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 […]

Good thing we didn’t give up!

February 4, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

Title is borrowed from a blog post entitled Disappointment and Then. It has me thinking. How many times in my life have I almost talked myself out of progress? Teaching is the example that stands out the most. I wanted to be a teacher ever since I lined up dolls for lessons as a child, […]

Decisive Action

January 12, 2020.Reading time 3 minutes.

Life presents challenges and I stumble to keep up. Chronic illness continues to form the backdrop of my life, so it becomes the baseline for any actions I take. Ric and I made a commitment to our health and our community this year, and that means that I have been more physically active than usual. […]

Choosing Life

December 6, 2018.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Buying time –resetting the dial,deviating from the norm… a healing place, here we go again,600 miles from home,recharging batteries… this might have beenan un-lived life. (My challenge this week is to make poetry from previous post titles. For this one, I chose to select only the titles that related to our recent journey.)

Resetting the Dial

November 24, 2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

At fifty-nine, I was certain that I knew myself – accomplished, defined and established – but illness changed the framework from which my remaining time would unfold. I became a non-entity in my former career, and a ghost to friends. My children mourned the loss of their vibrant mother and settled into lowered expectations. […]

Pain Fog

May 19, 2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

The hockey game blares from the front of the bus with a confidence I am not feeling. Yesterday, I had two cracked and very infected teeth extracted, and my jaw is in intense pain. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” the dentist told me. Apparently, I had clenched so hard that I split my back […]

Sun Certainty

Clouds bundleshift and foldcotton strata Trees huddleconfidence incommunity Emotions stackone on anotherco-mingling hues Beneath layersan eternal glowsun certainty. (First published April 2021. Image my own)

Peachy Keen

Not Everything Is Defined by Age

As a child, I knew no limits, setting out on adventures with never a fear for how I’d find my way back home. Now, nestled in my home, I limit myself to certainties, fearful of risks. Some days, I wonder about that child, and how it would feel to wander freely, and it makes me […]