Happy New Year to You and Me! As this day marks my 10th anniversary it is extra special to me. Ten years ago today I awoke from a coma in a small hospital in a foreign country. I’d taken my kids for the week to an intensive language school in Veracruz, Mexico. We left home […]

Do you get angry with the blind man because he cannot see? The red-tipped cane marks his physical lack of sight. Are you personally insulted by his handicap? I’m truly curious. Do you accommodate gracefully offering thanks that “ but for the grace of God, there go I?” Or, do you assign blame that if […]

It was 2006 at Easter Brunch out in the Texas Hill Country. Carol, a mom of my son’s classmate was grumbling about her dog, a young, yellow lab named Henry. They really loved him, but were very concerned that they’d have to give him away due to his escape artistry. “He jumps the fence all […]

  Tragedy strikes. And it breaks our heart open. Sometimes we get stretched beyond all reason, beyond all endurance, to the point of breaking. Seeing it, my heart goes out with compassion.   Compassion for ourselves, for our daily failures. Compassion for others, for helplessness in the face of powers greater than human. Compassion that […]

My son is living with me this summer as he commutes to his college internship. He’s a kind and gentle young man and I like him a lot. But, having him here reminds me how much I have to work with myself to refrain from taking his learning away from him. In that refrain is […]

  My mother was a narcissist. Through no fault of her own, she fit the classic profile. At the age of 2, when it was time for her to inch herself away from the stable presence of her mother, one step at a time, the tables turned and her mother left her. Did that make […]