With a Full Heart

We are, as we all well know, products of our upbringing, both a reflection of the time in which we were born and the family that we were born into. In my family, there were clear expectations about how to behave and how to express feelings. While I confess that I was very skilled at…

It’s snowing. This is day two of watching big, fat flakes drifting down. The roads are not great and the prediction is for a “dump” of a few more inches before the day is through. And, it’s a day when I don’t have any commitments, a circumstance that is both rare and even a little…

Years ago, when I worked as a director in a hospital, responsible for marketing as well as community outreach, I was invited to join the local Rotary club. Rotary was (and likely still is) a well attended weekly group with a great cross section of community leaders. Rotary members took part in many service projects,…

I have a friend who has done a lot of work on her “inner child.” She spends time really thinking about that little girl and trying to address some of the issues of her life by coming to terms with her past. While I respect her process, I have never really thought about the little…

Tis’ the season, as they say, and, regardless of your faith tradition, many of us are deeply mired in holiday preparations and food and gifts. As a child, I grew up in an observant Jewish home. We honored the Sabbath, my father was both a regular attendee at services and a person who prayed at…

Once again the news is filled with tragedy. A campus shooting, an attack on a Chanukah celebration in Australia, reminding us of the terrible level of violence in our world. It was magnified for me by having been to a major exhibit on Auschwitz, just yesterday. We spent almost 2-1/2 hours steeped in the history…

In a recent presentation that I attended, someone used the phrase “toxic positivity” and I not only wrote it down but have thought about it many times since. It’s such a powerful phrase and I can, as I am sure you can, think of many examples of this, especially in my professional life. I had…