Living A Succulent Juicy Life

Now that it is June, the supermarkets are starting to offer peaches, nectarines, plums and cherries--some of the delicious fruits that come with warm weather and summer. All of those fruits can be described as juicy and succulent. When you take a bite into a fresh ripe peach, the flavor and juice cascade out of the fruit into your mouth, bringing a wonderful sensation of joy and satisfaction.

What would it mean if the way we lived our lives was as juicy and succulent as a ripe, flavor-filled peach? Might we engage our whole bodies, our whole hearts and all five of our senses? Might we move beyond the limitations of our heads and brains, letting a sense of abundant sensuality drive us?

A succulent juicy life would never be boring. It might have quiet moments. Our minds might be clear of thoughts or worries sometimes. Or even pondering thoughts and worries sometimes. But full engagement in the moment, with our breath, with whatever is authentic, real and true would be the hallmark, more than idle busyness, running on a seemingly directionless treadmill or feeling pressured to do more rather than be.

I've always loved the phrase, "I've lost my mind and come to my senses." Ordinary life is too mental, cerebral, technological, time-lined and limiting. If we swim in that mainstream, we can become dead inside--numb to our hearts and disconnected from the rich landscape of our sensual experience.

The senses we embrace most comfortably, are in the words of anthropologist Ashley Montagu, our "distance senses," sight and hearing. Our "proximity senses," the ones that allow for greater intimacy and feeling, taste, smell and touch are "largely tabooed." Montagu notes in the preface to his book Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, that two dogs may use all five senses in their communication with a fellow dog. The same can hardly be said about two people.

It follows that if human beings are going to live a succulent juicy life, engaging all of our senses, and even our intuition, is necessary to feel a sense of joie d'vivre, of being fully alive. Finding emotionally safe spaces to take down our armor, to lower our defenses, first and foremost with ourselves and then with others is a critical first step. If we do not feel emotionally safe, we tense our breathing, and distance from the vulnerability of authentic feelings.

I find it very sad to discover how many people are truly numb to their hearts, their senses and their deeper experience when they first come to see me for EKP. After starting a session with a heart meditation, when I ask what is calling their heart's attention, many people answer, "I truly don't know."

Here are some steps we can take to open to the richness and fullness of what an embodied life can be:

1. Becoming safe within our own skin: Often we are uncomfortable with the feelings and sensations that emerge in our bodies and hearts as we go through the day. These feelings and sensations are like an internal GPS: they tell us where we are and where we need to go. Creating our own internal space, safety within our own skin, body and mind, to feel, hear and follow our hearts is a key step in opening to a succulent juicy life.

2. Learning to enjoy our senses: "Intensity" is often a scary experience. Sensual experience CAN be intense. If we feel strongly, we may find ourselves defending against the intensity of the strong feeling Learning to relax, breath and allow ourselves to just be is a practice that can help us enjoy intense sensual experience. Delicate sensual experience can also be joyful.

3. Becoming more embodied: I had a colleague years ago that said, "Whenever I feel the urge to exercise, I lie down until it has gone away!" Everyone in my office laughed. But I was actually sad for my colleague. If we don't move, feel our bodies active and engaged in life, feet firmly planted on the ground or even running or dancing, we miss a wonderful part of the human experience. Becoming more aware of our bodies, how they feel, and whether we are in them or out of them is part of becoming more embodied. The body really is the temple of the soul. And a lot of joy can be experienced in the temple!

4. Learning to enjoy our sensuality and sexuality: Sexuality and sensuality both allow life's energy force to fill and move through our bodies, hearts and souls. Both can bring pleasure and connection with self, the divine and others. Sadly, both "s words," can be the source of shame in our culture. Sensuality and sexuality can be extremely earthy and spiritual experiences. If we can embrace them with love for self and others, they are a magical force of aliveness.

5. Finding means of self-expression: The spirit really does seek expression to feel alive. We are fortunate to have so many different possible means of expression: singing, dancing, painting, drawing, photography, cooking, acting, touching, gardening…..That is only the beginning. Finding modes of expression that feel true and authentic enlivens our experience and helps bring balance to our lives.

6. Becoming touchable and comfortable touching: Our skin is the largest organ in the body. It also is sensitive and sensual. We can feel and know so much through touch. Sadly, our culture teaches us to be touch-phobic rather than touch literate. We learn that if we let someone close, they can hurt us, and sadly, often this is true. We are afraid to reach out and touch another person. Touch is too often taboo. Yet the word touch has emotional as well as physical connotations. When we are connected with ourselves we are "in touch" with our hearts. If someone touches our hearts, we may want to touch them with a hug. If someone offers us a literal helping hand, they also touch our hearts. Emotions and touch go hand in hand Having comfort and fluency in this language allows us more joie d'vivre.

The Power of Voice

“Everybody’s got a song to sing Everybody’s got something that they want to say And ageless voices stay silent while People dream of words they want to speak For the first time in their lives.”

--from “Everybody’s Got a Song to Sing” by Linda Marks and Lisa Wexler ©1981

In 27 years as a body psychotherapist, I have come to witness how powerfully the human spirit seeks expression and how finding one’s voice is a critical pathway in connecting with and understanding who we truly are.

Sadly, we live in a culture that does not encourage us to find our voice, and through the power of our voice, make a unique contribution to the world. Instead, beginning as children, we are drilled with messages that stifle voice, and often disconnect us from us deeper selves: “children should be seen and not heard,” “be quiet,” “you don’t really mean that, “ or most crudely, “shut up!” These messages hurt our hearts and spirits. But more powerfully, they stifle and silence our souls.

Having A Voice

The roots of voice originate in the spirit and soul. Having a voice allows us both to express or share our internal experience and to say things others need to hear us say. One challenge in our culture is that not all voices and not all messages are welcome. While, in theory, our culture embraces freedom of speech, in reality, between gender stereotypes, cultural biases and fear of emotion and vulnerability, many parts of us are silenced rather than welcomed.

It hurts our hearts when parts of our voice are silenced or disallowed, by us internally or by others around us. If we suppress our voices, we do so at great psychic cost. Voice movement therapist Deborah Crane is a voice movement therapist in Littleton, MA. She has the fascinating job of helping people discover their voices, and in many cases, connect with previously unwelcome or scary parts.

Deborah notes, “We silence some of our internal voices because our family, our neighborhood or the culture at large encourages us not to use those voices. Girls are not allowed anger. Boys are not allowed sadness. We end up not allowing parts of ourselves that are not accepted. So, we tend to focus on the parts of ourselves that are accepted.” To have a voice is to be vulnerable. When someone takes the risk of speaking their true thoughts, feelings or experience, we often say that they are “sticking their neck out.”

Rebecca Parris is a world renowned jazz singer and vocal coach for singers from Duxbury, MA. “We have been taught that we have to be strong and guarded and safe,” reflects Rebecca. “We’ve been taught to live from fear rather than openness. People don’t realize the weakness of fear, and they don’t realize their vulnerability is a power, not a weakness.”

Vulnerability allows us to express our deepest truth and our most human experience through opinions, thoughts, dreams and points of view. When we live in fear of sticking our necks out, we remain isolated, bound up, tense and unfulfilled.

The throat is mid-way between head and heart, and often serves as a bridge between the two. When we feel something that we think is risky, our throats may become tense and tight. When we feel strong feelings but are afraid to let them out, we may feel a lump in our throats. By gently placing a hand on the tension or on the lump in the throat, you receive the message that what you are thinking and feeling is welcome and okay. The tension melts. Tears may even flow. And the deeper feelings find their way out of the body, mind and heart and into the larger world.

Head Voice Vs Heart Voice

When I first started having my voice recorded, I noticed that I had two distinct voices: my head voice and my heart voice. When I spoke from my head, my voice had a tinny intellectual tone to it. I spoke more rapidly. When I spoke from my heart voice, however, there was a much more spacious, open and heartfelt quality. I would feel my body relaxing and melting. I learned there was a huge energetic difference between a voice that came from the head or the heart.

When we speak from the heart, we touch the hearts of others. Because the heart and the brain both generate electromagnetic energy, we can viscerally feel where energy is coming from, even if we are not consciously aware we are doing so.

Likewise, it matters how we listen to others. The way it feels to speak to someone listening from their heart is far more safe and inviting than someone listening from the head. Our heads judge, analyze and put meaning on words. That is fine in some contexts. However, for building intimacy and connection, to listen from the heart as someone speaks from their heart is much more effective, safe and fulfilling. Being aware that we have head and heart voices, and learning to use them consciously helps us more powerfully speak and be heard.

Why Voice Matters

“When we find our voice, what we gain is knowing who we are and noting the response of others,” says Rebecca. “We gain a true sense of being in the moment.” Without voice, we lose the depths and authenticities of relationships.

There are also physical, emotional and energetic costs when our voices are silenced or not allowed. “Unexpressed feelings, thoughts and sounds live in us as emotional energy blocks,” observes Deborah. “The voice is a vehicle not only for allowing our strength, but also allowing the stuck energy within us to move up and out of us. The cost of being silenced is that we never feel we can open up and allow deep emotion within, even for our own benefit with no one around. We become our own censors.”

In the lyrics my singing and songwriting collaborator Lisa Wexler and I wrote in our song, “Everybody’s Got a Song to Sing,” we express how it feels when we don’t have a way to express “the voice within us” that “wants to shout.” “It hurts so much because you want to say your words out loud. And no one knows the pain that you are going through.” When we don’t have a voice, we hurt. We feel alone.

When I was in grammar school, I remember an experiment where we took a prism and learned how to angle it so that it could direct the sunlight to burn a hole in a piece of paper. It seemed like magic that we could harness the energy of the sun that way. Living creatures are energy conduits, and our bodies generate electromagnetic energy that we can learn to consciously channel, like a prism channeling sunlight.

Our voices vibrate and those vibrations interact with the vibrations of other living things around us. The resonance of our voice touches other people and can literally change the energy in the room. If we want to plant the seeds of action, speaking our intentions is a powerful place to start. When we speak a vision, we open up possibility for all who hear it. “Once you find your voice, the possibilities are endless,” Rebecca notes. “In music, we have a microphone that reaches a lot of people over the course of a night. Our impact can be major. But you may impact one person who goes out and impacts a thousand. One would be surprised how many people their voice has touched in a lifetime.”

Six Tips for Finding Your Voice

1. Realize the voice is a “thing” — something to find and have. Kids need to hear the message that the voice is a critical human capacity. Learning to find it and use it is at least as important as learning to read or do math. In fact, writing is much easier when we find our voices.

2. Embrace all your emotions. It is just as important to learn to feel and accept your pain and anger as your joy and happiness. Being able to express what you feel in a way that is authentic and respectful of self and others feels empowering.

3. Be non-judgmental. Being curious and non-judgmental invites introspection, feeling, sensation and deeper thoughts. This allows us to find the seeds of what we know, feel and wish to convey.

4. Be patient. It takes time to find our voices and patience to be present with what is there, even if initially it feels empty or like nothing.

5. Focus on what you feel, not what you think. The quality of the voice changes whether it’s from the head or from the heart. Energy from the heart reaches the heart of the listener or the audience.

6. Listen to yourself, not the voices of other. Other people and the media tell us what to think, what to wear, what to do, and who we should be. None of these things may be right for you. Take the time to find out what is true for you by listening to your own voice.

Steps You Can Take If You've Been Identity Thefted

If you find yourself the victim of identity theft, here are the standard steps the police or any financial services company will ask you to take:

1. Notify your local police. Filing a police report may seem silly, since almost never is an identity thief someone who lives in your local community. However, as I was told by the officer who took my report, "It is done to give your case credibility. After all, no one is supposed to lie to the police, right?"

2. Fill out an FTC affidavit of theft. Honestly, this seems to be as futile as the local police report. But it is one of the required pathways for making a report. What I found most foolish about the form was on the one hand it asked you for very confidential information like social security number, driver's license number and date of birth....And then it sent up a warning saying this kind of information makes you vulnerable to fraudulent activity, so it is advised NOT to include it! Go figure! I chose to leave those vulnerable spaces blank for my own security!

3. Report your theft(s) to the credit monitoring bureaus: Equifax, Transunion and Experian. You may want a fraud alert put on all your accounts. And you may want to check your credit reports to make sure nothing is on them that you didn't authorize.

4. If you have an accountant, notify them. This is particularly important if you have tax identity theft or having retirement funds tampered with. The accountant can help run interference with the IRS and can help solve problems resulting from fraudulent use of your social security number of early withdrawal penalties for retirement money not withdrawn by YOU.

5. Hire a good computer security consultant. Whether s/he can find malware or spyware on your computer or even the smoking gun of the thief's attack, a good computer security consultant will provide you an eye opening education both about how thieves get into your on-line accounts, and what you can do to protect yourself.

6. Get yourself emotional support as well as practical support. Having your personal information stolen or tampered with and having hard-earned funds stolen is an assault. It can feel like a rape, a burglary or an attack. Your sense of safety in the larger world might be in question. Make sure you don't have to navigate what can be an overwhelming experience all alone.

Identity Theft For Real

You read about it in the paper all the time. You and most people you know have probably received lots of the spam e-mails about people who lost all their money in foreign countries asking for financial help or the members of European or African elite whose close relatives have just died. And most often it is just an annoyance of modern day life. But what happens when identity theft gets a lot more close, and invasively personal? Have you had your credit cards received charges you did not make? Or even more intrusive, have you ever filed your federal taxes only to be told someone has used your social security number before you did? Or most violating of all, have you ever discovered that someone broke into your financial accounts--be it retirement accounts, college funds for your kids or any other accounts, and actually stolen your funds? Over the past couple of years, I have experienced all of the forms of identity theft listed above. And most recently, someone broke into my retirement accounts and stole $13K in 5 transactions by opening up a bank account in Virginia in the name of an entirely different identity theft victim. Because my retirement account firm put up a red flag to have 5 transactions made the very morning a new bank account was attached to my account with them, the stolen funds were put on hold, and a week later, recovered. However, the experience of first having my AOL account hacked three times, and then having money stolen from what was thought to be a totally secure, professionally managed retirement account, felt like the modern day version of having someone break into your home in spite of a burglar alarm and no key. I was given a long list of steps I needed to take, from reporting the incidents to the local police, to contacting the FTC, to contacting credit agencies, to hiring a computer security consult to be sure that my computers had not been invaded with spyware or malware. Taking all the steps required countless hours and a chunk of money. And there is no guarantee any of these steps can help identify the thief or prevent this kind of occurrence from happening again. When I first learned that someone had stolen my social security number when I went to file my 2012 taxes, my accountant and I filled out all the paperwork and went through all the added steps necessary for an identity theft victim to first of all file their legitimate taxes and then attempt to make sure it did not happen again. When I went to my file 2013 taxes, voila. Same problem. And this time, after a 45 minute wait for an IRS agent, I learned there is no way to stop it from happening again. I was advised. "Just try to get your taxes in FIRST." I was ready to scream. I filed them in February, as soon as my accountant could provide them given all the paperwork a self-employed person needs to have in place to file taxes! In the case of the stolen retirement funds, my computer consultant was able to find the smoking gun. No malware or spyware on either my MacBook Air or old HP. Instead, having broken into my AOL account using my security question--the one you are asked to answer when someone has "forgotten" their password. I had used my mother's maiden name, and learned from the consultant that most of the security questions--like town you were born in, where you went to high school or college and mother's maiden name--are all very easy to research on the internet. So, for an identity thief, there is no security in answering these questions for real. I was advised to answer these questions with made up answers or complicated algorithms like we are now advised to use for our passwords: the kinds of answers that a regular person could never remember, and end up being locked out of their own account with unless they have a clear system for recording them and accessing them. So, I followed that model, changed my security answers. And voila, this very morning, someone broke into my AOL again twice as I was trying to send an e-mail to a friend! While I am going back to my computer security consultant to ask if any true firewall can be built to keep someone out entirely, I have a suspicion that there really is no way to keep these things from happening again. And yes, people say it is done on AOL, but I have had friends come forward and tell stories of having it done on gmail, yahoo and most every mail service. Cyberspace is a free for all for the most personal and intrusive of crimes in our overly cyber-world. When I went to my financial advisor to set up new retirement accounts (and to learn that not only were funds stolen, but there were early withdrawal penalties for retirement money to contend with as well), both my advisor's right hand man and secretary were horrified, because I was the very first client of theirs who this had happened to. While there are things I am proud to have pioneered, I assure you, this is NOT one of them! Both of them learned from all the steps I have had to take, and took steps to make their own accounts more secure! Long and short, identity theft is real and insidious. You may be able to find the smoking gun of a thief, but their identity is most often invisible. Who they are, where they live and their ultimate motives are beyond discovery. Perhaps a whole new kind of support group is needed for identity theft victims. And honestly, I advocate for the real time, face to face kind of group. For all you know, your on-line group might turn into yet another playground for cyberthieves!

The Creative Power of the Empath

"Everything that is real on planet earth has vibrations. Empathic people feel reality via these physical vibrations. This means empathic people resonate with the reality around them by using their physical body."

--Doris Jeanette

Our culture is very intellectual and cerebral, often times forgetting that there are other ways of knowing and other sources of creativity and power, beyond the brain and even beyond what we understand to be "the mind." Empathic people tend to sense, know, intuit and feel information, experience, and energy. And their mode of perception is often what is felt in the heart and sensed in the body.

Doris Jeanette notes that "resonating with reality is powerful stuff." If we are conscious about our capacity to resonate with reality, not only can we take in valuable information, but also we can use our energy to create from the heart and with our life force. Finding ways to express what we feel deep inside and to find forms in which to channel our energy is at the root of the creative power of the empath.

It is also important to be able to choose what we resonate with. Just because we CAN resonate with external reality does not mean we choose to resonate with EVERYTHING that is out there. Doris Jeanette reflects it is important to become clear of what we WANT to resonate with, so we resonate with what we want and not with what we don't want. When we are able to discern what we care about, what really matters to us, and what resonates with our values, we develop a wonderful sieve through which we can process reality. People, projects and experiences that we care about, that really matter to us and that resonate with our values then command our attention. What we focus on expands. What we do not focus on fades into the background.

If we care about special friendships, colleagueship's or family relationships, and we invest our times, energy and attention in these relationships, our energy helps anchor and grow them. By focusing on physical and emotional energy, we not only think about loved ones, but more importantly, call them, text them and initiate get togethers to stay in touch and keep the connections alive. When we share time and space with another person, we invest in the connection we share with them. Because of the creative power of our physical presence, the possibility to both experience and enjoy a connection with another person is so much greater when we are face to face than in virtual reality.

When we feel something in our hearts or bodies, there is an energy signal that is transmitted between us and another person or living being. When another person or living being feels a connection with us, their hearts and body send an energy signal that we perceive at this non-intellectual, empathic level. Feeling the connection, expressing our sense of connection, and acting from the sense of connection all contribute to anchoring and nurturing a relationship with another person or living being. If we are kind, and exude kindness, others will feel nurtured in our presence. If we are soft and graceful, others' defenses will be more able to melt. If we are defended and tough, loved ones may need to put up their defenses and toughen to protect their vulnerable hearts.

The energy we emanate creates, consciously or unconsciously. The more conscious we become of our feelings, our bodily sensations and our energy, the more consciously we can use our energy to create desired outcomes--for ourselves and with others.

Making Our Dreams Come True

"A thin line stands between dream and reality. And only the heart knows the characteristics that correspond to either side." --Linda Marks, age 16 It seems my entire life has been about living with vision and living from the heart. As a child, I wrote poems about these two topics. They were in separately interrelated. When I was 20, I wrote a song called "When Dreams Suffer," which became my signature song. And the message of this song was at the heart of my first book, Living With Vision: Reclaiming the Power of the Heart, which came out in 1988.

We all have dreams. What is often the hard part is turning dreams into reality. What can we do to make our dreams come true?

Some of the messages in "When Dreams Suffer" are:

1. When dreams suffer, there must be fear in our way.

Believing in our dreams is a magical thing. If we keep putting positive, heartful, visionary energy into our dreams, and taking actions steps one by one, we are unstoppable. When we are afraid, we freeze, stop, give up and sometimes even crumble. Finding ways to find safety, support, rooting and faith are critical to making our dreams real.

2. We need to learn to both hold on to our dreams, yet let go.

If we hold on to our dreams too tightly, we can suffocate the life blood out of them. We remove the breathing room that allows life's energies to move and flow. On the other hand, if we don't hold fast to our dreams, they can die, as a beautiful Langston Hughes poem notes. We need to hold them in our hearts, yet trust that God will be our co-pilot.

3. We must both give space, and believe, even while nothing supports our beliefs.

Perhaps this is another way to talk about having faith. Faith is a kind of heartfelt, spiritually rooted sense of belief. Yet, it also acknowledges that we do not create in a vacuum. There is a powerful creative force in the universe that gives life in many ways, including to our dreams. Having faith in that creative force is critical.

4. We can't throw our dreams away. Instead, they can be our life guidance system.

Without our dreams, our life will be can "a barren field frozen with snow," to return to Langston Hughes' poem. Our dreams enliven our days and our entire lives. Yet when we don't the steps to take to make our dreams real, or when it seems like our dreams are not manifesting soon enough, it is far too easy to abandon ship. Learning how to frame our dreams as our life guidance system makes it easier to stay with them and follow them over time.

Another important principal in bringing our dreams to life is to take immediate action. If you feel inspired, capture the energy of the moment. Take even a small action step. Every step we take moves our dreams forward. When we wait, tell ourselves we can do it later or even worse, procrastinate, we deflate the energy and fail to take advantage of the power of inspired moments. Telling someone else about your dream and inviting them to team with you are two other ways to ground your dreams. I learned early on that when another person co-held a dream with me and/or partnered with me to work on a dream, the path was easier, more unexpected doors opened, and the dream took flight much more effortlessly and faster than when I tried to do it all alone. Taking action and involving others are two ways of committing to our dreams. Commitment moves our energy forward and opens up all kinds of divine energy to support us in realizing our goals. When we fear commitment, we diffuse the very things we desire that commitment can bring.

Learning to make our dreams real is like learning dance steps. We need to get a sense of the rhythm. We need to get used to the music. We need to gain a sense of the dance floor. We need to get our footing, so we know how it feels. In many ways, we use all our senses, even if we focus on our hands or feet to take action. And the heart is the ultimate compass, at the center of the entire process.

Looking At Living As A Loved One Is Dying

"Don't come visit me after I die...I needed you when I was alive...."

--Unknown

My 86 year old mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers 3 1/2 years ago. While watching her memory fade, can be sad and at times surreal, until she broke her hip in November, her physical health seemed to be strong and constant.

I had always heard that once someone breaks their hip, it is often the beginning of a downward spiral towards the end. But it is very different living this truth than hearing it as a "parable." While some of my mother's Alzheimers behaviors are quirky (like lying on the carpet picking up every piece of lint she can find for hours) or down right entertaining (like answering a question like "how was physical therapy today?" with a seemingly senseless tale of the Boston Red Sox hitting badminton-like tennis rackets at batting practice), seeing a loved one move into a rapid response crisis with congestive heart failure, with a team of twelve people working for four hours to stabilize vitals is a whole other matter.

I have been finding myself reflecting a whole lot more on living and what it means to be alive as I have been living through the decline of my mother's health as her life has been moving along the downward spiral, that only God knows is the last moment of life. One thing that has become very clear to me as my mother has spent countless hours and days in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, often called nursing homes, is how alone many people are as they ail and die.

I visit my mother as often as I can, but with work and commitments to my son and friends, I cannot be there nearly as often as I feel I "should" be there. I am very grateful that my mother has a nurse and home health aide who can visit her on days when I cannot. However, even with all of our visits, there are countless hours when she is alone. In a hospital, with telemetry equipment, IV's and a Foley catheter encumbering one's body, this can be very lonely, scary and overwhelming. No wonder disorientation moves into delirium. I am struck by how little our society focuses on the deeper emotional and spiritual needs of human beings, including their needs for connection, relational security and presence during scary and hard times.

When the staff has commented that the visits of me and my mother's nurse and aide have helped her immeasurably, I feel even more deeply for those who have no one coming to visit them when they are ill or declining in a public facility. When someone goes home after an illness or health crisis, it can also be incredibly lonely faced with what has just happened, and being all alone.

Hospice is a wonderful concept for a person's last months of life. Yet, I wonder about some kind of care-giving structure that focuses on companionship, emotional contact, a loving hand to hold, and continuity of emotional care for people going through hard time or transitioning as life draws to a close. Some people are fortunate enough to have large networks of family and friends. My mother is not one of those people. She has been a loner much of her life. I cannot imagine there are moments when she does not feel quite a lone.

The process of dying has surely cast a lens on the process of living for me. I have always realized life is fragile. And now the clarity of that truth is even more apparent. If there are dreams we have, taking action today is essential because we don't know if there will be a tomorrow. Telling the people we love that we love them can never be done too many times. Being fully present with the people we love and asking for them to give us their presence and time allows us to exchange the most precious gift of all--our presence with one another.

We are all irreplaceable really. Our virtual culture may lead us to forget this truth. But watching a loved one go through the downward spiral at the end of life brings it home loud and clear. As James Taylor said, "Shower the people you love with love." Ultimately, that is one of our greatest powers and one of the greatest gifts we have to give ourselves and others while they and we are alive.