Month: August 2021

Suffering the suffering

Suffering the suffering

I’ve had a hard time paying attention to current events lately. Here’s my struggle: How do I stay abreast of all that’s going on in the world without getting emotionally swamped by it? There is so much suffering. And I’m suffering over the suffering. Earlier this summer, I read a passage from a book called, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, that provides daily meditations from the perspective of Stoicism, a school of thought that flourished in Greek and Roman antiquity. The passage, based on a quote by slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus, advises not to allow someone else’s tragedy to take you away from your […]

Tiny brave things

Tiny brave things

I recently watched the movie, 127 Hours, a true story about Aron Ralston, the hiker who in 2003 got trapped in a Utah canyon by an 800-pound boulder and had to cut off part of his arm to save his life. You likely have heard the story. One of the things that struck me while watching the film was how brave Aron was. And not just about severing his own body part. Even before he was pinned in the canyon, he was portrayed sailing over rocks on his mountain bike and plunging several stories down a slot canyon into a pool […]

The upside of vulnerability

The upside of vulnerability

I’ve been away visiting family so I took a break from blog writing this week. Instead, I share a post from a year ago that oddly and sadly could have been written today. I’ve been waking up lately to the smell of smoke. I’m sure you have too if you live in the West, as it’s wildfire season. This one has been heartbreaking. Because I live in the forest, I’m terrified of wildfire, even though, gratefully, I’ve never been through one. Still, I feel so vulnerable! Vulnerability is a place of discomfort for most of us. It’s typically viewed as […]

Telling the truth

Telling the truth

Three of my girlfriends and I road-tripped to Santa Fe a couple of weekends ago, and I brought back something unexpected–a truer version of myself. The desert-y landscape of New Mexico has always felt healing. Although Santa Fe is technically not high desert (it’s semi-arid steppe) there is an openness to the land and sky there that seduces me. It feels vast and vulnerable at the same time, like a dancing woman slowly removing her clothing. Like the truth. Our truth-telling began before we left Colorado. At a lunch stop in Pueblo, for some reason we got into a conversation […]

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