Anxiety can easily run away with us if we are merely reacting to it’s jitters. The best way to halt the runaway fear before it begins is to sink down, breathe, and take the reins.

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.”

We’re almost there my friends. We’re at the finish line of 2020: the craziest, weirdest, most tumultuous, contentious, painful, scary, exhausting year that most of us have ever seen.

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.

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

I seldom do what I’m about to do, which, I hope, will make what follows jump out at you and grab your bathrobe.

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.

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.

I recently wrote on the importance of being present in the unfolding moments and opportunities of Life.  As I wrote, it became very clear that it is almost impossible to discuss presence without also addressing awareness: they belong and resonate together

I was walking on the trails with my retriever, Tucker, the other day, happy to be out alone with him and to enjoy some tranquility. At one point on my walk, I realized that I had completely missed the last hundred yards of the trail, having become lost in my numerous thoughts, and I was struck, once again, by how very easily that happens; how we can blot out our current experience by drifting into busyness.