
What determines YOUR happiness?
Self-Care
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Last week my teen son and I were getting along smashingly. He was affectionate,…

How do you abandon yourself?
Self-Care
Recently while facilitating a women's retreat at Esalen, I shared my definition of self-care with the group: the art of attuning and responding to your needs and desires moment to moment. And then I asked the circle, "Do you feel safe with…

Do less, experience more
Self-Care
Recently, our family was invited to visit friends for the weekend at their cabin on the river, an hour’s drive from our house. The night before we were going to leave, my husband and I were frantically creating lists of all the things…

Why meditation is good self-care
Mindfulness, Self-Care
My sleep has been very erratic this month. While I'm practicing self-compassion (I'm navigating a lot of hormonal shifts like many my age), I believe the primary cause of my sleepless nights is due to an overly-busy mind. This wake-up call…

Self-care & risk-taking: tea with Jennifer Louden
Self-Care
When I was about to release the first edition of The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life in 2005, I reached out to a few wise voices for an endorsement. Jennifer Louden was at the top of my…

6 ways to find comfort in uncertain times
Self-Care
Last week I had a brush with someone I’ve known a long time who acted uncharacteristically rude and unkind. While their behavior was immature and irrational, rather than rise up to counter him, I just walked away and let it be. This…

Men need self-care, too
Self-Care
This past Sunday afternoon everyone in our family had competing desires: my son wanted to have a friend over, I wanted to get a massage and my husband wanted to play at a house concert with his band. We juggled and all ended up getting our…

Self-care is a journey, not a destination
Self-Care
This past weekend my husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. We got married 16 years ago, thirty days after my healthy 60 year-old mother died suddenly from the flu. My father had died four years earlier at age 56 from a heart…

7 ways to stay connected to your partner
Self-Care
Everywhere I turn my friends are navigating choppy waters in their most intimate relationships. This makes my heart hurt, but I can relate. Lately, my husband and I have been feeling out of sync and stressed out from parenting our wonderful,…

Things to do when life feels hard
Self-Care
I was visiting with a dear friend this past weekend who shared she’s battling depression. “It comes and it goes. But when it returns, I often freeze and forget what helps me most; all my great self-care practices fly right out the window,”…

9 ways to reclaim our humanness
Self-Care
The other morning my husband and I were milling around in the kitchen making breakfast and lunches and preparing for school and work. We looked up and saw our 13 year-old on his computer. My husband took a peek as he walked behind my son’s…

5 tips for choosing a therapist
Self-Care
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. Carl Jung
In the past month I probably received at least ten requests from friends asking for referrals for great therapists.
Whenever these calls come in, I try and get my friends…