Find Comfort Here 
Thanksgiving is around the corner. Before you know it, we’ll be making New Year’s resolutions to lose the holiday weight, or just the weight. Or exercise or be more organized. There were years I made lists, imagining I could accomplish more than one thing. After careful consideration, I decided to cast off making resolutions last
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My mother’s love was big. Rita was the parent waving wildly from the audience with a toothy smile. In high school I messed up my solo in Oklahoma when I saw her arms fanning above her head. Other parents sat patiently, palms in their laps, and looked at the stage with neutral expressions. Rita couldn’t
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I spoke to a customer service representative recently who was working during a natural disaster. Flooding in her community had reached historic levels. She filled me in on the areas affected and shared a story about a friend not being able to reach her elderly father because the road was washed out. She said they
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Family dinner is good for the soul. When my children Matt and Emma were young, I read articles about the value of sitting together for meals. Family dinner saves lives, preventing drug abuse and reducing the likelihood of all kinds of social pathology. It even boosted IQs so I devoted myself to the ritual, using
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“Today is the anniversary of my mom Rita’s death. I was 22 when she died so this year has special significance as my daughter Emma is 22. We are going to do 22 kind things together in honor of my mom. The first is asking people to join us in honoring this day with an act of
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My daughter Emma went to Rhodes College to study neuroscience and prepare for medical school. I love telling people she was “pre-med” and a neuroscience major. I usually start with neuroscience. If someone seems too impressed, I add an oh-shucks-comment like, “It’s not that big a deal. It’s just like majoring in biology.” If I
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My uncle is 87 and a very difficult man. Sometimes I struggle to find goodness in him. He has an iron grip on his routine, a powerful sense of entitlement, and no filter. He’s lived alone since my father died last year so I fly up every few months to check on him. Yesterday I headed
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Aunt Kay is my second mom. She taught me so many things by example, including valuable life lessons. She also offered love and comfort when we baked thumbprint cookies together. The ritual had a spiritual quality. We worked side-by-side in silence under the kitchen window where the afternoon light spotlighted our effort and made the
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I woke up this morning with a foreign feeling of gratitude. The object was my backyard. It’s one of the first things I see. It’s big and green and landscaped with curves like a winding stream. I love it. But I’ve seen it ten thousand times. Why so grateful now? I’ve been trying to be
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Remember Oprah Winfrey’s amazing acceptance speech at the Golden Globes Award Show this year? It was a call-to-action for girls and women to continue the fight for equal justice. It’s thrilling to see that sexual harassment, something I took for granted when I was young, is in the light and that things are changing. I
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