New Group:

Grandmothering Support Group

Articles by
Shoshona Pascoe:

	The Via Negativa: Living Authentically into the Yes
	ANXIETY and A Story About Turtles
	FOOD: Pleasure or Pain?
	Living in the Layers
	"The Layers," a poem by Stanley Kunitz
	Working with Pregnant and Parenting Women in Recovery
	"The Guest House," a poem by Rumi
	Working With Depression: Applying Mindfulness to Chronic Unhappiness
	Pre-Marital Counseling
	Kindness
	"Kindness", a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye
	Communication: Touching Every Relationship, Weaving our Relational Lives
	Couples Therapy: How We Are Wired for Connection and What Gets in the Way
	The Empty Nest: Letting Go Into Fullness
	Depression: Self-Care and the Winter Season
	Emotional Intelligence: Coaching Our Children, Coaching Ourselves
	Book Review: "Perfect Love Imperfect Relationships"
	Yoga and Inner Work
	Witness

"Kindness"
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.