War – Not War

July 7, 2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Somedays, words elude me. I want to say the war continues in Ukraine, but ‘war’ is not the right word. It suggests two-sided, as in a dispute that has escalated and come to blows. What happened in Ukraine is not that. It is an act of terrorism and greed at its most heinous. Ric and […]

Plus Five

May 20, 2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Arrogant of me to ask you to stop and read while I have been so absent, yet I have much to share. How did this broken woman, debilitated by disease, find herself deeply entrenched in the humanitarian side of war? I ask myself this question daily. It is a lesson for all us, I believe. […]

Don’t Take It Personally

February 9, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

Spurred on by my mother, I left home at the age of seventeen. It was the right thing for all involved, but when my parents replaced me with two cats, I couldn’t help but feel slighted: I’m deadly allergic to cats. When my mother-in-law spiked a meal with milk, hoping to prove that food allergies […]

Rachel Sunshine

September 13, 2020.Reading time 5 minutes.

“Tell me a favourite memory from your travels,” my golden-haired nurse asked me as she scoured my bruised arms for an accessible vein. I’d blown another IV and options were limited. Rachel Sunshine I called her, this wisp of a young woman who, at first hospital-glazed glance, glowed a with a yellow aura. So I […]

Every Step a Miracle

June 27, 2019.Reading time 3 minutes.

Angel of Death. The name had started to stick. As a volunteer, working with the dying, my job was to help patients relax, ease some of their stress. “She needs you more than me,” on old Irish doctor said as we both arrived at a patient’s home simultaneously. “I can give her medication for the […]