“Denial goes hand in glove with the rampant ageism in our society and our culture.” ~ Irving Stackpole, Stackpole & Associates I recently returned to Austin, TX, from my quarterly 2-week visit to my mom, who resides in a nursing home in Connecticut. The facility in which she lives is…

Starting a Family Council — Part I I’ve taken a break from my series about self-care in order to do a little bit of self-care while advocating for my 94-year-old mom, who is a nursing home resident. I’ve been learning a lot on this journey from this side, from a professional who has worked with elderly clients…

“The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine.” ~ Hippocrates In my 2023 New Year’s blog, I offered seven steps to reset and create the life you want. The steps were not in any specific order and, in fact, step…

“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness, we will discover the infinite power of our light.” ~ Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection Every New Year, many of us hope to hit restart and jump back onto our path of passion and joy, especially when things didn’t…

Working in nursing homes and other senior communities for the majority of my 30+ years as a clinical psychologist, I’ve seen that mental health issues were not given much thought unless and until a resident had become a “problem” for the staff. At this juncture in time, the elderly mental…

“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness, we will discover the infinite power of our light.” ~ Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection Every New Year, many of us hope to hit restart and jump back onto our path of passion and joy, especially when things didn’t…

“Having compassion, concern, respect, and kindness for others not only benefits society but is the most important factor for our own happiness.” ~ Dalai Lama, The Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s Stages of the Path — Vol. 1 The past few years have been quite difficult for most of us, making it…

Image by Rosy — The world is worth thousands of pictures from Pixabay “Tender self-compassion is the ability for us just to be with ourselves as we are — in all our messiness, in all our brokenness, in all our imperfection — and also to be open to the pain…

By Dr. Mara Karpel “Don’t worry if you’re making waves simply by being yourself. The moon does it all the time.” ~ Scott Stabile It’s been hard to write, lately, struck by the bane of writers, “writer’s block.” So, it took a disappointing incident on LinkedIn to get me writing…