Reflections

“I like your hummingbird,” said a dark-eyed, dark-haired young girl to the smaller, green-eyed girl beside her.  Giggling and shining, her dark eyes gazed toward the sky, finger pointing upward with dimples gleaming on both cheeks.  Her teeth, white and alight with mirth, flashed alongside the birds that flew all about them in the play-yard [...]

These days, these days – I see so many struggling. These days, these days – I wander around in my own clambering travail. The harsh reality of blundering through this human existence feels pained – like a great hurling off into nothing, to nowhere, into a black lagoon. This giant abyss – this deep, deep [...]

“You look so beautiful tonight,” my mom says to me, out of nowhere, in her soft, gentle voice, her eyes sparkling and glistening. Shy and disbelieving, I shiver, turn away and laugh - uncomfortable in my inability to accept her compliment. “You always looked good in blue,” she adds. And this dropped-in detail propels my [...]

I'm feeling sad - mourning the loss - of this fairy tale relationship I now know I will never have. I'm finally surrendering the vision I've held in my mind's ever hopeful eye:  He's holding my hand we're laughing in bliss I feel the sunny rays of his complete acceptance of all that I am. [...]

I have never been very comfortable being seen. I've spent a fair amount of my life attempting to fall into the shadows, to avoid attention, to hide my body. But here, in Italy, I can't seem to escape being seen. I am stared at, watched, looked at and observed. I am commented on, asked about [...]

Written in response to the collaborative writing endeavor, in specific: My.Body.For.Me.Her.Him.You.Us.   And yet gentle, gentle now, please. These parts of my body, they are to me as children. I take their hands, as they step out of the shadow and into the light. Holding them with strength, grace and compassion, I carefully lead them into [...]

I'm headed to Ireland and Italy by myself in less than 2 weeks, and while many people in my life know of the excitement and joy surrounding this trip for me, few understand the larger and deeper import of it in my life's trajectory. I actually had planned and paid for an almost identical trip [...]

It happens in the first moment of recognizing my aloneness. It is triggered by silence. It is given flight by a feeling of emptiness; challenged by how much I love myself. It feeds on how little I feel I'm worth. And yet it's so mundane and innocuous in its poison: “S/he didn't answer my text [...]

I was cleaning out my closet last weekend, going through the remnants of past versions of myself, when I stumbled upon an old wallet from nearly four years ago.  Its bulk spoke to me of the weight I carried around then and, as I unclasped it, I discovered the stack of papers and cards that [...]

I've been writing about dating for the last three years plus and you'd think I'd have it somewhat down by now. But sometimes, especially nights like tonight, I feel like one of those lonely socks that tumbles out of the dryer and sits on the bed, just waiting to be matched, as all the other [...]