Author Archives: Musings

Anger gets a bad rap. Especially for women. We are raised to be demure, deferential, self-sacrificing, patient. Basically—need-less, emotion-less, opinion-less. And anger, well, anger just isn’t pretty. When we express our anger, we are either told to calm down or we get called that last resort of insults, the very uncreative and overused bitch. ButContinue reading “Medusa”

Why is it, a friend and I were discussing recently, that as we get older, we seem to revisit certain stories? What we eventually came to, my friend and I, was that we are seeking some sort of resolution. Or understanding. Or healing. This reminds me of lines from the poem “Becoming Seventy” by currentContinue reading “House of Knowledge”

Every now and then I feel like a computer that must push the restart button. Maybe I’ve been rushing about or I am worrying about the state of the world or state of my family or maybe I didn’t sleep well the night before. Maybe Mercury is in retrograde…I don’t even know what that means,Continue reading “The Delight Muscle”

This past week was filled with joyous late-night conversations with my daughters, discovering cafes and kitchen shops and bookstores, and resting in the shade of the ancient trees surrounding the Capitol Building. It was bittersweet, as I helped my eldest daughter unpack and move into her new DC home. And there was an emptiness inContinue reading “Emptiness and Fullness”

Can we truly know another person? Can we truly know ourselves? Should we even try? This was my primary question as I read poet Saeed Jones’ memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives. Jones explains how anticlimactic was the experience of coming out to his mother. He writes, I came out to my mother asContinue reading “One truth…many truths?”

Yes, revisiting that old topic of the inner critic, that nagging voice inside that tells you all the bad things about you, all the irreparable damage you’ve caused in the lives of everyone you know, and don’t know, I mean, the whole entire world probably, and how stupid your career choices were and oh ya,Continue reading “Inner Critic…”

A few years ago, we thought we heard the scurrying of a rodent. up in the rafters. Then we saw droppings under our sink. So the local pest control sent over someone to check it out. And after spending the better part of an hour in our attic, he told us that yes, we hadContinue reading “Enjoying the Ride”

There is a particular busy intersection in St. Louis—near a freeway onramp, in between the Target and Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, just behind a new housing development—which, every now and then, a family of geese crosses. More than once, I’ve just exited the freeway only to see a row of brake lights ahead ofContinue reading “Here and Gone”

Forgiveness is tricky. Too often, when referring to self-forgiveness, it is equated with a lack of self-reflection. As if the only way to forgive oneself is to deny the gravity of what occurred. It just feels too bad to remember that…stuff, especially when that stuff involved another person, and especially when that person is someoneContinue reading “The Trickiness of Forgiveness”

One of my favorite places to go in New York is The Strand. I am biased, I know, but I really think it is the best independent bookstore. Two floors packed with new and used books, vintage and hard bound books, helpful staff who have encyclopedic knowledge of whatever section they work in and basicallyContinue reading “Making Beauty”