Personal challenges – Page 8

Weeds, like difficult people, serve a purpose

Weeds, labor-generating and vexing as they are, serve a purpose. Eventually, they break up unworkable soil. Then they are removed or replaced, just like troublesome folks in our lives. Yet we grow from conflict. Twenty years ago, there was a garden patch of dry, clay-like soil when we bought our home.  Only weeds sprouted there, […]

My husband fell from a ladder: a cautionary tale

March 24, 2019 David’s in the hospital. He fell off a ladder in Falmouth trying to clean the roof of our home. Eight feet up, he was trying to scrape lichen off the roof when the ladder slipped back.  He fell face first, his nose hitting the rung of the ladder, leaving multiple facial fractures.  […]

Meaghan Markle: How to handle racism royally

(Photo from sugar pop.co.uk) How does one weather racist hatred on social media? On-line trolls are attacking the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, whose first child is due in April. Last year, an image called for Prince Harry to be shot for being a race traitor for marrying Meghan Markle, according to a March 10 NPR […]

Love Your Enemies: A huge leap to emotional neutrality

Enemies.  “Does it count as saving someone’s life if you just refrain from killing them?”   I laughed at this meme on Gina Valley’s Instagram.  Now I’m not plotting murder or mayhem, but several times a day, the TV spews felony stupidity that deepens our national divide. Who wants to love their enemies?  “Not I,” […]

New Year: Become, don’t just overcome

In 2019, I hope to “become” not to “overcome.”  To me, becoming is about awareness and inner change, while overcoming feels like a grinding discipline of must and should. Yet there is so much to overcome: the polemics of news, bad habits, ongoing hurts. But recently I fasted from TV for a week, and a […]