Perfectionism. It’s the enemy of creativity, productivity, and, well, sanity. In “The Artist’s Way,” author Julia Cameron writes: “Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move head. It is a loop–an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to...

I’ve always found it curious that more suicides happen in the spring than in any other season. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics, suicide rates are lowest in the winter months and highest in the springtime. What’s so bad about April and May? The sun...

I used to sing “Be Not Afraid,” in the shower as an anxious child. It was the one song that gave me great comfort, and every time I hear it, at Sunday Mass or at a funeral, I tear up. It never occurred to me that the last line of this song, “Come follow me,...

Awhile back my friend Michelle said to the congregation at her husband’s funeral service: “He never spoke an unkind word to me.”   Another girlfriend and I looked at each other, jaws dropped. And then she whispered, “They didn’t have kids.” We nodded and felt better about ourselves. But a growing body of research confirms...

I had been on the drug Zyprexa (olanzapine) for four weeks and had already gained 15 pounds which, you know, didn’t help my depression. After going to a wedding and catching a side view of myself, I called my doctor and told him that my name was now Violet Beauregarde, the gum chewer in “Charlie and...