I spoke with my longtime colleague and writing mentor Anna David on The Cafes latest podcast. We met back in the day, when she first created AfterParty Magazine and I was but a fledgling. She gave me my first shot at a writing career. She is a New York Times bestselling author of

    My client called me the day after it happened… “I went to the emergency room, she said.  “I thought I was having a heart attack. I guess I’m really anxious about this speech.” Her tone was heavy with shame and self-recrimination. “Well, it’s better to die of embarrassment than a heart attack,” I said,

  For several years I had been addressing my fear with reasons why I shouldn’t feel that way. I had been looking for the underlying “reason” (read excuses, or judgement, or rationalizations), and then addressing each of these by talking myself out of them. Find a fear and smash it had been my approach. I

Many recovering addicts become so focused on the work of recovery that they forget to have fun. Usually this is because their only real goal early in the process is staying sober. While this is an admirable objective, it doesn’t exactly provide them with direction and meaning. Because of this, when the shiny new adventure

  It’s interesting to stand aside and just observe my emotions. I lost my mother in 2006. For many years I’d hear a song, see a play, or think of something I knew my mother would like and I couldn’t control the emotions that took over. I’d easily tear up and feel my body transported

“I want winning!” the three-year old seethed as he plucked the dreaded peppermint candy card from the pile.  He was so close to the castle, the finish line, the grand ending where he could declare himself the winner, but instead he boomeranged back to the beginning only to watch others race to the finish. Candy

  Does anyone remember the Scorsese film “After Hours”? At the start of the film Griffin Dunne watches his last $20 bill float out a cab window and it is a catalyst for a night of chaos in downtown 1980s New York City. Every scene builds with chaos and insanity and a colorful cast of

Prologue: The following piece was written after meeting a homeless man, in the depths of insanity, one afternoon in Dublin, last year. He appeared to be a hopeless case. However, over the course of the last 2.5 years, I have learned (from listening intently) that there are no hopeless cases. I spend a lot of time

The statistics speak for themselves; according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health 88,000 people die from alcohol related causes annually, making Alcohol the fourth leading cause of death in the United States alone. As a culture, we seem to underplay the pervasiveness of people who suffer or die from alcohol related

  I often get asked by clients, friends and acquaintances how to get to where they want to be in life. All of us have aspirations for our future. Self-help books and gurus tell us to dream big – if you can dream it you can be/do it. And we all know about the Law