Life after neurodiverse love is like being in the eye of the hurricane. My life is whirling at warp speed but I'm standing at the still center. If you know the feeling, then you’ll recognize the moment where I find myself now. I'm on the threshold of a new life after...
My new book takes a hard look at love. If your partner is neurodivergent, you have special challenges to overcome. My new memoir, forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press in November, is an unflinching exploration of love on the autism spectrum. When I began writing my book...
On April 1, my daughter Maya went skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains. She was 19, home on spring break from community college. She went to a resort outside of Truckee with her friends for a day of fun. It was 1992. When she arrived home early that evening, I had...
I only wish it was that simple. It would be great to slap a “gone fishing” sign on my front door and hightail it to SFO. But preparing to live and write in Basel Switzerland for six weeks is like training to run a marathon. So much to do. My stress is stressing me...
What if your Valentine is Autistic? Love is funny. I mean funny weird not funny “ha-ha.” I’ve been married for three years, but it feels like forever. That’s partly because of the way Covid lockdown warped our sense of time. But mostly it’s because my husband is on...
Readers of my memoir, Swimming with Maya, often approach and say something like, “After reading your story, I feel as if I know you as an intimate friend. Wasn’t it hard to be so open about your life?” Now, I find myself tested again as I put my marriage under the...
What I know is that love overcomes grief. It will be 30 years since my daughter Maya was declared brain dead on April 6, 1992. She was only 19 then. This is the year she would have turned 50. How mind blowing is that? What keeps me going is “love in the trenches,” the...
Facebook recently reminded me that my newly minted husband and I have been “friends” for seven years. It made me laugh. I think of him as my best friend – yet you couldn’t find two more opposite personalities. How on earth did this happen? No technology glitch or...
“Okay, then, 2018.” Those are the words Alex Poulsen and I had engraved on our wedding bands, now stashed in a dresser drawer awaiting our marriage. Alex bought the rings on the Friday before Earth Day, and in backwards fashion proposed on April 22. When 2018 dawned,...