Apr 16, 2024 | Thinking Aloud
With my vibrant blue headscarf covering my bald head, I joined a small group of nurses and assistants as we walked out of the Mary Dow Center of the Ellsworth Hospital. These dedicated hard-working women surrounded me in a circle as I rung a loud, joyful bell,...Read More
Jul 21, 2023 | Thinking Aloud
Do you try to live your life in the present? Or do you worry about the future and let the past take over the present? I wrote in my first book, Everything Special, Living Joy, about how we choose to look at life: the glass “half-empty” or “half-full.” As I sit in a...Read More
Nov 17, 2022 | Thinking Aloud
This short story didn’t make it into my memoir, so I’m sharing it here with you. I’m excited to tell you that my book will be released on July 18, 2023. The name is Framing a Life: Building the Place To Be Me. Updates will follow. No Easy Answer At...Read More
Aug 9, 2022 | Thinking Aloud
Part 1: I used to be an intense young woman. Sullen at losing my mother to cancer. Perplexed when my father left me in an orphanage. Bitter at police, politicians. An angry leftist. Almost enjoyed the anger, even though I didn’t relish being angry. It was such...Read More
Apr 26, 2022 | Thinking Aloud
I bless my mind for not exploding and crashing like a computer from all the data this world expects me to know and understand. I bless my skin as it ages, appreciating its creases and veins as they become the branches of a graceful Japanese Maple tree. I bless my ears...Read More
Mar 8, 2022 | Thinking Aloud
This letter was to be in my memoir, being published in 2023, but it had to be shelved. So I share it with you here. My memoir includes a few letters to my mother, who died when I was six years old. Dear Eva, dear mother, I’m sitting at the side of a dying man...Read More
Dec 19, 2021 | Thinking Aloud
During this 2021 holiday season, many lives have been disrupted or transformed because of Covid as well as recent overpowering weather. How have these past years affected you? I share with you a poem from my book, Everything Special, Living Joy, which, with humor and...Read More
Sep 5, 2021 | Thinking Aloud
In my childhood the most forbidden place for a young Jewish girl was on the dais in the synagogue where the Torah looms in august eminence, enclosed in its sacred box, waiting for the solemnity of the ritual when the Rabbi opens the doors of its home, gently places it...Read More
Jun 24, 2021 | Thinking Aloud
This is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir (more on that soon). It was one that did not get into the final manuscript which meant I wasn’t able to honor my friendship with Josie in the detail I would have liked. So, I share with you my remembrances of the life we...Read More
Feb 25, 2021 | Thinking Aloud
She runs like a greyhound, zooming into freedom in our enclosed yard. I wanted to run with her like I did as a teenager, free to release pent up angst and parental control. Now Bernice and I are the parental control. We cannot allow Ruby, our two-year-old black...Read More
Jan 23, 2021 | Thinking Aloud
This January 2021 has been one of upheaval and fear, and optimistically, renewal and healing. For much of my personal life, January was a month of traumatizing loss and transcendent celebration. My mother died January 27 at age 32, a day that shattered my cheerful,...Read More
Aug 18, 2020 | Thinking Aloud
As a child attending synagogue during the Jewish High Holidays, I’d yearly contemplate what to atone for; repenting my so-called transgressions, asking God for forgiveness so I could again be in its good graces. Looking back, those things weren’t overly serious, like...Read More
May 13, 2020 | Thinking Aloud
The Examined Life Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” A powerful statement. Now during this period of the Coronavirus, many of us have more time to examine our lives, as well as examine our relationships with others. During my many years as an...Read More
Apr 1, 2020 | Thinking Aloud
Dear Readers, I share with you a poetically written blog by a friend, Lynnsey Carroll, addressing the fears we are experiencing with the Coronavirus, and the varied choices we have in how we choose to respond. As you may know, I am one who believes in the future, in...Read More
Mar 4, 2020 | Thinking Aloud
At age eleven a cousin gave me my first diary, bright pink with a little girl’s face on the cover, and a lock to ensure my secrets would be kept safe. It didn’t seem like something that would change my life. But it did. I had a place to express my dreams, needs...Read More
Jan 23, 2020 | Thinking Aloud
Over this holiday season two friends died, both of heart attacks. No warning. The spouses were in shock. I was in shock. I was reminded how people react differently to illness and death, as my family did when my mother died when I was a small child, and when my father...Read More
Dec 18, 2019 | Thinking Aloud
An Adult Prayer from the Child Within: Take Back… God, Creator, Yahweh, Allah – take back Adam. Redesign him in the spirit of Eve so war would be only a card game. God – take back human sight for a while, so that we will miss the colors of...Read More
Nov 23, 2019 | Thinking Aloud
Animals play such an important part in many of our lives. When they are pets, we mourn them as a family member. They make us smile and laugh, like a baby free of inhibitions. We talk to them, and they listen without judgment like a trusted therapist. With family or...Read More
Nov 5, 2019 | Thinking Aloud
Do you sometimes feel like an octopus, with its tentacles stretching in different directions, not knowing what to do next? Your to-do list too long? You want to go back to sleep? I hope this poem adds a smile on your face, a laugh, and helps you breathe...Read More
Oct 14, 2019 | Thinking Aloud
I travel back into history when shopping at yard sales. Every yard sale has its own family story. There’s the young couple getting divorced, the aged woman whose husband recently died, the farmer whose business folded. I walk through so many lives at yard sales....Read More
Sep 18, 2019 | Thinking Aloud
A childhood friend once asked me, “Are you surviving or thriving?” I thought, what a disturbing question. Now I use that question as a meditation. Many years ago on a warm sunny day we were walking in the Rocky Mountains. We stopped at a lake. No one was...Read More
