Practices for Recovering Resilience
In(ter)dependence Day
I have fond childhood memories of the Fourth of July – family picnics and fireworks celebrating Independence Day, naively happy with what I experienced of safety and freedom in 1950’s America. SO naïve that that safety net was not the story of living in America for many of America’s citizens. The civil rights movement was […]
Pity the Nation
I try to be resourcing and helpful in these weekly posts. I’m sometimes provocative, seldom political. But when a friend forwarded Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem Pity the Nation from 2007, I was immediately struck by how spot on it still is today. Then realized Ferlinghetti did base his poem on Kahlil Gibran’s poem of the same […]
Take a Moment to Commemorate…
Amidst many American national holidays in June, honoring people’s struggles to be resilient in the face of ongoing hardship and heartache – the well-established (1910) Father’s Day on June 20 (and fatherhood can be challenging!), the more recent (roughly 1970) Gay Pride Day (now LGBT+ Pride month of June), the brand-new Juneteenth National Independence Day […]
Forgetfulness – Not Always Resilient but Always a Possibility
I didn’t forget to create this post, but remembering to reminded me of Billy Collins unforgettable poem “Forgetfulness.” Twice the U.S. national poet laureate, Billy Collins has a way of reminding us of life’s challenges in a way that brings a wry smile to the heart – and that can boost our resilience. Forgetfulness – […]
Re-Couping from a Hard, Hard Year – Part Two
In last week’s post, Re-Couping from the Revving Up and the Shutting Down of a Hard, Hard Year, I suggested practices for skillfully re-emerging from the pandemic year into the larger world again, based on science’s traditional model of the nervous system – energized and creative v. stressed out and revved up into “fight-flight”, relaxed […]
Re-couping from the Revving Up and the Shutting Down of a Hard, Hard Year
This weekend is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. On Sunday, June 20, at 8:31pm Pacific Time, the earth will reverse the tilt of its axis and begins its remarkably long journey toward winter. For many of us, this seasonal turning into official summer issues in warm sunny days, school vacations, and a time […]
Using the Inner Protector to Calm the Inner Critic
I often teach about retiring (re-wiring) the inner critic, in these posts and in workshops everywhere. And I often re-post, with permission, the Just One Thing e-newsletters of my colleague and friend Rick Hanson, because Rick can present deep and practical wisdom in such clear and immediately useful ways. Here’s Rick’s latest on using […]
The Wisdom and Courage that Graduation Now Requires
Students are graduating en masse this month, from colleges and universities, from high schools and middle schools, even my neighbor’s son from his pre-school. Many of whom have not been able to attend school in person during this pandemic year with their peers, their friends, their teachers who care, year after year, and who this […]
Mindfulness – Radically Different from Distraction or Flow
A participant in my Building Resilience in Challenging Times webinar last week asked how mindfulness was different from distraction or dissociation. Good question, so here goes… Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of what’s happening in the moment while it’s happening (and aware of our reactions to what’s happening) so that we can see […]
Nothing Is Lost
The Practice of Poignancy, my post this week on Memorial Day, continues. I received the good news that colleagues on the East Coast are returning to work in person in their offices this week, and yet the sponsor of my webinar last weekend with psychology students at Maltepe University in Istanbul, Turkey, says they probably […]