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“My heart is full of pieces of others’ hearts, and I share pieces of my heart as well,” said Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal at the 10th anniversary celebration of her tenure at Central Synagogue in New York City where she serves as senior director of youth and family education.   Pieces of my heart, in Rabbi Rosenthal’s parlance, symbolize the emotional investment one makes in love and relationships—a give and take—the sacrifice of giving a part of oneself to another and what is shared in return. It should never be a tit-for-tat or exact give and take but the key words...

We’ve written about laugh buddies and confidence buddies, and now, as we—ahem get older—we’ve added another buddy to our team,  a health buddy.  What’s a health buddy? A friend, relative or group of friends (sometimes it takes a village) to cheer us on when we’re seriously ill or facing trauma, to check on us to see how we’re faring. Examples: "Remember the doctor told you to get up and move.” Or “This is a message from your friend…don’t forget to take your baby aspirin this morning,” or “Call the doctor and make an appointment or I will,” a health buddy...

For many of us who are either retired or work part time, we’ve had more time to reflect on the trajectory of our lives and how we’ve evolved gradually to become the people we are today. So much of who we are is about the path in life we’ve chosen, the road that spread before us when we were young and sometimes a person we married or with whom we became a partner. But what if we had selected a different fork in the road?  Robert Frost’s iconic poem, “The Road Not Taken,” explores choices. The reader is left realizing...

“Don’t panic.” That’s easier said than done. Actually, these are the two most important words to remember for those of us who are chronic worriers. Low level stress and anxiety are perfectly normal during an emergency. It’s the high level of stress and the anticipation that something awful might happen that’s concerning like a temperature rising. How do we tamp it down? We ask ourselves: when did our tendency to worry excessively begin? We don’t remember ourselves as worry warts when we were younger. We flew in small planes alone, we tried daring activities for us, even if not skydiving or bungee...

As the world acknowledges the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO), we look back with heartache at all the deaths, lingering illnesses from long Covid including lung diseases and havoc the virus caused including lost jobs and failed relationships.  Who can forget how we hunkered down in our pods with our nearest and dearest, fearful we would catch the illness if we opened mail without cleaning it and letting it sit or if we got too close to anyone even if they wore an N-95 mask and told us they never had the...