Posts – Page 3 – Deepening Our Journey

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A Journey Through Stuff

August 7, 2024

That one word—stuff—has shown up in my conversations with a wide variety of folks more in the last few months than it has in many years! For the most part it held a negative and burdensome connotation, not something we wanted more of, but something we wanted to be free from. As you might know from past posts, Rita and I have been struggling to downsize as we prepare to put our home on the market and move into a continuing care community. When we received notice from Willow Valley

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Life’s Crap

June 2, 2024

None of us gets through life without encountering our share of hardship, adversity, pain, frustration, loss, and a whole bunch of other crap that we’d prefer to avoid. In fact, sometimes it can feel like life is nothing but crap! Before we go any further, this is probably a good spot to put something on “the table” that has been showing up in feedback from time to time. On occasion a few followers of my blog have politely shared that they find some of my references, adjectives, etc. a bit

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Little Bigs – Part 2

May 4, 2024

This is the second in a two-part post on what I call, “little bigs,” small things we can do to possibly help create some degree of understanding and healing in what I see as an increasingly divisive, antagonistic, and fear-driven climate. Your feedback on the first post about taking time to thank folks for a wide variety of services and small acts of kindness was overwhelming, refreshing, and empowering. Thanks! For those of you who have been following my blog over the years, you may remember a post I wrote

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Little Bigs – Part 1

March 31, 2024

As I have mentioned in prior posts, this is the most divisive, antagonistic and fear-driven climate I have experienced in my lifetime, and as a result, I have become increasingly more committed to identifying common opportunities for connecting and healing. I call these “little bigs” because they take little effort but can have outsized results on everyone involved. One of my “go-to” little bigs is thanking folks! It is clearly an effective and low-risk strategy for connecting with folks. I’ve long been trying to make a habit of affirming any

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Still Chewing

February 27, 2024

Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of sitting with several people who have been given a terminal illness diagnosis as they grapple with how to deal with this shocking and overwhelming news. On occasion they may ask for my thoughts or professional advice, but for the most part, they are hoping for someone to sit with them, listen carefully, pass no judgement, and at times hold their hand. Some choose as much medication as is allowable and basically remove themselves to the furthest extent possible from

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Our Shrinking World

February 1, 2024

“As you age, your world gets smaller and smaller.” This dire pronouncement from our neighbor, our boy’s self-designated adoptive grandmother, haunted me from the moment I heard it. Over the years Rita and I reflected on it often, even more frequently as we entered our own post-retirement phase. Already we had experienced the loss of several close friends, and now as we faced a move to an over 55 retirement community many miles from our home, we would be cut off from the daily interactions with everyone we had grown

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My Pre-New Year Resolution

December 27, 2023

It’s the beginning of the new year, the usual time for New Year’s resolutions. Several friends and acquaintances have already mentioned resolutions like beginning an exercise program or committing to a healthier diet, both of which I wholeheartedly support and are areas I continue to work on myself! Just within the past few days (it’s early December as I write this), I have identified an area of personal growth I have decided to commit—actually recommit!—to addressing immediately. (I do wonder why we decide to wait until January 1st and not

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Avoiding Decisions Part 3: Making the Decision

November 30, 2023

This is a continuation of the last post on confronting a major decision I’ve been avoiding for years: where and how Rita and I want to live out this next stage of our lives. This decision is extremely challenging and complex, and as I’ve come to understand the more I talk to others about it, there are many parts that are universal but many that are completely unique! Here are just a few of the responses I received when discussing our struggle: One person said, “I need to stay here

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Avoiding Decisions Part 2: Unpacking Your Baggage

November 4, 2023

This post is in response to a challenge put forth by one of my regular “bouncers” (the people I “bounce” my rough drafts off for their honest, critical and constructive feedback) after reading the draft of my last post on avoiding decisions. He asked me why I hadn’t written about the ongoing decision-making struggle I’ve been dealing with for years (and continue to wrestle with): the decision about how to live out the next stage of life, which includes if and when to leave our beloved home of 45 years

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