Courage-authenticity-shame expert Brene Brown has very insightful ways of thinking about the crucial importance of being able to "fully embrace vulnerability."  I've long had her on my blogroll, but was just alerted to this video today:  thanks, Margaret, for passing this on.  I think it's terrific.   For one thing, I like her definitions:  Blame […] Read More

 I spoke too soon when I said early last week that my current transition from one obsessive-compulsive disorder drug to another was finished and smooth.  The next day I went into withdrawal from the old one: headaches, bouts of sweating and chill, nausea,  weirdly intricate dreams,  aching back and joints, bits of confusion, exhaustion, ten to twelve hour naps, and […] Read More

Doing much better, thank you!! In my previous post, I was having a rough few days because the medication for my mild-to-perhaps-medium case of obsessive-compulsive disorder had run out of steam, as such drugs periodically do.  I complained in detail about the rise of my old familiar symptoms, all of them hedges against largely unfelt anxiety.  A bit like […] Read More

 Coping with my mild case of obsessive compulsive disorder has long been one of the announced topics of this blog.  It is after all an anxiety disorder, and anxiety can truly get in the way of boldness, whether it’s actually experienced as normal fear or instead takes the less healthy form of repeating thoughts and/or […] Read More

      A nice tip from an old Bottom Line Personal: Finance writer Dyan Machan brings together success secrets from a bunch of notable successful people. "Diane von Furstenberg, founder of a hugely successful clothing company (DVF), reminds herself that her mother survived a Nazi concentration camp.  Compared with that, what is there to […] Read More

Have you made a resolution?   I'm working on this, not quite finished.  For me, a good resolution needs  two parts: the big goal and the action item. A few years ago,  Part One was: follow the will of God. Part Two was: find out what that is by meditating 20 minutes a day without fail. That year […] Read More

When I was a senior at Duke, I took a wonderful writing course from Helen Bevington. On the first day of class, she told us on she was open to reading anything but Christmas poems. Being of a somewhat oppositional nature, I took it as a challenge to write a Christmas poem that would interest […] Read More

/Solstice celebration was today at lunch for four “weird women” in Raleigh’s Pullen Park. We stood in a big round gazebo around a little potted tree and held what amounted to a nature-lover’s mini-peer-group therapy session.   I left feeling shook loose and inspired. One of the highlights was the reading of a bold poem, […] Read More

On a screwy day (of the sort when I keep making dumb little mistakes), I’ve never been sure of the best strategy: plunge ahead or freeze. Yesterday was a bit like that (though not the worst.) I went to a two hour Christmas get-together, the sort of thing where you get there on time. I […] Read More

The change: last night I made a vat of fudge. Ordinarily I don't cook. And this is not an overstatement. If I ever made fudge before, it was more than forty years ago and utilized a mix and an onsite advisor. But the hint of a whim to do this touched me a few days […] Read More