Being the change we wish to see...

Growing up (in honor of my father's Italian heritage), our Christmas decorations always stayed up through this day. Then my mother eagerly took them down. I've followed this tradition until recently. Then something changed.

2025 is the year we lost Jane Goodall. And what a loss it is at a time when her tenacity and truth telling are needed more than ever. 

Imagine... a world of people so steeped in joy, so fulfilled by creating, so on fire with being in their magic that hatred and violence lose their grip and each person sees themselves in every other person, every other living thing. 

While I chose, years ago, to separate myself from the Christian religion with which I was raised, I still engage in the ritual of Advent. Something about the candle light, the stillness, it helps me mark the ending of one year and the start of the next. 

In the program, called the Inner Monologue Method, I support people in really getting to know the voices in their head. They name them. They turn them into characters (like in a play) and explore them.

People needed to get their feet back under them. Post pandemic, many people were looking at their lives, their worlds and finding them insufficient.

I'm still reflecting on Thanksgiving here in the United States. A problematic holiday in its whitewashing of history, it nonetheless reminds me that I do have things in my life for which I am grateful.

The loneliness epidemic inflicting so many communities is not a result of people being too transparent, too bold in their sharing but in not being transparent and bold enough.

How what jolts us points us to the worlds we crave to create - I am no stranger to being appalled by the wounds of the world. It started very early in my life. 

Humans are social creatures by design. It's in our makeup to seek belonging. The absence of belonging for so many has created epidemic loneliness.

In my first year of teaching, I was feeling inadequate for the immense responsibilities of a public school teacher. For inspiration, I taped the Tale of a Starfish to the door of my classroom.

As a young teacher, I was thrust into creating a program from a class that barely existed. I was hired three days before school started to teach an Animal Science course in the career and tech-ed department of a local high school.