When I was a small child, I inhabited, as most children do, a vivid imaginal world. But the products of my imagination weren’t created from inside my head: my imagination took flight as a result of my interactions with the physical and sensory world around me. The pitchfork-shaped, steam-spewing industrial structures which I could see across the river from where…
Excerpted from HOW CHILDREN THRIVE: The Practical Science of Raising Independent, Resilient, and Happy Kids, by Mark Bertin, MD. Sounds True, May 2018. Reprinted with permission. The day ends and you pull into your driveway. You open the mailbox and, groaning, take out a two-inch pile of mail, 90 percent junk, but needing to be sorted. Riffling through it as…
When I was seven years old, something unexpected happened. Something that changed how I showed up, perceived others and experienced life through a lens that was ever evolving as I traversed childhood and adulthood …. and even now, as I prepare to enter elderhood in the years to come. I spent a magical summer with an aunt in Wyoming learning…
Being an immigrant to the US, a person of color, and genderqueer, much of my life I never felt I belonged fully to any particular group or community. A coping strategy I learned early on was to conform to the dominant culture so that I didn’t stand out with the hope of being accepted and loved. That stopped working for…
Mary Pipher is the bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia and other books and her latest, Women Rowing North, is a contemplative guide, womanifesto, and reframing of our idea of aging. She is a therapist and writer based in Nebraska, straddling several political, professional, spiritual, and generational circles in her community. We talked about what it means to age, the importance…
There’s an iconic scene in the movie There’s Something About Mary in which Ben Stiller picks up a sketchy hitchhiker played by Harland Williams. Williams tells Stiller about a groundbreaking idea he’s had. “You heard of this thing, the eight minute abs?” he asks. “This is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: seven minute…
I live north of the Golden Gate Bridge in the hills of the wine country, and as I write, the year is turning. I feel my heart turning too, and opening with the apricot blossoms as they begin to come out. Last week there were floods, an atmospheric river passed over us, and also a sudden cold with rare, wondered…
“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” -Amit Ray It sounds so simple, childlike even, to say “just breathe.” You would think in the territory of suffering that our first best move might be something extraordinary, a momentous act, like “dial this number to directly reach the appropriate divine being,” or…