Everything is just happening Paul died in his sleep last week - that's what Cynthia texted. He would have wanted that, but of course no one - not his kids - his former wife, Cynthia or me and the people who loved him got to say goodbye. And what do you say, anyway?...

Because of palm trees that drop palm fronds which could fall on people, and which cost you $2000 to clean up, and because of the shared fence that leans between my neighbor’s yard to mine, and because of rats and raccoons that travel back and forth between my house...

For the last two and a half weeks I’ve been co-leading a writing/meditation retreat in Kathmandu, Nepal. Two days into our trip, and 7,600 miles away, my friend and my assistant, Bree Smith was having what I can only imagine was a very dark day. That morning she’d...

Photo credit: Mark Wagner   There I was weeping, 10 minutes before my early morning Wild Writing Family call where 75 writers were waiting for me. Weeping because the electricity and the lights in the house had just gone off, weeping because the house was pitch...

When you need a shower after four grubby days of squatting in the sage brush for your early morning pee, when you’ve put on the same clothes day after day because mornings are too cold to rummage around for something clean, be grateful for the hose, stretched out in...

“Oh Laurie, will you please just go get a boyfriend!” My Mother, Suzy pleads, wringing her hands right there on FaceTime.  Thank goodness for Suzy. She always supplies me with such perfect material when I’m scratching around for a blog post. And here I was going to...

The heater isn’t working, so I pull out a hoodie, remembering Zoe telling me last week that everyone needs a hoodie - a cozy pullover that goes over your head, that you might even hide out in. Zoe said that their own hoodie had saved them many times. Maybe it can be...

Because my 88-year-old mother starts sentences with, “Now don’t you go telling your siblings what I’m about to say.” And because it’s mostly about things she’s forgotten, like a date with a friend that she didn’t write down and how they showed up at her door. She...

Last week was the five year anniversary of the Wild Writing Family, the community of writers that I assembled during the early days of Covid, and which is still alive and well. Back in May of 2020 we entered the great spin, the whoosh away of everything we assumed...

For a couple of years now I’ve been aware of something that I can only describe as a big bend in the road ahead for me. One of those wide, wide curves you might take in a train or a car in a vast landscape, the bend so wide that you can’t see around it, can’t see...