“There is a mantra I love that can help enormously with this process we call Life. I saw it written on a whiteboard in a yoga class one day and I have adopted it as one of my Core Principles for Living. Here it is:

Here’s a holiday pop quiz: Do you remember what you received for Christmas last year? Do you remember what you gave? Me either.

Sometimes the Universe is not subtle. In the past eight weeks, I was privileged to watch three pairs of birds build their nests, lay their eggs, and fledge their young. At the same time, a half dozen monarch caterpillars joined our family and we’ve watched them grow and form glittering green chrysalises and emerge as beautiful butterflies.

My quiet little life of writing and drinking too much tea has lately given way to a crash course in social media as I prepare to move my book into the public eye. While I love being in the middle of a creative blitz, the cramming of technology as a second language (TSL) has me feeling slightly stupid, excessively amped, and generally off-kilter.

My husband and I were recently having dinner at a lovely, intimate restaurant. Seated next to us was a forty-something couple in the early stages of love. They were leaning in and smiling, holding hands the way you do in the early days of romance. Then I noticed the phone in his right hand.