Dad’s last words.
My dad died four and a half years ago at the age of 86 after an amazing, successful and storied life and a short, but ever-increasing bout with age-related dementia. It’s his birthday month and he has been on my mind. His death story – like that of so many people you probably […]
Becoming our own wayfinders.
I have spent the majority of my life in a ‘grid’ city. According to Wikipedia, “In urban planning, the grid plan, grid street plan, or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. The grid plan dates from antiquity and originated in […]
Little Lila and some wild Yeses
One of my nieces has three beautiful children. Very early one morning, when the two oldest were 6 years old and 4 years old and the youngest was a newborn, my niece was woken up to the musical sounds of “Who Let the Dogs Out, Who? Who?” blaring from the downstairs family room. She went […]
The reframe your brain needs.
I have a step-daughter-in-law and a little sister who are both Registered Nurses, or RNs. One is in the first couple years of her career and one has been a nighttime newborn ICU nurse for almost 30 years. Imagine that! Almost 30 years of being a witness to some of the toughest and most tender […]
A Bouncing Boulder – and Emma Woodhouse.
When Darren was young, he spent a lot of time with his siblings at his favorite Grandma’s house, who lived close to them in their small southern California town. One such day his older sister and one of his older brothers were down at his Grandma’s creek and they started teasing him. Darren, the feisty […]
“Flinging yourself straight into life” – or not.
Fyodor Dostoevsky in the book Crime and Punishment, writes “Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid – the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.” Sometimes I wish I was a ‘fling yourself straight into life!’ person. Some of you reading this post […]
Baker’s Chocolate and my DNA.
One of my favorite things to do is bake recipes from Depression or War-era America. I know it sounds kind of strange, but I love the creativity of it. Bacon fat instead of butter in a sugar cookie? Ok! Vinegar instead of milk in a chocolate cake? Sure! Mayonnaise instead of eggs in brownies? Let’s […]
Your Own Personal Order of Difficulty.
During the majority of my lengthy career in education, I, like many teachers and counselors you know, had a second job. One of them was a brief stint with a prestigious company offering high-end ACT prep classes. It was taught in a building in the heart of downtown and when I drove by that building […]
Efficacy and “Question Coleen.”
Recently I had a client tell me that she thought she’d done a disservice to her teenager. “She’s so used to me fixing everything for her that now she can’t figure out how to do it on her own. I can see so clearly that it’s my fault,” she told me. I decided to tell […]
Fortune Cookies and Optimistic Action.
Please pick a number between 1 and 10. Really. Pick it. Got it?? Ok, now kindly hold on to it for a moment. When I retired from education about a year and a half ago, my tribe of girlfriends threw me a brunch. It was so kind of them. I decided I wanted to […]
