It was a bitterly cold February day as I walked along the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Canada, contemplating departure from a career that was just not me. I was a probation and parole officer, about a year-and-a-half out of graduate school, working in a noble profession that did not resonate with my skill set or […]

About the only thing I remember from my ninth-grade physics class is Newton’s first law of motion, which states that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction, unless acted upon by an external force. Newton’s first law had […]

You have heard the expression, of course, that old dogs cannot learn new tricks. This maxim has surpassed dog training and is so embedded in our collective belief system that we easily can allow ourselves to take it to heart, even if it doesn’t truly apply to us. And once we believe it, we start […]

We have rounded the corner to the holiday season, saying goodbye to 2020 and (warily) welcoming a fresh beginning with the advent of the New Year. Many of us are pondering all that we have been through over the past 10 months and trying to make sense of a year that no one ever could […]

The 11th month officially kicks off the holiday season: Thanksgiving, Hannukah for Jews and Christmas for Christians. We usually have great expectations for celebration and togetherness at this time of year, but many experience anxiety and sadness instead. So, on the doorstep of Thanksgiving 2020—which is destined to be like none other because of the […]