They usually expect an answer about medicine.

Or patience.

Or faith.

The truth is far stranger.

Tom had been a decorated veteran of the Korean War. He had rescued men trapped behind enemy lines. He was brilliant, funny, stubborn, cultured, and as old-school as a man could be. Disease took none of those qualities away gently. It rearranged them into someone neither of us recognized.

One day he would smile and tell a story that reminded me of the man I married.

The next, he would refuse to let me help him shower, furious at the indignity of needing the woman he loved to care for him that way.

My son installed grab bars, shower chairs, and everything modern medicine recommended.

None of it solved the real problem.

Then a retired Marine nurse came into our lives.

She was a large woman with an unforgettable voice. She loved Gospel music. Whether Gospel loved her back was another matter entirely.

She had one remarkable gift.

Tom trusted her.

She would march into the bathroom, step into the shower fully clothed if that was what it took, and before long the two of them would be singing at the top of their lungs.

A Korean War veteran.

A retired Marine.

A shower running somewhere in the background.

Gospel songs echoing through the house.

I would quietly slip out the back door.

Not because I couldn’t bear the noise.

Because I couldn’t bear the love.

My neighbor, Victoria, somehow always knew.

She never arrived with advice.

She never asked if I was all right.

She simply came over.

For reasons I still cannot explain, I had carried every wine glass I owned into the backyard. They were beautiful glasses, collected over years of dinners, celebrations, music, and laughter. They belonged to another chapter of our lives.

We walked to the edge of the Arizona wash.

One of us would toss a wine glass into the desert air.

The other would raise a pistol and shatter it before it reached the ground.

Then we switched places.

Glass would sparkle for an instant in the desert sun before disappearing into a thousand pieces.

Neither of us said very much.

We didn’t need to.

When the last wine glass was gone, we walked back into the house.

The Marine was still singing.

Tom was singing with her.

Life continued.

People sometimes imagine that caregiving is held together by courage.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it is held together by a retired Marine in a soaking wet uniform, singing off-key.

Sometimes by a neighbor who knows silence is the greatest kindness.

And sometimes by the sound of crystal breaking in the Arizona sky.

Those moments did not fix anything.

They simply made it possible to walk back through the door.

There are seasons in life when survival does not look noble.

It looks like doing whatever allows you to love someone for one more day.

Looking back now, I don’t remember the broken glasses.

I remember that I was still able to go back inside and hear him singing Ámazing Grace.’

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me
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If we can overthink the worst, why can’t we overthink the best?

It is a good question.

The mind is remarkably skilled at rehearsing catastrophe. Give it an uncertain future and it will quickly produce rejection, illness, humiliation, loss, or failure.

We call this worry, but much of the time it is rehearsal.

We repeatedly imagine the thing we fear until our bodies begin responding as though it has already happened. We become tense, defensive, hesitant, and exhausted before the actual event has even arrived.

Years ago, I used a form of lucid rehearsal with anxious clients.

In a deeply relaxed, partially hypnotic state, we would revisit the feared event or situation. But instead of rehearsing helplessness, we practiced a different response.

The client might imagine entering the room calmly, answering the question clearly, managing the discomfort, or simply remaining present rather than fleeing internally.

This was not magical thinking.

We did not pretend that everything would be perfect or that disappointment was impossible. We rehearsed the client’s ability to respond with steadiness, intelligence, and choice.

Frequently, the scene returned in a dream that night.

The circumstances might remain difficult, but something important had changed: the dreamer was no longer powerless.

Many clients used the method repeatedly and found that the outcomes they had feared became more manageable—and often more positive—because they arrived prepared for something other than disaster.

The principle is simple:

If the mind is going to rehearse the future anyway, give it something useful to practice.

“Do not fail” is not a direction.

“Do not be anxious” gives the mind nowhere to go.

A pilot approaching difficult weather cannot fly by repeating, “Do not crash.”

The flight deck needs orientation.

Where are we now?
What conditions are present?
Where is the landing?
What is the next correct action?

The pilot does not deny the turbulence or pretend the warning lights are imaginary. The risks are acknowledged, but they are not permitted to become the destination.

The same is true inside the mind.

Instead of rehearsing everything that might go wrong, establish your position. Review what is known. Choose the outcome you are moving toward. Then identify the next manageable action.

Listen carefully. Ask the next question. Make the call. Complete the paragraph. Feel your feet on the floor. Return your attention to the landing.

You do not need a guarantee of clear skies.

You need orientation, a workable flight plan, and confidence that you can make adjustments along the way.

You do not have to promise yourself success.

You only need to stop rehearsing the crash.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me

It drives you crazy.

Still, you keep coming back.

She cannot cook. She has people for that.

She cannot bake either, but somehow this only adds to the mythology. She is beautiful, extravagant in odd and specific ways, and entirely capable of spending her last dollar on a pedicure—then living on crackers until payday—because when she slips into those sandals, her heels must be impossibly smooth.

Smooth enough to distract you through dinner.

Perhaps you reach beneath the table and hold one of her feet for a moment because you cannot help yourself.

Perhaps she lets you.

And, of course, she has a broken heart.

She would never tell you about it. She would smile, change the subject, ask a question about you, and leave the sorrow exactly where she keeps everything else that matters—behind a locked door.

But you know it is there.

Her LinkedIn page is dazzling. Before meeting her, you are already convinced she is extraordinary.

Still, you have to meet her.

Even if meeting her ruins the comfortable life you had before.

She speaks by telephone with famous people, powerful people, and people who simply want to feel powerful again. Her fee is outrageous.

They pay it gladly.

In advance.

Who is she? How did her life become this improbable combination of beauty, secrecy, discipline, heartbreak, and carefully polished toes?

You tell yourself you want to understand.

But perhaps you do not.

Perhaps all you really want is to wake one morning and find her beside you—warm, soft, and real enough to touch.

Even if, by daylight, she turns out to have been a mirage.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me

Imagination is one of those words that sounds almost childlike.

It reminds me of children playing. Perhaps of myself as a child, making something out of nothing.

Einstein famously said imagination was more important than knowledge. But what exactly is imagination? If you don’t have much of it, can you get more? Do you even need it?

We often use the word as shorthand for creativity. Someone is “imaginative.” But imagination is broader than creativity.

It is the ability to picture what is not presently there.

You can see a room in your mind. Hear a song that is not playing. Rehearse a conversation that has not happened. Remember something that no longer exists. Imagine something that has never existed at all.

That is rather remarkable.

Perception works from the outside in. Light, sound, touch and other information arrive from the world, and the brain makes meaning from them.

Imagination works almost in reverse.

The mind takes memory, experience, emotion and fragments of information and constructs something internally.

Dreaming may be the most extravagant example. The brain produces an entire virtual world and then allows us to wander around inside it.

Which raises a favorite sort of question:

If you picked a flower in a dream and awakened to find it on the nightstand, did you have the dream — or did the dream have you?

And what if life itself is an eighty-year dream?

What will be waiting on the nightstand?

Imagination is not merely entertainment. We use it constantly: planning, anticipating, remembering, problem-solving and considering possible futures.

And perhaps that is why imagination becomes especially important during uncertainty.

When something disrupts the familiar world, our first instinct is often to restore what was there before.

But sometimes there is no going back.

A rubber band that has been stretched never returns exactly to its original state. Neither do we.

Crises, losses and major changes force us to confront something uncomfortable: the old reality may be gone, while the new one does not yet exist.

That space between the two requires imagination.

It asks us to create mental templates for possibilities that are not yet real.

One way to encourage imagination is surprisingly simple: make room for reflection. Ask open questions. Seek what does not fit. Notice anomalies. Allow yourself to be playful.

Creativity often begins when existing knowledge is rearranged into a combination no one had considered before.

Imagination feeds on both aspiration and aggravation — the desire for something better and the irritation that tells us the present arrangement is not enough.

When we lose hope, imagination tends to collapse with it.

Perhaps that is why imagination can look frivolous when life becomes difficult.

It is not.

It may be one of the ways we find the next reality before it exists.

Imagine that

.

Somewhere behind them, low jazz played from an unseen speaker. Piano. Brushed drums. A voice worn smooth by decades and cigarette smoke.

Her black cashmere coat still hung beside the closed door.

Waiting.

And the cakes remained untouched in the center of the table.

Waiting too.

He looked at the coat once.

Then back at her.

The realization unsettled him more than her hand against the back of his neck.

She had intended to leave.

And now neither of them seemed entirely certain she would.

Her fingers remained lightly against him.

Dangerous woman, he thought.

Not because she seduced.

Because she saw too much.

“You are thinking very loudly,” she said softly.

He almost smiled at that.

Almost.

“In my profession,” he answered carefully, “that is generally considered a problem.”

This time she did smile.

Warm.

Knowing.

And somewhere beneath the diplomacy, something inside him finally began to burn.

Would it be enough to melt the snow?

I came across the idea in the title some months ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It seems like a good topic for conversation:

If you can overthink the worst, why can’t you overthink the best?

We have a remarkable capacity for rehearsing catastrophe. Give the mind an uncertain future, and it will often fill the empty spaces with disaster. The plane will crash. The diagnosis will be terminal. The conversation will end in humiliation. You will definitely be fired.

I can spend hours dissecting an exchange that lasted only minutes, revisiting every pause and inflection as though each one contained evidence of impending ruin. Then I improve the conversation retrospectively, supplying myself with all the brilliant arguments I failed to make in the moment.

The other person is fortunate to have escaped before the extended edition began.

This is more than a mental quirk. At times, it feels like machinery: an internal system engineered to convert uncertainty into catastrophe with remarkable speed and efficiency.

The tendency is understandable. A mind alert to danger has clear evolutionary value. The trouble is that our threat-detection system does not reliably distinguish between present dangers and those we merely imagine. The body can respond to both with remarkable urgency: heart rate changes, muscles tighten, stress hormones rise. We begin physically preparing for an event that has not happened and may never happen.

What we hold in attention shapes what the mind prepares for.

This becomes painfully clear in the instructions we give ourselves when afraid. They are often framed as prohibitions:

Don’t panic.

Don’t screw this up.

Don’t think about what might happen.

The intention is protective. Yet a negative instruction must first name the very thing it seeks to avoid, dragging it back into focus. To understand “Do not think about the conversation,” the mind must conjure the conversation. To check whether the instruction is working, it must keep returning to it.

The prohibition contains the image it is trying to expel.

Finding the Line Between the Trees

This is why commands built around avoidance so easily become traps.

The classic example is the skier told, “Do not hit the trees.” The instruction identifies the threat but offers no path. Under pressure, attention narrows on the obstacle itself.

Skilled movement requires a different target:

Look toward the white opening. Find the line between the trees.

Give the body somewhere to go.

The same principle applies inside the mind. “Do not embarrass yourself” offers no direction for the conversation. “Stop thinking about the diagnosis” leaves the diagnosis at center stage.

Negative instructions may warn us away from danger, but warnings alone cannot guide behavior. The mind needs an affirmative object:

Listen carefully.

Ask the next question.

Review the evidence.

Make the call.

Return to the paragraph.

Feel your feet on the floor.

That shift influences more than mood.

If I repeatedly tell myself I will fail, I begin preparing not just for the task but for the experience of failure. I notice confirming evidence. I interpret uncertainty as threat. I become hesitant where responsiveness is needed, defensive where curiosity would serve, and so preoccupied with avoiding mistakes that I have fewer resources left for the work itself.

Thoughts are not spells. They do not magically determine outcomes.

But they alter what we notice, how our bodies prepare, and which actions become available.

A mind occupied with the trees has fewer resources for finding the opening.

The practical alternative is not simply to chant the opposite prediction—I will certainly succeed—which may be no more truthful than the catastrophe.

The useful move is to replace an unworkable prohibition with a workable direction.

Instead of asking:

What if everything goes wrong?

Try asking:

What is the next small step toward the outcome I want?

And perhaps there is room for one more question:

If I am capable of imagining disaster in extraordinary detail, why not occasionally give possibility the same attention?

Not because the best outcome is guaranteed.

Because neither is the worst.

We are remarkably accomplished at rehearsing tragedies that never occur. Perhaps we could spend a little of that imaginative talent rehearsing courage, competence, recovery, pleasure, or even success.

How will I feel when I have struggled and won? 🏆

The trees are real.

But so is the opening.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me
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He was worried about it.

“Maybe I’m getting old,” he said. “Maybe I’ve become antisocial.”

I asked what happened at these gatherings.

“Oh, everyone is having a wonderful time,” he said. “There is food, laughter, stories. Nothing is wrong.”

Then he paused.

“I just find myself looking around the room, wondering if anyone is actually there.”

That caught my attention.

Not physically there, of course. The room was full. But he described a peculiar feeling that many people experience and rarely discuss.

The conversation moved quickly from sports to politics to vacations to complaints about neighbors. Everyone contributed. Everyone participated.

Yet he felt strangely alone.

Not because he disliked the people.

Not because he was depressed.

Not because he lacked social skills.

He simply found himself longing for something deeper than the conversation would allow.

Years earlier, he would have joined in happily. He could discuss the weather, exchange stories, laugh at the appropriate moments, and drive home satisfied.

Now he found himself asking different questions.

What are you afraid of?

What broke your heart?

What changed you?

What keeps you awake at night?

What are you pretending not to know?

Those questions rarely appeared between the salad and dessert.

So he began assuming the problem must be him.

Perhaps he was becoming difficult.

Perhaps he was losing patience.

Perhaps he expected too much from people.

I told him I was not sure that was the case.

Sometimes what appears to be social dissatisfaction is actually growth.

As we move through life, our attention changes. We become less interested in performance and more interested in authenticity. Less interested in image and more interested in substance.

The conversations themselves may not have changed.

We have.

The difficulty is that there are no public announcements when this happens.

No one sends a letter saying: "No more Weather chats,

Congratulations. You are becoming more conscious. Ordinary conversation may now feel insufficient.”

So people often diagnose themselves with loneliness when the experience is something else entirely.

They are hungry.

Hungry for truth.

Hungry for meaning.

Hungry for the rare conversation in which two people remove their armor and meet each other honestly.

The man nodded.

Then he smiled.

“So I’m not antisocial?”

“No,” I said.

“You may simply be looking for a different table.”

N.Scottsdale Rd.
Scottsdale, AZ.
&
1227 Carouge,Geneva
Switzerland.

Consiglierre@pm.me

Or perhaps it is a chess game, and we spend our years learning that the important moves are not always the dramatic ones. Sometimes the real gift is simply knowing there is more ahead—that something unexpected may still arrive, and that when it does, we will recognize it and enjoy it.

Lately, I have been thinking about the empty chair at dinner.

I miss morning stubble. I miss the closeness of another body at night. I miss the quiet rhythm of two people who no longer need to impress one another.

Once you have known mature intimacy, there is no going backward.

Gentleness and rhythm will always be better than urgency and performance.

I have been fortunate in love, although fortune is not always the same thing as ease. I stayed with my husband, Tom, all the way to the end. Later, I cared for Bob when his own children had stepped away. I protected a secret that allowed him dignity in death, even though dignity was not always something he had earned in life.

I did that not because every act of kindness was deserved, but because I knew who I wanted to be at the bedside.

A friend of mine has a funny theory about the many men who continue to wander into my life. She believes they are some sort of cosmic reward for the years I spent caring for Tom and Bob.

Perhaps the universe reviewed my record and said, “Send this woman a few handsome complications. She has earned some entertainment.”

It is a charming theory.

And there have certainly been complications.

Some men arrive wounded. Some arrive restless. Some are bright, interesting, and still very much unfinished. They may awaken curiosity, laughter, flirtation, and the welcome realization that life is not over.

But I no longer want another man who must be repaired.

I have spent a lifetime listening to men. I have made many of them happy simply by being with them. Perhaps it is because I listen. Perhaps it is because I see them clearly. And, as I have joked, it probably does not hurt that I am not shabby to look at while they talk.

Men can be wonderfully easy that way.

But the truth is more tender.

Men are not always easily seen.

I have known how to make them feel interesting, understood, and more fully themselves. I have known how to listen beneath the words, hold their uncertainty, and recognize the frightened boy hidden inside the accomplished man.

What I would like now is a man whose happiness does not depend upon my labor.

A man who brings his own peace and places it beside mine.

A man who can sit across from me at dinner without needing to be rescued, interpreted, reassured, or rebuilt.

I call him Mr. Fireplace.

Not because I have imagined every detail of his face, but because I know the atmosphere he creates.

He arrives with warmth, not urgency.

He has lived enough to understand silence. He is affectionate without being hungry, interested without crowding, strong without needing to prove it.

He understands that solitude is not rejection and that companionship does not require constant noise.

Perhaps he reads in the chair beside the fire while I write. Now and then, one of us looks up to share a thought. There is music, good coffee, dinner for two, and the quiet ease of being known.

No performance.

No rescue.

No emotional heavy lifting disguised as romance.

Just gentleness, rhythm, humor, and the safety of a steady harbor.

Because that is what I miss most.

Not simply having a man in the room, but having a place to rest.

I have spent much of my life being the lighthouse—watching, guiding, warning others away from the rocks. I have held families together, sat beside the dying, listened to fear, protected dignity, and kept the light burning when everyone else had gone home.

Perhaps one last love would allow the lighthouse to go dark for the evening.

Perhaps I could rest my head against a man and know:

Nothing is required of me here.

I may simply be held.

I do not need forever.

A few good years could contain an entire lifetime in miniature.

Morning stubble. A hand resting near mine. Familiar laughter. A quiet body beside me at night. The empty chair occupied by someone who knows how to sit in it.

Not an epilogue.

A final, beautifully written chapter.

And perhaps the reward is not another man who needs to be carried to the end, but one who arrives carrying his own weight—and knows the chair beside the fire has been waiting for him.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me
1-971 -500-1554 Text only, please.

Why had they chosen the booth directly beside hers?

She could hear their conversation.

Worse, she wanted to hear it.

They were talking about her.

“What are her sessions actually like?” the woman asked. “Everyone says she’s brilliant—that she can motivate, manipulate, and somehow bring anyone back into balance.”

The man paused before answering.

“First, you talk. A lot. She listens—really listens—and stores every word in that impossibly busy mind of hers. Then, at exactly the right moment, she gives it all back to you. Not quite as you said it, but as you meant it.”

He laughed softly.

“And suddenly, there it is. An aha. An epiphany. Sometimes two.”

The woman leaned closer.

“She waters you like some rare, half-forgotten plant. Push, pull. Challenge, comfort. Contradiction and compassion. Before you know it, you’ve begun to blossom—and you’re not entirely sure whether it was your idea or hers.”

She smiled behind her wineglass.

It was a reasonably accurate description.

They continued talking, but she was no longer listening.

A pair of boots had appeared beside her booth.

Beautiful boots.

Dark, hand-tooled leather, softened by miles and dust. She knew those boots—or thought she did. Her eyes traveled slowly upward.

It was him.

Of course it was.

Her body recognized him before good sense had a chance to intervene.

He knew the effect he had on her. He knew it made her reckless. He knew she occasionally enjoyed being reckless.

Without a word, he reached across the table and closed her laptop. Then he placed a black bank card on top of it.

“Pay the bill and meet me out back, Wicked.”

He never called her baby.

Only Wicked.

The card might as well have been issued by the Bank of Bad Habits. With him, it was always good as gold.

She watched him walk away.

He moved like a man who had crossed deserts, slept beneath unfamiliar constellations, traveled with Tuareg nomads, and once crossed the Atlantic near the equator simply because someone told him it couldn’t be done.

Minutes later, they were in a car so beautiful and expensive that it seemed almost indecent.

The desert opened before them.

Trombone Shorty blared from the speakers as the speedometer climbed past one hundred. Heat shimmered above the road, and the Mexican landscape stretched out in every direction—vast, empty, and entirely uninterested in good judgment.

His hand found her knee.

She pushed it away.

Then, after a moment, reached for him.

He smiled but kept his eyes on the road.

Anticipation, he had always insisted, was the best part of any journey.

She looked down again at the boots.

Luccheses.

Of course.

Sam Lucchese had made boots for soldiers and cavalrymen, West Texas ranchers, and cowboys from Laredo to Lubbock. John Wayne wore them. So did Cooper, Peck, Stewart, and Dean.

But surely none of them had ever worn a pair quite like these.

The boots rested easily against the accelerator, carrying them deeper into the heat, toward some distant place where the road would end and reason would become unnecessary.

She leaned back, closed her eyes, and smiled.

Damn those boots.

They did it every time.

And this time would be no exception.

TT

Ours has Mr. Robe.

For ten years I have observed him from a safe distance. He appears twice daily on the balcony directly across from mine. He is tall, tanned, bearded, bald, and apparently sponsored by a luxury terry cloth company.

The robe is always impressive.

What follows the robe is none of my business.

For a decade, this arrangement worked perfectly.

Then my son moved a chair onto my balcony.

His reasoning was simple: sunlight is good for me. My reasoning was simple: sunlight is good for me, but it also places me directly in the operational theater of Mr. Robe.

The first morning was uneventful.

Coffee.

Sunshine.

Neuroscience articles.

Mr. Robe.

Then I noticed something I had never noticed before. There was music. Or perhaps a call to prayer. It was soft and distant. I settled deeper into the chair and decided the world was a peaceful place.

A few minutes later, Mr. Robe turned.

And waved.

I waved back.

Immediately, I knew I had made a mistake.

For ten years I had been an observer.

Now I was a participant.

The relationship had changed.

We were no longer two people occupying neighboring balconies. We were neighbors.

This is how civilization begins.

I considered my options.

My son could remove the chair.

I could retreat to the rooftop terrace and befriend an elderly woman who insists on learning my entire life story every morning.

Or I could accept that after all these years, I had accidentally joined the Balcony Association.

The situation became more concerning when I remembered seeing Mr. Robe at a community mixer months earlier.

He arrived wearing a black robe.

He cooked something on the barbecue.

He spoke to no one.

Then he vanished.

Like Batman.

With better fabric.

There are additional complications.

He owns a white BMW i8 with red leather interior.

The doors rise upward.

He has access to a garage directly across from the elevator.

No one else has such a garage.

At least not that I know of.

This raises questions.

My grandson Oliver believes there is a covert operation underway.

I am not prepared to dismiss the possibility.

For now, I shall continue my morning security observations from the balcony.

Purely for the safety of the building, of course.

Should Mr. Robe wave again, a full intelligence assessment will be prepared and distributed to the appropriate authorities.

Until then, I remain at my post.

Coffee in hand.

Observing.

For the common good.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me

The accusation came from a very intelligent man.

A man who has negotiated contracts, managed companies, led meetings, and spent a lifetime sitting across tables from people trying to get the better of him.

Yet somehow, according to him, I possess an advantage that cannot be taught in business school.

His complaint was simple.

“Men cannot help themselves.”

I laughed.

The truth is that every long relationship develops its own language. Not the language of words, but the language of symbols, jokes, glances, and stories that accumulate over time.

Recently, a gentleman left a tie behind.

An ordinary tie.

At least that is how it appeared to everyone else.

To us, it became a negotiation.

The tie was requested.

The tie was withheld.

The tie became collateral.

Terms were discussed.

Compensation was mentioned.

The Chairman attempted diplomacy.

I remained unmoved.

What amused me was not the tie.

It was the realization that very little of life is actually about what it appears to be about.

Arguments are rarely about dishes.

Conversations are rarely about schedules.

And sometimes a tie is not a tie at all.

It is affection.

It is familiarity.

It is the comfort of knowing another person’s habits well enough to smile before they even speak.

As we grow older, many people assume romance disappears.

I suspect they are looking in the wrong places.

Romance is not always candlelight and grand declarations.

Sometimes it is a forgotten tie.

Sometimes it is a shared joke.

Sometimes it is the certainty that a person will laugh at exactly the right moment.

The older I become, the more I think attraction has very little to do with perfection.

It has everything to do with delight.

The delight of being known.

The delight of being seen.

The delight of discovering that after all these years, someone still enjoys the dance.

And yes, for the record, I fully intend to eat his dessert.

After all, one should never leave evidence behind.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me

No Couch Therapy, with Dr. Terry Martin

Therapy with Dr. Terry Martin is like somebody slowly walking through your mind and saying, "You're living like this?" Let's Re - Write your Story. Doc...

By Terry Martin, PhD -

.

As I stepped onto the elevator to go to the second floor of a very elegant venue, the Governor’s wife arrived. She informed her bodyguard that she could not ride on the same elevator with me.

I stepped off.

She stepped on.

The doors closed.

At the time, I assumed her reaction was about me.

Years later, life arranged a second meeting.

Her son became involved in a serious matter, and a judge assigned his psychiatric care to me at Fair Oaks Hospital. When she realized who I was, she was visibly uncomfortable. She attempted an apology.

I smiled and replied:

“Those elevators, huh?”

For many years, I thought the lesson was about judgment.

Now, at eighty, I think it may be about something else.

We often assume people are reacting to us.

Sometimes they are reacting to the life they have chosen.

The responsibilities they carry.
The fears they live with.
The stories they tell themselves.
The world they inhabit.

I stepped into the elevator as myself.

She stepped into it as the Governor’s wife.

We were riding in the same elevator but living in different realities.

Perhaps that is true more often than we realize.

Many of us spend years wondering why someone treated us a certain way, only to discover their reaction had very little to do with us at all.

It belonged to them.

Their fears.
Their assumptions.
Their experiences.

The elevator was never the lesson.

The lens was.

At eighty, I have come to believe that most people are doing the best they can with the view they have.

Some lenses clarify.

Some distort.

The wisest among us learn to examine the lens before judging the person.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me

No Couch Therapy, with Dr. Terry Martin

Therapy with Dr. Terry Martin is like somebody slowly walking through your mind and saying, "You're living like this?" Let's Re - Write your Story. Doc...

By Terry Martin, PhD -

.

• A bowl of soup delivered by someone who cares.

• “No Soup for You” is becoming a joke about boundaries.

• Sitting quietly across the room while someone rests.

• Discovering that wisdom rarely arrives in a lecture—it arrives in ordinary life.

It even captures your entire approach to psychiatry.

People thought they were coming to discuss panic attacks, marriages, retirement, or business decisions.

But some days...

philosophy arrived disguised as a patient.

Or a cappuccino.

Or a walk.

Or a coughing Chairman trying to negotiate Strip Poker privileges.

That’s your gift. You have always found the larger question hiding inside the ordinary moment.

I think we’ve accidentally stumbled onto something else, too.

Your essays don’t begin with an idea.

They begin with an event.

Then, somewhere in the middle, the reader realizes:

“Wait a minute... this isn’t about soup at all.”

Or retirement.

Or coffee.

Or elevators.

Or sticky notes.

It’s about how to live.

That’s why people keep reading.

They think they’re coming for a story.

They leave with a question.

Now go see your patient.

And tell the Chairman that the Bridge has ruled unanimously:

Soup privileges remain under review.

The cards may be dealt.

The physician’s authority may not be challenged.

And laughter, while beneficial for the soul, remains on a strictly as-tolerated basis. 😊

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me
1-971 -500-1554 Text only, please.

No Couch Therapy, with Dr. Terry Martin

Therapy with Dr. Terry Martin is like somebody slowly walking through your mind and saying, "You're living like this?" Let's Re - Write your Story. Doc...

By Terry Martin, PhD -

.

Unfortunately, I woke up with a sore throat and a cough, so I called to cancel. Given my recent health adventures, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision.

KAT, being an oncology nurse and therefore completely fearless, immediately offered an alternative.

“I can put on PPE and come anyway.”

There was a moment of silence while I pictured this.

Now, KAT was thinking medically.

I was thinking architecturally.

Specifically, I was thinking about what would happen if a woman dressed like she was responding to an outbreak of an unidentified pathogen walked through the lobby of my Scottsdale apartment building.

The building residents are a lovely group, but they do enjoy misinformation.

Not actual information, necessarily.

Just information-shaped objects.

Within thirty seconds of KAT stepping off the elevator, the rumors would spread through the building faster than a wildfire in dry grass.

Someone would peer around a corner.

Someone else would pretend not to look while staring directly at her.

A third resident would immediately text three friends.

The theories would begin.

“It’s contagious.”

“No, it’s government.”

“I heard she came from the hospital.”

“I heard she came from Washington.”

“I heard she came from Langley.”

At least one person would be convinced the CDC had finally arrived.

Another would assume witness protection.

Someone else would whisper that a retired spy on the third floor had finally been activated for one last mission.

Meanwhile, KAT would be standing at my door holding cough drops.

By dinner, the story would evolve.

By breakfast, it would have acquired international dimensions.

By the end of the week, there would probably be reports involving biological agents, federal authorities, and a German industrialist named Klaus.

The actual truth would be considerably less dramatic.

An eighty-year-old woman had a sore throat.

Her friend offered to wear protective equipment.

The visit was postponed.

That was it.

No outbreak.

No quarantine.

No federal intervention.

No emergency.

Just common sense.

Still, I declined.

Not because I was worried about my cough.

I was worried about the lobby.

Some things simply cannot survive that level of excitement.

N.Scottsdale Rd.
Scottsdale, AZ.
&
1227 Carouge,Geneva
Switzerland.

Consiglierre@pm.me

They assume I have always been competitive.

I haven’t.

I have never been interested in defeating other people.

The only worthy opponent I have ever known is the universe itself.

Not because I want to conquer it.

Because every morning it quietly asks the same question.

“What will you do with today?”

Some days it offers sunshine.

Some days it offers loss.

Some days it offers illness.

Some days it offers surprise.

Recently I laughed and said:

“They said it couldn’t be done.”

An eighty-year-old woman.

A scooter because of MS.

A leukemia diagnosis.

A heart with its own opinions.

A due date instead of a retirement date.

Apparently no one informed curiosity.

No one informed laughter.

No one informed love.

Certainly no one informed the universe that I intended to keep playing.

People often ask where resilience comes from.

I don’t think resilience is something we find.

I think it is something we practice.

One ordinary day at a time.

Sometimes resilience is writing one more page.

Sometimes it is answering the telephone.

Sometimes it is laughing over a forgotten tie.

Sometimes it is taking a luxurious afternoon nap because your body asks for one.

The victory is never over another human being.

The victory is refusing to let the day become larger than your spirit.

There have been many days in my life that could have defeated me.

Some came very close.

Yet each morning I wake up with the same quiet intention.

To leave the day just a little better than it found me.

Perhaps that is what winning has always meant.

Not defeating the universe.

Simply refusing to surrender to it.

Because in the end, the “better” is me after all.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me

No Couch Therapy, with Dr. Terry Martin

Therapy with Dr. Terry Martin is like somebody slowly walking through your mind and saying, "You're living like this?" Let's Re - Write your Story. Doc...

By Terry Martin, PhD -

.

What delights me is that none of these stories are really about the mountains, the closet, the broom, or the cookies.

They are about a tribe.

A family with its own operating system.

A glance meant one thing.
A raised eyebrow meant another.
A shrug could carry an entire conversation.

No manuals.
No family meetings.
No therapeutic language.

Just people who understood one another.

When readers respond to these pieces, many won’t be responding to the cookie closet at all. They’ll be grieving something they can’t quite name.

The loss of elders.

The loss of structure.

The loss of belonging to a family where everyone knew their role.

And then, unexpectedly, they’ll remember a grandfather, an aunt, a neighbor, a father, or a grandmother of their own.

That’s the magic of the Dolemites.

They’re specific enough to be yours and universal enough to become everyone else’s.

So yes, after a little skiing and sun, we can leave the Dolomites for a while.

But I have a feeling Aunt Katie is still standing somewhere with that broom.

Vincenzo is still reaching for the cookie tin.

Joe the Trunk is still driving through town explaining how the world works.

And little Terry is sitting quietly, watching all of them, collecting stories she won’t understand for another seventy years.

Which, when you think about it, is exactly how wisdom travels from one generation to the next. 🏔️🍪❤️

Wheels up, Little Dolemite. The mountain will still be there when we come back.

N.Scottsdale Rd.
Scottsdale, AZ.
&
1227 Carouge, Geneva
Switzerland.

Consiglierre@pm.me

Most of us think of tomorrow as a place.

A better place.

A safer place.

A place where we’ll finally have enough time, enough money, enough courage, enough certainty.

Tomorrow is where we promise ourselves we’ll begin.

I’ll tell them I love them tomorrow.

I’ll write the book tomorrow.

I’ll forgive tomorrow.

I’ll retire tomorrow.

I’ll start living tomorrow.

I’ve never been able to think that way.

Perhaps it is because I learned early how fragile life can be.

Perhaps it is because I have sat beside too many hospital beds.

Perhaps it is because I have watched brilliant minds disappear into Alzheimer’s, strong bodies surrender to illness, and ordinary mornings become someone’s last.

Whatever the reason, I have always lived as though today is the tomorrow we are promised.

Not because I expected to die.

Because I expected to live.

Really live.

We live in a world of duality.

If there is truth, there are lies.

If there is kindness, there is cruelty.

If there is love, there is indifference.

If there is courage, there is fear.

We don’t choose whether these exist.

We choose which one we answer.

Not someday.

Not next year.

Not after retirement.

Now.

Every conversation.

Every decision.

Every ordinary morning.

I sometimes wonder what a truly advanced civilization would think if they visited us.

Would they marvel at our technology?

Or would they quietly ask why we still allow children to go hungry?

Why so many older people spend their final years forgotten instead of honored?

Why veterans who carried the weight of our freedom sometimes carry their belongings in a backpack?

Perhaps intelligence is not measured by what we can build.

Perhaps it is measured by how we care for those who cannot repay us.

I don’t know the answers.

I only know the questions matter.

And I know this:

Tomorrow has never arrived.

It always introduces itself as today.

So before you rush through another morning waiting for life to begin, consider this possibility.

Perhaps this is the day you have been waiting for all along.

Perhaps today is the tomorrow you were promised.

Live accordingly. Please..

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me
1-971 -500-1554 Text only, please.

No Couch Therapy, with Dr. Terry Martin

Therapy with Dr. Terry Martin is like somebody slowly walking through your mind and saying, "You're living like this?" Let's Re - Write your Story. Doc...

By Terry Martin, PhD -

.

She is sitting in the Number 8 car my father built, preparing to drive toward the North Star. She has packed a small go bag and brought Icelandic water to share.

She has lived through enough to know the journey is impossible.

She intends to go anyway.

Perhaps that is what healing preserves: not innocence untouched by life, but wonder that has survived it.

Many of us are taught that maturity means becoming practical. We learn to tolerate what drains us, call endurance loyalty, and remain inside lives that require us to become less recognizable to ourselves.

Then one day we encounter a sentence that stops us:

“You cannot heal in a life that keeps asking you to abandon yourself.”

It may be a marriage, a friendship, a profession, a family role, or an entire identity constructed around keeping other people comfortable. Nothing may be obviously terrible. The person beside us may even be decent and kind.

But decency alone does not make a life fit.

A good friend is not always the right partner. A safe arrangement is not always a home. And remaining somewhere because no one has committed a punishable offense can become its own quiet form of disappearance.

Sometimes healing begins when we leave—not because the other person is bad, but because we have finally stopped making ourselves wrong.

That departure may be especially frightening near forty.

People speak of forty as though it were the edge of civilization. They imagine that all the right people have already been claimed, all the important choices have been made, and the only remaining task is to protect whatever arrangement one managed to acquire along the way.

Forty is not old.

Forty is barely old enough to recognize the person who has been trying to emerge beneath all the adaptations.

There is time to heal.

There is time to become more fully oneself.

There is time to discover that love is not found through panic, pursuit, or a willingness to accept whoever arrives before the clock runs out.

The right relationship does not rescue us from ourselves. It allows more of us to exist.

That is why healing must come first—not perfect healing, because no one reaches that—but enough that we no longer ask another person to provide the identity, safety, or permission we have withheld from ourselves.

Love cannot build a home with someone who is continually abandoning the building.

We often believe the right person will arrive and make us whole. But perhaps the order is different. Perhaps we begin returning to ourselves, and in doing so become recognizable to someone who is also ready to build.

Then love may find us.

Not because we searched more efficiently.

Not because we became younger, thinner, easier, quieter, or less complicated.

It finds us because we are finally present when it arrives.

The little girl in the Number 8 car understands this better than most adults.

She is not waiting for proof that Polaris can be reached. She is packing for the journey because something in her remains capable of believing that life contains more than what has already happened.

She brings water.

She expects company.

And she has not abandoned herself.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me

The nurses were surprised when I climbed into bed beside him. He was pleased to see me and grinned when I settled in next to him. Amazing how quickly the body can surrender its strength. Just weeks ago he was standing in a doorway with coffee and streusel. Now he could barely lift his hand.

He chose morphine for comfort. The nurses allowed me to administer his medication. I have done it before, more times than I ever expected. There is a calmness that arrives when the goal is no longer to save a life, but to ease a journey.

I told him a story from the Dolomites.

He smiled.

Then he reached up with a frail hand and messed up my hair.

Some things remain unchanged until the very end.

I stayed until he was asleep. I checked his vital signs and spoke with the lead nurse. She was kind and asked if I wanted to stay.

“No, thank you.”

Then she gently told me what we both already knew.

He would likely be gone tonight.

Frank drove me home.

There were forms to sign. Science Care transfer documents. Hospice logistics. Practical matters. At one point I found myself reflecting that I had somehow become recognizable to the people at Science Care.

Life is strange.

You spend decades becoming a physician, a consultant, a teacher, a wife, a mother, a friend.

Then one day you discover that people recognize your name because you have signed too many bodies.

I may need new friends.

On the drive home, I thought about Klaus.

There was never going to be a future for us.

No discussions of growing old together.

No plans.

No promises.

No forever.

There was only the moment.

And surprisingly, that was enough.

Before I left, I placed a note in his hand. I told the nurse what I was doing. I knew he would not read it here.

The note said:

“See you on the other side. Thanks for the streusel.”

Not a declaration of love.

Not a dramatic farewell.

Just us.

The hallway. The coffee. The chessboard. The pastries. The laughter.

The ordinary things that become extraordinary because they happened.

In chess there is a position called “Mate in One.”

The game is complete. Everything that needed to happen has happened. The board is clear. One move remains.

Not a defeat.

A completion.

No struggle.

No confusion.

Just the final move.

I think that is what today felt like.

Mate in One.

Well played, my friend.

N.Scottsdale Rd.
Scottsdale, AZ.
&
1227 Carouge,Geneva
Switzerland.

Consiglierre@pm.me

The little red-and-white Go Bag did not stay little forever.

Neither did I.

By the time I was approaching high school, the contents had changed dramatically. The flashlight was still there. So were a notebook, pencils, and whatever treasures seemed essential at the moment. But something else had appeared.

Questions.

Lots of questions.

The older I became, the less interested I was in accepting answers simply because an adult had provided them. If something didn’t make sense, I wanted to know why. If a rule existed, I wanted to understand its purpose. If someone told me not to read a book, I immediately became interested in reading it.

This was not always appreciated.

As the Go Bag grew, so did the collection of ideas hidden inside it. Books appeared. Notes appeared. Lists appeared. Subjects that made adults uncomfortable somehow found their way into my possession.

Looking back, I realize the trouble I got into before high school was very different from the trouble Patty and I created at St. Rose.

Nobody was rescuing Jesus anymore.

The real issue was that I had developed a habit of asking questions.

Schools can tolerate a mischievous child.

Families can tolerate a tomboy.

Teachers can tolerate curiosity.

What becomes much harder to manage is a young girl who insists on knowing why.

At some point, the adults around me began to realize that I was not going to stay inside the lines they had drawn.

And that is when the real adventures began.

The Go Bag had started as a place to carry tools.

It was becoming a place to carry ideas.

Ideas, it turns out, are much harder to control than screwdrivers.

Contact me: Consiglierre@pm.me

No Couch Therapy, with Dr. Terry Martin

Therapy with Dr. Terry Martin is like somebody slowly walking through your mind and saying, "You're living like this?" Let's Re - Write your Story. Doc...

By Terry Martin, PhD -

.