This piece was also posted today in America’s Wellness Network Blog.

Yes, it is indeed just days before Thanksgiving so the natural thing to do is to focus on all the things we’re grateful for, right? Well, as I sat down to write THAT article, I became very present to a truth I have been wrestling with for most of my life. While I am eminently grateful for the amazing gifts, experiences and relationships I have encountered, it doesn’t feel honest without offering appreciation for the rough moments, challenges, relationship disasters and personal failures I have experienced along the way. Where would I be…who would I be, without the long list of terrible times?

Thanksgiving is an especially significant holiday for me this year, as it marks a major milestone on my journey. As we all sit down to our roasted birds and baked tofurkies, I will turn 40 years old. While Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, this one in particular feels more than a little symbolic. Lots of things feel like they are coming full circle, returning me to a sense of wholeness and peace that I haven’t felt this completely since I was a small child stumbling around my New World, exploring new things, new people, new foods.

Like the Pilgrims, the journey didn’t truly begin until I got here, and then it was just one new experience after another. How do I live peacefully with others? How do I accept that your story is sacred and unique and that my story isn’t the only truth around? How do I allow my ego to quiet down and hear your wisdom, as you, whomever you are, are always here to teach me something? How do I negotiate the experience of others invading my space, forcing your ideas and beliefs onto me as if your way was the only way? How do I stay true to my commitment to peace and love when you challenge my lizard brain in such an acute manner? How do I remember to be grateful for abundance when I feel there is something missing?

So, yes, be grateful for the things you are unhappy about in your life.  Give thanks that your life is imperfect, your body is too this or that, your health is a little less robust than you’d like, your career is up and down, etc.

We have a tendency to complain about the things we want to change rather than embrace these things as opportunities to grow, lessons to learn, places to heal. Many Buddhists suggest that suffering is a part of life, perhaps the main reason for being in a body. I used to get angry about that concept. My immediate reaction was often a reflexive argument that the goal of life can’t possibly be to suffer, so why embrace it as a simple fact and not work on improving things…

Then I got it- Human life IS, to a large extent, about suffering because otherwise we wouldn’t have any opportunities to move deeper into ourselves, into our love for the Everything, the Everyone. Somehow, my suffering has carved canyons within me that are as gorgeous as the Grand Canyon and that provide me with a tremendous capacity to love and forgive you, YOU, me, ME, for all the suffering to begin with. Talk about gratitude!

40 years ago, on Thanksgiving, my parents gave me the Hebrew name Baruch, which means Blessing. Funny, really, that it has taken so long to truly appreciate their foresight into something as simple (yet gargantuan) as a name. I feel very blessed today to have had the chance for four decades to live and learn, to suffer and heal, to hurt and to love. I’m not sure I could have gotten here today without some serious disasters, so I give thanks for the suffering and for the beauty (and oy, the pain) of the healing that always seems to ensue.

Emotional affairs are oftentimes an occurrence in a relationship that catches some spouses off guard. A lot of people assume that an affair is black and white- if there isn’t sex then there is no transgression. What often most startles these folks is when they realize that sex is the least of their worries. A one night stand can be bad, but after “the stand,” the threat typically goes away in the morning.

On the other hand, an emotional affair is a legitimate threat because it highlights the weaknesses in the primary relationship and then serves as a new focus for what life “could be like” with a potential new partner who seemingly fills many of the spaces one is missing.

An emotional affair is a liaison in which one partner in a committed relationship begins to project unmet needs and desires onto a third party, creating a triangle of focus and feelings that may or may not include physical contact. The emotional affair has more potential to do permanent damage to a committed partnership because it is not addressing or fulfilling sexual frustrations, but rather it is fulfilling the general state of feeling unfulfilled!

On the other hand, since there is oftentimes an absence of sexual contact in many of these cases, if the emotional affair is identified and addressed early enough, it can be a lightning rod in a marriage that prods a couple to address issues in a direct, focused manner and without beating around the bush, so to speak. Sometimes the other partner is able to hear why their spouse is looking elsewhere to get their non-sexual needs met without reacting in a jealous way because there hasn’t been a physical transgression.

Even better yet? Work on your communication together! Stop projecting your needs onto your partner and take responsibility for your unmet needs and wants. Remember what it feels like to be kind to your partner, just because you are a kind person. If you’re being cold to your spouse, you are being cold to yourself first. So, warm up!

Really? I can’t tell you how many times I have unzipped in front of a standing urinal to find an advertisement staring back at me. In Santa Fe, NM there was a company that seemed to have infiltrated every restroom in town, actually installing fancy cases above urinals where the marketing could change with the season or the event. Who decided that my time in the bathroom was an untapped opportunity to sell me something?

I remember one of the most striking scenes in Jerry Maguire involved Cuba Gooding and Tom Cruise hanging out in the bathroom, screaming and shouting, making business happen for real. There is a mortgage broker in my current office building who can be seen almost daily walking into the restroom with his cordless phone tucked under his shoulder as he reaches to lock the door behind him. Don’t you hear him negotiating his own deal on the other end?

In this day and age of smart phones and tablets, aren’t we already hooked up pretty securely? What makes this matter so concerning for me is that there really is no end in sight to this trend. Selling you is my democratic right, and we reward the guy or gal who is creative enough to nail you where you least expect it and then hit you with their YouTube capture of the coup a few million times. The guy who bought AdWord space for a CEO he wanted to impress when he Googled himself is considered creative and brilliant (he even got a job out of it) yet not invasive or impertinent.

It is easy to jump to the question, “Is nothing sacred?”

However, I believe the more important, yet related, question is:

Where does the sacred fit in this new world order we are creating?

It can be so easy to let my sense of something beyond my personal daily story fade away in the midst of endless tweets and texts. Finding the miracles tucked away in supermarkets, on dog walks, and in simple interpersonal interactions has always been such an important part of what has kept me sane in an oftentimes wacky world. Acknowledging the presence of God/Spirit/The Universe/Higher Power/Gaia/ETC. can be just the right thing for me when the Internet goes down, the bars disappear on my IPhone or I lose that blog I was writing on WordPress. So, I suppose the choice is mine. Do I allow the sacred into my technological mishmash or move farther away from the tiny miracles that have the power of making technology another vessel, not another deity…

One of my first grown-up jobs was at the Taos Ski School in New Mexico. I was 25 years old and really had no idea how to ski but managed to get an Assistant Supervisor position at the children’s ski school. On the morning of my first day I was excited to meet my staff and “make my mark.” I was most excited to have money coming in and pay the rent, lifting me out of the growing pool of out of work poets who sat at the coffee shop drinking sludge and impressing tourists with our lack of income and direction. I smiled at my staff as they walked past the boots and bindings to the time clock on the wall where they inserted their cardboard ticket to a paycheck. One bright, attractive woman in a hot pink ski suit walked up to me after she clocked in and with a weak, sarcastic smile announced: “Nothing like punching out my soul every morning!”

Ouch. That hurt. And it was only my first day. I went on to understand her feelings firsthand and by the end of my second month (and first paycheck) I decided that I missed the coffee shop more than I thought. I felt heavy, stuck and maybe a little queasy as I drove my truck up the winding snow-covered road to 9,000 feet and it wasn’t the altitude sickness. It didn’t take long to understand why so many ski instructors viewed me as part of the problem before they really knew me. I was an administrator, part of the system. And the system was not their friend. In fact, in my short tenure, my attempts to go above me to make some changes to our department and improve work conditions were mostly rejected or ignored. I gave my two weeks notice mid-season and relinquished the season ski pass to which everyone seemed so attached. I was free once again, and while I returned to the struggle to make rent, I no longer felt heavy, stuck and perhaps depressed.

Workplace Depression is oftentimes a twofold story. There are some employees who bring their depression to work with them and there are others who find that going to work creates a situation whereby they feel depressed. In my practice, I work with both sides of this story.

For some, it is “work” simply to find one’s way out of bed each morning, get showered and dressed and make it to the office. These people tend to do their best to pretend to be emotionally fine as it is generally socially unacceptable to be a “downer” at work. Once they head home, it is like the mask is removed and their true affect emerges.

For others, life seems to be going generally well, relationships are steady and pleasant, until they arrive at work. Then it hits them: “I’m so miserable at this job that I think I will die if I stay here another day. But, wait, I’m stuck here because I don’t know what else I could even do or want to do….” The feeling of being trapped in a job where one is unhappy can be a precursor to depression, however the foundation for that depression is often rooted in deeper circumstances and beliefs such as low self-esteem, general confusion about life, and even substance abuse.