Jill Lepore wrote a book about a woman we know hardly anything about. A thick book, a love letter, a weighty tome about a woman of whom the slimmest of evidence exists—letters, a single hand-stitched notebook, ghostly things that others said of her. She was a poor woman from Boston right before and after the […]
Community
Girls Can Do All the Things
Juliette Gordon Low founded the girl scouts because she had been hanging out with the Boy Scouts founder and thought, well, why the heck weren’t girls encouraged to go hike in the woods, build a fire, swim? She liked all of that stuff. When people think about women who have made a major impact […]
Women Have a History
“History is no longer just a chronicle of kings and statesmen, of people who wielded power, but of ordinary women and men engaged in manifold tasks. Women’s history is an assertion that women have a history.” ~Aparna Basu, Professor of History at the University of Delhi, India And what a history it is! From warriors, like Boudica, Zenobia, Lyudmila […]
Blue Skies
Winter in Denver is much better than winter in Cincinnati. You can argue with me all you want, but guess what? Three hundred days of sunshine a year means you’ll feel that golden warmth shining on your face more often than not. Even in those dark cold days between the Super bowl and March […]
Keeping Up Appearances
When my husband and I sold our first home, I was excited. I had enough HGTV shows in me to be able to declutter and depersonalize my house, all while still making it feel warm and inviting. Our realtor was so impressed she took pictures to show future clients. The next time we put a […]
Recycled
“White woman, why water full of sorrow flow from face?” The young woman’s Chenglish needed no translation and neither did my tears as she poured rosewater into a wooden bucket to soak my feet. She was wearing a Louis Vuitton jacket, sequined sweater and rice hat: a fashion style as common in Kunming, China as […]
Lessons from My Best Friend Leaving
Today my best friend left. She loaded her things into her SUV and began a 25-hour journey away to join her soon-to-be husband in Colorado. We’ve been close friends for about three years, feeling like the only grown single women in our small town. Together we’ve weathered the storms of shared tears and laughter about […]
Breakaway Rising
I was fiercely fighting in forcing myself to stay. To be the “bigger person” and rise to the occasion. But after nine months, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I had to break free. And I was terrified it would be anything but a clean break. Tears flowed by the buckets that weekend, all because […]
Leaving Home and the Geographies of our Days
Every time we leave, I always hope for a clean break, where you wince but then rip off the band-aid and you’re okay. Where the pain is quick but then fades, and soon, you’re just left with a scab. Or I hope that if the pain does remain, it’s still beautiful in its own right, […]
Clean Breaks
“He’s lucky, it was a clean break.” People say this sometimes when a leg or arm or ankle is broken. I teach high school and I am always surprised at how often my students end up injured, often seriously. “It was good that the break was clean.” How can a break be good? I’ve never […]
Dreaming Big
I do my best dreaming in the shower. Not fairies and Ryan Gosling kind of dreaming, but world-changing and life-exploding dreaming. I started dreaming those kinds of dreams about two years ago, dreams that keep building on one another and making me ask, “Really, God, REALLY?” {Sitting here now I can almost hear Him […]
Welcome to The Mudroom
Back in the day, I used to write for Cornerstone magazine. The staff was a community inside of a community: artists, proofreaders, marketing, writers, mailroom. It was frantic and insane and glorious. I miss that sense of secrecy, the privilege of beholding a work of art before anyone else does, the camaraderie of common deadlines and […]
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