Each morning, for the past five weeks, I get my three daughters up at 7am for their swim lessons. Bleary eyed they change into their swimsuits, grab a change of clothes, and eat a protein bar on the thirty-minute drive to the pool where they take lessons. All week they look forward to “Friday Fun […]
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Where I Am Today
I can feel the tears And this time I’m trying really hard to stay near You But I can feel the water behind my eyes Sometimes making it hard for me to see You. I can feel the waves of doubt Hitting me like bullets in a windstorm And I’m squinting my eyes Trying […]
Straining for the Light
For a long time the threat of a new year brought with it an onslaught of more darkness, more enervating melancholy, more long, gray days ahead to suffer through. It was nothing to celebrate. At the end of one of those especially difficult years I met Alece Ronzino online. She too had experienced a year (or more!) like […]
When Your Birth is the Slow Kind
I have a book that I’ve been writing for a thousand years. (Are you really a thousand years old, you ask? Is that unnecessary hyperbole?) Oh, hush. I am. I must be, because I am quite sure that this book has taken me that long. A thousand years, yesterday. That makes me a thousand and a day, today. […]
Emmanuel and Showing Up
The first few days of Advent, I felt irrationally angry. I tried to call it irritable or easily annoyed, but when I sat down to dig through it all what I found was anger. Advent is an invitation to the waiting, and frankly, I would like to decline. No thanks. Can’t come. Wish I could […]
The Power of Enduring
It’s Thanksgiving. I’ve been cycling through this mixed state of hypomania and depression all Fall. Relief came at the beginning of the month, like a release on a pressure valve, giving my mind and lungs the room I needed to breathe and just . . . be again. The cycling has slowed but has not […]
Just Like Riding a Bike
Four years ago a teen-aged boy pointed a gun at me while demanding I give him my money. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in Oakland, California. I was standing at the flagpole in front of the elementary school where I’d recently been assigned to teach. My husband Chris and I had ridden our bikes […]
Free to Be Me
It’s been awhile since I’ve experienced it: vulnerability hangover. It’s a term Brene Brown coined for that feeling of, “Did I just share too much? Is she going to think I’m way too much of a mess?” It’s enough to make you throw up a little. But I felt that vulnerability hangover the other morning. […]
Why Does Twitter Terrify Me?
Why does using my words terrify me so much? Let’s start out with a confession: Twitter terrifies me. I got my handle a few years ago. The day my friend Melissa explained to me how she manages her twitter account, makes lists, what she posts, and what a hashtag is, my heart thudded in my […]
It All Started When I Owned my Doubt
“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.” ~Brene Brown The questions started out small. They bugged me, but they weren’t scary. Nothing that couldn’t be solved by switching churches or rethinking the way I voted. My undoing began when the deep questions erupted. […]
I Didn’t Want to Start a Conversation About Desire
I think I’m becoming an expert in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Not because I study them, but because I live them. They seem to follow me and buzz, like a fly, around my ear. Unwanted, with no sense or reasoning, but at a tempo that hums so softly it pulls my attention away from all […]
That Wild Road
We were standing together on the southern slope when she showed me where the roof came clean off of her neighbor’s barn. Her own barn had lost just a bit of trim, she said. Though it did clock her mother-in-law on the shoulder as they came out to check on the animals. Still. They were blessed. I had […]
Free Fall
May 27, 2009. This is the day I learn I have cancer. Weird. I never thought I’d hear those words. I am still drowsy from anesthesia. The doctor just comes in, and she says, “Well, we thought it was hemorrhoids, but it’s not. It’s a tumor. It’s cancer.” Just like that. Now I am […]
Learning to Float
I don’t like going out in boats. There is something about a “recreational” structure floating out in the vast expanse of dark deep water where at any moment a storm could strike, sending me to an untimely death, which makes the idea of a relaxing boat ride nonexistent in my world. The bright orange vest […]
Wedged
I never thought I’d still be breathing at 45, painted skulls on tiny coffins to distract my broken mind. But now I’ve tasted worth and felt confidence creeping up my spine. I know you had a lot of problems, always told me you were trying. And I have felt deep purple blood flow from your […]