I’m a fine one to talk. “All change implies the acceptance of loss” is the line I berate my coaching and psychotherapy clients with. Loss of function with invisible disability carries with it more than just the loss of “being able to…” It’s how others’ attitudes might change. Or how communication in a relationship — married or not — is impacted. Recently emailing with a colleague, another permutation appeared: “All loss […]
Married, in a relationship, or single, life is often ungovernable. Through disability, chronic illness, divorce, break-up, deaths big and small where do we find respite from difficulty? When can we stop being courageous? So many of us lean on love to give us relief from life’s chattering. If love were so one-dimensional, though, if all loving did was give us rest, would it still be lustrous? What is easy, quantifiable, […]
When it’s all too much, you feel crummy, your relationship sucks, it’s time to pare down, slow down, get down and get funky, sorta New Age-y. Like this. Do the math: Go granular, deconstruct. Find the lowest common denominator. For example, I handed my husband folded jeans fresh from the dryer, still warm. I was so proud, you’d think I’d baked bread or something. Don’t do laundry? Then sit outside, feel […]
It started with doll clothes. Dad’s hankies. Pillow cases. That’s how I learned to iron. Those were the days when ironing was hot, hard, serious work. Still damp, starched clothes were rolled tight, then stored in a vegetable-bin-type container in the fridge. Mom took her role seriously, playing her part in Dad’s job. She ironed my father’s military uniforms with care and precision for over 25 years. Boy, did he […]
We said we’d remember Pearl Harbor; but we haven’t. We said we’d never get caught off guard again; but we did. Americans are often naive; we’ve so much and we’re so far removed that we don’t get what the rest of the world often experiences daily — it can be dangerous out there.
Overwhelmingly, the percentage of people I see in my psychotherapy practice don’t sit down together as a family at dinnertime. Could this be an indicator of family and personal health and well-being? In a word, “yes”. When parental schedules revolve around their children’s, the result is that every weeknight and most weekends are taken up with a child’s activities. Not only doesn’t the family eat together, they may rarely be […]
The U.S. Open, the last of the tennis year’s four majors, is powering its way to the finals, and I’m psyched. Tennis is an intense human drama that showcases the psychology of winning — belief in self, winning through intimidation, body language, gamesmanship, positive self-talk, courage, and reaching deep past pain and fatigue to tap the will to win. It’s not surprising as a couples therapist I would remark on the […]
In the modern age, long past the time Aesop and Burl Ives were telling stories, hybrids thrived. One such unlikely combination was the grasshopper and the ant. Now, you would think that being such behavioral opposites their paths would never cross. You’d be wrong. Somewhere in the reeds and weeds all the bugs were doing their thing. Beetles rolled balls of doo-doo around in circles. Bees started happy […]
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