"Hope is very often a refusal to know what is so, and steadfastly it is a refusal to live as if the present moment is good enough and all we really have." ~ Stephen Jenkinson It's been a rough week. Sadness, lack of motivation, and the desire to retreat from the world have all been bubbling up to the surface. These down swings put me back in touch with the struggles of deep depression, and they inspire me to write to those who still find themselves stuck in the depths. So you

For Peggy, who’s constantly teaching us that the next great adventure is always within our reach, if you only have the vision, the imagination, the courage to create that which you seek. It’s been a lesson in presence to witness these days - up and down, good and bad - this ebb and flow that is life. Thank you for helping us learn the big things, the big things that hurt. For allowing us to be heartbroken and devastated by the way that life simply is. A mushroom named Reishi

My mother loves to tell this story about a two-year-old Madison: I was playing in another room and suddenly became very quiet. She was understandably suspicious - a quiet two-year old is rarely a good sign. "Madison?" she asked, "What are you doing in there?" To which I promptly shouted in reply, "I'm being-haved, Mom!" She loves the story as a sign of my early scholastic brilliance - the fact that I had been told to "behave" so many times that I had conjugated the verb to "b

Ask anyone who's ever travelled to India and they will undoubtably tell you the same thing - that this is the land of unapologetic contrasts. In no place is the stark disparity between the beauty and the ugliness of life more evident than it is in this country. The very rich and very poor live side-by-side - the slum just streets away from some of the biggest mansions in Gokulam. The starving homeless walk, begging, along the wide, flower-lined lanes. There are gorgeous, lush

I took a look at my website yesterday. It had been awhile. And then I realized that I hadn't written a blog post in far too long. So here I am. "What have you been doing, Madison, if not spending your summer regaling us with ridiculous and oh-so-wise tales about acupuncture and yoga?!?!" - you ask. And I reply - "I have been learning to play. And it is good." I've spent this summer shaking off the last SEVEN YEARS of full-time school plus part-time work, studying for

Before you proceed further, a warning: This is might be one of those blog posts that feels a little awkward for those of you who don't know me personally. I'm really hoping not to turn anyone off with an overload of too-personal information, but am also feeling that this is the whole point in having a blog - talking about my experience, and hoping that others can relate to/ be inspired/ learn something from it. And also, I feel like writing is a really great way for me to pro