I climbed the mountain not to reach the top, but to cross over, marking each morning with a new little bracelet on my wrist, with colors of ascending frequency to note the mounting chakras, simulating an elevated state in the thinning air. I love me, I want to be me…. but not this way. […]
Somewhere between the meetings and the writing and the car rides, I learn something that surprises me– I don’t actually want to shave my head. I want to want to do it, but I don’t actually want to. I know that if I do it, it won’t be free– it will take some sort of […]
I drive around a lot, partly to get groceries, partly to explore Nashville, and most especially to resume my “reading” of Eat Pray Love in the car. I left the windows down when I arrived in the dark that first night and the rain that so soothed me on my marathon nap also happened to […]
Mom, Grandma and I drove back in less than two days. It was almost insulting to look out the window and see the great distance I had so laboriously covered roll by so quickly. I immediately chaffed against the new dynamic wherein I was not in control and had to make constant conversation. Grandma sensed […]
A hard day- fitting for the last in what has been an incredibly tough year. Tomorrow is my birthday. This morning I crossed the 45th parallel. For a long time I have been searching a way to differentiate the past from the future, a reason why tomorrow will be different from yesterday. I have made […]
When I moved to South Africa, as a small-town girl from Michigan, I was intimidated. I saw myself as an easy victim in a dangerous country. I told myself that I would probably get mugged at some point. Accepting that possibility didn’t make it more or less likely, but it limited the potential of that […]
If there something in your life that hurts more than it helps, that keeps you from yourself: you must end it. For years you told yourself “it’s not that bad”, tolerated its intrusion, found ways to coexist- and so it persisted. You felt you had control, that you were winning the fight. No need for a drastic […]
Transcript of my Moth Story Hour Submission, Subject: Vices All my life I have been building: making plans, gaining knowledge, forming relationships, accumulating possessions. But for nine years there has been an insidious black mold in the foundation of my life’s structure that undermines everything I pile on top of it. My vice goes by […]
When I told you that I was still sick, and that I was going to get help, we hugged and cried and you gave your support. And while I was in treatment, you sometimes inquired, responding to my positive updates. But after I left that place, we never talked about it again. You assumed the […]
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