For Valentine’s Day I was going to post “A Recipe for Married Life” by Anthony Coniaris that a reader recently sent me. Its wise bits include: An exhaustive study of police records showed that no woman ever shot her husband while he was doing the dishes. Learn to serve each other in humility and love....

I sprouted early as a kid. In the fourth grade, I towered over many of my classmates, and especially over my two best friends. Lining up for school processions, they gathered at the beginning of the line, while I was the second or third person from the last. I recall one Saturday afternoon coming back...

According to Cigna’s U.S. Loneliness Index, nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feel alone.  A quarter of Americans rarely or never feel as though there are people that understand them, and a fifth report they rarely or never feel close to people. The report says that finding a balance of work, exercise, sleep,...

In the fourth grade, my grandmother sewed Halloween costumes for me and my twin sister. I went as a nun and she as a jailbreaker. The costumes were appropriate then and for the next three decades. I followed every rule and she broke them. At age two, when she was still in diapers, she packed...

In her book, Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff, Ph.D. offers a beautiful mantra she developed to help her deal with negative emotions, a reminder to treat herself with self-compassion when discomfort arises: “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the...