Well, here we are. Another holiday season is upon us. How do you feel about the holidays? They can be tricky for many of us. What can also be tricky is talking about all of this without being cliche or redundant. Talking about this time of year in a way…

H. Jackson Brown Jr. wrote: Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something. It’s a beautiful reminder as we stand at the precipice of the holiday season — a season when time feels especially fleeting and people tend to rush past one another…

I’ve been reading up on the topic of shame lately. Specifically how the shame we absorb in childhood causes us to split off from ourselves and form a “false self”. ‌ And then, of course, it’s very difficult for us to form fulfilling bonds and connections with other people because we’ve alienated our…

There’s a line in a Mary Oliver poem I think of often. Whenever it comes to mind it feels like a bell chiming. Or a reminder. It goes: Are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? Another question this one sparks is: Are you aware that you’re…

There’s a question that comes up from time to time, in my work as a coach, about the difference between the need to self isolate and the need for solitude. This is a topic very dear to my heart because self isolation is, unfortunately, my default mode when things are…

Esther Perel wrote: Those who give too much are those who fear not being given to. ‌ At the root, codependency is about not feeling conscious and anchored in our own inherent worth and so, as a result, we give what we wish we could receive. …

Pablo Neruda wrote: Let us forget, with generosity, those who cannot love us. I say: yes, yes, yes to this. Let us forget even if we can’t yet forgive, because forgiveness can be complicated and not always possible to conjure. But allowing ourselves to ‘forget’ — to turn our attention…

In Buddhism we have a teaching about spaciousness. If you put a pinch of salt in a thimble of water, you can really taste it. But if you put a pinch of salt in a lake we wouldn’t be able to detect its presence at all. The pinch of salt…

The tendency to over-promise in relationships is often connected to the need to avoid conflict and disappointment. But of course it never works out this way! When there’s a gap between what we say vs what we do, we wind up disappointing people much more profoundly than if we’d just…