Practices for Recovering Resilience
9,000 Ways to Be a Plant
I went to college near Chicago – long, cold, snowy-icy winters. On campus, crocuses would start to push their blossoms through the snow in late April-early May. Hope! Spring! Warmer weather. Like hope pushing through the murk now as people get vaccinated and the number of new coronavirus cases slowly comes down. Last week, when […]
Unlearning and Rethinking – the Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant began his research for Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know well before the coronavirus pandemic upheavaled our lives in countless (and seemingly endless) ways. But learning how to unlearn and rethink in a rapidly changing and increasingly divisive world can be as necessary as learning to learn […]
Black History Month – Remembering What We Barely Know
February has been designated Black History Month in the United States since 1976. Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain was published two weeks ago. A brilliant compendium of historical accounts, short stories, essays and poetry from 90 writers each focusing on a […]
A Year into the Pandemic – No Safe Distance from Sorrow
The article Learning Resilience from Hospital Chaplaincy arrived in my email inbox just moments after I posted my own post, Vulner-ability – A Path through Compassion to Resilience, last Thursday morning. (Thank you Carole Pertofsky, current coordinator of our NeuroDharma group.) I was so struck by the closing words of the article: There is no […]
Vulner-ability – A Path through Compassion to Resilience
To be vulnerable has been a no-no through much of human history. From the language of the ancient Greeks, vulnerable means ‘able to be attacked or wounded.” Thus armies and military fortifications to protect a society; defenses and strategies to protect a psyche. “Big boys don’t cry,” etc. Aversion and denial that fragility and hurt […]
A Blessing For One Who is Exhausted – a poem of refuge and renewal
My Gourmet Poets Society meets monthly now by Zoom, often sharing poems by the great Irish poet John O’Donohue from his collection To Bless the Space Between Us. Here’s his blessing For One Who Is Exhausted. Timely in its relevance, its wisdom, and its hope. For One Who Is Exhausted When the rhythm of the […]
Resilience in Still the Strangest of Times – Promising and Painful
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. – James Baldwin Psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach began her talk in last week’s Compassion in Therapy summit with the quote above from James Baldwin. […]
Council of Compassion
I’ve often taught the Circle of Support as a resource of en-courage-ment for entering into challenging situations, evoking the support in our imagination of people who believe in us and in our capacities to deal with difficulties. And Circle of Support is still a very valuable practice for doing so. And last week, wrestling with […]
Aspirations and Limitations
My first aspiration when I fractured my shoulder at the beginning of December was to not be in pain; my second aspiration was to take enough pain meds to sleep through the night but not too much that would make me vomit. A delicate dance. My aspirations progressed as my rehab progressed – to be […]
A Full Spectrum of Resources for Recovering Resilience
Three completely different resources that span the spectrum of what it means to be more resilient in 2021. Dance Across America is a 3-minute, high energy, culturally diverse tribute to being joyful and fully alive, released on Inauguration Day, 2021. Using Your Voice Is a Political Choice, the 7-minute TED-Ed talk by Amanda Gorman, now […]