Last week, we spoke of our need to belong, and that it is a need to belong in our very uniqueness, not merely our of conformity or in terms of projecting an image that we feel is acceptable. Yet the discovery of our authentic self is a slow and gradual […] Read more

Last week we referred to Gabor Mate, who says that the need to belong, especially in a child, can, at least for a time, override his or her need for authenticity. Erich Fromm has written similarly that the deepest need of a human being is to overcome separateness, without sacrificing […] Read more

Last week we suggested that we can experience gratitude for life, for our own life as well as for the lives of those who are meaningfully present in our lives, and even for life itself. Such gratitude is possible even amid the inevitable pains of life. I recall the words […] Read more

In speaking of kindness last week, a quotation from the late educator, John Holt, came to mind. I looked it up and I’ll include it here. “I think that the social virtues are an overflowing,” he says, “they are a surplus; people have enough kindness for others when they have […] Read more

We have most recently spoken of vulnerability and of healing. Vulnerability involves an awareness of the possibility of being hurt, yet reveals the paralysis of building protective walls around ourselves. A gradually growing trust allows us to share something of who we are with one another and, in humanist psychologist, […] Read more

As you know, I am fascinated with the etymology or roots of words, one of which is healing, the counterpart to wounding. In its origins the word heal means to make whole. Words with the same origin are health, hale, hail, holy. The terms, sound, safe, and uninjured appear also […] Read more

Last week we wrote about fear and anger, and how beneath them are the deeper realities of our longing for life, meaning, and relationship or belonging. We have used the somewhat similar image before of longing as a yearning to gather ourselves into our hands as something valuable, and to […] Read more

This week I would like to consider the experiences of fear and anger and suggest possible ways to respond to them. Of course, experience also tells us that knowing a helpful response is much easier than living out that response. Three prominent kinds of fears are the fear of hurt, […] Read more