Your word for the year 2015
For the past several years, I’ve chosen a word for the year. Some years it has been a few words or a phrase. Other years, just one word. Out of a quiet moment of journaling and meditation, a word comes across my heart and it feels like, “Yes, this is my word for the...
Letting the light shine
Every December, as the days get "shorter," I am so very aware of lighting...the sun setting by 5 p.m., the lighting in our home, the holiday lights. It's known about me that I never like to use the overhead lights and instead prefer the soft light of lamps. We light...
Three words that invite, support, and say, “I am so listening to you.”
Recently, a woman wrote to me and said that she wanted to send one of my poetic wrist wraps to a young girl who has cancer. "Which one do you suggest, Lisa?" She asked. "Hmmm....tell me about her," I wrote back. Often people come to me and ask about my wraps,...
(dis)regarding our children
Yesterday, I went to a new salon to get my haircut. As I was sitting in the chair and *Tracy was already getting to work on a shorter, cute cut for me, she started to asked me questions – what do you do, how do you know the person who referred you, how many children...
Dying, birthing, and the extraordinary in the ordinary
In the Space of Dying Lisa A. McCrohan You are an ordinary shrub losing its leaves for the winter in a suburban yard that I’ve walked by hundreds – perhaps now thousands – of times. And yet today, I pause in front of you noticing I’m in the space of dying. Leaves...
Making Time to Reconnect with Your Partner
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.” ~ Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu This past weekend, my husband and I had a 40-some hours to ourselves. At home. Alone. ...
The Ache of Belonging
Belonging My Darling, how is it that you search for belonging like a poor beggar on hands and knees frantically scrounging the dirt floor for food? My Dear Heart, if you wish, I can continue to beg and scrounge alongside you, and we can keep bruising our hands and...
The Ache of Monday Morning
The Ache of Monday Morning by Lisa McCrohan I watch my husband and children hop into the car and drive off to school. I stand there on the front steps, barefoot in my pajamas feeling the cold cement underneath my feet, my empty hand still warm from the toast I ran out...
Healing “the Bully Within”
The other week, my husband and I actually went out to a nice restaurant to celebrate a friend’s birthday. We never really “go out.” But this time, we got a babysitter and found ourselves sitting at really nice Thai restaurant. There were several people there I...
Raising girls who are “includers” instead of “mean girls”
(Part 1 of 2) I remember walking into the cafeteria of my new school and it was like someone punched me in the stomach. I was in sixth grade. My family had just moved from Virginia to Ohio. At first, I attended the local Catholic school. Within the first two months, I...