Across the centuries the theme persists: the self must be grown, built, defended, celebrated. The mystics prepared the way by carving inner chambers; Mary Wollstonecraft turned the self outward into politics; Elizabeth Cady Stanton universalized solitude as the basis of equality; Charlotte Perkins Gilman sang the self into being; the feminists of the 1970s rediscovered the tiger by the tail, and we today must hang on and ride the tiger to its cave where the new birth is to take place.

There comes a moment—perhaps at forty, or fifty, or beyond—when a woman looks at the path behind her and sees the footprints of everyone she has carried. Children, partners, aging parents, colleagues, friends. The echo of countless responsibilities. She sees meals cooked, appointments kept, crises navigated, the invisible labor of love and duty stretched like a long, winding road. But where, she wonders, are the markers of herself?

Confidence is not a monolith. It moves in different ways through different arenas of life. Here are the four major pillars where confidence plays a vital role—and how to strengthen them.

This is one of the curious ways that the religious impulse follows us into secular society - In front of the computer screen most of us are brought to our knees - worshipping at the altar of Techne.

Before we get up on our high horses, it is a good idea to recognize efforts to demonize “others” as another opportunity for spotting "the shadow" of our own, all too recent, excesses of puritan zeal and religious violence…

The images of the sun, the moon, the planets moving in their spheres-the very idea that we are part of a celestial dance that progresses in this serene, dignified fashion eon after eon with great predictability-every planet moving through its great elliptical phases ~ All of these energies impacting our little planet and we, as little, human receptors of these vast energies…

Since I know better, why can't I live better?

We are justified in returning to this troubling question again and again – it is certainly at the heart of ethics - and the core of my teaching thus far has been to acquaint students with the discrepancies between what we say we value, by our language, and what we demonstrably value by our actions, both as individuals and as a nation…

Rock ‘n’ roll was a celebration of congregation. But we don’t have the brains to answer the question of what it was that rock ‘n’ roll tried to start and has failed to finish: Who are we? What is our function? What is our worth?…