Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper: How to Stay Focused On the Light

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light a candle that can guide us through the darkness to a safe and sane future.”  — John F. Kennedy How does one stay in the know, without getting lost in the noise? This is a topic I touched upon in my essay last week, but I want to...

Know Their Names: How This News Junkie Stays Buoyant in Difficult Times

In December of 2012, just weeks after the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I was invited to speak at a forum for townspeople who were drowning in shock and grief. A parent whose children attended the school had read my book, Broken Open. She thought the...

How to Claim Your 5-Day Calm

How do you cope when it feels as if life is throwing too much at you at once? We can often feel pulled in so many directions that it makes it difficult to handle one thing much less the avalanche of issues headed towards us. How our minds chose to respond to the growing list of probl...

How Journaling Has Transformed My Negative Thoughts Into Positive Action

I am by no means a writer, but since discovering Maria’s book “I’ve Been Thinking…” and “I've Been Thinking...The Journal,” I am much more in tune with my thoughts and how they can determine my meaningful life. I had a wonderful childhood growing up in West Virginia, I was a ...

Fast and Sloppy Joes

Could a soy-based meat alternative do justice to this hot and messy American classic? We discovered that even the pickiest kids could enjoy this heart-healthy version. It captures the taste and texture of the original, minus the fat and cholesterol. These sandwiches can be served closed or o...

Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper: Turn Off the Noise. Turn Up the Hope.

Happiness depends more upon the internal flame of a person's own mind than on the externals of the world.”  — George Washington National emergency! National emergency! National emergency! After the news broke, the TV pundits started chattering nonstop about the president’s impe...

How to Get Started On Your Healing Journey After Trauma

As a trauma survivor, I’ve done everything possible to push aside my most painful memories. While I’ve always considered myself a no-nonsense, “face the truth” type of person, it took me, literally, decades to realize that I was living in denial about what happened to me so many ye...

NonViolence: Self-Care vs. Soft Care

The following is re-posted from Spirituality & Health  We often think of self care as something we do only when we’re stressed, in grief, or otherwise hurting, but it’s really something we have to be doing every single day in order to honor the one relationship we’ll have until...

Excerpt: Waking Up in Winter: In Search of What Really Matters at Midlife

May Sarton became an important influence for me after I read her book Journal of a Solitude. First published in 1973, it gave the reader access to the private diary of a creative woman who expressed herself through poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. By age twelve I’d become a voracious reade...

Deconstructed No Noodle Lasagna

I developed this recipe for “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Pasta,” my first online cooking class, and I wonder how on earth I lived without this recipe before. It’s the perfect meal for the meat sauce lover. You get all of the rich goodness of an Italian ragù di carne without any of th...