My travelling buddy for my Oprah Lifeclass adventure in Chicago last week, J, is quite simply, a force. J and I sat in on the taping of two episodes featuring Dr. Brene Brown…and it was a moving experience for the audience…most of us caregiver types. Being J’s friend is a little risky and a lot …
Asking for help Part 1
I had a blast on Monday at the taping of Oprah’s lifeclass with Dr. Brene Brown. Oprah and Brene are both witty, smart, engaging women who create interesting and engaging conversation. The tapings flew by. The audience had about 150 people..and to be honest, we weren’t there to see Oprah (though, to be equally honest, …
Hump Day Nudge: Creating Good Memories
I was out of town this week at Oprah’s Lifeclass with Brené Brown…and with Wednesday’s Hump Nudge coming up…well, Melanie nudged me about what to post…and I loved her suggestion. Fred just lost the love of his life…they were together 75 years. Wow. He wrote a song…except he’s not musical, and so he only created …
Domestic Violence Part 3
I blogged here and here a few weeks ago about domestic violence…looking at the roots…understanding that our culture assists in shaping men’s behaviour towards violence. Gail Shaver, the therapist that works most closely with those who engage in our Transforming Destructive into Constructive-Intimate Partner Violence program reminded me that I missed something big in the …
Hump Day Nudge: A heart to heart with a heart surgeon
I love this video done by Soul Pancake and the Oprah Winfrey network that interviews Dr. Kathy Magliato, a heart surgeon. For someone who likes biology, it’s interesting. For someone like myself who works does a different sort of work with hearts, day after day, it’s truly profound. Two moments stopped me cold: The first: …
Hump Day Nudge: Staying
I read this story last week, and was moved on multiple levels. Lisa M. Fenn is a producer with ESPN, a sports network…and she clearly and unabashedly crossed the neutral line of journalism and got in deep with the folks of one of her stories. She smashed the neutralism of journalism and stayed with a …
The cost of the beauty brainwash
Our culture today has made it hard to see true beauty. Folks are literally bombarded with thousands of images per day of “beautiful women”. Problem is, those beautiful women in the ads don’t exist. The women that posed for those ads, wished they looked like the women in those ads. Beauty that is unreachable and …
Hump Day Nudge: Sticking Together–Literally
There is very little that is of more value in this world than friends. Folks who don’t have to be with you, like family does. Folks who choose to be with you… …even after, and sometimes especially after, they get to know you. Folks who love you enough to: laugh with you until milk …
Hump Day Nudge: Someone isn’t listening
We all need to poke fun at ourselves sometimes, to laugh at ourselves in a gentle way that highlights truth in a humorous way…not to humiliate or shame ourselves, but just to invite ourselves to see things from a different angle. Hey girlfriend, if you’ve got a spouse or a male co-worker nearby who needs …
Women burning clean anger
It breaks my heart when women are so nice that they don’t tell their partners or their friends or their kids when they are mad. It frustrates me when women: suppress what they want to have happen pretend it didn’t really hurt all that much or stop themselves from expressing a different opinion on the …