Did you know that Saturday, Nov. 13 is World Kindness Day? Me, neither. But I am glad to learn that bit of information, and I am all in. I believe in kindness as a way of life; I agree with Aesop, famed storyteller from ancient Delphi, Greece, known for Aesop’s Fables, when he wrote, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” Having just returned from a month on Cape Cod (it was an amazing time, thank you for asking), I noticed acts of kindness with a visitor’s eyes. One of our favorite places for morning brunch is a small older place called the Heavenly Restaurant in Yarmouth ..read more

Life is a flower of which love is the honey –   Victor Hugo Ever have an experience of synchronicity? A week ago, a friend sent me a newspaper clipping about the global crisis in loneliness, and the very next day, another friend sent me an email about an organization called Love Letters that leaves anonymous positive notes around the community to bring kindness and hope.  Coincidence? I don’t think so. These two events might seem accidental, but I believe they are of divine origin, intended to draw my attention to writing about loneliness, and about the power of random acts of k ..read more

I’ve always been a fan of the great outdoors; as a child I loved riding my bike all over the small town where I grew up, and later as an adult, I have enjoyed running, going for “walks and talks” with my family and friends, and taking my dog out for his daily exercise.  And while we’ve known for generations that being outdoors, in the presence of nature, has a positive effect on our sense of wellbeing and our overall health, it has not always been clear just how little time it takes to derive those benefits.  Until recently. Several research studies, reported in the US and in Denmark ..read more

Many people are uncomfortable with silence, and solitude, and yet, these are essential skills for aging well and living life fully.  Silence can be restorative, and can build resilience in the face of crises, illness, loss and other life transitions.  Learning to welcome silence and cultivate its gifts of inner peace and creativity are worthy goals. Many of you know that I lived and worked in Japan for four years, but you might not know that, in my third year, I joined a weekly Zen meditation group that met outside of Osaka at a Buddhist temple on Friday evenings. The silent sessions ..read more

Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hope inspires the good to reveal itself.” We all want to be better human beings, to grow and to ennoble our souls. It’s soothing to know that hope takes goodness seriously and combines it with humility, to allow us to approach everything and everyone with a readiness to see goodness revealed and to be pleasantly surprised. Hope gives us a lightness of step, and eases a heaviness of heart. The Pandemic revealed to us a great deal of goodness during the shutdown and the many months of staying home, wearing masks, and avoiding close social contact. We discovered our own cr ..read more

One of the many things we are learning, as we live through this pandemic, is the importance of our time with friends to our overall health and well-being. COVID-19 is an equal opportunity agent that has disrupted the social lives of people of all ages by requiring that we mask up, limit or avoid our gatherings, and stay six feet apart. None of these are helpful to making and keeping friendships. In particular, adults in the second half of life can feel defeated by the sense of isolation, loneliness, and the challenges of finding ways to connect with others. Surprisingly, many people are succee ..read more

I’ve been thinking a lot about grace and how transformative it can be. I define grace as a special state of being in which I am given an unearned, unexpected gift, something that I don’t deserve, and haven’t asked for, that comes to me freely and with a love that feels benevolent and intentional. Upon reflection, I see that it’s grace that has strengthened me and moved my life forward from the time I was old enough to notice the grace around me. I was reminded of the power of grace in a recent news story about health care workers who are involved in the national vaccination efforts happening a ..read more

Urban Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was bragging over lunch to a group of fellow writers that he could compose a novel in six words (referred to as “flash fiction”).  Someone wagered a $10 bet, and he won when he wrote, “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.” I tell you this fabled story in order to lead into my blog post about gratitude during 2020.  This season of the year, I always deeply feel gratitude, and 2020 is no exception.  In spite of the pandemic, and all of the special miseries and challenges we have faced, I am grateful. Gratitude resembles hope in this sense: it ..read more

Many of us are feeling anxious, afraid, and unsettled right now.  These are heartbreakingly hard times that we are facing in 2020, but we are not powerless. It’s a harmful illusion to think that we are without choice in our lives, or that we lack the ability to act with courage and love. Life has always been like this: a paradox where we don’t always have control, but we do have choices.  We can control our own attitude toward what happens to us, individually and collectively. That is our true power. In a recent women’s writing circle that I joined, we considered how each of us could ..read more

  Note to reader:  This blog was originally posted in my October 2020 newsletter but did not land on my blog postings as intended.  It is, therefore, reprinted here now. Life, as imperfect and impermanent as it is, is what we have.  Death, as inevitable and mysterious as it is, is also what we have.  It’s unimaginable that we could talk about the wonder and awesome beauty of life without acknowledging the presence of death.  The force of life commands our respect as does the unrelenting role of death as the Great Equalizer.  As a teacher in my hospice trainin ..read more