Here we are on the cusp of another year – time for my annual contemplative “Hope and Cope Report.”  Rather than making a stale New Year’s resolution, this is my tradition of intentional reflection.With 4 simple columns marked “Knowns”, “Unknowns”, “Hopes”, and “Surprises,” I fill in the blanks of the past year and create a new sheet with my best predictions for the coming year. (more…)

A friend noticed the brightly wrapped packages under our Christmas tree.  “You put the presents out before Christmas?”  I responded with “Of course, don’t you?”  There seems to be little consensus on the details of how one should celebrate the holidays. (more…)

It was 1989 . . . I was a young woman living in New York City.  The media blasted the shocking story for weeks, months, years: “The Central Park Jogger.”  She was a woman my age who went out jogging one night only to spend the next years fighting for her life. (more…)

My creative energies have been directed toward a lecture that I’m giving this week in South Carolina.  So I’m leaving you with one of my first blogs, but one that many of my readers have found touching . . . 

Harold is waiting to die.  There were six of us at his bedside in the county nursing home, leaning toward him singing softly, “Amazing grace . . . how sweet the sound . . . “  Tears in his eyes, he shook each of our hands saying, “Thank you, you don’t know how much that meant to me.”  Little did he know how much it had meant to us . . . ..how much he meant to me. (more…)

Uncertainty is in the air in my house.  Out of our five children, four of them will be attending new schools next year.  The amazing thing is that we have no idea what schools.  What college, what high schools, what elementary school?  We’ve pretty much got the educational span covered. (more…)