by Rosemary Lichtman, Ph.D. and Phyllis Goldberg, Ph.D.
Feeling down in the dumps now that the holidays are over? If you’re hoping for something uplifting on these dreary days and cold nights, you’re not alone. T.S. Eliot, in The Waste Land, said, “April is the cruelest month.”
But studies have found that for the majority of Americans, January is the most depressing month of the year. […]
by Karen Maezen Miller
They love us in a different way.
I said that when someone asked what it was like to have a teenager.
I feel like we’ve lost a daughter.
My husband said that after a silent and inconsequential Sunday.
Just shut up.
I said that to her after a ride in the car yesterday.
And yet, there is love, so much love between us and it has gone nowhere! I am standing on the high bluff over death valley, infinite openness in all directions, stunned dumb in the emptiness, but I know the space before me is pure love. Pure love. Life grows here, even when we can’t see it. Refreshed in a cool night, fed by invisible rivulets. A whisper of sea sails five hundred miles across five mountain ranges, and the whisper is this.
They love us in a different way.
They love us in the space, the space that is nothing but love.
Love is not a feeling, not a thought, nothing given or got, not more or less. Not a precaution or warning, not a push or a prod. Not a reminder, not a teaching, not a performance. Love is not what I say and not what you hear. Not how was school how was the test what about homework what are you wearing wash your face eat your dinner pick up your shoes I don’t like her him that when if what did you do what did you say what about your terrible wonderful failure success happiness sadness what about me what about me what about me?
Love is the space between us. There is so much space.
What will you put into that space today, I ask myself before I hear the roar of my own echo.
Just shut up.
Reprinted with permission […]
by Rosemary Lichtman Ph.D. and Phyllis Goldberg Ph.D.
Long before it was a song, the saying was a part of our conversation: Love makes the world go ’round.
With all this whirling, love can make you feel off balance and dizzy. Sometimes it’s tricky to keep your personal world turning without having it spin totally out of control. Although our focus is most often on romantic love, there are many different kinds of love that help keep us grounded. […]
by Casey Kochmer
The term Midlife Crisis brings up many images. In America, it brings up deriding images of a person buying a red sports car, daydreams of flings, broken marriages and people acting as a child again.
In reality, a Midlife Crisis represents a deeper possibility for a person to become their dreams. However, those dreams are hard to realize within an un-supportive society and without clear personal understanding of the actual experience. People often end up hurting themselves in the process of trying to change. A person’s life carries a lot of momentum from the past that tumbles them about heedlessly upon trying to change to be something new. […]
by Casey Kochmer
I am going to practice being elegant… I will start with my daughter Mina by focusing more on time to play and not being such a parent all the time. […]