3 minute read
this newspaper clipping
A FEW DAYS AGO, I mentioned I was tackling the huge project of scanning (digitizing) all my photos (and other mementos), and backing them up box by box. Well…
Continue reading “life lessons my mother sent me”Category Archives: on rewriting
Rewriting life after loss. What I’ve learned about grieving, the rewriting (creative) process, editing, etc.
saving the past: scanning photos and memories
5 minute read
For months now, I haven’t felt like blogging. I write every day. Privately. Nothing I feel like sharing or showing to anyone.
Continue reading “saving the past: scanning photos and memories”here, still
1 minute read
Sam,
I’m still here.
I’m still counting moons: 223 since you’ve been gone. Eighteen years—two of your lifetimes! How can this be?
Too much time has passed, I know, for me to hope you might still one morning come padding out of your bedroom, smiling at me as if nothing happened.
Continue reading “here, still”Another birthday
2 minute read
Morning. I am here, sitting outside meditating, eyes closed, feeling the sun on my face, rising. Imagining, for a few minutes, that it’s him shining on me, in me.
It’s your birthday today, sweet son of mine.
Continue reading “Another birthday”Discover the Art That Speaks to Your Heart
3 minute read
the heart wants art
I didn’t know that the Mona Lisa painting became popular after it was stolen. Talk about absence making the heart grow fonder!
We often don’t realize the impact art can have on our hearts.
Art, in any form, can guide and motivate and inspire us.
So . . .
What art inspires you?
What speaks to your heart?
Continue reading “Discover the Art That Speaks to Your Heart”what to do with those sad gone thoughts: write
2 minute read
longing for those who are gone
JANUARY 28, twelve years ago today, was the day Rebecca decided would be her last. And I’m missing her, my longtime and loving friend.
A few years back, I wrote this. This morning, while thinking about what day it is, I read it again, grateful to have written about and to her.
Continue reading “what to do with those sad gone thoughts: write”remembering my dad
3 minute read
(👆In the photo: my father and me heading into my grandmother’s house in Miami, circa 1967.)
in the safe gray zone
He died seventeen years ago today. And, as Forrest Gump said, “That’s all I have to say about that.”
I don’t feel sad or wistful. I’m like a wheat field, waves of beige sameness. Neutral, undisturbed, bending with the wind.
Continue reading “remembering my dad”from drafts to done: building a habit of finishing your writing
4 minute read
What we practice becomes permanent.
– Gabriela Pereira, author, speaker, and founder of DIYMFA.com
Ouch. That line pinched me in the arm the other day when I was listening to DIYMFA podcast, episode 470, Draft Zero.
Continue reading “from drafts to done: building a habit of finishing your writing”without imagination…
3 minute read
a private note
WHENEVER I READ a book, I always find my very own personal takeaway, a sentence or two that stands out to me, seemingly as if the writer meant the message just for me—like a private note. The author may not have even meant for that particular line or two to be one of the story’s takeaways, and therein lies the magic (of words, and reading books).
Continue reading “without imagination…”sidewalks (1)
4 minute read
all the sidewalks
The word sidewalk appears thirty times in my book Willower.
The line I love you more than all the sidewalks in the world appears nine times.
The first time I heard this was when Sam, as a toddler, said it to me. It stayed with me. It was a funny thing to hear, an unusual measurement to use—sidewalks? But then, the sidewalk was our world; where we spent most of our time collecting acorns, bugs, sticks, stones . . .
Continue reading “sidewalks (1)”
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