My ADELE-ation Turns Into My Need for a 12-Step Program for My ADELE-iction

Sometimes it just hits me. When I look around me, see so much difficulty and strife in my own life, in my friends and the lives of others, in the country and the world, art always brings me around.

Adele's sophomore album 21, the #1 album in America, has brought me around. I remember hearing Tapestry and thinking that Carole King was singing to me, that she related to only me. I feel that way about Adele's musical masterpiece. Every song sings to me, and obviously countless others.

I think I have gifted 25 copies so far and more on the way. The gift that keeps on giving. Music transforms the often grim realities facing the world and propels me into a different feeling and then into a different attack on the problems that surround all of us. Love is at the center of her songs and it brings it all to the fore -- familial love, romantic love, platonic love.

I am quite stunned by her maturity being only in her early twenties, but age notwithstanding, the human connections she sings about resonates and challenges me and I hope you.

I recently heard Dr. Gabor Mate speak about addiction and parent's losing their connections with their children and about the amount of stress in families and how stress affects children. I suggest reading his work as he speaks of a common sense reality, like Adele of love lost and found, mistakes made and repaired. New music like this makes me so glad to be alive and to be able to experience the immense joy it brings. Simple. Profound. Truth. Love. Family.