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Posts tagged with “surgery”

Loving Yourself When You’re Too Fat, Too Skinny, Too Tall, or Too Short

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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Living in NYC, I have seen some crazy and outrageous things. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see an ad in the subway that read, “Overcome Your Bikini Fears. Breast Augmentation Made In NY: $3,900,” or another ad from the same plastic surgery office that showed a picture of a woman looking sad, holding a pair of small tangerines in front of her breasts, and the same woman looking happy holding grapefruits, with the same caption, “Breast Augmentation Made in NY: $3,900.”

Still, I …

Brushes with Mortality: 5 Lessons On Dealing with Hard Times

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“When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.” ~Wayne Muller

As someone with a serious chronic medical condition, I have danced with mortality. Many times. It wasn’t until our most recent pas de deux, however, that I truly understood just how much this dance could impact me.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in my work as a hospice volunteer.

The mission of the San Francisco-based Zen Hospice Project—a Buddhist-inspired organization where I have volunteered for five …

How Pain Teaches Us to Live Fully

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“The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.” ~Anais Nin

There have been times when I’ve experienced pain when all I wanted was for its cessation.

I’m not sure whether I’m “unique” in my experience of pain or in how many times in my life I’ve had to deal with physical pain. While I don’t consider myself “cursed” by it, I’ve endured enough of it to become somewhat of an “expert” on its presence and its effects.

Besides the normal cuts and scrapes that we all experience, I’ve had the (un?)fortunate luck of having had—at separate times in my …