When I was in graduate school studying theology at Notre Dame, I worked with a priest on a video project. One day he told me to look at the new 3-D poster on his wall and tell me what I saw. “Dots,” I said. “Lots of dots.” “Look harder,” he said. “Now what do you...

In a recent Guideposts article, I compared the year of 2018 to the worst English paper I ever turned in, on the life of Mary Todd Lincoln. Totally uninspired, I began each sentence with “Mary Todd Lincoln” and earned a D. The great thing about a new year, though, is that you begin fresh with...

I’ve noticed a pattern to my attitude about starting a new year. The harder the year prior, the more I look forward to January 1. It’s like turning in a really bad English paper and getting to start over on a new assignment. A blank page and a new year give us the one ingredient...

George Burns once said: “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family… in another city.” That would explain why the holidays are so stressful. Those dear relatives who live in San Francisco suddenly are lingering in front of your refrigerator in Cincinnati and you have to figure out a socially acceptable way of setting...

I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Terry Gilberg, host of Think! America national radio show last week about strategies to combat holiday depression. I mostly focused on the first point of my seven strategies below, to allow yourself to feel all the emotions of the holidays, not excluding sadness. For highly-sensitive folks and...