There is a child in China. I do not speak her language, she does not speak mine. What I hold are clippings of her life in translation. The day she admitted she had something to say, someone wrote it down. Rice could make the classroom beautiful. She painted what the marker could not sustain. Making beauty last: Bai Hua’s feet … Read More
Letting your eyes adjust to the light
Sometimes you need grief to rust a lock open. And lawyers to say things so ugly that the ground on which your marriage lived will never send up another false flower. And you need to prop up what can no longer stand into art or forgiveness, some kind of distance that lets your eyes actually adjust to the light.
The Well of Grief
— David Whyte Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for … Read More
A Mother’s Day Blessing for the Single Mother
You are an extraordinary mother. Every day, you do what you can do—and it is enough. The homework, the garbage, the dishes, the laundry, the pets, the yard, the carpools, the roof that needs repair, the friendship that needs repair, the deadlines, the discipline, the bruised egos and broken bones. You take care of it all. Every day and every night. … Read More
A Look Under the Hood of Conscious Uncoupling
For the first time in my life, a “royal couple” of the media industry is separating in a way that appears to be truly newsworthy: with a conscious commitment to their children and each other at their epicenter. This is what every divorcing parent is striving for ultimately, isn’t it? Peace with their ex. And the ability to co-create a family system that honors and … Read More
Getting Divorced to Save our Family
I was 15, attending a family friend’s bar mitzvah in suburban New Jersey where I lived. There was a couple there about my parents’ age who were behaving in a way that I had never seen grown-ups behave. They looked happy, sexy, in love. My mother and I were on the dance floor in a throng of people making enthusiastic … Read More
I want my eggs
soft and in between destinies the yolk undecided the white a nimbus of coagulated light haloing its small yellow sun as I have lived trained to the perimeter of what is most alive in me, accomplice to and bearer of its diminishing light.
The Path to Acceptance
In my seven years of knowing Pete, he became three different people, scripted primarily by the stories I made of him—of us. Each story was entirely true and entirely false in the way that any interpretation of our lives in the moment tends to be. And they all served as transportation through the discoveries I needed to make and the … Read More
apology
the dogs have followed me downstairs like heartbreak. sadness is our habit. i cannot find kindness on the shelves. i have no recipe. only eggs and butter and faith. there is no saving grace, no blame, no place of rest. until i trust the sun to its own descent, forgiveness breaks me down to dust the waves carry me out … Read More
We Are Less Alone Than We Believe
It was our final day of Disneyland, and I was feeling like a world champion. I had planned and paid for this trip, arranged for pet care with my standard multiple pages of instructions, packed for every possible mother-son contingency, spent a full day traveling in which I served as human snack vending machine and then, for three endless days, … Read More
