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Your Sole Mate
“Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly both partners might find more ‘suitable’ mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.” (J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter to Michael Tolkien, March 1941) In my experience as a marriage therapist, I have seen few faulty ideas […]
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Only the Lonely
“When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death – ourselves.” (Eda J. Le Shan) Now that my daughter is 18, I find myself talking less about the dangers of careless sex, and more about the dangers of careless romance. […]
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An Ignorance That Leads To Wisdom
“We have an almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.” (Daniel Kahneman) Maturity requires an awareness that there’s a lot you don’t know and that a lot of what you do know may be wrong — or at least twisted in one way or another. You have biases, ways of thinking that you inherited from […]
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The Perfect Poison
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.” (Anne Lamott) If we stopped to examine our definition of “perfect” we would see that it is often so unrealistic that it could never exist in one person. We want to be beautiful and intelligent. We want to be an amazing cook and a professional athlete. We want […]
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Give Yourself a Break
“It is as wrong to deny the possible as it is to deny the problem.” (Dr. Dennis Saleebey) One of the saddest truths I know is that we are our own harshest critics. Even if we are merely agreeing with the expectations of others, being overly critical of ourselves contributes to our own shame. This […]
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Meaning in the Mundane
“We ‘know’ celebrities but they don’t know us. These vicarious relationships create a new kind of loneliness — the loneliness of people whose relationships are with personae instead of persons.” (Dr. Mary Pipher) Our culture is obsessed with celebrities, turning sports players and singers into heroes while dismissing quiet, ordinary, hardworking men and women. Often, […]
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Growing Old (Hopefully)
“The afternoon of life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.” (Carl Jung) Old age catches most people by surprise. Very few of us actually feel our age. We are, rather, reminded of our age by others — often in some kind of comparison […]
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Life in the Rose Garden
“The parent’s role is primarily to stand by with a goodly supply of bandaids.” (Leo Buscaglia) Children are constantly discovering and learning — mostly by touching and tasting and falling. They crawl all over everything and put things in their mouths. This is how they get the information they’re seeking. Helping children process all of […]
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Keep Spinning
“Our world is a place where even a spider refuses to lie down and die if a rope can still be spun to a star.” (Loren Eiseley) Life is hard, and it sometimes sounds like a good idea to stop, to give up, to lie down and die. But there are those who refuse to […]
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Make Your Move
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky) The biggest barrier to creating the great relationships we crave most has always been, and will always be, our fear. We are all, at varying levels, afraid of change — even if it’s the change we’ve always wanted. We say […]