When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us … Read more

Meeting Grief I know the numbing pain of grief and how it made my world stand still while everything else kept moving. I could not imagine how I could go on and felt partially pulled into a different dimension…somewhere between life and death. This affected me most profoundly when someone I loved dearly died suddenly … Read more

The most caring thing we can do for those closest to us is to learn to self-soothe. This is the core insight that I took away from the book Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch. Real intimacy begins when we stop expecting our partners to regulate our emotions for us — when we stop needing them … Read more

Facing What Unsettles Us In 2005, I moved from the Big Island of Hawai’i to Rome, Italy. After settling in, I hoped I might meet Aldo Carotenuto, a psychoanalyst, prominent Jungian thinker, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Rome. I was disappointed to learn he had passed away earlier that year. His work, … Read more