Author: Simone Butler

In The Call to Courage, now streaming on Netflix, researcher Brene Brown asserts that it’s impossible to be brave without being vulnerable. The tough-talking Texan, who came to fame in a 2010 viral Ted Talk on vulnerability, has made it her life’s work to dispel the deeply ingrained myth that this quality is a weakness – instead of our greatest strength.…

Create a Grief Altar to get your ancestors’ help with processing deep feelings

Though she was sitting next to a lovely pond blooming with water lilies, Tama Kieves felt anything but tranquil.…

Photo courtesy of Muncie Fine Portraits

Sarah and Dave Herbert are photographers with a studio in Muncie, Indiana that specializes in family portraits. With the help of their beloved cat Rory, they are experts in getting kids to sit still for a portrait.…

Since they met in the early 1970s, Charles and Camilla (now the King and Queen Consort of England) knew they belonged together. They both love the great outdoors and championing social causes.…

Stephen King, one of the most brilliant and prolific writers who ever lived, is deeply connected to his creative inspiration. But King’s muse is no Greek goddess.

“There is a muse,” King assures aspiring authors in his classic book On Writing, “but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your computer.…

Years ago, a friend and I drove to the remote desert east of Los Angeles to do a ritual. We hiked far out into the wilderness to set up camp and build a fire.…

When Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor was recovering from a massive stroke, she had a sign put on the door of her hospital room that read, “Please be responsible for the energy that you bring into this room.”…

For the first time since 1952, cheetahs will soon roam wild in India once again. Eight of the big cats, famed for reaching speeds of 70 mph without breaking a sweat, are set to arrive in August from Namibia, to make their home at Kuno-Palpur National Park.…

I was listening to a talk by evolutionary astrologer Steven Forrest recently, when he said something that made me sit up and take notice. He was discussing his natal North Node in Taurus in the sixth house.…

She’s been arrested three times for acts of civil disobedience related to gas pipeline construction and permitting. In one of those incidents, as seen above, retired social worker Deborah Kushner chained her rocking chair to an old police cruiser painted with attention-grabbing slogans that made folks take notice!…

One spring night in 1968, 21-year-old Patti Smith went with some friends to see The Doors live at the Fillmore East in New York City. A recent college drop-out, Smith was working in a bookstore and wondering what to do with the rest of her life.…

When Michael Meade was twenty years old, he was thrown into solitary confinement in a military prison for refusing to go to Vietnam. “I wasn’t a very good prisoner,” he explained in a recent talk on Hope and Imagination in Hard Times.…

Are you ready for the powerful Full Blood Moon Total Eclipse in Scorpio?

I just spent a week at the Optimum Health Institute here in San Diego. It was an intense time of cleansing with wheat grass and raw foods, revving up the body, and learning more about healthy living.…

Despite being widely admired for her beauty, Audrey Hepburn never considered herself attractive. The Oscar-award-winning actress admitted in an interview that “I hated myself at certain periods. I was too fat, or maybe too tall, or just plain too ugly.”…

My thoughts have been occupied lately by a very dear Libra man. His name is James Hubbell, and he turned 90 last October 23. Many San Diegans know him as the gifted artist-sculptor who created a wonderland of adobe dwellings inlaid with mosaic and stained glass in the peaceful mountains near Julian (now known as the Ilan Lael Center).…