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Stuff to Feel Good About!

A collection of 40 issues

On Making Change When We Feel Powerless

The first trick of the powerful is to make others feel powerless. But let’s linger on that word trick for a moment. Because it’s got a telling ancestry. It comes from the old French meaning to cheat or deceive. So if the first deception, the first cheat, of

How We Can Work From Love

The other afternoon, I drove slowly home in thick snow, listening to an interview with a reporter who covers conflict. How are you doing right now? the host asked. Leaning hard into spiritual resilience, the reporter said. Making sure I’m doing the things that I love, that fill me

How We Reply to Violence

I once heard a wildly successful tennis player say that we can be motivated by one of two things: fear or love. Fear is a familiar face these days. Fear for beloveds, ourselves. Fear about who we are to each other. Fear that our country can’t find a path

Some Goodness for You Today

Wonderful Reader, Wherever this finds you in the holiday season, I am wishing you gentleness and ease. This year has asked a lot of our hearts. Should your cup need refilling, here are a few sweet bits and pieces to get the job started. As my Mum used to say,

For When the News Could Crush Your Spirit

One snowy evening, I was cutting sweet potatoes and listening to a newsy podcast. The headlines were heavy with humanity at its worst. As the two hosts talked about a horrendous event, the first host said, I guess there was a guy who risked his life to tackle one of

How to Resist One of This Moment’s Greatest Temptations

Trappist monk Thomas Merton wraps up his book The Seven Storey Mountain with a useful phrase: “Here ends the book, but not the searching.” It rhymes a bit with Rainer Maria Rilke’s guidance to not just live the questions, but to love the questions. And it clashes with that

Three Comforts to Take Us Into a Chillier, Darker Season

Every so often, the weekend linguist in me goes poking around in word etymologies. Which is how I learned that the verb to comfort arrives to us from the Old French meaning, among other things, “to strengthen.” It makes a good kind of sense, doesn’t it? It’s hard

For When You Think Policy Change Can’t Happen

There were ashtrays in our desks! a woman once told me of her 1960s college days. The professors usually taught in a cloud of smoke. Totally inconceivable now, I shook my head. Well, the woman said, now - she gestured to the smoke-free office we were in, which was next

One Note We Can Send for a Healthier Democracy

The whole experience was so smooth, it’d be easy to forget. The mind has a way of remembering the bumpy and rough stuff. I went to the town clerk’s office to vote early. The woman behind the desk explained how it worked to me like I was the

Where to Find Power When It Feels Like You Don’t Have Any

A business mentor of mine always advised to go where there isn’t much traffic. If everyone’s online, be in person. If everyone’s doing hot takes, wait a beat or six to discern where you stand. If everyone’s at 101 degrees, be the shade that helps brings