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Between What is Said and What is Heard
On our drive from school the other day my tweenage son told me a classmate had offered him a joint. I’d been preparing for this moment, staging it in my head for years, ready with my bag full of allegorical stories of my reckless youth before easing into the “Why drugs are bad for you” […]
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Living with Depression
I imagine when all is black in my head and heart, I’ll write something brilliant that justifies the darkness within. But when I’m depressed like this, all I usually produce are rants. Not this time. This essay is simply on depression, living with it in a world that wears masks, puts on facades online and in-person, […]
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Chemically Sane
For Lisa, my BFF since elementary school, until her other took over… — I haven’t always been mentally ill. I’ve always been on the fringe of the norm, the glass wall between me and humanity kind of thing, but I didn’t feel myself start to fragment until my mid-twenties. The first time it happened I […]
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The Psychology of Marketing
I teach my students at Berkeley and Stanford that the foundation of marketing is psychology. Marketing is manipulating people to do what we want, so to get people to do what we want, we have to understand how they think, what they feel, and why. I also teach that the foundation of psychology, what motivates […]
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Therapy for Change or Ego?
Lonely? You bet! So is most everyone else, even people with partners. And no need to be jealous of the relationship they have, since they likely don’t have the fulfilling romance you imagine they do. Sad? Of course! Lonely is depressing! Anxious these days? Or any days navigating our modern world? Sure you are. As […]
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The Layering of Life
Hiking on the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska a few weeks ago, I was trying to capture the iridescent blue/green light coming through the ice below my feet with my Canon Digital SLR. I took a few shots, with different apertures, from different P.O.V.s, but knew when I put them on the computer the picture would flatten. The […]
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Abortion and Choice
I was 16 weeks pregnant, with my first baby, when the results of an amnio told me that the wanted child I was carrying was not healthy. I have always been pro-choice, and never considered it a moral dilemma to terminate a fetus with severe Down’s Syndrome, or other life threatening, or debilitating abnormalities. Although […]
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The Truth About Mark Zuckerberg
IMAGINE working your ass off all through high school, studying instead of partying, volunteering with school and community groups so you can into a good college. You send out your applications, to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, as you have the 4.8 GPA, and all the right clubs on your resume. Your mom kisses each envelope before […]
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Raising Kids Without Religion
My husband and I raised our children without religion. We gave them no religious identity (as in claiming to be Christian or Jewish because of our parentage). We are both devout atheists, and I use the term devout with purpose. We don’t believe in a higher power, or any gods, or even the possibility of one. We […]
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We are Born Racists
We are ALL racists. Every human being on the planet is BORN a racist. NO! you’re screaming at me. BULLSHIT, you whacked out bitch. I am not a racist! Racism is taught, not inherent to our nature is the common wisdom. And while it’s true racism, hate, fear can be taught by parents, community, schools, religious leaders, […]
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