I’ve been mulling this over for years. I wrote my most recent book—Diana, Herself— as “fantasy fiction” so I could describe the magic I experience without being institutionalized. But after all this [...]
I’ve been mulling this over for years. I wrote my most recent book—Diana, Herself— as “fantasy fiction” so I could describe the magic I experience without being institutionalized. But after all this [...]
Does this sound odd to you? Let me tell you about “Spoon Theory,” my current preoccupation. Spoon Theory is a real thing—you can find it in Wikipedia, listed as a neologism (a phrase just entering popular usage). Spoon theory is the brainchild of the wonderful blogger Christine Miserandino, who has Lupus. She explained life as a Luperian (is that a word? A neologism?) by using spoons to represent the energy [...]
“If you think life’s a vending machine where you put in virtue and you get out happiness,” a character on the TV show “Six Feet Under” once noted, “then you’re probably going to be disappointed.” Most people find this out the hard way. I suspect you did. The times when you obeyed all the rules and got punished anyway, ate righteously and still got sick, worked yourself half to death to achieve a goal only to feel depletion and disappointment rather than the happiness you expected — the happiness you paid for, by God!
For thousands of years, wise observers [...]
One of my more embarrassing memories is the day in high school drama class when I was assigned to deliver the famous monologue in which Lady Macbeth loses her freaking mind. Bumbling my way through history’s worst rendition of that scene, I suddenly understood why actors are always asking, “What’s my motivation?” I had no idea how to portray Lady M because I couldn’t imagine what the heck made her tick.
At the time, I blamed my abysmal acting skills, but now that I’ve lived many additional decades and watched 800,000 episodes of Law & Order, I realize my horrible performance wasn’t [...]
Of course I don’t mean literal storms. I’m talking about periods of intense disturbance we go through prior to deep and lasting personal growth. I [...]
Doggie Do-Good Camp was supposed to last two weeks. That’s a long time to be separated from a dog you’ve just adopted, but when we got Claire, our emergency backup Golden Retriever, it seemed necessary. She was anxious, jittery, and unresponsive to even simple commands. After two weeks, a Doggie Do-Good trainer called to report that Claire needed more time. “Claire is one of the cutest dogs we’ve ever worked with,” said the trainer. There followed a charged silence. The trainer took a deep breath and added, “Her scores are, er, very low.”
It was hard to contradict, but still, harsh, [...]