Blog Posts

  • Giving “Birth to a Butterfly”: Assagioli’s Feminist Patient

    In 1913, Mina Loy (1882-1966) was living in a rented villa in Florence when she found herself in a torpor and depressed. Her photographer husband had just set sail for Australia, abandoning her with their two children. A painter herself, she was artistically stalled and still mourning over the death of her first child who…

  • Two Black Women’s Voices Once Heard

    Jarena Lee and Julia Foote They were two women preachers during a time when only men preached. They were black preachers who preached to both slaves and slave-holders. They were black women preachers who inspired men and women, believers and ‘backsliders,’ Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists and Presbyterians, lawyers, doctors and magistrates. Their names were Jarena Lee…

  • When an Ideal Model Goes Wrong

    My mother used to always say: “Nobody’s so bad that they can’t be used as a bad example.” One might find this advice startlingly judgmental, but surely Mom was referring to people like the last US president. He was and still is ‘bad’ and hence a perfectly good ‘bad example.’ And yet, many of the…

  • Writing to Awaken

    During this past year, many of us have faced deeper questions about our lives and its purpose. So the beginning of 2021 might be a good time to start a spiritual diary. Writing a spiritual diary is different from writing a memoir or a diary in general as the focus is on your spiritual life…

  • Gifting Ashes, Gifting Oil

    Lately, I have been attending a series of talks about the Maternal Gift Economy. It’s an interesting concept that challenges our preconceptions of how the exchange of services and products must take place. Some might say we have an exchange economy, but the reality is (and has been) that the global economy is an exploitive…