost feel – the intense power, the howling and yes, roaring, of the winds...
Deaths, Endings – and Openings of the Heart
These may sound like unusual themes for a New Year’s reflection, but every beginning is preceded by some sort of ending. So that’s where we begin… Support for those Grieving a Death Death touches every life, in one form or another – the death of someone...
Climate Change and Climate Anxiety
Climate change: Rise in Google searches around ‘anxiety’ 22nd November 2023 By Lucy Gilder BBC Online search queries related to "climate anxiety" have risen, according to data gathered by Google and shared exclusively with BBC 100 Women. Studies also suggests that...
The Lenses We See Through
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are – Anais Nin Having just passed through an election, plus anticipating the Presidential Election a year from now – and also facing the current situation in the Middle East - I am once again reminded about...
Love and Despair for the Planet
The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I...
The Journey towards Healing
The Healing Time Finally on my way to yes I bump into all the places where I said no to my life all the untended wounds the red and purple scars those hieroglyphs of pain carved into my skin, my bones, those coded messages that send me down the wrong street...
What We Pay Attention To – and Avoid
As I was walking this morning, I began paying attention to where my attention was going…. Mostly, it was wandering. Looking at the trees, at other people on the path, planning the day, remembering what happened yesterday, contemplating the focus of my blog… We...
Alone in the Dark
If you ever found yourself as a child terrified and alone in an unfamiliar dark space… if you were ever lost outdoors on a dark night when the other kids had run off and left you far behind … if your mother died and left you or you were really sick and in quarantine...
Loneliness and Solitude
“Americans are facing an epidemic of loneliness, an “underappreciated public health crisis” that needs to be brought to light, said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in a statement last week. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, about half of adults in the country reported...
Presence: a Practice and a Gift
What is Presence? If you look up a definition of “presence,” you will find something obvious along the lines of “the state or condition of being present.” And “being present” is “the state of existing or occurring now.” If we are content with that … end of...