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S. L. Morrison

Writer, editor, storyteller

I write on topics and ideas that help you live your best life.

Write A Catalyst •

Manifesting a Clutter-free Environment

Moving beyond visualization and affirmationNumerous research studies indicate that clutter impacts mental health and productivity (see a reference list below). While we have all heard the adage that brilliant people are often messy (Einstein is the poster child example), research suggests that most of us do not function well surrounded by clutter at home or at the office.Why does this matter?Clutter and lack of organization can indicate depression, anxiety, or forms of ADHD or OCD in the perpetr...
Write A Catalyst •

Money and Shame

Getting control of your finances is about more than frugality. As a divorced single mother, I lived through bankruptcy and a house foreclosure. At 50, I liquidated everything and moved to the West Coast for graduate school with my dog, a few boxes of clothes and photographs, and a leased car. But until recently, I had not confronted the truth of what led to such financial disaster. In a word, it was shame.This is why I hate financial pundits like Suzie Orman. She either doesn't understand why peop...
Write A Catalyst •

The Hidden Job Market

Best Things I Have Learned from Career Coaches....Resume· Put the title you are searching for at the top of the resume· Start with a summary of who you are and what you do· Follow the summary with a Core Competencies section (keywords that you can tweak based on the job)· Stick to focusing on the last ten years of your work history· Bullet points are your friend· Use numbers to show quantitative data on your achievements (percentages are another way of explaining how you achieved a goal). For exampl...
Write A Catalyst •

The American Epidemic of Loneliness

A Harvard study sounds the alarm that Loneliness is a complex problem that is a growing primary health concern in America.Are you lonely? If you are, you are not alone in feeling that way. The question is: what do you do about it?According to a research study by the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, based on a nationally representative survey of adults, at least 21% of Americans feel lonely. Loneliness is not necessarily about social isolation, as many peo...
Write A Catalyst •

When Talking is Pointless

In a previous post, I wrote about the silences that happen in a family, how destructive those silences can be, and how caring communication is the answer. You can find it here: https://medium.com/p/50a9feffe662.However, I’ve been thinking more about relationship conflict, and perhaps that was too simplistic. There are exceptions.What if you are dealing with a person who you suspect has a personality disorder? What then? According to Dr. Ramaqni Durvasula, a clinical psychologist who specializes...
Write A Catalyst •

Family Silence: Five Reasons We Keep Silent and 5 Ways to Overcome It

Since the holidays, I’ve been thinking a lot about the silences that take place in a family. I suspect most families harbor secrets and silences, both large and small, mine included.Last week, I heard a chilling story on NPR about Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize winner for fiction. When her daughter told her that her husband, the girl’s stepfather, had been sexually abusing her for years, Alice chose her husband, who confessed to his pedophilia, over her daughter. Despite learning about the crime a...
ILLUMINATION •

Taking Care of a Dying Parent and the Regret that Follows Afterwards

In May 2023, my mother passed after several years of living with cancer. I hope to share my regrets here so that you might learn from my mistakes or, at the very least, manage your own regrets.In January 2022, my younger brother passed suddenly at the age of 53. My mother owned a two-family home in New Orleans. He lived in the back unit. We had an unspoken understanding among us siblings that he would be primarily in charge of our mother as her health declined. She was 81 years old then, with te...
Write A Catalyst •

You are more than your mental illness.

It is possible to have severe mental illness and be a strong, loving, and capable person.If you have been recently diagnosed with psychosis, don’t despair. It is unquestionably a long, hard road, and it's not fair. Even so, it is possible to lead a full and spectacular life. Let me tell you the story of my friend.I’ve known my friend for close to 40 years. 40 years! When I first met her, I was responding to an ad for a roommate in the local paper, The Village Voice. On first meeting her, she imm...
Write A Catalyst •

My dog has better primary care than I do

And I have private insurance….When I say that my dog has better healthcare than I do, I’m not joking. How sad is that? I want to know why. (And no, I am not getting any money for this post.)We belong to the Banfield Pet Hospital network. It works like this:· You pay a monthly fee. Basic subscription is $39,99 a month.· Subscribers get reduced fees on bloodwork and medication.· You get a free annual check-up and free sick care visits (not including bloodwork/tests).· Banfields are a network, so i...
Medium •

Let It Go

You can’t control others, only yourselfMy two little nieces LOVED Frozen. At the top of their lungs, they would sing, “Let it go, let it go!” It struck me as a strangely sophisticated, heart wrenching sentiment to come out of a toddler’s mouth, but Disney had clearly tapped into a universal little girl or boy desire. Even little kids feel the tug of wanting the approval of others, while still wanting to be true to themselves. Even little children yearn to be free to be who they are.In conversati...
Medium •

My Vulnerability is None of Your Damn Business

While authenticity matters, you shouldn’t have to share everything to get hired. Certain details of my personal life and past, including the trials and sorrows that have helped shape me, are none of a hiring manager’s damn business. Yours shouldn’t be either.Brené Brown’s TED Talk from 2011, The Power of Vulnerability, has 22 million views on YouTube and is one of the top five most-watched TED Talks of all time. It made her a household name. It rocketed her to fame as an academic author/researcher...
Medium •

I Politely Quit My Job, Twice, and Did It Without Burning All My Bridges

Here’s what I think I did right….Quitting a job can be one of two things: foolish or brave. There’s little grey area. I just read an excellent Medium article by Ellen “Jelly” McRae about her experience quitting a job. She thought she had done it reasonably and fairly and that there would be no hard feelings, but found she was wrong about that. She ends the piece with a warning that you should be sure you want to quit because there is no going back. It is the end of something.While this is good a...
Medium •

Are we a healthier generation than our parents?

The answer is complicated….As I have been approaching senior citizen status, I began thinking about death in America now as compared to 30 years ago. 30 years ago, in my family at least, heart attacks and respiratory illnesses were the leading cause of death over the age of 50. It seemed like most of my family members didn’t live long enough to get cancer, but if they did, it was related to smoking. I’ve worked in medical education for years. I know how hard medicine is working to find ways to i...
Medium •

Why Servant Leadership matters more than ever in medicine

It’s more than some touchy-feely nonsense. In 2022, for my dissertation, I studied leadership traits in medical students attending medical school in Washington and Oregon. Specifically, I wanted to find out if medical humanities courses impacted their servant leadership traits. Medical humanities courses are a wide variety of elective courses designed to encourage empathy and greater attention to the subtle art of understanding one’s patients on a deeper level by understanding the human experience...
Medium •

Turning love into public art

In 2022, my brother, neo-classical sculptor Thomas R. Morrison, known as “Randy” by long-time friends and family, died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 53-years-old. I don’t know who started the idea that we should memorialize him by taking his last mold and creating a bronze sculpture from it. It was probably his best friend, Dave. It was an idea that took off right away. My brother Steve and I were onboard immediately, as was a core group of his closest...
Medium •

You are not your resume

After three career coaches, I’ve learned a few surprising things. If you have been listening to the news at all, you are probably aware that the bull market in employment is over. If you are like me, you may be kicking yourself for not changing jobs sooner, when the job market was stronger. I spent thousands of dollars and many hours of online class time and coaching on how to position myself for a senior-level management position. I’m here to share some suprising, and some not-so suprising,...
Medium •

Ten lessons I learned from grieving…

On January 16th, 2022, my brother died of a heart attack in New Orleans in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. He was fifty-three. He got home, laid down on the sofa in the living room, and never got up. His girlfriend found him in the morning, looking as though he was asleep. He had been up all night at the Hermes den, working feverishly to complete the remaining unfinished 40 foot Greek and Roman sculptures for the Pygmalion Mardi Gras parade that was to roll down St. Charles Avenue in four wee...