I’m declaring “Mindfulness” as my 2020 word of the year. I know what you’re thinking. The 2020 word of the year should be Pandemic, or Covid-19 or I Hate This (that’s 3 words however). I’m preferring to take the high road and consider how well we’ve all done during this crisis. We’ve adjusted to a lot of changes over these past 5 months. Working from home, having kids scampering around underfoot, learning new technologies. and helping each other out whether...

Like most dogs, Cody likes to stick his head out the window when we are driving around town. News reports will tell you that dogs do this because they love the rush of wind on their face and like to let jowls flap and ear fly. Given that Cody’s olfactory senses have mine outnumbered by a factor of 50:1,  I think there is another element in play. Cody may be using his snout to predict the future; He has an...

An ambiguous loss is a loss that occurs without the certainly of an outcome. Ambiguous losses do not provide a defining end point, like death. First identified by Dr. Pauline Boss, these kinds of losses occur because people cannot get some kind of meaningful understanding from their experience. Some examples of ambiguous losses include infertility, the disappearance of a family member, or even an estrangement from a child.  Living with a family member who has Alzheimer’s creates a powerful grieving...

Our Resilient Mindfulness session last Friday focused on Managing Negative Emotions. During the meditation, I shared a 3 part formula for addressing that pesky negativity which includes (1) recognizing and naming the feeling, (2) allowing the feeling to be there without judgement or criticism and  observe what happens during that time of acceptance and (3) sharing an appreciation with yourself for not getting hooked into or having the emotion control you. When we debriefed from the experience, one participant shared...

Sheltering in place means that we get to spend more time at home. For us that means working in the yard and getting those vegetables and flowers blooming at full force Might as well make the best of a challenging situation, right! Our circumstances provided the opportunity to clean up flower beds, plant some new varieties and help with our community garden. In the midst of our little summer heat wave,  I noted that one of our tomato plants was...