Open any published book to the Acknowledgements page. Notice how many people are listed there and what the author is thanking them for....

I love early mornings. I love that luminous, numinous moment every day, when everything is fresh, crisp, untainted. It's the perfect time...

We don’t meditate to become expert meditators, right? At least in the meditation practices I follow, we do eventually get up off the...

Inspiration is a fleeting, elusive thing. Sometimes you’ll think you have something, but then suddenly the Muse goes silent, disappearing...

Some of my best ideas come to me in the shower. I probably wrote half my master’s thesis under running water. Sometimes I’m inspired by...

When I was 22, I promised myself I’d live with no regrets. This seemed like a good idea at the time—a healthy way to view life as a...

— quoted from calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh Today is the 30th anniversary of my father’s death. Today I remember him. Every day for 30...

The best way I know of to bring light to the shadows of my mind is by writing down the shadows and letting them breathe, giving them space.

As I sail through one green light after another on my way to an appointment, I think of that magical day last summer, out on the lake by...

Meet Betty. Betty is my sourdough starter. What’s unusual about Betty is not that I’ve given a name to a mere concoction of flour and...

I'm a writer and a teacher. I write pretty much every day. But just a few short years ago, I was hardly writing at all, except emails and...

Can I call myself a writer if all I do is “journalling”? Or morning pages? Writing in a writing class but not on my own? YES. I say yes,...

It was a revelation of epic proportions when my first meditation instructor said to me, the body feels before you put words to it. I...

The last time I posted here, I said on Facebook that posting weekly was part of my self-compassion practice. Then I promptly skipped a...

Who knew a four-day, 2500-kilometre solo drive in the rain, preceded and followed by intense moving activities, could be so exhausting?...

I was recently asked about what has worked for me in building a regular writing practice. So I’ve pulled together some of the components...

When people ask me what I’m up to these days, I get all tongue tied and fumbly. I hem and haw about sort of being more or less kind of...

In the Dordogne Valley near the Bordeaux region of France there’s a cave* with a magnificent 13-thousand-year-old painting of a horse on...