psy·chot·ic leop·ard sīˈkädik/ˈlepərd/ noun · anything that is funky, interesting, beautiful, niche, useful, and grabs one's attention

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News — Childhood

DEEPENING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS WITH WOMEN & THEIR FATHERS AND SONS: STEP BY STEP

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

DEEPENING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS WITH WOMEN & THEIR FATHERS AND SONS:  STEP BY STEP

  When I was little, every Sunday morning started by walking with my dad “to get the paper.”  Instead of The New York Times being delivered to our house, he liked to go down to the local drugstore for it, and I would accompany him.  As the eldest child, my sister still a toddler and at home with my mom, I basked in his full attention.   The neighborhood I lived in was called Indian Village, and all of the streets were named after Native American tribes.  Probably less for tradition and more as a deterrent for cars, almost every...

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The Evolution of a Gym Rat:  Instagram Envy, and How I Made Fitness A Top Priority

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

The Evolution of a Gym Rat:  Instagram Envy, and How I Made Fitness A Top Priority

  Under the guise of business, I began dipping into the waters of Instagram for the past year, and observed that anyone with posts related to exercise, workouts or hard bodies, seems to get LOADS of likes.  Why do people pay so much attention to everyone else’s progress?  Is it really motivating to see how far others have succeeded? In elementary school, I was a gymnast. My best friend used to tease me because I wore sweatpants to school four days a week, and owned one pair of patchwork dungarees with a parrot on back pocket (boy, do I wish...

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Precious and Valuable: Finding Personal Significance in Family Possessions

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

Precious and Valuable:  Finding Personal Significance in Family Possessions

My mother is the kind of person who saves everything, including the unimportant, and over the decades, it’s taken over her and my father’s house. Within weeks of my sisters and I going off to college, our bedrooms were transformed into what appeared to be retail storage space for her clothing, as round chrome store-bought racks became centerpieces we had to squeeze around whenever we came home for a visit, the cold metal sagging under dozens of cheap dresses and floral pant sets. I don’t even remember her wearing most of them. To assuage everyone’s complaints and because she actually...

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Saying Goodbye to My Fancy Aunt Ruth

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

Saying Goodbye to My Fancy Aunt Ruth

One of my favorite relatives, my dad’s older sister, Ruth, was supposed to turn 80 this Friday, and for weeks, a big birthday party was being planned for her this coming weekend.  But yesterday morning, I learned that she had died the night before, and everything has been completely upended. It’s so strange to lose someone you have known your entire life, someone who in a fairly small family, has always been a fixture.  She lived about four hours away, but often traveled through the area, as she and her long-time boyfriend and partner had an antiques business together, and...

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Best Friendship and the Teen Girl: Conflict and Courage

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

Best Friendship and the Teen Girl:  Conflict and Courage

Like everything unknown and in the future, I had romantic visions of parenthood.  Having traveled all over the world, experienced all sorts of people, culture, and heartbreak by the time I was 22, I envisioned the awesomeness of sharing my life experiences with my daughter and son.  I had really lived my life, gathered wisdom beyond my years, and was ready to be a parent.  I had so much to share with these future children of mine, and would be better than most at making sure they were happy, and was sure I could somehow prevent them from experiencing some of the more...

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