Pride month is over, but we can live its lessons year-round. Are you proud? Maybe if you’re not part of the LGBTQIA+ community, you think you don’t get to be proud. Maybe your religious tradition taught you that pride was a sin. Maybe your mother told you, “Don’t be boastful” and you made yourself small. Whoever you are, you get to be proud. Not because you’re amazing. Not because you’re better than anyone else. You get to be proud because you're YOU, and because pride is an antidote to...
14 days ago • 4 min read
Hello love, Yesterday we celebrated my daughter’s college graduation. Earlier that morning, a dear friend’s father passed away. I have to take a breath to hold it all, the joy and the sorrow. I know they live right next to each other. My father passed away the day after the birthday of one of my oldest & dearest friends. We chose that day to take him off life support because I didn’t want my friend’s birthday to also be the day of my father’s passing. Years later, her father passed away on my...
20 days ago • 3 min read
strawberries & cream meets nutella-banana Happy Saturday! I recently took my daughter out for brunch. She wanted crepes and couldn’t decide between two flavors. “Let’s ask if you can have one of each. They can always say no.” They said yes. Actually, the server went to ask the manager and then came back and said, “We’ve never done this but he said we can do it for $3.” What a great lesson for $3. We’ve never done this. Yes we can. Because we asked. If they’ve never done it it means no one has...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Photo by Jongsun Lee on Unsplash Happy Monday! Rather cheeky, aren't I? Are we even allowed to feel happy on Mondays? I mean, we all know that person, the one who comes into the office, cheerful on Monday -- Sometimes we love their relentless cheerfulness and sometimes it drives us bonkers. I admit -- sometimes I am that person! And sometimes I pretend I'm not. If people around me are complaining about Monday, I want to join in. We're social beings and it feels good to be connected to others,...
4 months ago • 4 min read
These are woods in New York, about 40 miles north of New York City. My family moved here when I was in 4th grade and it's where my husband and I grew up. Beautiful, no? But here's the thing -- I don't feel at home there. I realized this last week when we went back for my mother-in-law's 90th birthday. I might never have realized it without coaching. Coaching has made me less judgmental of myself, which lets me hear my own truths more easily. I mean, someplace beautiful, in a place where you...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Outdoor lunch on Mom's birthday, 2018 How do the painful things that happen in our life become part of us? And how can we shape their influence on us, so we emerge stronger, more soulful, deeper? This is really it, isn’t it? Sometimes we wish painful experiences wouldn’t affect us, that we could just continue on, being our beautiful selves, untouched. But we also know that the hard things we’ve made it through are part of our history, part of who we are. We put our experiences in their places...
6 months ago • 4 min read
Peets tastes best in SF with my sister Greetings from San Francisco! I'm here for a conference and to see my sister and her wife --- the best! My sister Carrie and I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and I had the opportunity to see the Ragnar Kjartansson installation, The Visitors. It's an experience that will stay with me. The installation is a dark room with screens projecting images around the room. In each screen is a musician in a different room of the house, playing an...
7 months ago • 3 min read
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash It’s New Year’s Eve! I’m not much for parties, but I enjoy the reflection of this time of year, looking back and looking ahead. Here are two powerful questions I’ve been sitting with: What am I saying YES to, in my life, right now? And in the coming year, What do I want to say YES to? Sometimes we say yes to things we don’t want. We say yes to make other people happy or to get along. We say yes because it feels easier or because we think we don’t have a...
7 months ago • 3 min read
Merry Christmas Eve! As a kid, I celebrated Christmas, even though both my parents were Jewish. My mother's father wasn't Jewish and he passed away when she was still a teenager. I imagine celebrating Christmas made my mom feel connected to her dad. My husband's family opened gifts on Christmas eve, but my family was all about Christmas morning. I remember that feeling of being so excited that I could hardly sleep, and the wonder of waking up to a cozy house, filled with lights and presents....
7 months ago • 2 min read