Judith Johnson

Do you feel like you are 5 years old again when you visit with your family? Do you feel like everything is the same somehow? Have you maintained the same role in relationship to your family throughout your life? The shining star? The black sheep? The outcast? The one who...

Existential maturity (is) a kind of peaceful acceptance of mortality and of the relationship between generations of life that mitigates the pain of our transience by allowing an understanding of how we can die without entirely ceasing to exist. -- Linda Emmanuel

I must admit that I have fallen in...

Sometimes, I walk through this world and just marvel at the fact that we are all souls with individualized karmic agendas. Our lives and stories are woven together in a perfect complexity of clearing our individual and collective karmic accruals. It is as though we have a kind of karmic...

Over the past week, I have spent more than 15 hours on the phone with technical support for Apple, Time Warner Cable and Microsoft. I've spoken to about 30 different people in the U.S., India and the Philippines, and I have lost my mind on several occasions. I started out...

The term "karma" is often used with great casualness, with little understanding of its profundity. People dismissively say "it's my karma," suggesting that their destiny or fate is merely the luck or bad fortune of the draw. This use of the term suggests a lack of personal power or responsibility...

"There is a struggle that is more interesting than pleasure or ego satisfaction... There is something far more interesting than what money can buy." -- Jacob Needleman

I find it fascinating that 92 percent of Americans claim belief in God yet current politics suggest that only 1 percent...

Did you ever have a really good friendship where everything was just rolling along until one day you hit an impasse that you couldn't seem to get past? I've been hearing a lot of stories like this lately and have had my fair share as well. So let's take a...

Dictionaries specify that the word "judgment" refers to the process of forming an opinion after careful consideration. Judgments have their place in a court of law where, by social agreement, authority is granted to a judge or jury to determine whether or not someone's behavior is or is not in...

There are those among us who are leading the way in demonstrating how to break free of society's taboo around death. While most of us might be likely to awkwardly say "your color looks good today" to a dying loved one, someone who has made peace with death would be...

"For most of human history, people died fast.
Now suddenly, we have the opportunity to grow old,
to have an illness for a long period of time,
and to know what's coming.
We could make this an important phase of life."
-- Joanne Lynn, M.D.,...

Can you imagine "getting over" the death of someone you love deeply in four days? That's the average paid leave given by American businesses according to "Grief Index: The 'Hidden' Annual Costs of Grief in America's Workplace." The truth is there is no "getting over" the death...

This is the first in a series of posts on the topic of death that will be published over the next several weeks.

We don't do death well in this country which results in a lot of unnecessary suffering. Most of us do not talk about death and are terribly...

They say opinions are like noses -- everyone has one. Whether you like it or not, people have opinions about you. What you do with those opinions is entirely up to you.

Consider a coaching client of mine who had a really tough time dealing with her family's opinion of...

Below the surface of many family holiday gatherings are mini dramas playing out, contemporary grudges and resentments and unresolved childhood issues. Nothing hurts with such emotional depth as these familial battles. For the tender-hearted, this can be a psychological mine field while self-righteous bullies reign unchallenged. Many silently suffer through...

I have a bowl with the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, "The greatest gift is a portion of thyself." One day recently, I placed it on my new coffee table. The next morning, I discovered that my obviously gifted cat, Finnegan, had placed his favorite toy in the bowl. Random? You...

Do you think everyone else is going to have a wonderful Thanksgiving except you? Does it feel like you are the only one who isn't going to be having a warm and fuzzy time? You are not alone! There are so many people who feel alone and isolated over the...

This above all:



To thine own self be true,



And it must follow, as the night the day,



Thou canst not then be false to any man.



-- Shakespeare

"To thine own self be true." That is about...

I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: a man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself. --Rod Serling

When...

What if we stopped fighting against people and situations we perceive as our enemies. What if we accepted them exactly as they are and as having the right to exist? What if we invested our energy in living, doing and being the change we want, rather than depleting our energy...

Human consciousness encompasses the full, complex and multi-dimensional range of our awarenesses, perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, preferences and desires. It is the basis upon which we make choices and take action in our lives. Whether we pay attention to the fluid dance of our consciousness or not, whether we question...