“Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve.” –Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman What is your intention for 2024? I like to choose a word for the year ahead that sums up my intention. This year my word is “Peace.” The challenge I've set for myself is to let inner peace...
These days, I watch the world go by from a different window. I mean that literally as well as figuratively. I’ve moved to the west side of Rossmoor, perched on a hillside with a view of Mt. Diablo, a grassy common space dotted with fruit trees, and a giant beech tree...
I only wish it was that simple. It would be great to slap a “gone fishing” sign on my front door and hightail it to SFO. But preparing to live and write in Basel Switzerland for six weeks is like training to run a marathon. So much to do. My stress is stressing me...
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,...
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...
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...