Growing with gratitude for life's challenges
“Mom, why do we never spend time with your family? You have all these cousins I have never met. What’s up with that?” I cringe when the topic of my mother’s family comes up, never really quite certain how to explain. “None of them like me,” is the easy explanation, and in part, it’s true. […]
Read MoreMinutes after my first husband and I were settling into our honeymoon suite, I got a call from my father advising me that my oldest sister had gone from the wedding reception to emergency. “I think you better come,” he told me solemnly. So we packed up and headed back. I had known that my […]
Read More“My dreams have turned violent lately, lots of blood. What could that mean?” “What does blood represent to you?” “Well passion, life giving, but these dreams have a woman being decapitated, a baby being cut with scissors, and it always occurs in connection to my childhood home.” “Not life giving, then.” “I usually convert the […]
Read More“Are you guys brother and sister?” the question came from our soon-to-be five-year-old granddaughter. Dropped off by her mother for an overnight stay, we had a day of cousins and uncles and aunts, and of course, Grandma and Grandpa. I brushed off her comment with a: “No, we’re married”, but the innocent observation shook me. […]
Read MoreWrote a prescription for the perfect man: made him tall, strong, romantic, dependable, family oriented; told myself I was ready. Projected expectations onto the first likely candidate – single dad, three full-time kids – read desire in his brooding eyes, ignored the burden of his grief, the irrational speed at which we moved, the complications […]
Read MoreFrom the time I was preteen, I was obsessed with drawing the same cartoon over and over; the first illustration showed the shapely backside of a long-haired temptress, and the next frame revealed the fact that the things are not as they appear – a woman with a monstrously ugly face. It was a self-portrait, […]
Read MoreI’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson is a poignant, multi-faceted approach to many issues facing young people today; a coming of age story that examines both the female and male experience through the voices of twins, Jude and Noah. Not surprisingly, this novel has won many awards (click on link above for listing). […]
Read MoreA secret: I had to teach myself how to receive love. Born fifth of my mother’s six children, I was unexpected – an ill-advised accident, given the difficulties my mother had in previous child births. Conceived during a tumultuous time – after the father of her first children abandoned her, beaten and penniless – I […]
Read MoreI dream that Ric has removed our dining table. There has been no discussion, no explanation, just an empty space to mark his actions. Even in my dreams, I am asking questions: Is he having it repaired, or replacing it? Surely, not replacing, I think, as the table was his mother’s. I conclude that all […]
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Just returned from the hospital, having left my husband in the Cardiac Surgery Recovery Unit. He was not transferred to the unit until after 9:00 pm, so while I was able to see and touch him, he was not yet conscious. It is hard to pinpoint the gamut of emotions that have coursed through me […]
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One Woman's Quest II 