Love and Gratitude
When I was younger, I believed a family was easy to define: A mother, a father, the children, a pet or two. I spent most of my life building that kind of family—the kind that had been modeled to me, the kind that I read about in my beloved books.
Poor As a Church Mouse
In this forced season of unemployment (300+ applications and not one interview. Seriously.), I have finally learned to slow down a bit. I spend long days writing my memoir and working on my next book. It is a luxury I’ve never had.
Family Matters
Dear Diary, As most of you know, I lost my beloved mom two years ago. A year after that, I lost my only sister. And three months after saying goodbye to my sister, I lost the job I loved—the one I thought would be mine until I retired. Loss is funny, and so is grief. […]
A Tiny Hurricane Lesson
No one filled, challenged, invigorated, exasperated, and illuminated me like Claudia did. She was breath and life and death rolled up in a beautiful package of gentle skin and kaleidoscope eyes. ~ Hurricane Lessons, Chapter 5
My Brain is Tired
Dear Diary, I’m new to Substack, and it feels a little bit like high school all over again. I’m already stressing about Chemistry. The cool kids are in one corner pegging their jeans, the jocks are in the other, flexing. The smarties are all bent over their books, and the nerds are taping their glasses. […]
Sleeping, Sweating, and Menopause
Dear Diary, I’ve been fat on and off for most of my adult life. When I had four babies in five years, I never bothered to lose the weight in between. I just got pregnant again so I could stay in my maternity clothes. I joined Weight Watchers on at least five different occasions. I’ve […]
Filling the Hole
Dear Diary, Let’s talk about fat. Let’s talk about being fat and societal expectations and fatphobia and food. I want to talk about all those things because I struggle with them on the daily. I’m currently far fatter than I’d like to be, and it’s all I can think about. Well, not all I can […]
An ER Story
Wait until you hear this one. So, I’m sleeping peacefully two nights into my Covid recovery when, at 2:00 AM, I wake up with hot, raging pain in my feet. It’s in my heels, in the soles of my feet, in my arches. It slowly moves up into my ankles—both of them. It’s a pain […]
Saving the Starfish
Dear Diary, Covid left me with very little energy, but I did find the time to do one thing I know I shouldn’t do: engage in online political arguments with strangers. It all started with that damn Jason Aldean song and its racist undertones and threats of vigilante justice. I mean… how could people NOT […]
Fashionably Late to the Covid Party
Dear Diary, Plans were set in motion months ago, long before I lost my job. A cross-country summer driving trip to see all my kids—from Florida to Lexington to Boulder to Portland to Olympia and back home to Florida via Indiana. I mapped and timed everything meticulously, booked all the Airbnbs, and counted down the […]