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've discovered that love trumps grief. Today is the anniversary of my daughter Maya's death 31 years ago. What sustains me in moments of grief is “love in the trenches,” the kind that demands fortitude and commitment – not the easy breezy romantic ideal. Just as the...
I was 43 when my daughter Maya, 19, was declared brain dead after massive head injuries caused by a fall from a horse she was riding bareback. The day before her accident, we learned that she had been accepted by UCLA in its theater arts program. They would provide a...
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...
Mass killings are happening at such an alarming rate that most of us can’t even remember when – or why – the most recent killing spree filled our Twitter feeds or our TV screens. Grieving faces, flowers and candles left on street corners, and empty rhetoric about...
On this day 46 years ago I gave birth to a baby girl. We named her Maya. She arrived three weeks early so she was was tiny, just 5 lbs. 4 oz. For the rest of her life, Maya was in a hurry. Friends called her "Barbie" because of her white-blonde hair. She had dark...
Today is Maya’s 43rd birthday. I was 43 years old when Maya died, and she was 19. So this year, a mysterious circle is forming. There are so many “I wonders” inside the circle of synchronicity, so many “What ifs?” What if Maya had lived to be middle aged? Who would...
Being a mother who outlives her child is mind blowing. It’s a lot of other things too, of course. But on this day, the 23rd anniversary of Maya’s death, it’s the mind-bending aspect that grabs me. Maya’s beautiful face, her fierce brown eyes that snapped with wit and...
When words wash over you like waves at the beach, make you laugh out loud, or gasp in astonishment, or choke back tears, you know you are hearing a good poem. That's the beauty of poetry - it's music to your ears and to your heart. I write poems in order to hear the...
When the news of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death by heroin overdose broke, social networks were abuzz. People were understandably shocked, upset, and sad. Many were livid. I saw dozens of comments castigating Hoffman for leaving his family because of his...