"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." -- E.E. Cummings

I have been making love with the same man for some 30 years, and although I can honestly say it has gotten amazingly and increasingly better over the decades, it is important to add that...

"Be no longer tender. Cover me with frenzied kisses -- even as I would drench my body in the cruel torrents of the rain. Envelop me from throat to ankle in delirium intolerable..." -- Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff

Accessing our deepest erotic selves can be as simple as tapping into the...

"Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly." -- George McDonald

This year, rethink your gift-giving rituals by focusing on how you spend your time and attention in your most meaningful relationships. There is no gift you could purchase that will more profoundly enhance the emotional...

"We are people who need love, because love is the soul's life, love is simply creation's greatest joy." -- Hafiz

All the great spiritual teachings are founded on love. For thousands of years, the mystics have been teaching the truth of our deep connection to this conscious universe, which is...

We can't get down to coming up with real solutions for the diminishing resources we face as a society until we all agree to a few basic premises. The first premise, which at least rhetorically is shared by both parties in the current debate, is that the most accurate measure...

"None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith." -- Paulo Coelho

It's easy to trust when life is giving us what we want, when our relationships are stable and communication flows. Leaning...

"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like." -- Lao Tzu

For as many euphemisms as there are about how life is always changing, most of us often...

"We need in love to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily -- we do not need to learn it." -- Rainer Maria Rilke

My parents' marriage ended when my mother told my father she didn't love him anymore and that she was not sure...

"We've all been wounded, but, paradoxically, wounding is probably our greatest stimulus for health. As we heal, we grow." -- David Knighton, M.D.

I have been thinking a lot about healing lately, partly because it is happening on my face. My bee sting of last weekend has dominated my energy...

Perhaps the single most devastating emotional pain we suffer is abandonment. Many children know this experience as their primary relationship to their parents, and the effects are wide-ranging and long-lasting. Abandonment is rarely about the person being left; it is most always a reflection of what is broken in the...

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity." -- Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden, 1854

Our time is our life. How we spend the hours of our days is the truest measure of what we create, what we value and how we invest our life energy. This is why...

Years ago I memorized the 50 principles from A Course in Miracles. One that has always stayed with me is how miracles heal the past in the present and thus release the future. Many of us don't recognize how we hold our future hostage to the pain of our past....

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become." -- Buddha

There is no more powerful or challenging change we can make in our lives than looking at how we think. The human mind generates hundreds of thousands...

"I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring...

"It's also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that's sitting right here, right now... with its aches and its pleasure is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, and fully alive." -- Pema Chodron

One of my favorite movie scenes comes from the...

Recognizing that our relationships are our most gentle teachers in life is a great way to approach the work involved in staying with them. We too often don't value and trust the huge amounts of resources that we have invested into them and are too willing to dispose of them...

"When it's over, I want to say: All my life, I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." -- Mary Oliver

It's easy to get so lost in the momentum of holiday activities and the seemingly endless to-do lists that we...

"For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice -- no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service." -- John Burroughs

It is perhaps the deepest aspect of our human nature to seek security and assurance....

"All healing is first a healing of the heart." -- Carl Townsend

I remember the first time I heard the maxim that "Bad things happen fast, and good things happen over time." It was a recognition that hadn't occurred to me until I was faced with sweeping and traumatic shifts...

"When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude." - Cynthia Ozick

Our communication is the currency of our relationships, literally...