Putting Spark to the Cold Ground

I once spent a night alone in a biologist’s cabin in Garden Valley, Idaho. It was January and the entire valley was padded with a foot of powdery snow.  I was doing a clinical rotation in that small town and the doctor I worked with had an arrangement with the family that owned this cabin,…

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Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity

“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.” Chekhov Today marks the start of Week 4 in The Artist’s Way, and this chapter is full of goodness. There are ways to sort of mark your progress in this first month and some wedges to push the door open just a hair…

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Attention

I smell the ocean on the warm breeze flowing steadily past the skin on my face and arms, which are slightly sticky from the drying salt water. The sun is headed down but the days are long and it will be hours before it sets. There is a seagull walking past, eyeing the abandoned beach…

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Conversion

I was thinking about the boom box at Baskin Robbins the other day. The tinny sound of Mix 105.5 floating over the trickle of water through the scoop basins and the chorus hum of freezers. I can’t hear a Billy Idol song without thinking of that boom box (was every night 80s night?). Natalie Imbruglia,…

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Boyfriends

A year ago this month, my then-boyfriend of four or five months abruptly broke up with me with little explanation. And he did it in sort of an angry way, four days after my grandpa passed away. I went to the funeral devastated. I went to work. I took my son to swimming lessons. I…

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The Crocs Miracle: Living with Intention at Disneyland

We did it! Connection and joy. It’s possible, even at Disneyland!

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Sit and smile

I’m going to pause here because THIS is mind-blowing for me. I’m not required to constantly shift and work and adjust and strain until perfection is obtained? Really? There is space in life for a moment’s pause to sit and smile?

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Seasonal allergies or cancer?

Right now I have a paraganglioma in my right neck.  It’s called a carotid body tumor because it is wrapped around the carotid artery at the point where the artery splits to provide blood supply to my face and my brain.  I had tumor removed from the same location on the left side in 2005. …

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Engage in small c creation

“We do seem to be living in a universe that is in a constant and unending state of creation. It’s never stopping. It’s never stopping here either. We are not witnessing that. We are PART of that. We come from that. We work into that.” Elizabeth Gilbert

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