Practices for Recovering Resilience
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 […]
From Heartache to Hope – How to Dig Deeper for Meaning
When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry. A sea we must wade. We braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is […]
In This Place – Another Timely Offering from Amanda Gorman
This poem by our Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman showed up in my inbox from Larry Robinson at the very moment I was creating the post Poetry Trumps Politics. For the timing and the truth of it, I’m delighted to pass it on to you. In This Place (An American Lyric) There’s a poem in this […]
My Evolution of Resilience
I used to believe that life was somewhat linear, unfolding steadily toward growing up, becoming wise, finding fulfillment. If a big bump derailed a life from that path – “bad things happen to good people” – then resilience played an important role in helping us bounce back. Recovering what had been working well before, progressing […]