WHEN I ARRIVED at my front door after moving my youngest child halfway across the world to a university in Paris, I expected a grand threshold moment. At the very least, I expected to walk in and fall to my knees bawling. It was a moment I’d imagined so many times over the years with dread. But it was nothing like I’d imagined.
On a warm September morning, I walked into a house that was clean, quiet, and dappled in sunlight—like a temple for my old life as a mother with all its energy, but none of the mess. Without unpacking, without the anticipated weight of self-pity or sadness, I burst into a frenzy of activity and got to work. I reorganized and reclaimed spaces. I Marie Kondo’d for hours, then, jet-lagged and bone-tired, I passed out.
When I awoke the next morning, it was peaceful and calm. That feeling lingered for days, and only occasionally would I drop into the well of sorrow. Usually, the grief came from a day without hearing from either of my children, or the sudden realization that after all the years of foreboding grief, my life had become stiflingly solitary. On those days, I would let myself cry. I had learned over the years to sit with sorrow and see what it had to teach me.
This story is from the May/Jun 2023 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the May/Jun 2023 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
Journalist Emily O’Kelly shares some uplifting research on the benefits of sweat bathing, a global healing practice not just limited to Northern climes.
the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.