Personal disclosure: last week I spent a lot of time beating myself up internally. The reason was pretty innocent: I have been doing a lot of teaching lately, which has left little time for other aspects of my work (like writing this newsletter). Because investing...
If I’m self-compassionate, does that mean I feel sorry for myself? It’s a common fear that self-compassion will lead to self-pity (for ourselves or our kids). What differentiates self-compassion from self-pity? And what makes one resilience boosting and the other...
Have you ever been stuck in a difficult mind loop and unsure how how to get unstuck? Me, too! When a difficult situation or emotion has me spinning, it means that my amygdala has been activated and my prefrontal cortex will be of limited help. What does this mean in...
Click here to listen to an audio of this blog. My children are growing up. As they enter the second half of their childhoods, I am increasingly aware that my time with them is finite. Like many parents, I often function in a sort of survival or efficiency mode. What...
"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced." -James Baldwin We are in the midst of a pandemic. Let’s imagine that you sit still to practice mindfulness – the simple art of non-judgmental awareness. You observe your...
The other night I lay in bed, unable to fall asleep. I was feeling sadness about something that had happened earlier in the day, and I offered myself a little compassion for the difficulty. I then went through my usual repertoire of things I do when I lay in bed: I...
I recently began teaching a mindfulness curriculum to a group of middle school students in a Milwaukee Public School. Before I even began teaching, one of the middle school teachers said to me, "Mindfulness doesn't work." Hmmm.....I thought. Mindfulness is about...