In Bird by Bird (and in other places) the writer Anne Lamott talks about the idea that each person has an emotional acre. It’s all yours.  You get to tend it in any way you want, and it comes with a fence and a gate. You can let people in, and you can ask them to leave too. Here’s a bit of what she says: Continue reading “Tending Your Own Emotional Acre” →

It has been the worst spring, and by worst, I mean coldest. It’s felt like endless setbacks, and spring itself has felt like a certain horrible idea that feels like truth to me: life will never change and good things don’t really happen. Continue reading “Of Spring and Expectations” →

Lately I’ve been thinking about the story my life is telling, and the story I tell myself. They are not always one and the same, I think. Some people might look at the story of my life and conclude it’s a story gone wrong. Maybe they reduce it to something like this: she’s divorced; she’s a single mom. Those might be the facts (or a few of them), but there’s a bigger story than that, and though it may include some sad and even disturbing chapters, that’s okay. Every good story does, and the story I tell myself is not a sad one. Continue reading “A Story Worth Telling” →

Since the winter of 2015 when our lives cracked wide open, the memories have come at me hard in February and March. I tell myself it’s okay to remember. I also tell myself it’s okay to forget, though it doesn’t seem like I’ll be forgetting anytime soon. Continue reading “When There Is No Best” →

On Friday I realized I was depressed. It was a relief really, when that little flash of insight came: This is depression. Right, I thought, it’s February. Something about the sameness, the grayness, the endless-ness does me in each year. Winter just seems so true, and Spring seems like a fairytale. What I have to remember, of course, is that fairytales are true too. Continue reading “Evidence Unseen” →

We’ve been looking at the world atlas this week; the seven-year-old has been particularly obsessed with the map that identifies the richest and poorest countries. Then last night he said, “I need to look at the atlas again. I need to see something about Japan.”

“Why Japan?” I asked.

“Do you remember about the bomb?” he asked.

And then I remembered that he’s been worried about nuclear war, though he hasn’t raised the issue lately. Someone at school had told him that North Korea was going to nuke Washington, DC, in the way that older elementary school kids love a good scare. I had told him that wouldn’t happen, that North Korea had no hope of sending a bomb that far, and then I’d said it might hit Japan, or the ocean. Continue reading “Weight of the World” →

Some nights, when I’m brushing my teeth, my eye catches on one of the small splotches of glitter nail polish that I haven’t managed to scrub from the bathroom countertop. I don’t always notice it, because the countertop is speckled, but every time I do, my stomach twists a bit. Continue reading “The Devil Is in the Details” →

When I was little, I was afraid of all kinds of things. I was scared of the dark. I was scared to be left home alone. I was terrified by the Wicked Witch of the West and the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. I was afraid of robbers and murderers. I was sure the Son of Sam serial killer would leave his New York City stomping grounds and find my family in North Jersey and kill us all. And, of course, I was afraid of spiders, probably most of all. Continue reading “Spiders, and Robbers, and Fear, Oh My!” →

Last week the little boy had a meltdown. Apparently some neighborhood friends, the boys he spends all his outside playtime with, haven’t been the best friends lately. After a recent haircut, one of the boys said, “You look even dumber now.” And there have been other incidents that have caused him to feel sad and rejected, the worst of which is that no one sits with him on the bus. They all pair off and sit together, leaving my little boy alone. Continue reading “No Fair” →

I started running again last week. These blue sneakers helped, because I’m a big fan of putting them on every morning. Unfortunately, they aren’t enough to keep me from remembering every single day how much of a nonrunner I am. About twenty whole steps into it, I start asking myself when I can stop.

That’s when I make this mental shift and force myself to stop thinking about the end. Inside, I have to sit back into my discomfort and unwillingness, choose to feel it and keep feeling it, and embrace the NOW. There is only my feet, there is only my breath, there is only this cold air. There is just this step. There is now.

This was pretty much my approach to natural child birth. too. It worked for the first three, but not so much for the last one. I suppose it didn’t work then because I simply could not let myself go into the pain. I couldn’t come to terms with it, and all I wanted was for it to be over. Perhaps the pitocin had a little to do with that. Continue reading “Is It Over?” →