When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they "deserve" it, the good and beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention.

Stay focused on what is beautiful and abundant even as illness carves more and more of what you love away

Reading, reading actively, strengthens the soul.

Growth and transformation occur not by changing who we are, but as we summon the courage to be who we are.

Alone-in moments of prayer or meditation, or simply in stillness-we breathe more deeply, see more fully, hear more keenly. We notice more, and in the process, we return to what is sacred.

One of the greatest challenges I've faced as a mother-especially in these anxious, winner-takes-all times-is the need to resist the urge to accept someone else's definition of success and to try to figure out, instead, what really is best for my own children, what unique combination of structure and freedom, nurturing and challenge, education and exploration, each of them needs in order to grow and bloom.

...there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them.