As we greet 2016, I'm celebrating a clean slate - emotionally, physically, financially, and spiritually. The past year was a parade (some might say a circus!) of "let goes" which brought an avalanche of good into my life. If only it was easy. But part of the value of...
Nancy Mills loves to connect and empower women. A dynamo with seemingly boundless energy, she recently called me before breakfast to be sure that the links I'd submitted for the 2016 Spirited Woman Directory were working properly. Nancy is both a visionary and a...
Some people have lucky numbers. Others, unlucky ones. I have a sacred number: 11:11 in the morning, the hour and minute of my daughter Maya's birth. When 11:11 popped up on my iPhone screen this morning, I thought, "Aha, beloved girl. There you are, waking me up...
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...
Since the dawn of time people have gathered for births, weddings, coming of age ceremonies, and deaths - to eat, drink, dance, mourn and celebrate. In our culture, retirement from a 9 to 5 job is a milestone that is both a major goodbye and a new beginning. I retired...
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...
In her very fine visual memoir, painter LeeAnn Brook weaves tales about creativity that go deep into her own process. Each image in the book has a story, and a history that links it to other images and to the artist's life and her previous work. The beauty of Brook's...
I began reading Late Rapturous 10 days before Christmas. Frank Gaspar's poems are complex, often somber elegies with just enough wry humor to let the reader draw a startled breath. Reading Gaspar is like wandering in a forest of words, where images are arranged like...
Faced with conflicting feedback, what's a writer to do? My answer is simple but not easy: Trust your instincts and be willing to revise your work. My former agent Laurie Harper consults with authors to help them shape their books and their careers. She recently asked...
Today, sitting outside at a cafe on Grand Avenue, I met a two-month old baby, Stella, her mother, and her grandmother. We chatted under the shade of a tree, while Stella followed her grandmother's words with her blue gray eyes, alert to every syllable. I couldn't...