Get Naked With Yourself

A singular idea occurred to me last week, coming hard on the heels of the Jewish holiday of repentance and new resolutions: what would happen if I made a list of all I’d like to change in my life during the coming year? Many of us create resolutions for the start of a fresh year–whether…

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Stripping Down

It’s October 11th and Yom Kippur is almost here. I’m writing this just about one week before you will be reading it. I’m at my kitchen table, typing, thinking, wondering–maybe making a little prayer. It’s three o’clock, and in a few hours, at sundown, millions of Jewish men, women and children all around the world will…

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Steps To Fighting The Darkness

My last newsletter reminded all of you that September is National Suicide Prevention month. This week I’d like to offer some strategies I used to fight off the darkness when I was a suicide risk. And I’ll also give you a few that worked when my Mom was the one at risk, and I needed…

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Gone Snorkeling…ALOHA!

Okay, I have a confession to make: I really loathe buying a bathing suit. Consider first the ghastly green lighting in the department stores that illuminates every dimple of cellulite. And consider second the mirror that adds a good ten pounds to my sixty-two year old body, upon which gravity has definitely done its work.…

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Guilty Pleasures

So, it’s Thursday at 5:00 in the morning and I’m speeding along at eighty miles an hour, in the pitch black, to a burg called Vallejo, which is about an hour and a half from my house. I’m keeping watch in my rear view mirror for “CHIPies,” (California Highway Patrol), who will pull me over…

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The Winter of My Brain

Out of hibernation we emerge! The clocks have sprung forward, the spring equinox has passed, the groundhog failed to see his shadow last month and so predicted an early new season. Boy, am I glad to hear it, as here at our home on the top of a small mountain, we had a direct lightning…

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A Dog Is A Dog Is A Dog

A second chance is one of the most miraculous and elusive gifts we can give. But why is it so hard to forgive–not only the ways in which we let others down, but also the ways in which we disappoint ourselves? Over the past two years, there has been an aspect of my life in…

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Transform Your Aspirations Into Achievements

So you want to take the risk of shaking up your life, or even just pursuing “the old stuff” with a unique and fresh perspective. You know the New Year is the perfect time to try. But maybe you don’t have even the remotest idea of a way to begin. How do you transform your…

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Let Your Own Sun Shine

Look back over 2015 and what do you see? A string of experiences and dilemmas to which you responded, reacted, or resolved. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. The “worse” is what helps us formulate our “New Year’s Resolutions.” I do it just about every year: when I was sixteen, I resolved…

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Dodging Curveballs

Sometimes life sends us curveballs. Just when we are least expecting it, a new situation arises, be it good or bad, and we are left scrambling. Not so long ago, I was talking with a friend whose older sister had died suddenly quite some time ago, and who was having difficulty coming to terms with…

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