Tag Archives: love

Personal Empowerment

Resisting Love

By Shae Hadden
Bio

  • Resistance causes persistence.
  • You get what you resist.
  • Practice non-resistance.

All
these axioms seem appropriate when speaking of violence, acts of
aggression, conflict, long-standing issues of hate and fear. But why
would we resist the ‘good’ things in life like friendship, support,
trust, attraction and love?

Time and time again I find myself
turning away from what I most want as if it is a poisonous substance
harmful to my health. I live alone now and often feel an overwhelming
need for intimacy, fun and laughter. I look at

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Wisdom in Action

Sand Art

I am profoundly grateful today for the gift of life and the opportunity to observe. How extraordinary and beautiful this all is. When we consider how miraculous it is that we are here at all, even the difficulty and pain are exquisite.

If I think about my life, it is utterly amazing that I have survived this long and have had such a wealth of experiences—a cornucopia of the good, the bad and the ugly. Perhaps the greatest gift of growing older is to appreciate ALL of it, the marvelous and the

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Personal Empowerment

Reality of Love

Thanks to Google, I’ve learned that Valentine’s Day is so old a tradition that we’re not even sure how it began. It probably goes back to pagan rituals that were later “Christianized” around the time of Claudius and probably  “commercialized” by Hallmark. Whatever its origins, it is about romance and love and letting the special men and women in our lives know how we feel about them.

For me, Valentine’s Day is extra special because it comes right after my birthday, which for

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Learning

Riverboats and Bone Yards II

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This is second in a five-part series.

Those paddlewheel steamers on the Yukon keenly awakened my sensibility
that all things—regardless of how grand or wonderfully complex at the
time—have their time. If we are lucky, they, like us, will live on in a
sweet memory, rife with nostalgic editing that carves away the worst.

Like
a distant love affair that once seemed to have held the very purpose of
life in its hands, it is possible to be reminded of happier moments

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Learning

Learning from Older People

I am thinking about all the things older people told me over the
years—don’t worry, relax, smell the roses, live life in the moment,
learn from your mistakes, and, above all, love other people and
yourself. Much of my life hasn’t been spent practicing these gems from
my predecessors. It’s been about struggling to do it right, doing it my
way, resisting anything I didn’t like, and (in one way or another)
controlling myself and other people.

Love,
when it appeared, was like a fleeting

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Personal Empowerment

Connections

By Shae Hadden
Bio

I’ve always been aware of the distances between people…ever since my
first childhood remembrance of being a being separate from my mother.
Vivid memories of being the last one chosen to be on the team in gym
class translated into a story about being the one assigned to sit on
the sidelines of life while others got to play. I thought I had left
that all behind when I got married at the ripe old age of 28. I was
ready to dive in and live full

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