In these days before the celebration of Christ’s birth, I wanted to share a gift with you. I have recently found myself drawn to the writings of a minister and author whose unassuming humility and graciousness belie the depth of his scholarship and insight. Michael Sprague’s LinkedIn posts are consistently thoughtful, edifying and bring a new perspective to a scripture or topic that may not be new, or possibly even so familiar as to seem cliché in meaning. Here, with his per

You can change your relationship with your thoughts This is my final writing in a series of posts re: fear loops. Together, these 5 short pieces build a cohesive journey:  Recognizing the loop → Understanding your biology → Clarifying the emotions → Reframing your thoughts → Practicing strategies This last post will get to the strategies, that when practiced, can guide you from stepping out of the fear loop to nurturing resilience and reframing the pain into purpose. (*Go h

You can change your relationship w/ thoughts This is Part 4 of a series on thought loops that can be formed from fear, worry and anxiety - how we can get trapped in them and how to break free from them. (If you want to read the first three in this blog series go here .) In the previous post (Part 3), I covered the distinctions between the three distress emotions - fear, worry, and anxiety - how each contributes to a fear loop. I also defined ‘feedback loops’ and differentiate

This spooky web can be sticky to get out of! I have been sharing my exploration into fear - its webs and loops, and generally speaking, its power to throw our emotions into dysregulation and our body systems out of the homeostasis for which we were made. My first two posts on the topic can be found here , if you would like to read them. I used the personal story of our family handling the acute crisis of my husband resigning suddenly, to introduce the idea of fear loops as we

You were built for balance In my last post, I started a series on the topic of fear loops: How life brings situations that can set us up...

It was the 1990s on a typical weekday, with the usual sounds – me clanking kitchenware as I prepared dinner, and our two kids in their...

Building a Life That Bends, Not Breaks This is the final installment of considering the concept of resilience. ( Go here if you would...

A Story of Improvisation Let's take a look at another aspect of resilience. (The topic I have been exploring in the last several blog...

Can a dozen different orders of patatas bravas change your life? For sure the quest for the best has got me pondering the deep...

A few years ago, I had a woman in my life, in her early forties, say to me, “I look to you to learn what it is to be a woman.” Wow, that...

Advent means an arrival or coming For this Christmas post, I just wanted to throw out something I have been pondering during this 2024...

The setting: Our (then) eight-year-old granddaughter and eleven-year-old grandson were visiting in July a few years ago. Our daughter and...

Many years ago, when a close friend stopped all contact with me for over a year (14 months, to be exact), I was in great pain. I could...

Within the Enneagram personality structure of nine distinct Types, there are a handful of the numbers that tend to deal more with the...

May I do something a little different, and throw out a question at the begin of a post? Will you consider pondering this with me today?...

I sense my title may be evoking various versions of curiosity: What is emotional monitoring? How could empathy ever be bad or dark? I had...

Read about developing endurance by practicing recovery while in the midst of an uphill challenge.

I was around thirty years old when it hit me...With a smirk on my face, I said to myself: “The title to my life story is surely going to...

We are into February (already!), probably reassessing the resolutions we made a month ago, and headed towards Valentine’s Day. So, I am...

Being in the last half of January, most of you are probably through the irritating return process from Christmas gift-giving. The process...