The mouse roared, the phoenix rose, and Cinderella snapped

“Deadly and graceful, poised and ruthless. Quiet and cunning. A queen offers her hand to be kissed, and can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time.” ~ E. Acevedo It happens. And not when you’d expect. Not when enough is enough. Because for many, the territory of enough-ness keeps being expanded…

What is around you matters

Granted there are dogs living in Chernobyl. And we admire Viktor Frankl’s message about dealing with unavoidable suffering, along with all the other messages out there about courage and personal choice in the face of adversity. We also understand that our ‘inner world’ needs to be balanced and well managed for us to function adequately,…

Again, it’s all and always about the love

“I have not fallen in love with a body, but merely a soul, and that has made all the difference.” ~ Christopher Poindexter A favorite post, as true today, after so much time, as it was when I first wrote it. I didn’t buy tulips or champagne for Thanksgiving, but different flowers and some Coke….

A reminder: you are not a pretzel

What a relief! No really, it is, isn’t it? Very liberating. This realizing once and for all that you don’t have to twist yourself into a pretzel to be loved and treated well. Some realize it early on. For others, it takes a bit of living to not only realize it intellectually, but also believe…

Love is not enough

Love is clearly not enough. We’ve lived this harsh truth, seen it around, and relationship gurus remind us of it all the time. The very idea of romance these days (or perhaps since forever) doesn’t seem to lead us to a space of hope, joy and enthusiasm for a happy life. Quite the opposite. It…

Old dogs can always learn new tricks – and should

A short story about a cat, not a dog. When we rescued Freddy, a beautiful grey cat who later turned out to be a Russian blue, he had been hanging around in the lobby of an apartment building for weeks. He would walk a few steps and then lie down. Apparently, to at least the…

It could be harder – a lesson in optimism

Whenever anyone offered the perspective that placed my challenges in a context of even more difficult circumstances and obstacles, I used to reply “yes, but it can also be much better!“. In my defense, I blame perfectionism and also, a sincere aversion to settling for something that can be enhanced by thoughtful effort, as opposed…

Will you remember who you are? (an almost poem)

“if you must turn hard to survive, don’t let it be against yourself.” e. wilder, balefire the song, not the scream.the gentle word. not the anguished. or the loud. or the terrifying. the soft and gentle hand, not the one that strikes. not the fist. will you remember who you really are, and take yourself…

Yes, because there’s nothing to lose

What is it they say… Something about how if the answer is yes and things work out, you win. And if the answer is no, and things don’t go well, you win again because you learned a lesson. They also say (and psychology proves it) that we will do more to avoid pain than to…

Not who you are

After three years of a pandemic that drained even the luckiest among us, another major conflict is unfolding. Because there wasn’t enough conflict and suffering in the world. Or poverty. Or enough refugees. It was late at night when I saw the first post on social media about troops having gone into the Ukraine. I…