This Mama’s Dharma

I’ve just begun a 10-month online course called Awakening Joy with Buddhist meditation teacher James Baraz and a whole host of guest teachers. As the name would indicate, it’s about cultivating happiness, wellbeing, peace, serenity, whatever you call it, in your daily life. I continue to be amazed and humbled by technology because it really [...]

Ah, the bitter irony of this life. I was to have a full five days to myself while Sami was at his father’s. And what happens? The Snowpocalypse of 2009. All my plans to be a whirling dervish of activity, dashed.
It ended up being all good. I just so happened to have a wonderful house [...]

This blog reminds me more than anything of the principle of impermanence.
I went through the grief of the last few posts and came out the other side. Nothing lasts forever.
Tonight, I think about how much joy I feel. Connection with my son has never been sweeter. In the last five weeks, since getting clean, I [...]

It has been a very interesting few weeks.
Interesting is putting it mildly. It started when I got some completely unexpected and very upsetting health news - basically it was yet another cancer scare, and the good news is that it is benign and things are more or less back on track. But something has happened [...]

I have been neglecting this poor blog all summer, but I’d like to think that I have a bit of a good excuse.
I was busy recording a spoken word album, working with a professional producer here in DC. This is how my life goes; when I take on a new project, something else gets neglected. [...]

Discipline is not my strong suit these days.
My sitting practice - more or less out the window.
Mindful eating/consumption? Not so much. My ass is slowly but surely expanding, a universe of its own, and I’ve moved to elastic waistbands for the time being.
Exercise? If you count carrying a kicking, screaming 42-pound preschooler out of Target, [...]

This is a very special time of year for me when New Age Mama comes out in full force.  It is the Aries New Moon - the astrological new year, so to speak.  A ritual that I began for the first time last year was to make what is called a “treasure map” - a [...]

Life is just so damn weird sometimes.
I think about these circuitous paths and wonder: how much is destiny?  How much is free will?  I won’t try to figure out this age-old theological debate tonight, but just putting it out there that I sit with these questions sometimes.
Last night was one of my mama-gone-wild Friday nights, [...]

For most of my life I have been a very disorganized person.  Mentally more than in other ways.  While I have completed a lot of things I am extremely proud of, more often than not I tend to start projects and put them down.  I have been known to abandon ideas, things, causes, other people, myself.  I’ve always [...]

I’m on a compassion jag and I can’t stop it.
I have been gathering up Sami’s baby gear to donate to a local thrift store, but then as I was looking at those two bags of stuff sitting there in the front hallway this evening, it hit me that I know someone who can really use [...]