“post-election”

How odd to come back to something I haven’t done since right before the 2016 election when I posted the beautiful Mary Oliver poem, “Wild Geese.” (Mary Oliver has since died, in January of this year.) Since my last post, there have been numerous times in sessions where I have used the phrases “post-election” and […]

Narrative Therapy

A lot of people are curious what “narrative therapy” is and what it might be like to work with a narrative therapist. Below are five aspects of the narrative worldview that are extremely valuable to my practice with clients. People are not the problem. Problems are problems. Therefore separate people from problems. In our day-to-day lives, […]

Failure: Debbie Downer or Opportunity for Growth?

How do we make sense of a major disappointment or something that goes terribly wrong? Do we let it poison our motivation and give up? Or do we see it as a opportunity for growth? In the New York Times Book Review article “Epic Fail,” Scott Sandage reviews two books that address this question: “How do we learn to stop worrying and […]

The Secret to Desire in a Long-term Relationship

Esther Perel’s intriguing 19 minute TED talk about desire, radiance, eroticism, and the poetics of sex in long-term relationships. In it, she talks about the commonalities of when people are most drawn to their partner and what comes from people answering the following prompts: “I shut myself off when…” “I turn off my desires when…” […]

exposing the “little haters” and their traps

“Little haters” seem to exist all around, so it makes sense they’d also be heard in our minds. The host of WBAI‘s “Underground Railroad,” Jay Smooth, made these two great 3-4 minute videos about those “little haters.” Check them out.

a beautiful story of love and partnership

laurie anderson wrote this beautiful piece in rolling stone about her 21-year relationship to lou reed, who recently passed. a tale and love story of two musicians whose lives and art have deeply inspired me.

the days of awe

this is the time of year in the jewish calendar that is the most profound, a period of ten “High Holy Days” that begin the new jewish calendar year. these days are also called the “days of awe”. basically, there are three steps to these “days of awe”. they are for anyone who is inspired […]

a root structure with smarts

i’m always searching for metaphors that help to understand complex aspects of life more succinctly. here is one i keep turning back to: the rhizome. rhizomes grow in the earth. they are a unique kind of root system. if roots were to organize in order to create a more sustainable root system that wasn’t dependent […]

practicing beginnings.

whether the new year starts for you today or on your birthday, rosh hashanah, the chinese new year in a few weeks, or the solstice that just passed, this is such a golden opportunity to leave something behind and welcome something new. i like to think of the leaving behind part with fire. sometimes it […]

where alice in wonderland meets foucault

A lot of people wonder what narrative therapy is, and it is always so difficult to answer such a big question adequately without going on and on, and a blog is not such a place for that. I imagine I will allude to it here and there, and tiny glimpses will be had. What follows […]