When you love someone who treats you badly, it is difficult to make sense of it. Your friends don’t get it, nor does your brain, but still you just can’t seem to help yourself. The love feels so strong and powerful that you put up with or overlook the ways your partner treats you poorly. […]
When I was 24, I had knee surgery that landed me with a few weeks on crutches. I was in a good amount of pain, so I was taking Vicodin as one does in these situations. One day, I was hobbling home on my crutches when a voice called out to me from the front […]
Lately, I’ve become a bit obsessed with reducing energy use in our house. It started with the refrigerator, and me finding out that it uses three times the amount of energy a standard new one does. Then, I discovered that a good chunk of energy was wasted by having our TV and its accompanying recording […]
When you feel like you don’t deserve love, you might feel as if love is something that everyone else gets, but you never will. It can be frustrating to watch all sorts of other people find love, keep love, and make it look easy. Some people even seem to take love for granted. Meanwhile, you […]
Dogs have many different reactions to fear- some cower, some attack. For years, we had the kind of dog that reacted to her fear by attacking- and she had a bottomless well of fear and anxiety. Liver was a muscular, hyper Dalmatian who came into the world with faulty wiring in her nervous system- constantly tense […]
Recently, I watched the movie “Murderball” which is an excellent documentary about a powerful, tough, and inspiring group of quadriplegic rugby players. There is much that is worth seeing in this film, so I highly recommend it. Today, I am focused on one quote in particular, by team member Andy Cohn, while describing the period of rehabilitation one […]
When I was in college, I rode around on a ten-speed that may as well have been a one-speed. I’d had this bike for years, and never learned how to change gears on it, so whatever gear it had been in when I got it, that was the gear I’d bike around on. One day, […]
When planting a garden, it is tempting to put in full-sized plants so that your garden is completely filled in as soon as you are done planting. The problem with this is that very soon, your garden will be overcrowded, and you’ll need to divide and thin many of your plants. Dividing is hard work, […]
I have only gone rock-climbing once in my life, and that was enough for me. My siblings adore this activity, so they introduced it to me one year at Joshua Tree. When I reached the top of my first wall and it was time to come back down, I felt completely stuck. I was roped […]
Sometimes, we act as if the world of our emotions is flat, a two-dimensional sort of place. We may very badly want something to turn out a particular way. That desired outcome stands in the future, on the edge of a flat world. We picture it turning out the “wrong” way, and believe that we […]