Why I write
It’s been thirty years since my father died of prostate cancer. From the distance of years, I catch myself wondering if my dad is just a story I tell myself. But then I have the comforting reminder that he lives on in so much of who I am and what I do. It is, for […]
Trusting the Process
Recently, I was invited to give a kind of brief testimony connected to the mission statement at my Unitarian church during one of the services. I am relatively new to church going but not to writing. And I was, at once, flattered to be asked and doubtful that I could come up with anything decent […]
Emergence
This is the time of year in New England when we search for signs—the beginnings of a crocus stem, the lengthening of light, the yellow grass shifting to green—signs that spring is tenaciously taking ahold. Spring is a time of emergence. And spring in New England reminds me that emergence can be tough work, like […]
So what? And other helpful questions
When a particular memory invites us to write, we should ask ourselves: 1. Why this memory now? With so many memories surfacing all the time, why did this one take hold? It is here that insight can be gleaned. 2. Who is this me that is remembering? Reflecting on a memory is, in fact, a conversation between who we are […]
My memory, my story
The nature of memory—unreliable and changeable—means the stories of our life are just that, stories not facts. Just think of tangling with the shared, contradictory, memories of a sibling. An exercise in eighth grade history revealed to me that there is no one story for any given event. The school I went to began with […]
Begin to practice
I sit down with the intention to write. But as for so many of us, I am visited by the familiar doubts: What am I going to write about? Do I really have anything worth saying? What will others think of what I write? I’m tempted to check my email, make a cup of tea, […]