Once upon a time I tried to die. But it wasn’t my time. Too much was unlived, untapped, unknown. So much not yet done, if it had even begun, so busy had I been stuffing and hiding and numbing so as not to feel the ever present sense of far… [Continue Reading]

The paring knife of life keeps peeling. In restlessness, in exasperation, on the edge of falling, I keep coming to: What is essential here? It is a question both clean and powerful. It moves around the immovable, leaving bullshit in its wake. Sitting in that question is sitting in kindness…. [Continue Reading]

A facebook friend’s status line said: “Write 500 words on what you are at your most happy, prosperous and healthy. Amazing fun. Do it now.” I do so love receiving simple direction. Here goes! At my most happy I am calm in my heart and belly even when my mind… [Continue Reading]

Somewhere between the if-you-don’t-have-anything-good-to-say-don’t-say-anything-at-all camp and the it’s-still-freaking-winter-and-I’m-climbing-the-walls camp, is a place of OK-ness. You know, OK: you aren’t jumping for joy euphorically, but neither are you throwing in the towel and running the Sylvia Plath bath. And today, I must say, OK sounds pretty darned good. To that end… [Continue Reading]

In longing you close your eyes, but in wonder you open them… -Myra Shapiro I started writing—really writing, like my life depended on it—when I was 11 and went off to boarding school for the first time to a country a 10-hour drive plus a 5-hour flight from where my… [Continue Reading]

Sometimes I feel alone in the world. Like lately. To borrow Joni Mitchell’s words: “It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees, they’re putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace — I wish I had a river I could skate away on.” I just went to the… [Continue Reading]

Happy freedom day. I’m on my way to North Carolina to visit my sister and her 3 kids with my mom… should be interesting, to say the least, the faces from which I will see myself reflected back to me. I’m looking forward to seeing my 2 nephews and my… [Continue Reading]

There’s a house I love in my neighborhood. Whenever I can, I walk by way of this house. It is a luscious canyon-orange, Victorian with a big porch, upon which a green rocker sits waiting oh-so-patiently. I have never, to this day, seen anyone actually sitting and rocking in that… [Continue Reading]