Category: Self care
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Leading with Gratitude
There’s a question that has been rattling around in my brain for the last few days. Maybe you want to try it as well. Here goes: what if you woke up tomorrow and all that you had is that for which you are grateful today? On the surface, it sounds like a simple question but…
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Where is Stillness?
Label it however you choose, but I have come to accept that I am a person who is never fully at rest, never fully at peace. My entire childhood was spent with my mother asking me to please be still, to sit down, to stop flitting around. My father used to say “Take a breath”…
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Capturing Moments
Life, as we know, is made up of a succession of moments, each of them unique and non-repeatable. It is human nature for us to forget that, to treat each experience as if it is going to last forever or to ignore the reality that a moment is here and then gone. We remember that,…
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A State of Grace
There are moments when I see reflections of my parents in me as there are moments when I see reflections of their father and me in my own children. It’s interesting that the characteristics I see in myself, and identify as coming from one of my parents, are usually the ones I would label as…
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One Speed
Since childhood, in truth I suspect since birth, I have been one of those people who only has one speed. Acceleration happens fast and deceleration doesn’t happen. It never has. I am happiest in motion, mentally and physically, and find it hard—if not impossible—to settle down in any respect. My mother’s most oft-repeated expression to…
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Feeling Humbled
This has been an eventful week for me. As a result of some nerve issues in my back, and the unintended, but unavoidable, consequences of back surgery some years ago, it was necessary for me to have back surgery this week. I am grateful to have a team of wonderful and responsive medical professionals, to…
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Achieving Grace
Everything in life is a choice. That’s a pretty definitive statement, isn’t it? And you might contend that things, often, seem to just happen. An illness, an accident, an unexpected turn of events in your personal or professional life. That’s true. Things do happen that we don’t plan or expect or want to have happen.…
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Do No Harm
I would imagine that we all know the phrase “First, do no harm.” It’s often attributed to the Hippocratic oath that medical students take. The phrase is actually not part of that oath but it stands on its own, still offering a watchword worth holding. The concept seems a simple one and, I would suspect,…
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Get Over It
I guess there are people who can just “get over it.” Maybe you are one of them. I, for better or for worse, am not. I never have been. And, while I definitely don’t claim that as one of my better traits, I accept it as part of who I am. In some ways, my…
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Echoes and Understanding
Happy birthday Dad. How amazing it is to realize that it’s been 30 years since I’ve actually said those words to you. I have often said, perhaps as I reflect on it now, a bit uncharitably, that my father elevated difficulty to the level of an art form. Born in Poland, faced with the horrors…
With a Full Heart 