Big Fish Blog

Navigating Doula Polarities

November 12th, 2009

Well… first, polarities. That paradoxical pairing of seemingly incompatible opposites, that, it turns out, are more often than not just two sides of the very same coin.

For all of us, the only universal polarity is life and death. We all were born. We all will die. Now, is it just me, or do you notice that, even though this is the ONLY thing we ALL have in common, it rarely, if ever, gets talked about! The death and/or dying part anyway, unless we’re talking about someone else’s funeral.
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ground balls…

October 30th, 2009

Ok, the World Series is upon us, and, as an old fan of the Yankees, having grown up with Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, the stuff that heroes and legends are made of, you might think that ‘ground balls’ references that particular fall classic.  Nope.  Ground balls, is to fly balls, I learned the other day, as slam dunk is to sinking a three-pointer at the buzzer, from the opposite end of the court.

Forget the sports metaphors.  One’s easy.  The other is hard.  What I learned about the beauty of ground balls occurred while playing outside with my nine-month old retriever puppy, who, in the seven months that we’ve been raising him, has not gotten the hang of retrieving, at all.  Until I threw him a ground ball.  And then another.  And another…
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