About 20 years ago, back at the turn of the millennium, I was set up on a blind date with an attractive, independently wealthy, otherwise sweet guy who, early in our conversation, talked of his business plans in the Amazon. He was pleased, humbly proud, and excited that initial steps were underway. … Continue reading Amazon Burning
Yesterday morning, a friend led three other friends and me through a writing exercise during our second annual Seminary Sisters’ gathering. We’d all been together for over a day by that point. Updates had been shared, gaps filled, comically bad food eaten, and our hearts and minds swirled as we sat in a circle around … Continue reading A Writing Exercise: On and Partially Out of Doom
Billy Joel said, with considerable cynicism, that only the good die young because goodness can’t be maintained. One must die young in order to have a chance of dying while still good. The purity culture—driven by those who believe we are born “innocent” and thus fashion their daughters with virtual chastity belts at Purity Balls, … Continue reading “Only the Good Die Young…”
It’s raining heavily outside right now, and yet it sounds nothing like it did in the days before I wrote, from the comfort of our well-worn couch, this piece on recovering from trauma that I shared on Facebook. It was all I had to offer as I convalesced from surgery as my friends and neighbors … Continue reading Of Hurricane Harvey and a Hydrocodone Haze: A Short Reflection One Year Later
Based on Luke 17:5-10 within the context of 1-4, delivered on World Communion Sunday, 2016, shared now in order to give context to some of the verses being thrown around this week by the AG. Luke 17:5-10: The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of … Continue reading Sermon: “Faith Enough to Forgive”
Reflections after responding to the Santa Fe shootings: As psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk would have predicted, it broke through when I started dancing, if you can call the thing I was doing (something that increasingly began looking and feeling like some angry Elaine Benes gyration) dancing. “Dancing,” the thing I was doing, began the weekend … Continue reading Guns in My Area
I checked my phone before going to bed last night and I saw I’d missed a group text from a colleague earlier in the evening. She told us she’d just heard how a favorite psychiatrist on our referral list had died by suicide, and rather dramatically at that. I was dumbstruck. I stared at the … Continue reading “The Doctor Won’t See You Now…”
