Practices for Recovering Resilience
Stolen Focus – The most perspective-changing, life-changing book of the year
I know many of us may find it difficult these days to find the time and muster the attentional bandwidth to read a 300-page book on why we are so disastrously losing our capacities to focus our attention for more than a few minutes. But journalist Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention […]
Resilience Re-Visited
I’m teaching Cultivating a Resilience Mindset at the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium this week. Tenth consecutive year, including online during the worst of the pandemic. My first in-person workshop since the pandemic shutdown two years ago. My final time teaching at the Symposium ever, retiring July 1, 2022. In fact, it was Michael Gelb, whom I […]
Saying Yes to Saying No
My continued “retirement curriculum” led me recently to join a Zoom group of local psychotherapists in various stages of leaning into retirement; which led to sharing inspiring resources which led to Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience, and Spirit which led to “saying yes to saying no is a form of holy chutzpah.” I’ve taught […]
What Schools Don’t Teach Black Boys in America Today
February 21, 2022 is President’s Day in the U.S., commemorating the men (so far) who have navigated this country’s struggle for equality and freedom. We know the paradoxes cut deep. Thomas Jefferson penned the magnificent words We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their […]
I Could Use a Moment of Something Working…
While navigating a week of snags and snafus about teaching online and recording podcasts, compounded by a family medical emergency, my friend and colleague Deb Dana said in our weekly Zoom call, “I could use a moment of something working.” Synchronistically, the confirmation of the re-routing of my flights the next day to teach at […]
Finding Each Other – Poetry for Valentine’s Day
February 14 is Saint Valentine’s Day, a feast day in the early Christian Church since the 5th century A.D. to commemorate the death of the martyr Saint Valentine. The Feast of Saint Valentine became associated with romantic or courtly love in the 14th and 15th centuries, according to Wikipedia. While not a government holiday in […]
A Warm Bath of Oxytocin at the 2022 Psychotherapy Networker Symposium
It all started when editor Rich Simon suggested I write an article for the Psychotherapy Networker magazine in 2009. I was “nobody” then; Rich worked we me for months, “simonizing” my writing as he did with every contributor to the magazine. The article, A Warm Bath for the Brain: Understanding Oxytocin’s Role in Therapeutic Change, […]
The Sacred in the Self
I originally wrote Bouncing Back to reconcile my own inner confusion about the value of so many practices of psychotherapy to strengthen a healthy, authentic sense of self, and the value of so many practices in Eastern contemplative traditions to experience the freedom and ease of non-self. Both necessary, neither sufficient. I came up with […]
Homage to Friendship
I met my friend Marilynne Chophel on February 4, 1982. (I can remember the date because, coincidentally, the non-profit organization Directions that I founded to help minority high school students explore careers in San Francisco was legally incorporated that same day; I saw that date hundreds of times on grant applications; several lifetimes ago now.) […]
Retiring into Renaissance – Letting Go of Who “I” Am
The more I lean into retirement-Renaissance (July 1, 2022), the more well-intentioned, sincerely interested friends and colleagues ask me, “What’s next?” And some day (Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise) there will be a next, new beginnings, a new chapter. For now I subscribe to the wisdom of William Bridges’ Transitions: Making Sense of […]