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...

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...

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...

Messy, Gorgeous Process

What if I told you that it took me ten years to understand what I was teaching? It looked like I was teaching people how to write, but what I was actually doing, I realized late in the game, was teaching writers how to peel away the layers of their story and dig for...

The Smallest Things

The note your ten-year-old writes you because she heard you crying in the bathtub. “Mommy, we love you very much. Who wouldn’t?” The way she comes in while you’re laying there in three inches of hot water; depleted, exhausted, alone, and how...