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Why our mistakes deserve reflection, our setbacks deserve context, and our comebacks deserve more attention. We celebrate the promotion, the graduation, the successful business, and the photograph where everyone appears to have figured out their lives. We rarely see the rejected applications, the abandoned first attempts, the difficult apologies, or the mornings when getting started required more courage than anyone realized. We see the announcement. We miss the rebuilding. A

On obstacles, patience, and the slow work of smoothing those leaves and branches try slowing the river’s flow; yet, they force raging water over a sharp rock— just hastening its smoothing — from “(the earth remembers)” On one stretch of the river there is a rock dam. After a storm, I like to stand beside it and see what the water has brought. Branches and leaves pile up against the rocks, a record of everything the river carried in the night. The water finds its way through a

On holding joy and sadness at the same time tell me, how can this way hold joy and sadness with the change of her breath? it’s the one yellow leaf that strikes me with joyful-sadness — from “(fiery melancholy)” In summer, the old way through the woods is a green tunnel. The canopy is dense, and Nature seems to welcome anyone who walks beneath her. I think of it as a loving embrace. Then autumn arrives and covers the same path with a stream of fallen leaves, fiery reds and yel

What the woods taught me about paying attention there aren’t any grand landscapes here—just the small things Nature nurtures and those things some tend to ignore as they walk along the Way — from “(no grand landscapes in Fallen Oaks Woods)” I wrote those lines in a small stretch of New England woods that has no mountain view and no dramatic overlook. It has a river, a pond, some old oaks, and a few rocks. For a long time, I half expected that to be a disappointment. It turned

Menopause is more than hot flashes. It can affect your sleep, confidence, relationships, career, and sense of identity. Here is how to navigate this transition with knowledge, practical support, and a little humor. Welcome to Menopause: Nobody Gave Us the Instruction Manual One day, you are managing your career, family, relationships, household, and the usual collection of life's unexpected complications. The next day, you find yourself standing in front of an open refrigerat

What to do in the first 48 hours, how to protect your finances, and how to build a smarter job search strategy.

Why unexpected endings, uncomfortable transitions, and new beginnings can become opportunities to rediscover what truly matters. There is a peculiar moment in life when you realize that the future you carefully imagined is no longer the future waiting for you. Perhaps your marriage ended. You lost a job you thought would carry you into retirement. Your children grew up and moved away. You relocated to a new country, only to discover that a change of scenery does not automatic

There are days when we have too much energy and absolutely no idea what to do with it. Not necessarily physical energy. Sometimes it is emotional energy. Mental noise. Frustration. Curiosity. Anxiety about the future. A strange urge to change something. Ten ideas arriving at the same time. The feeling that you should be doing something, creating something, becoming something, but you cannot quite identify what that something is. So what do we often do? We scroll. We reorganiz

I used to think creativity meant making something. A poem. A photograph. A piece of music. An invention. I still think those are creative acts. But I have come to think creativity sometimes begins earlier. Sometimes it begins when I notice a relationship that I hadn't seen before. An old song meets the person I have become. Something I learned years ago suddenly becomes useful somewhere completely unexpected. A Taoist image changes the way I look at a river. Someone says some

Three questions came to me through the Sisterhood of Dada in Doom Patrol: Who are you? What are you? Why are you? They sound straightforward enough. They aren't. I decided to answer them with a poem, which probably should have warned me that straightforward answers were already in trouble. Who Are You? Nothing. I left the space blank. A name would have been easy. So would a profession, a collection of beliefs, accomplishments, mistakes, interests, relationships, or stories ab

Henry David Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately. Years later, I borrowed his famous opening for a poem of my own. But I gave my trip to the woods a somewhat different purpose: “I went to the woods” to prove Lao-tzu right or wrong, curiosity and skepticism are such great motivators Admittedly, this was not an entirely impartial investigation. I had been reading Lao-tzu for years. And I already thought the old dope was right. Still, it never hurts to check. Ten thous

The river where you set your foot just now is gone— those waters giving way to this, now this. --Heraclitus, Fragments. Translated by Brooks Haxton I listen to an old recording. The music begins to flow, and suddenly I have a river. Why not? We speak of streams of music. Sound moves. A song begins, passes through time, and ends. I can step into that stream simply by listening. So I put on a Philosopher’s cloak and make a rather grand announcement: Heraclitus was wrong! There

Dedicated to every woman who has ever been told she is too old, too late, too much, too ambitious, too visible, or suddenly somehow invisible. There is a strange rumor circulating in society that a woman turns 50 and immediately becomes interested only in comfortable shoes, calcium, gardening, and discussing the thermostat. Apparently, we are also expected to disappear quietly from popular culture while looking fabulous but not too fabulous because then someone will accuse us

We have never had so many ways to reach one another. We can send a text in seconds. We can see what a friend ate for dinner thousands of miles away. We can follow relatives, coworkers, former classmates, celebrities, neighbors, and complete strangers throughout the day. We can join online communities, attend meetings without leaving home, date through an app, work with people on another continent, and carry hundreds of conversations in our pockets. And yet, many people feel p

Most of us have something we want to change. We want to exercise more. Finish a degree. Change careers. Start a business. Save money. Travel. Write a book. Improve a relationship. Become more organized. Or finally begin something we have been thinking about for years. The problem is often not that we don't have goals. The problem is turning those goals into action. There can be a considerable distance between saying “I want to do this” and actually doing it. Psychological res

You open your phone for five minutes. Someone is traveling through Italy. Someone else just received a promotion. A friend posts pictures of a seemingly perfect family. An influencer has the perfect body, home, morning routine, relationship, and career. Twenty minutes later, you put down your phone. Nothing in your actual life has changed. And yet, somehow, you feel different about it. This is one of the most important questions we should be asking in the age of social media:

There are moments in life when everything around us seems loud. Family has an opinion. Friends offer advice. Work creates expectations. Social media tells us what success should look like. Past experiences remind us of what went wrong. Fear warns us about what could happen next. And somewhere underneath all that noise is another conversation—the one we are having with ourselves. What do I really want? What matters to me? Am I making this decision because it feels right for me