By practicing awareness and non-judgment, you create space. You provide some breathing room between an action and a reaction and in this space, in this pause, something new can emerge—an insight, or a bit of compassion. This is the beginning of transformation.

As with all trauma, pain offers the difficult blessing of causing one’s world to become incredibly small. All the details and to-do lists evaporate and life slows to a centered simplicity, as in, “Let’s see if I can manage to lie down without crying.”

It all began at Madame Stacy's. I stared at the tarot cards on the makeshift table. They represented the state of affairs in my little world. In the center of the spread was the Hanged Man — my current situation.

“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:

As my faithful readers undoubtedly know, I am a porch-sitter. My porch is where I sit and watch the sunrise, express my gratitude, speak my prayers, and think my thoughts.

Chinese medicine calls viruses “Pernicious Evil Influences,” which sums it up pretty perfectly. They are all three of those things. But while viruses are nasty, the anxiety they generate is worse … much worse.

For most of my life, I have been a seeker: a seeker of truth, understanding, and also happiness. Seeking understanding and wisdom is honorable enough, but the happiness bit has been somewhat challenging.

A number of years ago I read a little book titled, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. In it, the author tells the story of being struck by a mysterious condition that left her completely incapacitated, unable even to sit up.

Before we zoom over Thanksgiving on our way to Christmas/New Years/Spring Break/Next Summer, I would like to pause to consider the most basic and greatest of gratitudes: that we have the privilege of being here at all.

There's a country song with the catchy little phrase: "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Those words have (annoyingly) stuck with me because, well, I haven't done very much at all for the first time in a long time. This is not good.

It was gorgeous last weekend, the perfect opportunity to get the kids out of the house, enjoy some time together, and do a bit of Christmas reconnaissance shopping. We walked the half-mile to town in the crisp, cold December morning under a dazzling blue sky, birds flitting and deer grazing in the open field we passed.

f you are one of those lucky people who knew who you were and what you wanted to do from the time you were seven years old, this column is not for you. Furthermore, I don’t ever want to talk to you and please don’t write me.

What do Donald Trump, a trip to Costco, and my dog have in common? More than you might imagine. A strange confluence of events culminated this morning in a surprising, personal revelation.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Not the When Harry Met Sally sort, or the infatuation/lust/heartbreak/revenge tedium on the radio that makes my 10-year-old daughter ask, with a look of pure nausea and disgust on her face, “Why are all the songs about love?”

Adrenal fatigue — the main symptom of which is unremitting and total exhaustion—is rampant in the U.S., especially among middle-aged women. I might have found this fact interesting in and of itself, but a recent and recurring bout with adrenal fatigue has caused me to pause, quite literally, to consider the nature of disease, its meanings, and our role in creating it.

The other morning I sat in the pre-dawn darkness on my porch, wrapped up against the cold, staring at the stars with their piercing, distant magnificence. I listened to invisible raccoons running through the trees, saw the inky outline of the branches bending under their weight. I heard the soft clopping of deer hooves, and then the owl’s resonant, echoing call in the middle distance.

Sitting inside the Full Moon Woo tarot tent, I stared at the cards representing the state of affairs in my little world. In the center of the spread was the Hanged Man — my current situation. I read up on the Hanged Man, and the sum and substance of it is this: perspective. As in, get a new one.

I hate snakes. Hate is a strong word, but there it is. So imagine my excitement this time last year when we entered the year of the Black Water Snake. I knew it was going to be a wild ride, and not just because I hate snakes: I knew it because a year whose symbolic energy is turmoil and transformation ain’t going to be easy.

One of the more interesting phenomena of middle age is the recognition of just how very stupid and arrogant you have been up to wherever you find yourself near the halfway point.

Two weeks ago my daughter and I had a nasty little tumble from my bicycle, which plopped us rudely onto Third Street and left us battered and bruised. Being five, Sophia recovered at the speed of light. Being some decades past five, I am still purple and in pain.