Every life has a tale to tell. Prologue May 2000 She sat in the uncomfortable velvet Victorian chair in the corner, careful not to crinkle the dress she’d been forced to wear. The dress that oddly enough seemed to match the chair. …

It hangs in my office. Directly in my line of sight. The trees are tall and bare. Dark imposing sticks rising high above the soft blanket of white. A singular icy path leading to the bottom of a hill the only disturbance to its innate stillness. Desolate, I once thought. …

I had a good education. I thought. I didn’t know there were holes. Cavernous black holes. We were being taught only one slice of history. We were learning in the dark. I was taught Lincoln freed the slaves. I didn’t learn it took years for all to be free. I…

Fiction is fickle. As a writer, the idea may start in your head, but soon the story takes over. The characters you develop come into their own and begin to lead the way. And sometimes, sometimes, reality seeps in. When it does, all bets are off. I set out to…

We must live our lives together. Break bread together. Work together. Play together. Laugh together. Love together. I’m a privileged white woman in so many ways it’s impossible to delineate. Not that I’ve lived a charmed life. Nor am I upper class. Nor am I free to walk the streets…

Learning to see beyond the mask. I realized it yesterday in my first trip to a market in weeks. An unmasked woman walked by, a bit close, apologizing and smiling. I smiled back, to reassure her I wasn’t upset. She didn’t acknowledge. Then as I walked away it dawned on…

In the most unexpected places. It’s easy to get bogged down in the here and now. Frustration, anger, angst and all the swirling emotions that turbulent times may bring. Taking a detour from it all may seem impossible. It’s not. Sometimes, if you close your eyes, and just breathe, you…

Using them on Humans? Lazy Language. I’m not going to tell you what’s wrong with this whole lit-up debate on our generational differences. Boomers vs Millennials. Enough. There’s simply too much of it and it’s really distasteful and disrespectul from any vantage point. A four-year old sees a bunch of…

Or what I dislike most about the new age of numeric content. My inbox is inundated daily with numeric instructions for conquering all of life’s hurdles. Now I don’t mean to be critical. Wait, yes, I do. Honesty is paramount in this new world order. …