Author, Musician, Editor, Writing Coach
The famous line from the ’70s movie Love Story was Love means never having to say you’re sorry. I’m sorry, but what horse poo that was! A more appropriate line might be love means knowing when you need to say you’re sorry and having the cojones to do it. I realize that’s not as elegant sounding, but it rings a lot truer to me.
The other dayI had a flashback to when I was about 13, all full of teen-girl hormones and unpredictable rages. I was on about some girl at school and her attitude and how she was mean to other girls and I really…My mom, making beef stew at the stove and a little hot and grumpy herself turned to me and said, “Really! Why don’t you just mind your own business?”
I’ve been blessed to attend various support groups over the past two years, and have recorded many of the more meaningful comments and quotes that have been made by others in my pink notebook, along with my own thoughts, many of which have been shared (respecting anonymity, of course) with TPN readers over the past year. Read More
Cybill was THE model of teenage perfection in the 1970s, as visualized in Cover Girl ads in many issues of influential magazines, like this one.
I’m a pretty typical late Baby Boomer woman, I think. I grew up in an era (a really long one) where women were objectified constantly in the media (not that we’re entirely finished doing that) and where certain cultural definitions of beauty were foisted on young women at a most vulnerable time in life–high school.
Why me, Lord? Maybe you just received divorce papers. Or you broke your favorite cut glass serving bowl from your grandmother (not that I just did that), or were rejected when you asked for something. Whatever the disappointment, sometimes you just need to throw yourself a feelings feté.
So two weekends ago I had a rare gift: I got to spend two days in New York City, where I lived for a few years more than three decades ago. I had only gone back a couple of times after I moved away, and even that was still 20 years ago. A lot of living was packed into that short time.
(First posted on May 6, 2016 on the Huffington Post)
I’m Skyping with my friend Marie the other day, and as we’re solving the world’s problems, the subject turns to the upcoming May 8 holiday celebrating moms. We’re both moms of now-adult children, so it makes us a bit reflective on the subject. She says, “I always said the perfect Mother’s Day gift would be a crystal ball…The perfect gift you could never have.”
“Hah! No kidding,” I reply.
But what if there was? What if we could make an imaginary crystal ball, a shining orb of mom-wisdom? Stuff we wished we’d known when we were newbies. So we talk, and compare notes, like we do.
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Yesterday I had a tough time struggling with a demon. He lives inside my brain, and is the result of a lifetime of feeling out of control of very important things. Read More
It was Fall, 2015. I’d been making a real effort to more clearly identify my list of “needs and wants.” I finally had figured out why I needed to make this list. It wasn’t easy. My first attempt got an F from my counselor: Apparently “wanting my loved ones to be healthy and happy” didn’t quality as a need or a want for ME. (Who knew?!)
At the end of the calendar year I had finally assembled my starter list. Still, I wasn’t sure I actually had done it right. [bctt tweet=”It takes a lot of work, I’ve discovered, to dispel the notion of having wants and needs as being selfish.”] Instilled at a young age by well-meaning parents from a very different generation, it took a very persistent counsellor and a strong support network of friends and family to encourage me past the front gate of self-worthiness. It was new for me to see a difference between self care and selfishness.
I was standing in the bookstore looking at the three words embossed on the pale pink notebook cover: Dwell in possibility.
I loved everything about this notebook, from its ballerina-pink cover (which reminded me of my daughter Lucy’s tights as a little girl-dancer many years ago); to its embossed gold message from one of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson, to its subtly lined pages.