<658 words> I have a sideways pear tree in my backyard. It fell over some years ago before I moved here, so I don’t know what happened. But, by the time I moved in, it had developed a very different stance from what one normally expects of a pear tree. The… Read More »TENACITY AND RESILIENCE
“Mother-in-law” – The most maligned role in our society. Does any little girl ever dream of becoming a mother-in-law? When you were pregnant with your baby (who is now your adult offspring who is married), were you eagerly anticipating becoming a mother-in-law? If you answered ‘Yes’ to either of these questions… Read More »Being a mother-in-law is no joke
<1312 words> Faltering can happen any time, no matter how well prepared you are and how experienced and skilled and everything. No doubt faltering has many causes but to my mind, when emotions simply will not remain in the back row of a command performance, the prospects of faltering happening significantly… Read More »When Faltering Happens
<1609 words>
A minimum of two people and an issue on which they disagree.
Add to the recipe the factors that the people each bring into the relationship:
Our values are what we judge to be important in life: our personal principles. The rules we live by. They typically originate in our culture but over time our values may shift as our relationship with our culture shifts (e.g. young adults and their elderly parents may share a culture but have very different values as regards to how kids are raised; dealing with garbage; ethnic diversity, and so on).
“Culture is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others.”[1]
Triggers: What sets you off causes a quick change in your mood/attitude, rooted often in values or cultural practices you hold dear would be called a trigger. For example a South African grandmother whose half-Japanese grandson slurps his tea. Tea slurping is what one does in Japanese culture. Not so in ‘polite society’ in South Africa.
<1281 words> I have a great deal of respect for wild elephants and am careful to show that respect by backing out of their way when they come walking down the road towards my car. I believe I’ve learned a thing or two about elephant culture in my multiple trips to… Read More »RESPECT & CURIOSITY: On Elephants and Others
<654 words and 2 links> Stress is a natural part of life. In limited doses it is good for you – for your brain and for your body. When your brain grabs hold of some old unresolved quarrel, though, and it simply won’t let go, you can end up in a… Read More »Get Beyond the Bad of Stress. But you Must Want To.
<1457 words – yes, this is a long one but it contains an interesting story and some pictures :-)> And, I’ve added a link at the bottom of this blog to a very informative article on resilience that appeared in the New Yorker in Feb 2016. More on the science of….… Read More »What does resilience really look like, anyway?
868 words When you Google ‘negative friends’ it virtually immediately offers up the highest performing results of the 340,000,000 out there. Of the ones I examined, most offered survival advice – how to cope with or avoid the negative person, and if all else fails, how to dump them and find… Read More »You Do Not Have to Fire Negative Friends
<1160 words> The harsh truth about helping Canada’s Syrian refugees is with us now. The state of their kids’ teeth, our inability to communicate in Arabic, and all that. I’m sure there are many misunderstandings that have the potential to gnaw at the goodwill cloud that swept the Canadian nation… Read More »Syrian Refugees: Who Helps the Helpers?
<932 words> I read Kathy Jourdain’s new blog this morning on her blog page and ended up writing such a long response that it turned into the blog below. She starts out with: “Be afraid. Be very afraid. But not for the reasons you might think. We are living in precipitous… Read More »Response to Fear: Fascism or Openness?