Author Stan Goldberg

In 2009 I wrote, When the Ground Shakes, an article in which I described finding my mother coming out of a forested area holding a bunch of sticks and twigs. In response to my question of what she was doing,...

In 2010, I wrote Top 10 Insults for Old People, a tongue-in-cheek article about an insensitive young couple I watched making fun of an older man as he shuffled down the street. Four years later, in some ways,...

For more than 30 years I've been brought, kicking and screaming, to the sharp points of life. What I've learned is instead of running away, bring them closer and you'll enrich your life and ease your death

In 2011 I wrote Shoot Me Please: The Right to Die, where I described my reactions to a patient who asked me to help him die. I recently received a comment on the article by Jarad Hughes from the Compassion and...

  Grief is an emotion that is pervasive. It can arrive on a passing breeze, the sounds of a familiar song, the taste of a loved one’s favorite food, or in the middle of the night when a hand reaches...

Change is frightening, whether it's a person coming to terms with a terminal diagnosis or an evangelical minister learning his son is gay. Both are forced to let go of cherished beliefs for a world that has...

I was asked to join Thich Nhat Hanh, Jane Goodall, Norman Fischer, and other writers I have long admired in contributing to Shambhala Sun’s July 2013 special edition on the body. In my article, I relive...

(An Excerpt from Leaning Into Sharp Points). Change is analogous to a large boulder balanced on a precipice. It looks like it could tumble off the cliff if just a little pressure were applied. But despite your...

Choosing the appropriate instrument to stop grieving When I attended a workshop on the Native American flute (NAF), I didn't realize that the lesson I would receive was one not only applicable to music but...

My Catholic friends are apprehensive about Pope Benedict’s resignation. Who will be the new Pope? Will he pull the church more to the right or left? Will the new Pope become more forceful in addressing the...

I look at my aging body and resolve to get in shape, lose weight, eat better, listen without judging, and practice my flute more often. They are the same resolutions I made last year, the year before, and...

On news shows and press conferences about the Sandy Hook Elementary School, I repeatedly heard things such as ----Our hearts go out to the families and survivors. ----Pray for them. ----Although we...

We move in a world created by our history and often pretend the past and present aren’t connected. A partner becomes annoyed at what we do or say, and we can’t accept the notion that their annoyance is our...

Most of us believe the world should be viewed as we see it. And when there is a discrepancy between the right way—ours—and the wrong way, we are, in the words of Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca,...

The good news is we are living longer. The bad news is it’s taking us longer to die. Soygul Rinpoche, the Tibetan monk and philosopher said that “Death is no big deal. You breathe in, you breathe out, and then you don’t breathe in anymore.”

What would you do if you learned from this moment until you died you would be in pain? Not something mild like an occasional headache, but something that overwhelms every one of your thoughts, feelings, and...

More than 15 years ago I was asked to sit on a contentious committee at San Francisco State University that was given the task of recommending curricular changes that would sensitize students to cultural...

Whenever I hear about the importance of letting go of the past, I think about a conversation I had with my mother more than thirty years ago. She emigrated to the United States from Poland when she was six...

When I gave a workshop on change at a well-known retreat center, one participant told me that this was the tenth week-long workshop he attended in the past five years. “Why so many?” I...

“If we just could increase awareness,” some of my friends with Alzheimer’s say, “funding would rise and the illness could be eventually controlled or eliminated.” I wish it was that...