Personal growth Archives

Lessons from 2022: From the Pathetic to the Great

I had a hard time deciding how to structure this list. My first thought was to start with the great and end with the pathetic, to then conclude with how I would do better or different in 2023. But the...Read More →

15 Reasons I’m Grateful to be Venezuelan

Last year I started my very own Thanksgiving tradition, though I didn’t know it yet. I posted a list of random things I was thankful for -exactly 52, for no other reason than the fact that I was 52....Read More →

Aging: Age is Not Just a Number

Being older is the same as being younger in many respects. That’s what I think anyway. I’ll be 53 this month and my needs and wants are not much different than they were at 35. I continue to want love,...Read More →

Flight Switch: A Scary Story With An Unexpected Ending

Once in a while things work out for you and you know a higher power had a hand in it. This happens to me whenever I fly. Sometimes it’s super obvious, like the time I switched to an earlier flight from...Read More →

26 Lessons About Love, Sex, Parenting and Money From 30 Years of Marriage

Thirty years of marriage. How is it even possible? “It really has felt like two minutes — underwater,” an acquaintance joked the other day about his similarly long marriage. Seeing as I’m very slow when...Read More →

Jealousy: I Was Decidedly NOT Jealous

It all started 21 years ago when we immigrated to the United States and joined our local YMCA, where I enrolled in yoga classes with an instructor I shall name Kate. I would come home raving about them...Read More →

Time for a Marriage Break?

Do you ever wish you could mute your spouse when he’s (my spouse is a “he”) telling the same “joke” he has told 137 times and which you’ve made abundantly clear is not funny AT ALL? Have you fantasized...Read More →

The Gift of Uncertainty

Uncertainty is not all bad. Far from it: it can be a gift that forces you to actively write the story of your life. Imagine this hypothetical life: You’re born into a well-to-do family. Your father’s ...Read More →

Seven Big Ideas on the Astounding Benefits of Tiny Habits

I was reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, and suddenly it hit me: the person I know with the best habits is autistic and intellectually disabled. He reads at a first-grade level and his myriad...Read More →

Process Over Outcome: A Perfect Focus for 2022

Last December was the first time I reflected long and hard on the year that was about to end. The year 2020 was an eventful year if there ever was one, and I came up with seven different lessons or...Read More →