Although I suffered from severe depression, I didn’t call it that for most of the several years I was in and out of it. I thought depression was for lethargic people who stayed in bed all day. But my pain was as sharp as an ice pick. Restless in the extreme, I paced...

I have experienced illness, heartbreak, aging, and disability. As a Black, elder, cis-gendered woman, I live with the trauma of social oppression on a daily basis. Like many of us, I’m also profoundly disturbed by the current suffering in the world. In these troubled...

  My birth was not a celebrated and magical event. My parents’ relationship had always been rocky and, sadly, it completely unraveled during my mother’s pregnancy with me. We lived in Bellflower, California, a low-income neighborhood between Long Beach and Compton, in...

‘All Buddha’s teachings end up here.’ Zen Graffiti

When someone we know goes through an illness or is recovering from an injury, there's really nothing we can do except care for them in a way that is possible for us. And unless we are part of their immediate family, we can't really participate in the regular...