diane meriwether

I'm not always a fan of "nice." If you look at the history of the word, you find it meant "trivial, foolish and ignorant" before it meant "pleasant". Nice is a way of making oneself small, of not making waves, of finishing last. Like all doormats, nice can cover up a lot of dirt. Nice people sometimes wrap their victimhood around them like a blanket. Nice people don't say upsetting things, even if unpleasantness might be in everyone's highest good. My favorite story about

I hope my legacy will be ripples. I hope the people I've taught to use "hurt" instead of "broken" hold that small aperture open for someone else. I hope that people who have watched me notice what they got right instead of what they got wrong do similar things for their fellow humans from time to time. I hope the forgiveness I have given and pain I have transmuted will mean a bit less suffering in the world. When I haven't been a good example, I hope my work as a terr

Quora: What are some tips for dealing with someone who is angry and/or confrontational? Put on your asbestos bodysuit and make absolutely sure they know you are hearing what they say. Repeat their main points back to them, for example. "Let me make sure I understand. Whatever language they used to describe their upset? And you're whatever emotion word they used about this." Keep your attitude neutral, you are only clarifying. You are making sure you understand. It's im

I'd like to write about an unassuming jewelry box filled with gravel and tiny bones. I left California for Montana a week after my tenth birthday. Just before my birthday, my mother had given me a little beige jewelry box identical to this one: In the week before I Ieft, I filled the box with the treasures I had so far: the green metallic shell of a dead japanese beetle, a nearly complete mouse skeleton from the field near my school and a tiny silver heart on a chain that I

This too shall pass. - sufi wisdom As useful for when things are good as when they are falling apart. Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? - jm barrie I have never looked back and thought, I wish I had been a little more unkind. I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” - mark twain When buddha was told he was not welcome in enlightenment and the demons came to chase

Here is a three step process to completely eliminate self-pity. Step One - Self-Pity is a judgment, not a feeling, call it by it's real name. That persistent sensation is not "self-pity" it's something like 'sadness' or 'grief' or 'loss'. Use a feeling word list, like the one below, to find out what precisely what the 'something' is. Say some of the words out loud while the feeling is going on. When you get closer to the right word, you will feel a bit of flutter in the "self

In the early 90s I met a bodyworker who persuaded me to get a massage. Because of my childhood, I experienced non-sexual touch as painful and I found bodies vaguely disturbing ("oogy" was the word I used) but I let her work on me anyway. Two months later I was handing Kleenix to a therapist. Six months after that I was in freefall. Everything I had so carefully put together - my marriage, my job, my home, even my identity was tumbling away. Against this spinning backd

Decades ago a yogi told me, "There will come a day when you won't have the luxury to consider the options and choose; a moment when the only asset you have is the muscle memory formed from years of practice. Everything will depend on the jump you instinctively make." The single most important thing for me is to practice doing the right thing. I try to practice my values in small private interactions as well as in public ways, and to be compassionate with myself and try a

Silent Judgement: If the judgement is unspoken I treat it like they farted. I know it's there. I may feel a little awkward for them and uncomfortable if it's a particularly nasty one, but I'm going to either ignore and wait it out, or get myself out of the room. Unless. If I really love you and you are in the innermost circle, I've been known to wave my hands in front of my face and holler "Holy Mother Of Christ! What died up there!?" These are the same people that I would ca

Our ancestors were more acutely and sensually aware of what death does to a body than most of us. They knew, that weather permitting, you have about three days. It's not surprising that Jesus rose at the three day mark - at three days, he's "not only merely dead, he's really most sincerely dead." How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? Three. The 17-day-old undead cells from the study you are talking about were kept refrigerated at 39 degrees F. I