How Do I Stop Being a Perfectionist?
“How do I stop being a perfectionist? How do you move away from perfectionism?” These are the questions you ask, and on one level the answers are simple. We shift out of perfectionism through daily, real-world action, rewriting our old patterns of behavior and belief. But you’re not just asking for the how-to. You’re asking for the hope. You’re asking, “Is it really possible for us to change?” Let me tell you a story. …
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I Never Saw It Coming: A Story of Self-Forgiveness
Something miraculous happened to me recently. The other night, I was typing at my laptop, responding to emails, ordering gifts for friends, and ignoring the drifts of cat fur that grow larger by the day. Nearly a half an hour went by before I stood up and walked toward our kitchen. It was only then that I remembered: I’d left a pot of rice cooking on the stove. “Oh no!” I yelped. “I forgot about the rice! Shoot and sugar muffins!” (If you hang around me long enough, you’ll hear creative alternatives to swear words; it’s a holdover from growing...
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One Sentence To Set You Free from Fear
Have you ever had your world turned upside down by a single sentence? Have you ever felt someone else’s words unlock a caged place within your heart and set you free from fear? If so, then this story is for you. It begins with me spending a month in a residential rehab called The Clearing. I am here for work – I’m a copywriter on The Clearing’s team, writing ebooks and essays – but I am also here for my own healing. (They tried to make me go to rehab, and I said yes.) On this particular day in workshop,...
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The Work That’s Never Done
There's one item in our house that always catches people's eyes. The item in question? A photo collage that my husband Jonathan received when we moved away from the L'Arche community where we met. Farewell collages are a tradition at L'Arche DC; they feature the faces of every person that was a part of L'Arche during the years one lived there. In Jonathan's case, that means five years of faces, five years of relationships. When we first moved, I hesitated to display the collage. The goodbye was still raw; there were (are) so many people we love and miss. And...
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