Your Authentic Life: How I Failed My Parents
My father — front left. My mother — front right. The day after their wedding, at the Newton, KS train station, leaving for Paraguay in 1943 When I was a kid, my dad was my hero-doctor. He stitched up my chin three times after I fell...
Your Authentic Life: I Want To Be Known Even If It’s Scary
I ended my last post with this question: Really, what’s the point of having relationships with people if I can’t have sticky, messy, real relationships that will help me grow toward greater wholeness, less loneliness and a...
Your Authentic Self: Why It’s Important For Me To Be Vulnerable
Even if (maybe especially if) it Scares Me My prior blog posts suggested that showing up vulnerably with others is necessary if I want to be truly known. I introduced research concluding that not being known makes me feel...
Mindful Self-Care: Lonely Ants Die Young … and So Do Lonely People
One of my last blog posts reviewed some of the things I’ve learned about the interconnectedness of loneliness and social media: Loneliness is a growing epidemic, seemingly fueled at least in part by social media use. Social...
Your Authentic Life: When I’m Wounded
The wounded feet of one of my father’s leprosy patients — circa 1950s In a prior blog, I wrote about the importance of touch in my intimate relationship. When my partner and I discovered “the skin thing” over 20 years ago, we thought...
Mindful Self-Care: Touch…More Important than Sex?
We all know that sex can be exciting, compelling and revitalizing. But did you know that when researchers recently asked happily married couples how important sex was to the success of their marriage — on a scale of one to...
Your Authentic Life: Social Networks to Combat Loneliness…Really? Isn’t It the Other Way Around?
When I feel lonely, I’m not alone. Cigna recently surveyed 20,000 people and found that about half of the respondents reported that they often felt lonely or left out. It turns out that loneliness has very little to do with...
Your Authentic Life: Time is Shorter — And We Have More to Say
Last night, my husband and I went to a musical performance by Roseanne Cash, winner of multiple Grammy awards, and the oldest daughter of country musician Johnny Cash. Something she said has stuck with me: “Women my age still...
Your Authentic Life: Larger Than Life…and then Gone
My Father, bottom left ... Susan's Parents, back row Today I learned that the final close personal link to a significant man in my life has died. Susan Rhoades was the daughter of my father’s oldest brother, Dr. Herb Schmidt. My Uncle Herb...
Mindful Self-Care: Planning to Let Go
Ed and I love to plan. We have already scheduled the trips we will take in 2020. We have a month-by-month set of specific timelines to finish the novel we’re writing. And we have detailed plans for each day: Morning...