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...
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...
“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...
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...
It’s a day to celebrate, and to mourn. Maya died on April 6, 1992, twenty-six years ago. And on this day, my dear friend Patti Frame received my daughter’s liver, and her life began again. Others received the gift of sight, or a new heart, or a new kidney. And many...
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?” I readily admit that yes, it was hard – the striptease of writing...