Just over a year ago, my 82-year-old mother was rushed to a hospital where they discovered that she had metastatic cancer. I flew from Moscow to Los Angeles and stayed with her until the end of her life, driving around the San Fernando Valley in my rental car, a midnight blue Hyundai Elantra. It is ironic that as an L.A.…
Ever since I was young, I’ve been interested in memory. As a child, I remember reading in Ripley’s Believe It or Not about children who had memorized the Bible at age eight and other astounding feats, and I wondered whether I could match such accomplishments of memory. At Boston Latin School, one of the arcane requirements was “recitation”: we had…
Smart. Simple. Direct. Witty. This is the schmaltz-free Karen Salmansohn style for serving up easy-to-digest spiritual inspiration in the first book in her Happiness series, How to Be Happy, Dammit: A Cynic’s Guide to Spiritual Happiness. Salmansohn left her successful advertising career to pursue her passion for writing. She is now a bestselling author and book packager known for “self-help…
If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you know that I’m really drawn to the way Dr. Joe Loizzo teaches. He’s the founder of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science and the author of Sustainable Happiness. So when I saw he was giving a lecture at Tibet House, I was excited to attend. Then I read the title of…
Several months ago I began exercising regularly with my friend Josh, a dedicated and gifted physician with a certificate in personal training and an extensive background in the martial arts. Each training session was different and challenging. Several times Josh abruptly changed my routine in the middle of our workouts when he noticed that a particular activity was too easy…
I’m kind of looking forward to Mother’s Day. I’ve got my eye on a lilac standard to replace what a large tree hath wrought into sticks. And there is the Saturday afternoon mani-pedi, providing my son-in-law can handle the grandkids. An early brunch someplace delicious, and an indulgent afternoon watching the kids try to destroy the baby tomato plants and…
In 1984, I was in sixth grade, at the beginning of the worst of the junior high years. At school, cliques were beginning to form, acts of rebellion were starting to hold cachet, and self-consciousness was spreading like a bad virus. I tried to get my bearings as the ground shifted beneath my feet. Just the year before, I’d been…
I was never one of those hovering, anxious mothers, but I was always connected and sure in relationship to my daughter. Then she got married, and I learned the growing pains of being a mother. At first I struggled to accept that there was someone in her life who would come to be more important than her mother. Eventually, I relaxed.…
