I came home from my travels to find two gifts waiting for me. One was a small letterpress poster from my friend Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. and the other an engraved ceramic feather with IMPRESARIO etched on it. I knew the second was a gift from Michelle Allee, an artist friend, who had read my blog. When I was in Tucson visiting Tin, we took the Love Language quiz again. My love language is still…
There are years that ask questions and then there are years that answer the questions I have a heart-shaped sugar cookie with red frosting that G-man gave me propped up on my desk. I liked looking at it. It reminded me of him. The ghosting started over a week ago, and I have reconciled feeling disappointed, sad, and hurt with words of gratitude for the experience. It is okay to be angry. Every part of me…
I began writing my blog in 2004, because my work as an investigative journalist on Wall Street had consumed me. I was desperate for a creative outlet. I was writing elsewhere – morning journaling, a couple of essays on Medium: ode to my truck, the challenge of parenting my son. But it just seemed each time I would come back to my blog. Entries in a blog have a feeling of smoke and mirrors to…
Yesterday, was a day for the books. More was revealed about the person who had made me sad, and a few conversations led to a deeper connection, more unearthing of our truth. A conversation with Tin helped me understand how he is where he needs to be most and ended with I love you’s that he initiated. Lunch with a dear friend and dinner with two others and once again, I claimed my stake in…
In my past facilitation work we always used ice breakers. Some of my favorite ones were everyone telling the group where their name comes from. Naming is a laden task not only for babies, but for pets, and perhaps houses and camps, and maybe even cars. Naming the feelings that come up with names is also a thing. Another ice breaker – and this one I saved for seasoned groups who knew how to check…
As long ago as October of 2007, I was in Istanbul and my friend’s neighbor read my fortune from a teacup. We sat in the living room, on the ground floor of an apartment building that faced the Bosporous Sea, and this woman clucked her tongue in Turkish, your heart has no roads in, it is blocked solid. I will attest to the fact that it remained this way for too long a time. It…
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…
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…
Yesterday, despite having had a double booked to-do list all week, I drove to Jackson to the MS Museum of Art to see the Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South exhibit. I’m an avid quilt fan and first became enamored with quilting when I lived in San Francisco and went to the Gap Headquarters where they had a collection of Amish quilts on display. My ex mother-in-law was a quilter, and…
The beauty of my life is I am surrounded by artists who create excitement out of even the most mundane. My artist friends have encouraged and helped me start my collage project. They have supported my writing. An artist friend, whose design sensibility and dance moves have taken her all over the world, threw a party last night – always lovely – a covey of female artists. Whether through photos, food, writing, painting, fashion, curating,…