Part 1 of this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-johnson/addiction-recovery_b_1929196.html addressed the dynamics of excess body weight being a side effect of addiction whereby food is used to repress and numb unbearable (often unconscious) emotional content. In other words, in order to really understand the dynamics of weight gain and loss, we need to shift our focus away from […]
Photo Credit: Ullysses Photography If you are like most brides, you might be micro-managing your wedding to avoid unwanted surprises. But, guess what? Your wedding day WILL NOT go 100% according to your plans. There are a thousand tiny details and what actually happens will be an amalgamation of the input of many vendors, guests, […]
For many of us who struggle with excess body weight, “success” in losing weight is soon followed by regaining those pounds and then some. Just now, at the age of 64, I am recognizing why this has been happening to me and perhaps to many others. I have long suspected that the answer that would […]
This is a picture of my mother, Grace Mundy, six months before her death in 2006. We shared a home during the final nine years of her life. Being her friend and caregiver through to her death was a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. It taught me the following life and […]
The centerpiece of the American culture of death is a taboo that inhibits our ability to encounter the territory of dying, death, and bereavement with wisdom, competency, and discernment. We are acculturated to fear and resist death. However, this inhibition also deprives us of some of the greatest intimacy, tenderness, and depth of connection available […]
As a life coach, I spend a lot of time helping clients to pay close attention to their autopilot reaction to challenges in their lives. What you consider to be challenges and how you respond to them are defining factors in the quality of your life. Next time your sense of well-being is disturbed, try […]
While I am not a Buddhist, I find the Tibetan Buddhist teachings on death a source of great wisdom and potential liberation – particularly for those still under the influence of the death taboo in the west. Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, has a particular skill in drawing out […]
I was recently on a panel discussion on HuffPost Live about the reality of death and how it can test our faith. We were discussing a post by a teenager named Alice who eloquently expressed her mental and emotional reaction to death and her rage at God for the death of people she cared about. It […]
When I was ordained as an interfaith minister in 1985, I was charged with the responsibility of ministering to all regardless of race, creed, color, situation, circumstance, or environment — in other words, to serve without prejudice. Isn’t this what we should really be asking of our “public servants” — i.e. politicians and elected officials […]
This is the first in a series of posts on the topic of death that will be published over the next several weeks. We don’t do death well in this country which results in a lot of unnecessary suffering. Most of us do not talk about death and are terribly uncomfortable being in death’s presence. […]
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