When a Loved One Dies

Recently, someone I have known for a long time died.  I draw on this experience as well as my knowledge as a therapist to address any similar occasion you may have had. When a loved one dies, many thoughts and feelings arise.  Grief, disbelief, loneliness, regrets,...

Report from the Home Front during COVID-19

As a therapist, I regularly have the privilege of coming into and sharing your lives.  Recently, I have also had the privilege of coming into your homes through online telehealth, as the coronavirus emergency continues.  So I thought I would share a general view of...

Four Easy Steps to New Habits

Have you made any New Year’s resolutions? Most likely not.  Few people seem to make New Year’s resolutions anymore.  The conventional wisdom is that it is no use to make New Year’s resolutions, because 90% of them are broken within three weeks anyway. The fact of the...

Let the Saw Do the Work

Once, when I was 8 or 9 years old, I was in the garage attached to the house I grew up in.  I was sawing a piece of wood with a handsaw.  I learned something that day that I see as a metaphor for keeping a calm, centered mind as I work at tasks these days. I was...

That Wasn’t in the Catalog!

I had a conversation years ago with someone about how life doesn’t always turn out how we thought it would. We have expectations about how we thought things would go, about what we would do, about what we would have, about whom we would be with, about how things would...