In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran writes: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. I thought of his words yesterday as I...
One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is the one where Elaine snoops inside her medical chart and reads “patient is difficult.” The doctor takes a look at her rash and says, “Well, this doesn’t look serious,” and writes something in the chart. “What are you writing?” she asks. He sneers and walks out the door....
As a highly-sensitive person (as defined by Elaine Aron in her bestseller The Highly Sensitive Person), it’s easy for me to become overwhelmed, or over-aroused (not in a sexual way—not on antidepressants). I have been compiling ways to calm down over the years. I learned some in Aron’s book, some as part of the mindfulness-based...
We are trained from the time we emerge from our mothers’ wombs to look forward to vacations as a chance to relax, have fun, escape from the rigors of life. But for a small percentage of us, vacation is harder than work—it requires far more stamina than sitting in an office chair for eight hours...
Two summers ago, our family grabbed a bite to eat in downtown Annapolis and headed over to the Naval Academy for a parade—celebrating of the end of Plebe Summer, six weeks of rigorous physical and mental training for new midshipmen. It was late August, and I was horribly depressed, trying out medication combination #45 or...
