Meghan O'Rourke uses her memoir, The Long Goodbye, as an elegy to immortalize her deceased mother....
Continue Reading
by Emily Zimmer |
The recent terror attack on London reminds the author of the deeply emotional bond she has to England....
Continue Reading
by Avellina Balestri |
Technology is often overlooked as a tool to bring people together for emotional support....
Continue Reading
by David Markus |
A spiritual reflection on tragedies like the Orlando shooting....
Continue Reading
by Avellina Balestri |
I foolishly thought burying my almost 91-year old father would have been easier than what my siblings and I went through in saying goodbye to my mother who died prematurely at the age of 68, five years ago. After all, my mother was supposed to live long enough to see my still small children grow, become Bar/Bat Mitzvah, graduate and perhaps, get married. No, she died at an age which nowadays is considered young. Her loss was devastating. It took a lot of time and work to integrate her death into my......
Continue Reading
by Matt Gewirtz |
Have you ever picked up a book knowing that its arrival in your life at precisely this moment was a gift? That was my sense when I held Jay Michaelson’s The Gate of Tears, subtitled “Sadness and the Spiritual Path.” As I delved into the book (out this month in paperback), that sense only deepened. “Joy and sadness are not opposites,” Michaelson writes. “Sometimes, they coexist, like two consonant notes of a complex yet harmonious chord.” And he observes: “At our contemporary moment, the ordinary sadness that is part of a life......
Continue Reading
by Rachel Barenblat |
If there were any person in your life, living or dead, with whom you could spend one last day, who would it be? And how would you spend that day? No, I’m not stealing this question from college applications. I’m feeling the pain of the mass murder at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and the killings of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin in Israel. The deep desire to hold close those I love is definitely part of my response. The preciousness of those we love shouldn’t be a function of their absence, or......
Continue Reading
by Brad Hirschfield |
Who is the hardest person to forgive? An abusive parent? A partner who betrayed you? One who shattered our world with mass violence? Well, according to Google, based on the volume of responses to this question, the answer is: yourself. But is that true? I’m not challenging the accuracy of the claim that self-forgiveness is the hardest to practice. Far be it from me to challenge Google’s all-knowing, all-powerful algorithms, and their power to shape our lives! Well, perhaps I should (at least the latter) but that is for another time. For......
Continue Reading
by Brad Hirschfield |
Why do so many people in our culture still buy into the notion that “real men don’t cry”? In a recent piece on Aeon, writer Sandra Newman raises this question. And she suggests that there may be some utility in men containing their tears in certain situations. But she also points out that it’s a relatively recent concept to equate masculinity with dry eyes – an idea that’s ultimately more unhealthy than not. Newman cites scientific research showing that crying opens pathways of connection and healing in unique ways; it often includes......
Continue Reading
by Brad Hirschfield |
When world famous neurologist Oliver Sacks, explainer of things human, writes – as he did recently about family, faith and his own impending death – it pays to pay attention. Okay, I admit, I’m biased by virtue of the fact that this amazing doctor and author was the friend and colleague of another doctor and author I respect: my late father-in-law, Dr. Harold Klawans (equally as esteemed around the world by colleagues and fans of his murder mysteries, albeit not quite as well known, as Sacks). They blurbed each other’s books, spoke......
Continue Reading