Anchored to Wise

You Can’t Fix it: Parenting Wisdom From my Mother

By: A. Arcuri January 8, 2021March 31, 2021

Parenting, Personal Developmentalanon, anxiety, kids, ParentingLeave a Comment

Recently, my daughter developed an anxiety-induced vomiting routine. She was waking up every morning and throwing up first thing. This happened every day for a few weeks and as it went on and on and on, I became more and more worried and increasingly angry, my go-to emotion. My husband and I began a series…

Taking God out of the Box

By: A. Arcuri December 1, 2020January 8, 2021

Book Wisdom, Spiritual DevelopmentGod, scriptureLeave a Comment

Articulating my thoughts on God has been difficult for me for a long time, so I was relieved to learn that having a clear and sure understanding of God was never the goal of religion. In fact, religious teachings were meant to deconstruct our cozy notions of the Divine and remind us that there is…

Do You Need a Spiritual Friend?

By: A. Arcuri January 8, 2021April 2, 2021

Spiritual DevelopmentLeave a Comment

Although I have a circle of wonderful life-long friends, we generally don’t discuss our spirituality. And when we do discuss spirituality, we sometimes don’t see eye-to-eye or hold the topic in the same high esteem as others (me) do. Spirituality is a vulnerable subject, so it’s hard to let our guards down and reveal what…

Religion: What’s the Point?

By: A. Arcuri December 1, 2020January 8, 2021

Book Wisdom, Personal Development, Spiritual DevelopmentReligion, spiritualityLeave a Comment

I live in one of the least religious cities in America, Portland, Oregon. We are progressive freethinkers who are generally a “spiritual but not religious” people. Yet this religiously independent attitude, one that I am guilty of as well, keeps us spiritually stunted. Karen Armstrong, one of our great contemporary religious scholars, has convinced me…

6 Guidelines for Mindful Eating

By: A. Arcuri December 1, 2020April 5, 2021

Book Wisdom, Mindfulness, Spiritual Practicesmindful eating, Mindfulness, zen2 Comments

The holiday season in the US is a season of feasting. We simultaneously feel entitled to eat more cookies in December than we ate during the entire year while also feeling guilty for our overindulgence, which inevitably leads to the surge of gym memberships come January. This complex winter holiday pattern isn’t solely a cultural…

We’ve Lost our Faith! How Do We Reclaim Religion?

By: A. Arcuri October 21, 2020December 1, 2020

Book Wisdom, Spiritual DevelopmentGod, lost faith, meaning, non religiousLeave a Comment

According to the Pew Research center, 22% of Americans are non-religious. With the explosive growth of scientific understanding paired with the numerous betrayals of our religious leaders, we have lost our faith in the spiritual institutions that we used to trust. What’s alarming, is that we have abruptly dropped religion like a toxic friend. We…

5 Things that Anne of Green Gables Taught me About Being a Person

By: A. Arcuri October 10, 2020October 11, 2020

Book Wisdom, Personal DevelopmentLeave a Comment

After reading Anne of Green Gables to my ten-year old daughter, I continued on my own and have now found myself in the third book of the Anne series written by L.M Montgomery. I read these books as a teenager, and I am remembering again why they’re my favorite book series of all time. I…

Sadness and Grief: The Work of Fall Time and Why it’s Especially Important in 2020

By: A. Arcuri October 2, 2020December 1, 2020

Spiritual PracticesGrief, Seasons, ShamanismLeave a Comment

2020 according to my eighty five-year-old granddad is the “worst year I’ve ever had to live through.” That about sums it up for me as well. It’s been a downpour of challenges, and what I’ve noticed in myself, as we move into the fall time, is that all the grief and sadness about the tragedies…

My Ladies Night Needs More “Wild Woman”

By: A. Arcuri September 30, 2020November 16, 2020

Book Wisdom, Divine FeminineDivine Feminine, RetreatLeave a Comment

The conversations became louder and more intimate as the wine continued to flow into the third hour of our ladies retreat happy hour. We had spent the day bonding, hundreds of feet above the forest canopy, zip-lining at 25 mph from tree to tree. We hiked the dewy Washington woods, bathing in the smells of…