by Mary B Safrit | Jul 20, 2022 | Singleness
Ask Marebs: How to persuade people I am genuinely happy with being single my whole life/how to know if ‘called’. The prospect of lifelong singleness evokes any number of feelings depending on any number of factors. Those feelings can vary minute-to-minute,...
by Mary B Safrit | Jul 13, 2022 | Relationships and Community
4 Ways To Stay Connected This Summer Summer can be a very fluid time. I don’t just mean because it’s stupid hot and we’re all sweating a whole lot. Especially this summer, it’s a time of year when people are in and out. These tricky schedules can shake up our...
by Mary B Safrit | Jun 29, 2022 | Mental Health
If you’re new to these parts, you should know that I love talking about calling and direction. What is a calling? According to the googs, it’s, “a strong urge toward a particular way of life or career; a vocation.” In the spiritual context, we would typically think of...
by Mary B Safrit | Jun 22, 2022 | Relationships and Community
It was a Wednesday afternoon when I noticed the unread email pop up. The subject line read “Notification of Potential COVID Exposure.” I clicked on the email and read that someone who was sitting near me at an event had tested positive. I don’t think I would have...
by Mary B Safrit | Jun 8, 2022 | Mental Health
I took exactly one creative writing class when I was in school. At the time, I was noodling in the world of music composition and songwriting. It seemed like a good idea to learn some things about writing words. That was how I wound up in Creative Writing my sophomore...
by Mary B Safrit | Jun 1, 2022 | Mental Health
We were beginning to realize that the trail we were following was not, in fact, a trail. It was a trail in the sense that there was a worn divet of dirt cutting through the brush and fallen leaves. Was it an official trail leading to some sort of summit? As I stepped...
by Mary B Safrit | May 25, 2022 | The Creative Life
A “calling” is not like a paperclip, which is a physical object you can see and quantify. It’s a construct, a series of letters wrapped around an idea. Given that it also tends to be spiritual in nature, it also comes with a certain amount of interpretation. When I...
by Mary B Safrit | May 18, 2022 | Mental Health
Have you heard of touch deprivation? The term is fairly self-explanatory. It happens when we are deprived of human touch for a period of time. Generally, it is in the context of platonic touch. To varying degrees, human beings need touch. In some Western cultures,...
by Mary B Safrit | May 11, 2022 | Singleness
On a Friday, I sat at my computer, doing my last checks. Email, website updates, weekly to-dos. Was there anything I was forgetting? It was 5:15. Now that it is getting darker earlier, I try to wrap up in time for an evening walk beginning at 5:30. I opened my website...
by Mary B Safrit | May 4, 2022 | Relationships and Community
I sat on a chambray blanket in Central Park on Sunday. It wasn’t my blanket; I hadn’t brought one. The blanket belonged to the facilitator of our group discussion. Eight of us sat in a circle eating our various Asian-inspired bowls while our leader asked questions...
