The baby was due on July 4. Independence Day always ranked low on my list of treasured holidays, but now the date felt significant, like something written in the stars. In truth, no one really knew when our baby would arrive, thanks to my lackadaisical approach to biological record keeping. An exasperated midwife insisted I supply a best-guess date of…
It’s a disorienting decision—certainly for someone who makes a living selling words—to choose a form of expression that doesn’t use them. But I’d always dreamed of choreographing—not for a living but for fun. I wanted to see if I could learn its own unfamiliar and difficult language. Five months ago, I started a weekly class in modern-dance choreography. I’ve studied…
If you asked my college roommate to rate my neatness on a scale of 1 to 10, she’d probably say 12. I was Felix Unger to her Oscar Madison, and as much as she drove me crazy with her messiness, I’m sure my extreme tidiness drove her even crazier. So she would’ve been shocked if she’d seen the state of…
I’ve been interested in martial arts since I was a child. I took classes here and there, but I never found the courage or confidence to stick with it. The art intimidated me because I couldn’t fully understand it. Years later, in my adult life working with Reiki energy, I was introduced to Qigong, a practice of aligning body, breath,…
We want to change! We really do! This time, we are going to finally do something adventurous with our lives. We are determined to finish that novel, start that exercise regimen, travel to New Zealand, or stop the relentless voices in our head saying, “You can’t succeed” or “Who do you think you are?” We are ready. We consider how…
Balancing spirituality and science, the lineup for last week’s FACES conference in Washington, D.C., was remarkable: Roshi Joan Halifax, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Kristin Neff, Barbara Fredrickson, Frank Ostaseski, Christine Courtois, Tara Brach, John Briere, and Chris Germer. I was worried that mindfulness had been talked about a bit too much of late, but the speakers brought fresh insights and research to…
I turned 63 this year. How can this be? In my mind, I’m perpetually 30. When I was 30, my innocent look and ageless skin meant I’d still get carded. I was living like a free spirit—taking weird jobs…standing buck naked in the middle of a room full of clothed people. Really. My joke to myself was that every morning…
Like so many people, women in particular, I was never very comfortable in my own skin. But my discomfort had less to do with wanting to be a blonde instead of a brunette or wishing for blue eyes instead of hazel. Though I did of course occasionally covet different physical traits than the ones I was born with, it wasn’t…
