Be Present. Be Grateful. Believe. Become.
My caring and generous best friend Christine (the one who brought me not just one, but two pairs of pants) is visiting us in Australia with her fantastic husband and kids, who my husband, kids and myself so conveniently adore. The adventures diving on the Great Barrier Reef, feeding crocodiles, and snuggling koala bears have been as plentiful as they’ve […]
We’re spending the last of our days in New Zealand down in the Fiorlands to get up close and personal with what’s been called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Aside from seeing these majestic mountains of rock and timber that fade, or rather fall precipitously, into the water, I’ve spent a lot of time doing something else that I […]
On our 2nd continent in our 3rd of 20+ weeks of travel, I’m already regretting my packing choices. Packing for nearly 6 months of nomad homelessness presents its own sort of challenge, but adding to it the perquisite of packing and storing all of one’s possessions in advance of such worldwide wandering was arguably a regrettable undertaking, if not absurd […]
Post Machu Picchu, we traveled to Pisco to enjoy the beach and also board a small plane to view the Nazca Lines. Formed sometime between 500 BC and 500 AD, these 4 to 6 inch-deep carvings in the hard, clay soil sit in the arid plateaus of the Nazca Desert. There, because of the dry and windless climate, they have […]
Most of us have seen the pictures of the Citadel, the impressive citadel built by the Incas 600 years ago. It was discovered in 1911 by Yale Professor, Hiriam Bingham. The reason why it still stands is that the Spanish conquistadores who defeated the Incas never knew about the city sitting 8,000 feet above sea level, so they didn’t know […]
Sometime in my early thirties, I remember reading an article about the importance of having girlfriends loosely defined as women who you have your back. I believe the magic number to have was at least five. At the time, I had a two-year-young husband, a newborn and a start-up. I balked and wondered when I’d ever have the luck to […]
This week I spent pruning, purging, and packing my office. It wasn’t fun as my reticent, rat-packing tendencies became loudly noticeable in the room that only I tend to use. There were some great discoveries though: I care less about a lot of things that used to matter to me, such as having sharpies in every color including all the […]
It’s official. The training to become a Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher has begun. I signed up for the program almost a year ago, and now that it’s started, the seeds of self-doubt are creeping in. The certification process takes two years, and teaching is the core of the second year of the training. Teaching means I need students, which means […]
This week was a challenge. I got 3 hours of sleep 3 nights in a row. As someone who almost never has sleeping concerns, I was barely functional. Naps didn’t take. Medicine didn’t help. I was in a twilight zone of insomnia, and desperate to get out. It was the experience of going on a silent, seven-day meditation retreat that […]
I’m listening and loving Oprah and Eckhart’s (last names are superfluous with these two) podcast on breaking down, chapter by chapter, A New Earth, Eckhart’s revolutionary book (yes it really is life changing). If you need indication of its significance, it was first published in 2005 and is still in discussion today, some 14 years later, because like many Holy Scriptures, […]