Comfort food. Soul food. I’m used to hearing these descriptors for macaroni and cheese, but I heard a man today talk this way about ramen, as he took me to a restaurant that made me appreciate the staple food exponentially more than I had. There’s great healing power to be found in food. It comforts [...]
Should companionship ever rival traditional dating? Any of us companions has some responsibility to separate fact from fiction; I don’t recommend my services in lieu of traditional love. I’m honest with my clients and the onus is on them to keep things sane; I hope they’re not seeing me to confuse me with an IRL [...]
There are a few reasons my attitude toward stress does me harm. The first is behavioral…if I think I’m stressed, I’m more likely to reach for a cocktail, cookies or other ways to help myself cope that don’t fit into my otherwise-healthy lifestyle. On the other hand, when I’ve been able to view stress as [...]
It’s not hard to find evidence of phones and devices taking priority over real conversation. Just look around the next time you go out to eat—chances are there will be at least a few couple who are sitting face-to-face yet staring down at their screens. And while occasionally pausing to answer a text or check [...]
Back in 2017, I joined some friends for the Women’s March downtown. Sharing the moment with so many disparate souls who cared enough about a cause to show up (if only voting worked that way) was uplifting: the big city felt a bit like a village as hundreds of thousands of lives intersected near and [...]
My beauty rituals are as good for my soul as they are for my looks. Sometimes they’re an elaborate, all-day affair; other times they’re quick and to the point. That fast and furious routine is a modern-day necessity, but the comfort and happiness that come from taking the extra time for myself is often the [...]
Hi there, you going a hundred miles an hour. Stop. Look around. What do you see? What do you smell? How does your body feel right at this very moment? Put your left hand on your chest. Your heart. Close your eyes. Feel it beat. This morning when you got up, did you stop to [...]
Fellow humans, I’m going to give you the whole truth because I’m done giving less. I’m done holding back, holding out, holding in. I’m done containing the hurricanes inside me. The truth: I’ve spent a lot of my life hating myself. Sometimes it was a loud internal voice driving my mind into obsessive downward spirals [...]
I remember the village idiot when I was at UC Berkeley. He’d come out mostly in the evenings, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed, playing hide-and-seek throughout the neighborhood, swaying, dancing and laughing. His laughter rang out strongly like a bell; at other times he’d be utterly silent. He seemed to use dance as a tool to [...]
Identity feels very stable. You know who you are, where you come from and what you most value in life. Your identity provides you a sense of continuity, tying you to your personal and familial past as well as to the future you imagine for yourself. It helps you make choices that are consistent with [...]