Let Me Familiarize Myself With You

Let Me Familiarize Myself With You

“Let me familiarize myself with you. I’m not just talking about assorted facts anyone can get to compose an obituary. I want you to know the history of my heart, the tiny tragedies and comical acts of my everyday life.” I wrote these beginning lines of this blog after looking up the etymology of the word “familiar,” which comes from the same root word as family. We typically use the word familiar to mean a casual knowing, but when turned into a verb, familiarize, it becomes the act of getting to know someone, especially through repeated interaction over time. This means that you learn the good and the bad in a person and expose the same in yourself. We create the family feeling through regular interaction in which we familiarize ourselves with each other and we come to know, appreciate, and ideally love the quirks and idiosyncrasies, the beauty and dignity, and even the faults and flaws that make us uniquely ourselves.

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Deepen My Devotion

Deepen My Devotion

The Konmari method is based primarily on keeping in your home what sparks joy rather than cluttering your house with mostly and joyless needless things. The house truly is a huge mess now, in the middle of the process, but I’ve got a glimmer of hope it will all come together in the end with clean lines and warm colors, and with enough open space in an uncluttered home for love to flourish.

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Living With Rhythm

Living With Rhythm

A few days ago, I started the “Konmari Method” of tidying up which is based on keeping in your home only what sparks joy. After starting the process, a reminder popped on January 6, 2019 to read a “letter to future self” I wrote back in March of 2018. It was amazingly prescient! I am often astounded by this uncanny actualization in these letters. It’s a beautiful question to hold as you go into the new year: What sparks joy in your life and in your surroundings?

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Heartbreak of Desire

Heartbreak of Desire

This article, excerpted from my next Valentine’s Day issue, Heartbreak of Desire, to be released in mid-January articulates the cycle of desire in four phases: lacking, longing, loving and losing. It offers some good end of year questions to ponder: What do you feel you are currently lacking in yourself or in your life ? What do you long for in life at this time? What or whom do you currently love and would not want to lose? How do you deal with the loss of things or people that you love?

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The Sceptic and The Heart

The Sceptic and The Heart

What dominate emotion would you like in the background of your life? Think outside of the box, go beyond the easy ones, such as love, happiness, or joy. Name it and write how that emotion would impact you if it were a dominate feeling in the background of your life. What would it make you see, hear, think? How would you act? What would it inspire you to do?

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