alyssaluboff

Feel Like Your Work and Personal Life Are in Tension? There’s Just One Answer.

Here’s a variation on a familiar saying: Life is what happens while you’re trying to get your work done. For many of us, balancing the demands of work and relationships feels impossible. These can be relationships with parents, partners, children, friends, and also ourselves. What we need to do to make a living feels atContinue reading “Feel Like Your Work and Personal Life Are in Tension? There’s Just One Answer.”

The One Reason You Might Think You Don’t Like Breathwork and Four More to Give It a Try

If you are like me, the very thought of breathwork can leave you gasping for air. No form of mindfulness sounds less relaxing or restoring than being asked to focus on your breath. Your heart starts racing. Your breathing becomes fast and shallow. Or maybe you get a queasy feeling in your stomach. For peopleContinue reading “The One Reason You Might Think You Don’t Like Breathwork and Four More to Give It a Try”

The Anatomy of a Broken Heart, and How to Heal One

The death of a loved one. The rupture of a relationship. The loss of a job. The failure of a project. The dismantling of a dream. The end of an era. There are many reasons that the heart breaks, that we feel an emptiness in the center of our chests as the world around usContinue reading “The Anatomy of a Broken Heart, and How to Heal One”

Don’t Be Afraid to Hurt Those You Love

You may think from the title that this post is about being selfish or taking advantage of people. It’s actually about learning to love more. And it’s not written for sadists or manipulators; it is for caretakers and co-dependent types. We each have different styles of loving, and with them, comes different healing work toContinue reading “Don’t Be Afraid to Hurt Those You Love”

Seeing My White Privilege

I don’t like the word, “privilege.” It connotes the idea of something better, something earned; and whiteness is neither. But the phrase #whiteprivilege has proved useful in explaining the differences in daily experience between people who are white and people of color. This is an essay I wrote several years ago under the title, “WhyContinue reading “Seeing My White Privilege”

Beginning to Breathe

As our world grinds to a halt – Flights canceled, production stopped, commutes erased – Our planet, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, Reverses the flow and begins to breathe. She is healing, shedding, transforming. And this virus, ironically, attacks the human lungs. We gasp for air. What do we do now? AreContinue reading “Beginning to Breathe”

Kol Nidre

My Grandpa Abe almost never set foot in a synagogue, but the one time of the year when he took pride in climbing the steps of the bimah was on Yom Kippur Eve. It was then that he played the mournful melody of the Kol Nidre on his bass for our whole congregation to hear.Continue reading “Kol Nidre”

Nelson

“You’re one of us,” Nelson said. I looked at my friend, equally surprised by the compliment and bewildered by the spin of his words. I had accepted the epithet, “gringa,” long ago; I knew I wasn’t really one of the Afro-descendent or indigenous Chachi people, the two ancestral groups living in that region of theContinue reading “Nelson”

You Don’t Have to Believe in Yourself

On really hard days, if I’m lucky, the theme song to the children’s show, “Arthur,” pops into my head. “Just believe in yourself,” a voice sings, “Well, that’s the place to start…” I smile, feel refreshed, and keep running up hill, ready to face my demons and what felt, just a moment before, like theContinue reading “You Don’t Have to Believe in Yourself”

Between Terror and Enlightenment

I once read the Tao Te Ching from cover to cover in a single afternoon. Sucked in and mesmerized, I had no words; simply, the truths of the Chinese classic resonated with my soul. This is how it is to flow with the universe. I emerged from my office as if to another world, myContinue reading “Between Terror and Enlightenment”