by Marlena Fiol | Jul 16, 2020
In the Protective Arms of my Older Brother This week’s blogs have been about the trauma of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Before all of that, there was innocence and trust. Can we ever return to that place? “It takes a very long time…
by Marlena Fiol | Jul 9, 2020
I am pleased to bring you the thinking of today’s guest, Thordis Elva. Thordis is an Icelandic author, speaker, playwright, and activist for gender equality. Thordis collaborated on and published a book with her perpetrator, Tom Stranger, making her the first rape…
by Marlena Fiol | Jul 8, 2020
In Monday’s blog I wrote that living simply for me meant being clear about about my values, and then living in a manner consistent with them. This eschews the important question of what those values are – what it is that matters most to me. I…
by Marlena Fiol | Jul 6, 2020
My Mennonite Missionary Father in front of his Home in Paraguay It’s the ‘in’ thing: Simplify. Unclutter. Less (smaller) is better. As I’ve written about elsewhere, my good Mennonite missionary father was anti-materialist and anti-consumerist to an extreme. He firmly believed that God only…
by Marlena Fiol | Jul 3, 2020
This week’s topic has been about what parents and their grown children owe each other. My conclusion was that the language of debt and obligation is inappropriate. Rather, we should be talking about love and appreciation. I feel like the biggest gifts my…
by Marlena Fiol | Jun 26, 2020
I am pleased to bring you the thinking of today’s guest, Harriet Brown. She is a writer, magazine editor and professor of magazine journalism at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Harriet writes,…