Monthly Archives: February 2016

The Ballad of My First Car (and marriage)

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My first car was a 1989 Chevy Corsica, and her name was Cecilia. I named her (as I do all my vehicles) after a song. In the beginning, Cecilia was mostly blue, but her defective paint peeled off in strips, leaving large patches of gray primer. Due to a couple minor accidents, she also sported a silver bumper and one of her 4 doors was red. The red door had manual controls where the others had powered buttons. A few months into our relationship, my dad painted Cecilia black and gave her a red pinstripe. As a finishing touch, I […]

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Get Close to Pain

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I write a lot about forgiveness and letting go because I believe these tactics are critical to bringing us through our pain. But today I want to write about pain itself, and why we all need to get close to pain. Getting close to pain is pretty much the last thing anyone wants to do. We humans avoid it in all kinds of clever ways. Perhaps we overindulge in food, drugs and sex. Or we might throw ourselves into the role of parent, friend, family member or employee, and in doing so we ignore who we are. We can also abstain from […]

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Valentine’s Day is Looming. Do You Care?

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In less than a week, it will be Valentine’s Day. Tis the season for roses, chocolates, stuffed animals, wine, champagne, poetry, candles, bubble baths, dinner reservations and selfie-happy social couples… Blah. I’m not a fan of romance. At least, not the prescribed consumer-based type of materialism that’s pushed this time of year. I’m a campfire-over-candlelight type of girl, but I wasn’t always. As a child, I bought into the hype of Valentine’s Day. I longed for the day when some handsome prince would give me a heart-shaped box of milk chocolate truffles. Beyond that, I forget the details of the […]

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The Sweet Spot (in Yoga and Divorce)

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Saturday morning, my yoga teacher kicked off our class with a discussion about Ganesh, the Hindu god with the elephant head. Ganesh is the God of New Beginnings (which is why I have a statue of him in my office), but my teacher honed in on a different aspect of Ganesh:  his love of sweets. “His trunk points to the bowl of sweets in his hand,” she told us. “Ganesh reminds us to search for the sweetness in life, to find that Sweet Spot.” I wondered if she would give us candy at the end of class, but I was […]

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