Blog Article, Meditations
Kate Spencer
How to Recover Your Life After It Breaks into ...

“Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen was right. Well, of course he was. In every life there are challenges that absolutely delight us, and other challenges that absolutely break us. The things that break us are not the challenges of small things. These are the big things of life. From lost jobs to lost friends, broken legs to broken hearts, being born into chaos, and dying all alone, we are both blessed and vulnerable to all that life can take. Every season of our lives is both a beginning and an ending.

How to Recover Your Life After It Breaks into Pieces
Meditations
Kate Spencer
Rising to the Challenge of the Pandemic Life

We are in the waiting room of the world. We are waiting to go forward to a new normal because going back to the old normal is not an option anymore. Not even close.

We are waiting parent by parent, child by child, teacher by teacher, for a reliable plan for the ongoing, steady presence of schools. And in the absence of a reliable plan, a path to incrementally getting to some reasonable facsimile, day by day.

Rising to the Challenge of the Pandemic Life
Meditations
Kate Spencer
Kick-starting a Deeply Deferred Dream

My grandmother, Mable Hopper, was a mostly stern, serious woman, at least to my 5-year-old self. Small in physical stature, Mable had a big wit, a beautiful singing voice, and a depth of intelligence that did not suffer fools or foolishness gladly. I, being five, was full of foolishness.

Kick-starting a Deeply Deferred Dream
Blog Article
Kate Spencer
A Brother’s Death: COVID-19’s Collateral Damage

There are some sounds you never forget. The sweetness of your toddler’s voice, the off-key perfection of your best friend’s singing, the dependable snore of your snoozing dog.

There are some sounds that are so close to the heart and soul of your life that you never forget them. Sweet, reassuring sounds, like the joy and consolation of your big brother’s laughter.

A Brother’s Death: COVID-19’s Collateral Damage
Meditations
Kate Spencer
First Lessons From COVID-19

When the virus hit the United States, Washington State was brought to its knees. Washington is my home state and I live in the Eastern part of it, the part that by comparison, has been dealt a significantly less lethal blow than our west side neighbors. And still, in some fundamental, essential way, each of our lives across the entire planet have been dealt a lethal blow. Within that devastation may come our salvation.

First Lessons From COVID-19

Blog Article

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How to Recover Your Life After It Breaks into Pieces

,
How to Recover Your Life After It Breaks into Pieces

“Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen was right. Well, of course he was. In every life there are challenges that absolutely delight us, and other challenges that absolutely break us. The things that break us are not the challenges of small things. These are the big things of life. From lost jobs to lost friends, broken legs to broken hearts, being born into chaos, and dying all alone, we are both blessed and vulnerable to all that life can take. Every season of our lives is both a beginning and an ending.

A Brother’s Death: COVID-19’s Collateral Damage

A Brother’s Death: COVID-19’s Collateral Damage

There are some sounds you never forget. The sweetness of your toddler’s voice, the off-key perfection of your best friend’s singing, the dependable snore of your snoozing dog.

There are some sounds that are so close to the heart and soul of your life that you never forget them. Sweet, reassuring sounds, like the joy and consolation of your big brother’s laughter.

How Helen Mirren Saved Me

How Helen Mirren Saved Me

I don’t know Helen Mirren, but I know for certain that she saved me.

My husband had been binge watching Corona-virus news for weeks, from the moment he got up, to just before he went to bed. Anderson Cooper, Sanjay Gupta and Chris Cuomo became like brothers to him and he waited on, and weighed in on, their every word. What my husband heard from his new best buddies scared him on a very personal level. He had his reasons to worry about the unfolding pandemic. Deeply frightening reasons.

Three Ways to Learn Real Life Resilience

Three Ways to Learn Real Life Resilience

Resilience is the determined buoyancy that comes from living through and beyond the hard times of life. Older? Maybe. Wiser? Hopefully. Stronger? Frequently.  

We come into the world with a gasp followed by a cry. From that first cry, to our last breath, we feel both the weight of gravity and the lightness of being, the solace of safety and the thrill of chance. If we are lucky, we have those chances. If we are wise and kind, we pass some of those best chances on to others.

The Caregiver’s Dilemma, Part I

The Caregiver’s Dilemma, Part I

Caregiving is an ongoing endurance triathlon: swimming in dark, choppy waters, cycling a twisted, rutted road that ends in a cliff hanger, and running in every direction simultaneously. In the beginning, adrenaline and a sense of intensely focused purpose will get you a long way. But as you settle into the nearly completely unpredictable new normal of your life, you may find your energy, patience, resilience and sense of humor more difficult to rally. You may feel exhausted, sad, scared and alone.

Ditch Resolutions and Commit to the Present

Ditch Resolutions and Commit to the Present

If you’re going into this new year with the same old resolutions you’ve made and broken for too many years--get more exercise, lose the first 20 pounds, swear off potato chips, stop dating people who don’t really like the real you, finally quit that job, gym, relationship—it’s time to make another plan. This plan is made up of two simple parts: The first is the present moment and the second is your willingness to show up for it every, single day.

How to Change Your Life in One Second Flat

How to Change Your Life in One Second Flat

We ask the people we love, we ask the people who matter to us professionally, and on a broader level, we ask the people we encounter as we go about our everyday lives: the cashier who takes your coffee order, the jogging neighbor you wave to from the car on the way to work, the elderly woman sitting across from you on the train.

The four questions rarely get asked with words, just as they're rarely answered with words. 

Five Ways to Learn to Love Again

Five Ways to Learn to Love Again

Life, as my mother used to say, is “the whole damn glorious story.” She was right. Pared down to the bare bones, there are three sure things in that damn glorious story of life: we are born, we live, and we die. Whatever the actual time we each have, within those years there is a lifetime of learning and yearning ahead of us. And if we dare to risk our hearts, there is a fourth certainty.

The Finder and the Found

The Finder and the Found

Closely-following events give us extraordinary opportunities to see the world, and each other, with new eyes. The eclipse reminded us of how small we are in relation to the universe, and Hurricanes Harvey and Irma remind us how integral we are to each other in the wake of disaster on the home planet.

The Pursuit of Resilience

The Pursuit of Resilience

The ability to spring back from life’s setbacks, losses, tragedies and heartbreak is quite possibly the most essential skill for living a full, happy and healthy life. The acquiring of this skill can take a lifetime, but its acquisition is what makes life radiant on the best days and bearable on the worst.

For Children Who Were Born Old

For Children Who Were Born Old

I came into the world old. By that, I don’t mean an old, wise soul. I mean a child who was, from the beginning, overly familiar with death. By the time that I, the youngest child of a second marriage was born, my old father was on his way to dying and my young mother was in the deep end of the ocean caring for him.

How to Find Happiness Now

How to Find Happiness Now

We wait for the better thing that is just beyond our reach, that great good thing that will finally make us happy and whole. We are more than willing to wait for it, even though it take a lifetime. The thing is, waiting to fully live until the right set of circumstances comes along is like waiting for a pie to cook without ever turning on the oven. It takes some heat to get the gold, on a pie or in a life.

Six Steps for Dealing and Healing Through Life's Major Losses

Six Steps for Dealing and Healing Through Life's Major Losses

Loss is a natural part of life. Intellectually, we know this, but emotionally, not so much. If we’re lucky, we have gentle losses when we’re kids that prepare us for the larger losses the lie ahead. And still, as practiced as we may believe we are with our manageable losses, nothing can adequately prepare us for the big ones, the ones that buckle our knees and take our breath away. Getting back on our feet and learning how to breathe again is a process that is neither linear nor won and done.