Every night, my 10-year-old daughter Olivia and I lie in bed and talk. Sometimes it’s processing the day, sometimes it’s philosophical, and it’s always lifting the veil of the culture to reveal truths behind the illusion. I cherish our chats and I always learn as much from them as she does.

A couple nights ago, Olivia was feeling down. As I listened, I noticed that she was struggling with one of the things about humanness that I grapple with—our built-in...

Have you ever awaited a time when you’d be "Queen for the Day," showered with love, touch no dirty dishes, and get served delicious, nourishing food? Perhaps all your favorite people would magically gather, sing to you, and present you with a festive feast complete with balloons and streamers. Oh, and you don’t have to clean up afterward! To top it off, you get your way all day long and everything goes perfectly?

No, this isn’t a narcissistic fantasy (well, maybe it is), but...

Once we reach a "certain age," some people stop celebrating their birthdays, or at the very least, they stop counting them. To me, having another birthday beats the alternative, so why not celebrate? 

When we bemoan our age, what we're really doing is buying into the consumerist culture that is obsessed with youth. The single reason we've been sold the lies that signs of aging are undesirable lie within the next sentence. The remedy to every little "flaw" we're supposed to see in...

Years ago, I learned about the excessive environmental waste aspect of junk mail. Did you know that the average person receives 41 pounds of junk mail each year?!

Most of that goes right into the trash, or at best is recycled, but 40% of it ends up in the landfill since not everything can be recycled. What?!?! True! So, I made it a practice to be diligent about getting off all mailing lists.

Little did I know there was also a significant time waste going on. That was before I realized...

Let's talk about envy and jealousy. Oooohhh...fun! ;-)

I've recently had a new insight about these feelings.

Today, I've got a two-minute video I took just before boarding the plane on a day trip I took yesterday to go to the Natural Products Expo—a very fertile place just waiting for FOMO, jealousy, and envy.

It's so easy to look at other people's lives from the outside and judge ourselves for not measuring up. And even though doing that is totally normal in a culture that encourages...

Have you ever realized you've been looking at your screen for hours and got completely distracted from what you started out doing?

You're not alone, and it's not because you are personally bad at multi-tasking. The reality is that no one is good at multi-tasking; the human brain just doesn't work that way.

The age of the internet is changing our brains and negatively impacting our ability to focus.

Check out this short video to understand why:

The good news is that there's a way around this....

The most common ways are to fight, flee, or freeze. When I opened myself up to the possibility of solving a disagreement through social media, I learned that it's also possible to do all three!

So yeah, I can already hear you groaning.  And I get it. I have doubts about that medium too, so my usual policy is to stay away. This time I couldn't, so when someone challenged my doubts, I gave it some thought. I wanted to know if there was some way it actually could be a good medium for such a...

Are you still worried about being liked by everyone? Doing your best not to be too out there? Afraid of offending someone?

The fact is that not everyone is going to like us and we're not going to like everyone else. Rather than seeing that as a shortfall, we can see it as a relief. Imagine if everyone wanted a piece of you at all times. Can you say EXHAUSTION? 

Sometimes we share a leg of the journey with someone very closely and then there comes a point when...

No matter where you land with respect to what's happening in our world today, it's likely that you're feeling a variety of complex emotions. I feel it myself and I hear it from everyone.

I've been asking a lot of questions lately to get to uncover the feelings I've been having. Even though I'm a Self-care Coach and I know the importance of nurturing myself, even I have been having a struggle maintaining my own self-care practice in the face of the daily political firestorms. My...

Is there a difference between self-ish and SELFISH?
Read that aloud, and you'll have your answer. Although there's a negative connotation with the word, it isn't necessarily so.

What's the distinction?
Being SELFISH is grabbing out of desperation and depletion; making choices that benefit ourselves at the expense of others. It's careless. Being self-ish is taking care of myself first, acknowledging limited resources, and knowing that what I prioritize becomes my life. When we...