The pandemic was particularly hard on the mental health of adolescents. Their activities, plans, hopes and dreams were canceled or changed, and disappointment hit hard. Now many teenagers are depressed, angry, frustrated, confused and are falling deep into holes of anxiety, fear and futility.
This past year, I turned 70, published my first collection of short stories, and lost my eldest brother to cancer. These events left me feeling as if I am only now beginning to know who I am.
Sometimes, the most difficult emotions can reveal things we could not know any other way.
With all the bitter divides in the U.S. and around the world, it’s hard to believe that human beings can create community with each other. But we can and we do…
In 2010, recovering from a traumatic brain injury and traveling across the country with my wife, I was taken aback at seeing this handwritten sign on a telephone pole in New Orleans.
My mother died last summer. She was 91. This quote is from her book about a young girl happily living on a Kentucky farm with her extended family until poverty forces her and her parents to adjust to a new life in Cincinnati.
This quote has helped me trust that a flower’s journey from seed to blooming is also true for me (and other people, too).
It’s easy to admire a flower and forget that it was once a…
In the summer of 1980, I was responsible for a Kettering Foundation symposium in Woodstock, VT, that brought together scientists, theologians, psychologists, and others to explore the subject “Recovery of Wholeness.”
When younger, I was an ardent lover of movies, of cinema. From Cocteau to Kurosawa, Keaton to Kubrick, watching a great film was a near religious experience. Images and words…
I entered teaching as a writer, and remain one. I had spent 10 years as a journalist and the habits of writing every single day stuck with me even as I changed careers.