February 5, 2012 – 8:33 pm
We sat around the kitchen table after dinner last night — my son Henry, my husband Steve, and two of our dearest friends in the world, Lisa and Kerby. I met Lisa eighteen years ago, when Henry visited her kindergarten classroom for the first time as a small, shy four-year-old. He already had an IEP from the public school system and a medical file that was two-inches thick. He’d been diagnosed with asthma at three months, sensory integration dysfunction and low muscle tone at two, and various other physical and developmental delays and concerns ever since. He saw an occupational…
January 9, 2012 – 11:07 pm
Last week, I wrote about wholeheartedness, a word that truly seemed to pick me, rather than the other way around, for 2012. On New Year’s Day, my last morning at Kripalu, having accepted my word, I decided that I would simply allow myself to live into it. Moment by moment, I would try to do the loving thing, whatever that might be. Instead of second guessing myself, worrying about what might happen next, or trying to come off a certain way, I would set my foot down firmly on the side of love over fear. And so, at the risk…
January 2, 2012 – 6:52 pm
“Wholeheartedness.” It’s a mouthful. It’s also the word that has been ricocheting around in my thoughts for a week. The word I keep coming back to when I imagine who I want to be and how I want to live. The word that is surely the antidote for the devouring self-doubt that’s lately been haunting my days and keeping me awake at night. What I suffer with in the darkness is this: My best efforts aren’t enough. I don’t have what it takes to be the mother my two sons need, the wife my husband desires, the friend my own…
November 7, 2011 – 6:45 pm
He turns nineteen tomorrow. Last week, we were in Boston for a college interview. It was an opportunity for him to tell his story in person, this young man who attended three different high schools, spent nine winter weeks living in the woods and sleeping under a tarp, got into his share of mischeif, and has not always seen the point of homework. “If your fifteen-year-old self were sitting here in the room right now,” the college admissions person asked, “what would you have to say to him?” “Well,” the about-to-be-nineteen-year-old replied, “I’d have a lot of advice for him….
October 11, 2011 – 11:02 pm
There is always something else that needs doing. But there are never enough days like yesterday, days when the trees don brilliant robes and stand tall, rustling softly in their finery. When the sky melts into azure infinity, when the air is as soft as breath, and nasturtiums bloom like crown jewels scattered upon a tumbled carpet of fallen leaves. The thrum of insects, the call of a crow, the precious light, the honeyed warmth – it was too lovely an October afternoon to miss. A day that whispered, “Ignore the to-do list, shut off the computer, and play hooky.”…
