There’s always a couch and a lamp and a plant of some sort. Across from that will sit one or two chairs with plush arms and pillows to hold onto. Next to the chairs will sit a small end table. On the table will be a box of tissues and a few ballpoint pens. The walls...

  Dear Grief,I am writing to recount your recent stay.On November 1st, 2016 you arrived at my door. You had come for brief visits on other occasions, but this time you stood with suitcase in hand. You had moved into the homes of many great souls that year: David...

    Dearest Tess,  Remember writing this in your diary a few months before you left?  Do you ever wonder when you look at the sky at night that there is a planet out there just like ours? And you are just like you. And you are actually looking back at...

I often think that people should be like trees -   if you could find a way to cut inside, you could see rings, showing what the person had weathered - the seasons, the losses, the gains. If I looked in my rings, what story would they tell? There I am at 16,...

When I discovered I was pregnant, I was thirty one and a publishing executive and I was at least seven years into being banished from my mother’s life, a cycle that started when I was a toddler. When I didn’t meet my mother’s expectations she stopped talking to me,...

She was there for many of my firsts - first breath, first smile, first tooth. In the harbor where we lived at the end of a canal right next door to the volunteer fire department that was my father’s second home, she taught me how to swim, promising me a boat all of my...

When I was six months old, my mother thought my tear ducts were clogged. She took me to the doctor to see why I never cried. She was assured that my tear ducts worked fine. I just had no reason to cry.  I was loved. I have felt her love my whole life and continue to...