The other day, walking out my front door, I found myself glancing down to make sure my shirt was buttoned. Then I laughed. I’d caught myself doing one of Mom’s Sanity Checks. She always told me, “If you forget to button your blouse, that’s a sure sign you’re looney.” My mother passed away more than […]

At times, my life appeared to resemble an unfolding fern frond. An inner force pushed me to create and face hard challenges: a career teaching adults, public speaking, forming enduring relationships, becoming an exhibiting artist, child-raising, learning meditation and aspiring for enlightenment and founding two civil right organizations (the Ingraham-Garfield Student Exchange Program in 1964

I’m not always clever enough to comprehend other people’s inner realities at the moment I’m talking to them. But a recent incident astounded me. My adult son lives in a different city and I take great delight in visiting him.  He often takes me out with his friends for coffee, drinks, or a party. I’m

Twice in my life, I’ve stood above rainbows, looking down at them. Each occasion spawned different spiritual surprises Twenty years ago I hiked with my son’s sixth grade class in the mountains rising above a jungle valley called Manoa, a part of Honolulu. Known for its plentiful rainbows, we trod up the steep trail to

Throughout my long life, I thought I’d encountered every form of negative communication possible. Growing up with two older sisters, I early learned about anger, bullying and put-downs designed to shut up their much younger sibling who eternally wanted to be included. As a teen and young woman, I dated charmers who tried to pursue

In late spring and early summer of 2021, we felt optimism. Covid-19 was on the wane. We’d beat it. Stores reopened and people began to travel again. But when the Delta variant slammed us in the summer, we reluctantly began to wear masks and isolate more. Back to square one and back to the maelstrom

When I lie in bed, waiting to fall asleep, it often seems like a war breaks out between my mind and my breath. In the last moments of consciousness, my brain often races, seemingly desperate to manufacture thoughts that solve my problems. As I try to bring my attention back to each relaxing breath, I

Nature designed humans with an inability to imagine what reality will look like after twenty-years. When I gave birth to my son, Jon, I couldn’t conceive what kind of person he would be or what he’d look like in two decades. After years spent hovering over the exuberant toddler and worrying about the rebellious teen-ager,

As far as I could see, many people created an image of themselves that usually proved to be better than they actually were. They tried to live up to it, needing to convince others that their façade was the real thing.  Forty years ago, when a distant relative, Julian, had an amicable divorce, his kind