Greetings, friends! Since giving you a sneak peek of my Damselwings Photography online shop a while back, I've been working hard behind the scenes to make it ready for prime time. Though...
Holiday Stress? Here’s How to Just Say No!
What emotional response do you have when you hear the first Christmas song on the radio or find the first red and green or snowflake-patterned holiday decorations at the store? Does a...
Stretching My Playfulness Muscles
Playfulness is good for you. So many sources have delivered this message to me over the years that I’ve lost count. Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, mindfulness teachers ranging from the...
Why METAvivor.Org Deserves Our Support This October
This week's post is a reprint of a piece I wrote last October, updated to reflect the means by which I plan to support METAvivor.org in 2017. Breast cancer hasn't gone away, nor has the...
New Photography Award Winner (And New Product Sneak Peak)!
How do you like my newest photography award winner, Hibiscus Abstract Sepia? When I was notified a couple of weeks ago that my entry had won the “Abstracts of Nature” category in the 2017...
Why An Accountability Buddy Is a Mindfulness Tool
Have you ever collaborated with an accountability buddy? I wrote about this in a 2015 series on rebooting healthy, soul-feeding habits in my life (see How an Accountability Buddy Can Turn...
To Scratch or Not To Scratch A Meditation Itch?
"What are you supposed to do if you have an itch during meditation? Should you try to ignore it or is it OK to scratch it?" When this question came up during the post-meditation discussion...
Follow Joy To Find Your Purpose
I’ve been thinking a lot about joy lately, and particularly about joy as an indicator of living in alignment with your purpose. We dove deep into this topic earlier this week in my...
How Mindfulness Moves Us From “Can I” to “How Can I”
It never fails to astonish me how doing nothing for a few minutes each day (meditating) helps me do everything else better. In a 2015 interview with On Being's Krista Tippet, social...
Butterfly Photographs Need Your Vote!
This past Saturday, I stood in Wheaton, Maryland’s Brookside Gardens waiting to take butterfly photographs. Joy flooded through me to such an extent that I was almost moved to...
Musings, Memories, and Mindful Reflections the Morning of My Niece’s Wedding
I'm writing this morning from Seattle's Whidbey Island. In just a few hours, my niece Elizabeth (Lizzie) will marry the love of her life. Although I have been planted on the East Coast for...
Surviving and Thriving in Your Empty Nest
Our family’s Beginning of Empty Nest Day (BEND???? as in bend in the road?) is August 12, 2017, two days from the time of this writing. After months of feeling excited and prepared for our...