I am writing this on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving. Because I like to finish one holiday before leaping ahead to the next, I am making this a quiet day, a space to reflect on what this annual feast, now so narrowly focused on eating and football, really means.
The actual history of Thanksgiving is far more complex, both messier and richer, than the story everyone knows about the Pilgrims inviting the Indians to dinner.
We hear very little about how the Pilgrims stole seed corn from the Nauset Indians of Cape Cod a few days after they arrived, or the fact that the land around Plymouth had already been cleared and cultivated by Pokanokets who had been wiped out by disease shortly before the newcomers arrived, or that when Native American neighbors came to help the Pilgrims they usually showed up naked!
We cheat ourselves when we settle for an oversimplified view of history because the arrival of the Mayflower in Plymouth represents a nitty-gritty struggle for survival which is as relevant today as it was for the residents of Plymouth in the 1620s.
Every event or conversation that upsets or displeases us is made up of two components: what actually happens in real time, and what our head does with it afterwards. We have little or no control over many of the difficult things which occur in our lives, but we can change our response to them.
I’ve been aware for some time now that what causes my clients the most pain in their professional lives is not the weight of their responsibilities, the heavier workload due to the economic downturn.
I regularly work with clients who have creative goals—making pottery, writing poetry, actually using the sketch pad they’ve purchased or been given as a gift. Sometimes these aspirations come up almost apologetically: “Of course, it’s not practical and I have so little time, but what I’d really like to be doing is—”
People who vacation on Cape Cod would probably find it strange that someone who lives here would leave in July.
Growing a lawn, rather than isolated clumps of grass, is a problem on a sand bar, which is a good description of outer Cape Cod, where I live.
Sometimes I’ve just had it with the absurd extremes marketing goes to and I have to stand up and say, “Enough!”
I heard some of the best work search advice I’ve come across in a long time at a career event sponsored by a Boston university where I was invited to give the keynote address.
It seems like just about everyone I’ve talked to lately has commented about the accelerated pace of their lives. 
Whenever the same question comes up more than once in a short period of time, it gets my attention, so when feedback from a program I did for an agency which helps women in transition mirrored a 
