What I’m working with now is the difference between judgment and discernment. Discernment is more of an observation or a noticing. Judgment can be something more freighted. It often comes with moral baggage – being right or wrong.

I keep relearning the lesson that people often aren’t looking for advice when they bring up a problem- they just want to be heard. I’m learning now that offering advice should only come when prompted.

Change is a process, and it is also about the process itself. It is about the willingness to try something different and to see where it goes. The very act of shifting your circumstances even a little bit can make a huge difference in the long run.

This is the discernment process. What can I work on today? What am I not ready to do yet? What do I need to come back to later? The grace comes in being able to move easily around your edge - recognizing what you can manage and what you can’t, when to push forward and when to pull back.

In brief, healthy choices make you feel more expansive, whereas unhealthy choices make you feel more contracted.

I had started a post about the difficulties of being a physician with a sick partner. In particular, I was writing about a mistake I had made at the very start of Arnold’s illness -- way back in December 2007. It was a big mistake.

I will write more about grief in later posts, but the fundamental fact remained: I had to reconstruct my life. The whole foundation had been shattered, and the shards thrown out the window. I now had to put it back together, piece by piece.

Much of this blog will be about how I’ve gotten from 2011 to the present – what I’ve experienced, what I’ve learned, and how I’ve changed. I hope that my struggles and challenges might provide insight to others who are going through similar problems.