I have a friend named Mindy. I asked her permission to write this piece, and she agreed. I’ve known Mindy for many years.  For the last 10 years or so, we have been playing weekly Mahjong together. She has a bit of a habit of saying that her Mahjong hand is awful, and then she wins anyway. Mindy was diagnosed with a brain tumor, a glioblastoma, three and a half years ago. That is 42 months.  The prognosis for this kind of cancer is 12-18 months. Since her diagnosis, she has gone from having...

Is it ever too late in the year to set goals? Of course not. A friend was telling me the other day about an alternative to setting New...

Over the past few years, after my parents passed away, many of their possessions made their way to our house. Some furniture, some...

This is not going to be a sad story, I promise. But it does start out with the process of going through my parents’ condo, after their...

We are in about our sixth week of sheltering in place. Hopefully this post finds you healthy and safe, and getting more “used to” the...

My father recently passed away at the age of 90. He was a gentle soul and a gentleman, a talented baker of bread and cinnamon rolls, a...

Many of us spend a fair amount of time doing for others. If we are parents, we are regularly doing for our kids. We do for our spouses...

The last six weeks for me have been a whirlwind of busy. Mostly good things, some not so good. A wonderful vacation complete with a...

It’s summer and many of us are thinking…..vacation, outdoors, hiking, boating, swimming, blue lakes, tall green trees, warm sand and lots...

I’m worried. People everywhere are walking with their heads down. They are young, they are quite elderly and they are in-between. ...

This is our Year of the Lost Luggage. Our suitcases have been lost twice this year. In the many years that I have been traveling by...

Not everyone is prone to be introspective. Introspection is when we take time to look at ourselves, our actions, our behaviors, our...

I read Real Simple magazine. I just like the title – the idea that I am trying to make my life more simple rather than complicated. I...

This is going to be part travelogue and part therapist-speak.   Once the pandemic was over to the extent that it was safe-ish to travel, we started taking driving trips.  One year to Shenandoah National Forest in Virginia. Another trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The following year we headed north to Montreal and Quebec. I highly recommend all of these.  We just got back from the “circle tour” - the trip around Lake Michigan. We followed the lakeshore up the Michigan side and down the...

Did you know there are 23,000 books that have happiness in the title? I’ve been interested in this word, happiness, and this concept for...

I really enjoy writing for my blog, but had hoped to find inspiration from topics other than Covid and related effects. But here we are...

I love writing my blog. It is a joy for me, and especially because I write when I want to, when the inspiration is there. No...

Right now, we are in a very unusual time. There is a global pandemic and it is causing problems on many, many levels. First and...

One of my favorite places in the world is Sedona, Arizona. Recently my husband and I took a trip there to get away from the polar vortex...

Maybe some of you have seen the movie Lady Bird. It is an intense story of a teenage girl coming of age, doing rebellious teenage things....

I was riding my bike along the Lake Michigan path the other day, and I observed a woman shouting to a man who I think was her very adult...

I have been hearing about the idea of “30 days to a new habit.” The concept is that it takes 30 days of doing something new, every day,...

Recently I’ve been hearing about “grit.” This term is currently being used in psychology, but let’s talk about it in a more physical...

My husband recently gave our family an unexpected gift. He had all of our home movies put on to DVD’s. Many of the film clips we had...

I recently heard a story on National Public Radio that caught my interest. It was about what happens when someone makes a social mistake,...