It was the softest of mornings, the quietest of sunrises, the loveliest day to step out into. I cherish these September days — the silky air, the damp, sweet scent of summer succumbing to fall. I walked across the wet grass, sat on a rock, and watched the mists drift across the valley, the sky brighten, a single bird soaring high, silhouetted against the sky. Never do I appreciate the beauty of home more than on a day when I have to leave it. I type these words in an airport terminal, waiting for my delayed flight to Atlanta, where…
Driving out to Hopkinton in the dark on Sunday morning, it was hard to believe that we could possibly walk all that way back to Boston in one day. Hard to imagine all our fifty-plus-year-old bodies carrying us the distance we’d promised to go. Impossible to know how any of us would feel at the end of 26 miles. But it was easy to remember why were there in the first place, joining the throng of dedicated walkers: because we loved our friend Diane Brewster, and we knew without question that, had her cancer taken a different course, she would…
I am always a bit melancholic as summer gives way to fall, and this year has been no exception. The change of season reminds me that the first anniversary of a dear friend’s death is looming. The boys have gone back to school, I have a birthday around the corner, a deadline to meet, a season’s worth of commitments made long ago that are now upon me. A week ago, I could feel my own personal dark cloud settling over me like a cloak. And then, almost on a whim, I enrolled in a two-day course on Reiki healing. Last…
Toward the end of my month of yoga teacher training at Kripalu last spring, each person in my class was handed a sheet of paper and a pen and asked to write the words “What I want to tell you is. . .” The assignment, then, was to write a letter, a letter from the radiant, wide-open, yoga-saturated, heart-full self of that moment to some beleaguered, tired and doubting future self who might one day be in need of a little bucking up. These letters, we were assured, would arrive in our mailboxes at the right time. There were so…
