I’ve seen this image several times, all over the place, and finally I downloaded it because I love it. I love the font, I love the gray and white, and I love the message. Trust your struggle. These words honor that we all have struggles, and they contains within them trust that all the effort [...]
Sometimes I stagger under the weight of my own feelings. This season has turned so swiftly from one of relative calm to one of choppy seas and brand new changes, and I am still struggling to find my balance. On a daily basis, both my anxiety and my good fortune overwhelm me. How to take [...]
I am reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s beautiful An Altar in the World right now and loving it. Several different and disparate people recommended it to me and they were all right. There are many passages that resonate – most of all the section called “reverence,” which is the best way I know how to describe [...]
For so many years I tried to outrun my sadness and my sensitivity, but no matter how fast I went it trailed behind me, stuttering on the pavement like the cans tied behind a bride and groom’s getaway car. No matter how hard I sprinted I could not evade it, this lingering sadness, this strange [...]
I distinctly remember, as a child, looking at the cover of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and thinking: those words are what I want. In particular I gravitated towards glory (I’ve never been very interested in power). That’s what I thought I wanted to be able to say I’d had at the end [...]
The American Cancer Society believes that every birthday is a victory – another year that cancer has not won. Thanks in part to the Society’s cutting-edge scientific research, patient support, and prevention, education, and advocacy efforts, 11 million cancer survivors will celebrate another birthday this year. Tiny Prints, the online stationary boutique, is fighting for more [...]
Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we’re going to die. The most mysterious aspect of being alive might be that — and poetry knows that. I read these sentences, from Terry Gross, on Beth Kephart’s beautiful blog last week and I simultaneously gasped and welled up with tears. As [...]
At the end of every summer, my children become wretched. They are also lovely, and we do special things like our spontaneous outing to Crane’s Beach. But without fail, they are difficult. I swear it’s the universe making it more bearable to go back to school, back to fall, back to the routines and strictures [...]
A couple of years ago I realized that the annual, persistent cold I got in the spring was seasonal allergies. Odd, I thought: I’ve never had these before. My doctor told me that it’s actually common to develop them in midlife. Okay. So now I take Allegra for a while in the spring and all [...]
When I decided to go back to Legoland with Grace and Whit this summer, I worried that maybe it was wrong to try to revisit and recapture one of the most glorious memories of my time as a mother. Perhaps we would all be disappointed, inevitably, and I’d regret the decision. Ultimately I couldn’t resist [...]
