Practices for Recovering Resilience
The Achieving Brain and the Awakened Brain
In The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life, Dr. Lisa Miller presents her 25 years of impeccable scientific research demonstrating that spirituality is a reliable and effective antidote to depression. Perhaps a no-brainer (no pun intended) for those of us who have experienced both, but an intriguing […]
What We See…and What We Don’t See
Going through books to donate to the library, deciding to look through some of the large format glossy color wilderness books again before letting them go. An image and story from Galen Rowell: A Retrospective knocked my socks off and led to this post on perception– what we see and what we don’t see. [And […]
Grace for Thanksgiving Day
Not the first time I’ve made an error in these posts, but I am truly sorry for this one, and grateful for the graciousness of the poet in correcting me. Rafael Jesús González is the poet laureate of the city of Berkeley, CA. I first saw this poem in Larry Robinson’s post to his Poetry […]
Attitudes of Gratitude with Chronic Pain
As we approach days of Thanksgiving in the U.S., I’m delighted to share with you a spirited conversation I had with Lauren Zalewski about “Gratitude Leads to Resilience” for her online Attitudes of Gratitude with Chronic Pain group. Here’s the link. After a 5-minute intro about Lauren’s programs and groups, we talked about: What resilience […]
Enjoy the Glimmers and Spurts
My good friend Deb Dana’s book Anchored was published last week by Sounds True. It’s a very user-friendly guide to calming the nervous system and returning to ease and contentment in times of stress and distress. Perfect timing for our world today. In Anchored, Deb explores the importance of catching glimmers as we go throughout […]
Hope Is Confrontation of Darkness
Quite a dramatic statement: Hope is confrontation of darkness. Spoken by psychologist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eger in the recent Sounds True Activating Hope Summit. (I truly wish I had alerted you and posted the link to access the summit while it was being broadcast for free, November 4-7, 2021. Here’s the link to […]
Poetic Metaphors for Being Human
A friend shared this poem, Being Human, at our Gourmet Poets Society last week. (Meeting quarterly for 21 years, such a resource for holding life’s joys and sorrows.) Which led me to the poet Naima Penniman reciting it in a beautiful video. Being Human showers us with metaphors for the glories and struggles of human […]
The 5 A’s of Acceptance – the Bridge from the Inner Critic to Well-Being
Acceptance of one’s self – all that we love and all that we hate and all that we’re confounded by – is one of the essential steps to pushing back on the inner critic – that inner voice of negative self-talk that harshly judges/shames/blames us whenever we’ve messed up or fear we’ve messed up. [See […]
The Deep Joy that Transcends Anything – Any Suffering, Any Grief, Any Devastation or Oppression, Anything at All
How do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering? The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World is about so much more than the flavors of joy: pleasure, amusement, contentment, excitement, relief, delight, wonder, rejoicing, bliss, exultation, radiant pride, unhealthy jubilation or schadenfreude), elevation, gratitude, spiritual radiance… Or the familiar […]
Pushing Back on the Inner Critic
One of the important lessons I learned in recovering from being hacked and scammed three weeks ago (see Hacked, Scammed – Lessons Learned) was the importance of pushing back quickly on the inner critic. When that harsh, negative, judgmental, shaming-blaming inner voice takes over, we quickly lose any memory that we can be resilient and […]