On Leaving Home, a Time to Grow Up for Our Child or Us?
I never left home for college. My family came to the U. S. only three years before I went to college. With three older siblings in college at the time, all we could afford was the closest university to our home (we lived in Columbus, Ohio) back then, which was Ohio State University. All my…
Yoga and Mindfulness, Yoga and Toning
Yoga and Mindfulness Yoga forces us to be in the present moment, connecting inward with our breath and our body. Understanding the awareness of how your body moves, the health of your body, and your alignment, is the best way to improve your relationship with yourself. Controlling the breath is the most significant part of the yoga…
Farewell to Ann, a Life Well Lived
“That’s what we are all looking for. A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing… Make peace with living. It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big…
House of Sand and Fog: a Matter of Perspective
Several years ago, I read an excellent novel called “ House of Sand and Fog,” by Andre Dubus III, which later was made into a movie. Now and then, there is a novel which makes me think about the human condition for days after I finish reading it, and this novel was among the most…
Generation Hope: Change a Life, Change a Generation
I’d like to share my experience with Generation Hope. It is an incredible organization, founded by Nicole Lynn Lewis. I first met Nicole Lewis in 2011. We crossed…
A Lesson to the Graduates: Go with the Flow!
Everything in life has a beginning and an end, including high school. After thirteen years at Sidwell Friends School, a Quaker school in Washington, DC, our son joined his 126 classmates yesterday morning to bid farewell to their school. It has been a wonderful journey for our son to learn from his wise teachers about…
Letter to Johanny: All the Places You Will Go!
Dear Johanny, You did it! You graduated from Georgetown University with high honors, after four years of hard work. You were in the same stadium with the Crown Prince of Jordan and so many others whom a shallow society would deem more important than you. It was not just the four years at Georgetown, but…
How a Monkey Saved Me
For many years I taught kids’ yoga. It kept me in shape, lifted my spirits and brought much joy into my life. It defined me. Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in 2003, I was doing remarkably well. A diagnosis of right temporal lobe epilepsy (due to a nasty MS lesion) in 2012 ended all that….
A Day at Chitra’s Farm: Seeds of Love Garden Event
Last Saturday, our group of friends organized an event at Dr. Chitra Rajagopal’s farm in Gaithersburg on behalf of the William Penn House Quaker Foundation (WPH). The event raised fund for WPH 2016 community garden project. In 2015, several of us helped WPH provide 50 families in SE Washington with garden boxes. The recipients, including one…
Happy Mother’s Day to You!
Happy Mother’s Day to the young and beautiful Syrian mother who was having coffee with a reporter one morning in Turkey before her planned trip to Greece to hopefully join her children in Belgium who had left before her. Why did her family leave Syria taking such dangerous route through the sea? For the children’s…