I desire to be free. And yet I struggle. I am a layered trifle of limited beliefs, which I am constantly trying to scoop away, eat away, dissolve, and yet, these beliefs persist. Much of the meditation I’ve been doing the past few weeks is about breaking out of these limited beliefs. Here’s where the buzzer goes off – is this true or is this not true? I’ll give you a belief that has come…
My friend Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. came in for Mardi Gras since he was our King last year for the Krewe of 100 WOMEN DBA. The word character is the best way to describe a man whose talent and zest for life and use of the beauty of words give so much delight. On Thursday, Amos was selling some of his books and posters during the Hall’s Lava Lounge. I found mine instantly – FUCK…
Woman goes on journey, comes home changed. The journey was a short trip to Arizona to visit Tin. It also happened to be the weekend before his 16th birthday, an event that is always laden with ambivalence. Not mine, his. The journey of an adopted child is lifelong. I remember a man in an adoption group I belonged to insisting that I look at adoption as trauma, and I insisted I was not going to…
On November 7, 2025, Ann and I were driving Tin to boarding school in Arizona. We stopped in Las Cruces, NM and took a detour to go see a giant roadrunner sculpture made out of garbage. As fascinating as it was, and it was, we were in the parking lot of the welcome center when Ann thought she spotted a chicken running underneath the cars. A young man, Asian, handsome, long jet black hair, stood…
I’m back in this alien landscape to visit my son whose 16th birthday is approaching. None of what has happened with us in the last 16 years could have been predicted, none of it fits tidy into a family history, none of it has been easy, and yet, when I sit down to piece together all of the photos from previous birthdays, the notes, the cards, the feelings – there is a through line of…
I am part of multiple groups all centered around addiction, but mostly I’d say these are groups of parents and adults who are living a life where things are not going as planned and none of us were given the skills to navigate an unplanned life. And while addiction may be our theme, it is only a subplot in a multilayered and complex narrative. In one group, most of us could point to our parents…
What if you’ve been wrong about your limits all along? I have a belief that I am unable to plan a vacation. The reason is because when I start to plan solo travel, I become paralyzed with fear – it’s too much money, it’s me navigating an unfamiliar place alone, it’s an investment of time and I may not enjoy it. There are so many reasons for me not to act on my desire that…
Every day, a new headline contains an egregious, outrageous and mind twisting claim that turns the truth inside out. And yet truth will out. One of the 100 WOMEN DBA members sent 100 Men Hall rack cards to Welcome Centers across Mississippi. A few of the centers are closed for renovation, and yesterday, I got a call from one in Natchez saying our rack cards arrived, the address had been incorrect, and she didn’t know…
It’s been a week and it’s only hump day. Last night, I went to my ACA meeting where we get to eviscerate our insides and leave exhausted. Yes and it’s good. We were reading a line that said something like how do you recreate insanity in your relationships and I think that was when the chipping away exposed a nerve. Yes, and I cried. Like just out of nowhere or out of everywhere, I started…
My father was a rageaholic. He was furious about things that seemed unimportant to the rest of us. He would yell, throw things, and get so angry his eyes looked like they had flames dancing in them and his neck and face would turn purple like a bruise. I saw this rage in someone I was seeing whose eyes would flicker with flames when they were angry and who one time pinched me so hard…