creative process
The Weight of Knowing
My grandma came home today. One year, three months, and six days after I sat by her side as she took her last breath, she arrived at my door by courier, packaged in a shoe-sized box neatly and respectfully wrapped in brown kraft-paper. Four hundred sixty-three days since she died under a full moon early…
Read MoreGrief and Gratitude
In this time of Thanksgiving, I’m attempting to answer the question, “Can I be grateful for my grief?” in the wake of my beloved grandma’s recent death. She was more of a mother to me than a grandmother. She was nearly ninety-four and had lived what everyone calls “a good long life”. Yes, that’s true.…
Read MoreReminders of Impermanence
“I’m in an ambulance on my way to the hospital,” my husband told me as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “Wait. You’re what?” was all I could think of to say. It was almost 2:00am as I lay in a single bed in the guest room at my dad’s house in Florida,…
Read MoreA Space for Grace to Enter
As originally published for The Convenings on 6/16/18 The stillness of a recent early summer morning found me in the garden. As I tended and planted and otherwise lost myself in creation, I heard rustling behind me and turned to find my dog Ritter belly up, rolling around in my iris garden. “No!” I…
Read MorePracticing for Death
It’s been 10 days since I arrived in Germany to companion my friend as she receives treatment for metastatic breast cancer. Originally, we were to fly her home to Florida this Sunday — three days from now. As it is, the doctor requested that she stay for another round of hyperthermia and chemo before she…
Read MoreCreative Engagement
I am departing today for Germany, taking my heart across the ocean in service of a dear friend receiving treatment for metastatic breast cancer. As I sit at the airport on this overcast morning looking out on the tarmac, at people coming and going, I’m feeling a strange combination of excitement and sobriety for the…
Read MoreStories
Last night, a dear friend and I went to see Jonatha Brooke’s My Mother Has 4 Noses at The Jungle Theater. This one-woman musical play is a masterpiece, an exploration of devotion and loss, loyalty and heartbreak, and the remarkable things we do for love. Words cannot describe how wrapped up in it I became…
Read MoreWitnessing
I’m in a place in winter where I ride the tension between what is and what will be. It’s a fine line. My body reacts by getting antsy to be outside free of layers to shelter against the cold, to be not only generating warmth but surrounded by it. As it is, I feel within…
Read MoreThe Return
I have been waiting for this day. After a walk in the dark around the neighborhood with my husband and pup, after a breakfast of sweet potatoes, kale and scrambled eggs, after filling the bird feeder at the window, I feel the words coming. Percolating in a way they haven’t for a while. Not because…
Read MoreAnswering the Call
I am in LOVE with the new year and all of its raw possibility! What fun is there to be had? What’s around the next bend? What adventures can I co-create? In my last post, I wrote about my word of the year, EXPANSIVE, and how it was already beginning to show up. It seems my experience of EXPANSIVE is…
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