Emily Dickinson wrote:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all.

One of my happiest truths about moving into anything new is that I’ll have the chance to walk into empty spaces and make new choices. Such chances absolutely fill me with hopeful delight. Sure, I’ll be wandering into the unfamiliar, carrying all kinds of baggage . . . but the good news is I’ll be moving into uncluttered spaces. I can choose what to leave behind because it just won’t fit, and how to reconfigure all the stuff I decide to ke...

The tree pictured first showed up for me as an anonymous image meant to represent this holiday season. For years I’ve wanted to replace, as well as add some words and phrases to its branches – to fashion a tree meant to embrace all seasons and all people. I finally took the time to finish that work so that it depicts not only a season or holiday, but every-day living to me. Every separate idea is meant as a message for how to think and feel and behave . . . each and every day. 

I hope you’ll slow down enough to read them as if they were light points on the tree. Perhaps th...

. . . and there I was, doing it again and muttering to myself, “Well, that was a stupid thing to do.  I can’t believe I did it again.  I am an idiot!” 

It took a while before I began to finally realize I was once more inadvertently creating the beginnings of an unintentional mantra – a repetition of what I like least about myself.

I’ve come to believe that “I am” might just be the most important phrase we ever use, because the thoughts we place after those words have the power to shape our personal reality. 

Unintended, negative, mantra-like statemen...

It was almost 2,000 years ago that this famous phrase was coined: “Home is where the heart is.” I believe this often-recalled thought expresses a concept as important to our lives today as it might have been then – the idea that a physical place and part of the body exist together. In fact, let me walk a few more steps into the core of that idea and state it as a metaphor: our truest home is our own heart.

The holidays mark special seasons in our lives; we can find ourselves making our way to homes, again and again. That kind of traveling can be both lovely and stres...

My son, Matt, and I found ourselves on the bustling streets of Manhattan last week. My boy sticks around no matter where I am. Sometimes he just quietly goes along for the ride, but this particular day was one of those times I felt his whisper in my heart. When I sense him there I know it’s time for me to become intentional, more aware of even the smallest sights, sounds and bits of information around me. And that’s when Mother Teresa entered my day. 

My cousin and I were browsing the Julliard Bookstore – she, looking for a theory book to help one of her piano students, an...

I gave my blog a title this past year because it seemed like that was what all serious bloggers did. Honestly, I suppose I thought I would take the work of sharing my ideas more seriously if I named the place they were going to live. Perhaps a specific title would assure everyone that I was serious about the ideas that had caught my mind in their soulful webs . . . and maybe even catch the eye of a new reader or two. And along the way, I discovered the perfect reason for giving title to my words; it has served to relentlessly remind me of the purpose for my writing. In th...

Yep, that’s how the latest email began . . . all in shouty, bold letters. 

I tried digesting the phrase, rolled it around in my head a bit and then just sat with it. It became probable truth as my old nemesis, perfectionism, joined forces with the insecurities that survive, alive and kicking, within my introverted self. And through their critical lenses the actions of my last several months started to play across the landscape of my writer’s life. My mind generated a well full of questions, each bubbling up to ask what more I could have accomplished. I supposed it must be...