thinking thursday
mind “What I like about this study is how it assumes that love is an action.” In such a way, love is a verb. I love the list of questions. For several years, I’ve had this crazy idea of hosting a community dinner, inviting a whole town to the convention …
Camp News!
Speaking Opportunities Today at midnight (Eastern) is the deadline to submit a session/speaking proposal for Life is a Verb Camp 2015. I hope you’ll make a strong offer and share your brilliance! Scholarship Program Our Camp Scholarship application process will open later today as well. If you are interested to …
poetry wednesday : a few words on the soul
A few words on the soul by Wislawa Szymborska We have a soul at times. No one’s got it non-stop, for keeps. Day after day, year after year may pass without it. Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood’s fears and raptures. Sometimes only in astonishment that we are …
book stack tuesday : does this spark joy?
We moved into our new old house 15 months ago. What preceded that move was The Great Shedding of Many Things that I do not miss at all. A set of grandma’s china. A tea set I lugged back on the plane from Austria at age 19. Carvings, jewelry, scarves, …
trust yourself
Betrayal. It feels hot and cold simultaneously. It is complex. It is infuriating. It feels numbing. Shocking. It is a loss of such great magnitude—trust lost, thrown away, trampled. It engenders such feelings of sadness. What does it mean to feel betrayed? What kind of loss is that? What does …
strong offer friday
do you know your optimal work equation? Over the years, I have determined a healthy balance of work projects for myself, in thirds. When I did more corporate consulting, the balance was 1/3 consulting, 1/3 writing, 1/3 speaking. If I veered too much from that equation, I felt off kilter. …
thinking thursday
mind What is the cost of loneliness? “Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as deadly as obesity. Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents – all these, like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more prevalent when connections are …
poetry wednesday : if you knew
If You Knew by Ellen Bass What if you knew you’d be the last to touch someone? If you were taking tickets, for example, at the theater, tearing them, giving back the ragged stubs, you might take care to touch that palm, brush your fingertips along the life line’s crease. …
book stack tuesday : mindfulness and depression
The poet Jane Kenyon, who suffered from devastating depressions, wrote, “With the wonder and bitterness of someone pardoned for a crime she did not commit I come back to marriage and friends…to my desk, books, and chair.” And, at another time, she wrote, “Unholy ghost, you are certain to come …
break open by surprise
an excerpt from my book, “The Geography of Loss” One October a few years ago, a woman named Jodi Cohen invited me to come read from Life is a Verb in Madison, Wisconsin. I asked Jodi if she had any favorite stories in the book, because I wanted to …
