FPA Blog

Hello FPA friends and Happy February! This month I want to share with y'all a poem that was read by my brother during my wedding ceremony. I just think it's lovely and captures some foundational ideas about how I view romantic relationships. I hope you read it and enjoy it and maybe take a moment to reflect on the relationships in your life- the ones you've had, the ones you've witnessed in your families, the ones you hope to someday have. Does your love look the way you want it to? Does it look the way you need it to? What part can you play in building a healthier connection to the ones most important to you? This poem was written by Neil Gaiman, for his friends on their wedding day: This is everything I have to tell you about love:  nothing. This is everything I've learned about marriage:  nothing .   Only that the world out there is complicated, and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain, and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes, is to reach ...

Hello FPA and Happy New Year to you each! January has arrived, along with it a new start as we welcome 2025. In our part of the world a new year comes in the middle of our winter season- when the trees are bare. I write a lot about the changing of the seasons and the way our weather affects us. I think because one of the universal human experiences is the experience of weather. Weather is also a way to connect to our own communities, as we experience the changing seasons together. The energy of the collective shifts as the energy of the sun and the rain and the temperatures shift. I also love connecting to the changing of the seasons. As life comes in seasons, in waves of celebration and sadness, in ups and downs of abundance and scarcity, so does our environment. I've been thinking this season about the juxtaposition of newness with winter. The idea of 'new' brings with it ideas of spring, of blossoms and baby animals, of growth and expansion. Winter is not a time of growt...

Hello friends of FPA! December is in full swing. The holiday season is upon us. With the holidays often comes an increase in stress. We manage the expectations of ourselves and our loved ones around traditions, gatherings, gifting, and events. This is your gentle reminder to be honest with yourself and others about what matters to you during the holiday season. Less can be more. Doing less can lead to having more- more bandwidth, more quality time, more patience, more presence, more gratitude, more joy. Less pressure can mean more ease with your loved ones. Less gifting can mean more security for your family finances. Less hosting can mean more patience during times of togetherness. If you find that the holidays put you in a funk, get curious with yourself about why. You might be grieving the loss of an important person, celebrating without them for the first time. You might be stressed about finances and anxious about how you're going to afford everything expected of you. You migh...

Hello FPA Friends- and happy November! We’ve all just experienced the conclusion of a tumultuous election cycle. However you’re feeling about the outcome, you probably have people in your life who feel differently than you do. I’ve been talking with a lot of people lately about how to talk to their friends and family about their political opinions, especially when the beliefs underlying the opinions are in stark contrast. We want to be able to express ourselves, while we protect the health and the longevity of our most important relationships. Here are some basic suggestions to make your political conversations more productive and less harmful: Time, Place, and Temperature Don’t attempt a conversation when you’re already emotionally escalated, intoxicated, or distracted. Choose a time and a setting to talk when you won’t be rushed, and you have the option to end the conversation should it become unproductive. I highly recommend your conversation take place at least over the phone r...

Happy October FPA! It’s harvest season! The weather is turning, the leaves are changing, fall is arriving. What does it mean to harvest? To gather the fruits of your labor? To dig up the product of your hard work and enjoy and rest and celebrate? The harvest season means many things to many cultures, but the themes of harvest season tend to be abundance and joy. This is a season to celebrate and be at ease. So many of us aren't familiar with peace and rest. We stay busy. We stay busy with kids and family and work and friendships and hobbies and communities. We forget how important resting is, how vital a harvest season is to the goodness and fullness of our spirits.   Abundance and joy . Close your eyes for a mindful moment and reflect on the words abundance and joy . Think hard about the last time you really felt joyful, about the last time you really felt at peace. Picture yourself in that moment, just content. A moment when there was nothing to do and nowhere you needed to be, ...

Hello to September and hello to our FPA friends. This month I wanted to share with you something I’ve noticed in my 7 years practicing therapy that I find a bit strange. My patients’ concerns seem to come in waves of certain themes. What I mean is, I experience these clusters when a lot of people come in saying the same things to me in a marked period of time. I’ll have a few weeks where it seems like all of my patients, or a huge proportion of my patients, are dealing with the same thing. It’s always very specific. I don’t know how to explain the phenomenon. There are a few problems that I talk with almost everyone I treat about. I imagine that because we’re all humans navigating a wild world we’ll all experience flavors of the same dishes. We all know what it’s like to be sad, we all know what it’s like to be stressed, but every once in awhile I’ll have a few weeks when I hear over and over about a specific pain point. The theme of my work lately has been grief. Specifically, latel...