My dear friend Reverend Marian Starnes was a spiritual powerhouse. A compassionate healer, a gifted medium, a loving friend to any in need. She founded The Brigade of Light and on the advice of an Angel named Gary (I’m not making this up) bought a property of 250 acres of pristine beauty on a [ Read More ]
I know from your letters to me that many of you, in your heart of hearts, fantasize about writing a novel. So, I’d like to use my own wacky path to authordom, to inspire you to write that novel or to pursue whatever other passionate dream you’ve got. I know for a fact that it’s [ Read More ]
They’re shooting at our regiment now.” I read the quote above and put down the New York Times, the gallows humor too profound to ignore. The article by Mark Epstein was quoting a friend whose contemporaries were dying. Mine are, too. At an alarming rate. My Christmas card list this year showed a disturbing number
Love manifests in the strangest ways. Just like courage. And understanding. Sometimes it sneaks up on you and you don’t realize how great a gift it is or how much self-sacrifice was required of the giver. Until later, much later in the game of life, when you’ve grown old enough to know that nothing is [ Read More ]
I recently spent a hilarious afternoon at the hairdresser, as all the women there and the witty, astute owner of the place, shared our strategies for never really seeing ourselves in the mirror again… except, of course, when we’re at the hairdresser and look our absolute best. We each had our own mid-life mirror-avoidance technique [ Read More ]
This blog appeared in the New York Times on January 15, 2013. If you’d like to read it, please follow this link for the full text: New York Times, Face to Face With Mom in the Mirror
Somebody called me a Wise Woman the other day and it almost made me laugh out loud. Isn’t that something like those Lifetime Achievement Awards they give you in Hollywood when they can’t find roles for you anymore, I wondered? But it set me to thinking… Nobody sets out to be a Wise Woman. You [ Read More ]
“Inside every older person is a younger person – wondering what the hell happened.” —Cora Harvey Armstrong “You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul’s own doing.” —Marie Stopes The arrival of a brand New Year (always a treat to be able [ Read More ]
My daughter Dakota is just about to graduate from college, and I have the awful maternal fear that I might have forgotten to tell her something that’s really important. So I made a list. I know the accumulation of wisdom is a lifelong task and can’t be hurried or culled from someone else’s hands – [ Read More ]
“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can decide how you’re going to live now.” —Joan Baez, Folksinger When my daughter died at thirty-five, in the midst of my grief, I had an irrational recurrent guilt that I hadn’t bought her more hot fudge sundaes. She loved them so, [ Read More ]