"Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue." – Zeno Many words have lost their essential meaning in American culture. Everything is “awesome”. Any negative experience is quickly and carelessly labeled “traumatic”. If someone does or says something you don’t like, they’re “toxic". In the counseling business, words are incredibly useful and meaningful. I don’t know what counseling would look like without them. About five to seven years ago, I began to notice a subtle s

Louise sat before me; hands folded in her lap. Her diminutive frame the polar opposite of her towering intellect. Her face bore the unmistakable marks of a soul trying hard to stay composed in the face of overwhelming grief. At eighty-two, she still carried the poise of the distinguished scholar she once was – a retired professor of African-American studies at a large university – she had spent her life teaching others how to articulate struggle and influence in the same brea

“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” — Dr. Viktor Frankl Christmas is, on its surface, a story about joy — candles, chorales, and the warmth of reunion. But underneath that celebration lies a harder, older truth: hope entered the world through pain. The child was born in a stable, not a sanctuary. The King came wrapped in rags, not robes. From its very beginning, Christianity has insisted upon the same paradox Frankl uncovered centuri