A woman named Lolita stood over me, saying a prayer to the spirits of the North, East, West, and South. She made shushing sounds, and waved her hands in the air above my body, apparently pulling negative energy out of my system. “Do you feel a heaviness traveling through your legs and out of your feet?” She asked at the end of the treatment. Maybe? I wanted to. My sister had left her shamanic healing ...

  “I just had to send you a message,” a client we’ll call Marla wrote to me. “Normally this time of year I’d be feening to shop for myself and other people. Like I had to stay plugged so that I wouldn’t miss major sale announcements, but instead I feel totally unbothered!” We’d worked with Marla extensively to edit her space. We talked at length about how she used every excuse in the book to ...

  We live in a highly produced culture. We’re bombarded with shabby befores snapping to swoonworthy afters. The upgrades are instantaneous, only adding to their impressiveness. We expect our personal transformations to happen as rapidly. We want the results now. We want our current discomfort, our hang-ups, and our emotional turmoil to be dispelled in the span of an HGTV episode. We evaluate our goals impatiently. We wonder how everyone else is managing to pull ...

  October was my mom’s birthday month, and if there was one quality (aside from joy) that she possessed in spades, it was grace.  She didn’t try, she just was. She didn’t force or manipulate, she allowed things to ebb and flow towards and away from her without ever seeming too troubled about their direction. And that includes lost entities such as mobility, independence, and then, finally, life. Hers was a grace built on the ...

  August, with its straw hat and freckles, has taken its final bow for the year. In its stead enters September, which, with its return to routine for so many families, gives one that sense that life is once again standing at attention with its glasses on. The mornings are crisper, the daylight shortens, but still, the spirit of renewal is in the air. This month invites us to resume activities we’ve abandoned during the ...