Permission Granted
This is a Wild Writing piece inspired by the poem, Permission Granted, by David Allen Sullivan. Yes, you have permission to refuse the rest of the red velvet cake your Mother wants you to pack up and take with you on your 300-mile drive...
Catching a Little Wind
Just when I was thinking of finally biting the bullet and asking my doc for a prescription for something that might give me a little more zing, add a little skip, put a smile on my face – good god – anything to give me a tiny, loving shove into the new year, I get an...
On Patience
The other day on a walk, my friend told me that all of the big parts of his life were in flux; housing, work, money, love. None of them felt firmly planted, nothing was certain. And yet with all that uncertainty, he felt really solid. Meditation, walks with his dog in...
Keep Coming Back
The truth about being a writing teacher is that everything you teach to others is often a lesson that you have to keep learning for yourself, over and over. So it will come as no surprise when I tell you that it truly is a challenge for me to sit my fanny down and...
Running is Not Funny!
It wasn’t a big race, there were no prizes, I didn’t have to train or make sure I had the right outfit - - I just had to show up and be ready to run. And not even the whole 3.2 miles, mind you. I could walk it along with my 76-year-old mother and my 8-year-old nephew...
The Gift of Sadness
If you’re a parent, you know how painful it is when your child is sad. What’s the saying? You’re only as happy as your most unhappy child. So when my daughter came home from the first few weeks of the 10th grade this year in tears because she didn’t connect with any...
The Story of You
“'I should have stayed at the dance.'” That’s what I was thinking as I sat in my friend’s car. The mood was tense. Julie had insisted on leaving the dance right after Homecoming Queen was announced. She hadn’t won like she’d hoped. I had." These are the beginning...
Learning To Make Mistakes
"Why do you work so hard?" my friend Deb asked me the other day. "You seem like you're in such a hurry to get somewhere." "I think I'm trying to get to a sense of rest," I said. "Some place on the other side of all this hard work where I'll feel calm." "But you never...
Walking My Talk
The thing about being someone who promotes truth telling - on the page and off - is that when you’re not walking your talk you know it immediately and it’s hard not to feel like a big ol’ liar. Of course I’m being a little hard on myself; I’m human, I make choices,...
Wheezing and Squealing
“So how many different fetal positions have you discovered?” my friend Jane asks as we set out for our evening walk. She’s smiling, but that’s because the sad ass year when she separated from her husband was over a decade ago. Now she can laugh. The thing about having...