Happy Year of the Black Water Rabbit! In Chinese astrology 2023 is known as a Black Water Rabbit year. The element of water, or Yin energy, is associated with the color black, thus the rabbit's color. This bunny with its softer, gentler energy could lead us in a new...
Like a cup of hot lemon, light in December is pale, almost watery. And there are hours less sun than at summer’s height. The days are grey and pitch black before dinner is even on the table. It can feel bleak. As we reach the apex of darkness at the Winter Solstice,...
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...
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...
I’ve been a mother for 50 years. Yet I rarely read or hear anything truly honest about motherhood. Motherhood itself, not the Hallmark version. The real day-to-day slog. The unending, unpaid, under appreciated work that women do to feed, clothe, nurture, bathe, change...
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...
These days, the willingness to be vulnerable, to come from the heart, which is the seat of courage, is much on my mind as we enter the Chinese Year of the Water Tiger. When I visualize a tiger I see a sleek animal with laser focus leaping after its prey. Adding the...
I wish I could love as dogs love, without judgement or demands, without expectations. Dogs love “unconditionally,” in self-help parlance. We’re dog sitting for a twelve-year-old Golden doodle named Abby while her owners are on vacation. She’s got reddish blond curly...
Maya’s blond pageboy gleamed in the early October light when she came bounding into our apartment. She was about to turn 19, at the beginning of her sophomore year in 1991 at Santa Barbara City College. She had come home for her birthday. She was on fire with her love...
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...