I can remember a time when, at about 12 years of age, I walked through the snow in bare feet. For fun. I loved the feeling of the crisp white flakes beneath me. I can also remember loving hot summer days and coming home a hot dirty mess after playing outside all day long and feeling perfectly content and fully alive. I must be getting old (and you need not remind me that I celebrated a big birthday just two weeks ago), because I no longer enjoy the extremes of the seasons. I

I sometimes have days where I feel like I just don’t want to get out of bed. How nice it would be to have the time to just think and reflect, maybe read good books, write poetry, and drink tea, without any expectation of productivity. But I never do. While a day resting at the beach seems to be a perfectly acceptable means of relaxation, a day in bed comes across as somehow slovenly and pathetic. Although I intellectually realize how important rest is to physical and emotiona

My life has been filled with disappointment. I’m sure that you have experienced a lot of disappointment as well. We all experience times when things don’t work out quite the way we expect or would like them to happen, like relationships that end unexpectedly, project proposals that are unfunded, job opportunities that are offered to another candidate, and betrayals of our trust. There are many, many more things that can potentially cause us disappointment in any given day. Di

Happiness is something we all seem to want more of in our lives, but what exactly do we mean when we say that we want to be happy? The way each person interprets the meaning of happiness is as unique as every manifestation of life on the planet. When you think about the word ‘happy,’ it likely invokes a certain emotional response which I can assure you is quite different from what your neighbor might be feeling when this particular word is used. It might make you think of oth

I have always been curious about sourdough, but when I recently read that it both had a lower glycemic index than other breads and offered beneficial bacteria I decided to give it a try. I promptly ordered a starter that originated in the 1700s and a nice airy jar in which my starter would reside. If you haven’t worked with sourdough before, it requires a bit of TLC. If it is kept on the counter, it needs to be fed with water and flour every day. If it is kept in the refriger

I bought myself my first big fancy hat. Not only is it de rigueur for the Devon Horse Show, the event at which I first wore it, it protected me from the lobster-like sunburn which I involuntarily acquired while sitting and walking out in the sun for hours on end at last year’s show. Hat shopping wasn’t fun; after more than six months of searching I finally found something that looked fabulous in a sea of mediocrity. I felt very self-conscious while wearing the hat at the show

As a naive young college graduate in the late 1990s, I can remember actually telling people who interviewed me as I embarked upon a career in the nonprofit sector that I wanted to help save the world, or something like that. Nearly 20 years later, I look back on my career in human services and wonder if I have actually made any difference at all, let alone save the world. Yes, I have touched thousands of lives, listened and offered understanding, created opportunities, made v