The "Jewel of the Sierra" – Lake Tahoe as it was before ecological disaster became our nightmare come true. When the Caldor Fire blew over Echo Ridge in late August, and roared into the Tahoe Basin, I cried, mourning the immense beauty going up in smoke. For many,...
Grief shows its face with fierce waves of emotion that sweep us away as well as gentle memories we can linger over. In our year of lockdown and loss, I’ve experienced all the faces of grief from the benevolent to the malign, from deep gratitude to profound rage. What...
“Intentions are the soul’s desires coming into physical manifestation.” –Wayne Dyer Every January, I like to reflect on the past twelve months and set intentions for the coming brand new ones, focusing on the qualities I want to manifest more than the things I want to...
“When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out and the tide of love rushes in.” Coined by Kristin Armstrong of the Happiness Project at UC Berkeley, this aphorism captures the power of appreciation. If you’ve ever kept a gratitude journal or...
“It’s like we’re in an endless car ride with a drunk at the wheel. No one knows when the pain will stop.” - Daphne de Marneffe, author and psychologist If your COVID days blur together, if you feel trapped in an endless Groundhog Day, if you suffer from an inability...
At the start of the Bay Area’s shelter in place order, I had a daily schedule. I met with my writing community on Slack every morning, put lots of literary Zoom events in my calendar, baked muffins and chocolate chip cookies, attended morning meditation with my Sangha...
It’s April 6 again, a day to celebrate and to mourn. My oldest daughter Maya died on this day twenty-eight years ago. As the Covid-19 pandemic rages around the globe, millions of us find our lives radically upended; we’re scared, and we’re grieving. For those of us...
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...
“Don’t worry about anything – or anyone,” my grandmother said, and thumped her cane emphatically, underlining her words. She was speaking from the “other side,” a world where I could not hear her directly, but a gifted psychic could translate her words to me. I don’t...
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...