“The path, traveler, is made in the walking.”

  • The Fish Tank Problem: Finding the Conditions to Thrive

    The Fish Tank Problem: Finding the Conditions to Thrive

    I had promised my son a fish for his 6th birthday. He had been saving money to help cover the cost for months, and was bouncing next to me on his tip toes with excitement. But as I looked at the cart – packed full of random oddments I had never imagined a fish needed…

  • On Grief

    On Grief

    It’s not the same as sadness. You can let go of desire for the thing you lost, and sadness goes away. But grief is a gift that keeps on giving. Grief is love – something essential to our life force, something pure and good and true – that has nowhere to go. It’s a hole…

  • Why Love & Happiness Always Hurt

    Why Love & Happiness Always Hurt

    There’s no happily ever after. Mainly because there’s no ever after. The story just keeps going. There are happily’s and unhappily’s, and they just rotate. Loving someone, deeply, truly, doesn’t make the happiness stay. Happiness, and indeed having anything we want, doesn’t work that way. That’s why we talk about love with detachment. Loving the…

  • The Compass to Good You Were Taught to Ignore

    Humans have spent a long time worrying about starvation. The quivering family clutches their rags around them in the dreary hut. Outside, snow falls, and the rickety walls only welcome the draft. The little boy swallows his crust of bread in a single bite and stares desolately at the wall as tears come to his…

  • I Was Evicted Once

    I Was Evicted Once

    It was Christmas, and I was looking at being evicted and homeless. With a toddler. With no spare resources to settle the house we were renting or get to a safe place. I couldn’t even get transport to the social services office. Our car had been smoking if it went over 40 miles an hour.…