Notes on validation, adolescence, and the work of becoming for everyone

October 1, 2025 – These are extraordinary times, unprecedented in American history and unprecedented in the history of our species. These are hard times, and the list of hard things is long, from gun violence in schools to fascist movements at home and abroad to climate crisis. Romantic relationships, how to fit in, grades, navigating parental disapproval, and their plans for the future are hard things for adolescents now, and they were hard 20 years ago, 50 years ago, and ev

September 3, 2025 – Adolescence is a threshold time—a season of becoming when the question Who am I? moves to the center of life. It is both exhilarating and disorienting, a period where experimentation, conflict, and discovery intersect. Identity is not simply discovered during these years but actively constructed, through trial and error, rebellion and belonging, imitation and invention. It is also during adolescence that young people first come face-to-face with not only t

August 20, 2025 – I’ve said before in more than a few places how important the process and practice of validation is, how effective it is for myriad necessary ways of being for health, secure attachment, emotional safety, emotion regulation, and building trust between people, and building trust with our inner parts. I have been a loud proponent of its cure-all ability. However, the list of guiding principles continues to grow as life situations and interactions occur in which

August 6, 2025 - In Teenager: The Prehistory of Youth Culture, 1875 - 1945, author and historian Jon Savage thoroughly explores the early concepts of the teenager, and then, after 465 pages, he leaves us with a cliffhanger. “The postwar spread of American values would be spearheaded by the idea of the Teenager. This new type was the ultimate psychic match for the times: living in the now, pleasure-seeking, product-hungry, embodying the new global society where social inclusio

July 23, 2025 – I have about a dozen reasons why my business is called The Shiftless Wanderer. Over and over, life teaches me that while we can—and should—set intentions and make plans, we must also hold them lightly. Because life turns on a dime. The best laid schemes of mice and men go aft astray, writes Robert Burns. A broken leg. An unplanned pregnancy. A cancer diagnosis. A chance encounter that leads to love—or to loss. One of the hardest lessons many of us must learn i

July 9, 2025 - Below is a letter that came across my desk several months ago as my sister was cleaning out files. I loved it so much, I reached out to Gretchen Schmelzer to ask permission to share this with you. She’s a busy person and did not respond. But I did end up on her email list and lo, and behold, she sent this out a few weeks ago. Dr. Schmelzer indicated that the blog has been published and shared literally millions of times since she first posted it, including on o

.June 25, 2025 - My granddaughter is the apple of her father’s eye. Throughout her childhood, they were extraordinarily close—watching movies together, listening to music, going on road trips. They were inseparable. Then one day, I began receiving messages from my son, expressing the quiet heartbreak of change: his little princess didn’t want to hang out with him anymore. He understood, of course—his mother is an adolescent psychotherapist—but that didn’t make it easier. Grad

After many months of reflection, experimentation, and collaboration, we’re thrilled to unveil a new logo and visual style for The Shiftless Wanderer. This brand update represents a milestone in our journey. A deepening. A re-alignment with who we are, what we stand for, and where we’re headed. Why the change? From the beginning, The Shiftless Wanderer has been rooted in a paradoxical truth: that wandering—the kind of deep, meaningful, often non-linear exploration we’re told t

May 14, 2025 —Let’s begin with three stories. #1 - The poem began I am in hell, written when I was 13 years old. I had just discovered that my larger-than-life father who was, in my eyes, the arbiter of all things moral and pure, was sleeping with a woman out of wedlock. While I wasn’t devoutly Christian, I was devastated to discover that my father could be immoral, that he was just a human being. #2 - On my 16th birthday, my grandmother gave me a beautiful hardbound copy of