reframing femininity
Before me sits a well-groomed 75-year-old man named Richard. His button-down shirt is tidy, and his khakis are well pressed. He is a former pilot and used to being in control. He is witty and quick to answer, navigating questions with a rapid side step. One would never know just by talking to him.
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I follow tears. Glistening eyes, quivering lips, red rising on cheeks. Clues on a path to story. A big, black circle on the map to the heart.
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“You know I absolutely adore you.” His words return to me vivid and tender. An evergreen glistened with tiny white lights as raindrops pelted the brick landing of the retreat center before I boarded the airport shuttle. I picture the wild hair and dancing eyes of the kind man holding my face in his hands…
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There is a war that rages in my heart between life and death, right and wrong, sorrow and joy, good and bad, faith and fear. I have learned, through prayer and meditation, to love and honor both sides of the war and to rest in the middle ground, where peace is always awaiting my return.…
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For the first time in three years, my family is living under the same roof. My older son came home for spring break, never imagining that he wouldn’t be returning to campus for the remainder of his semester. My younger son’s high school senior year has been greatly altered, as he and his classmates now…
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Standing in the florescent glow of Super Target it happened. A throng of ponytailed and legging-clad mothers had just dropped little ones at school and entered the store, eager for a cathartic wander through the aisles, me included. I turned toward Starbucks to get my morning Chai when I happened to glance at the cart…
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Everywhere I turn, there is nothing. Vast nothingness all around me. As far as my eye can see is emptiness. Dry, arid, dusty, flat and desolate nothingness. My heart is broken into a million pieces. Shattered into dust on the ground. It’s hard to distinguish between the dust of my broken heart and the dust…
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My husband and I watch a television show we’ve grown rather fond of called, The Good Doctor. In a recent episode, one of the young surgeons tragically loses her mom whom she’d just begun to get to know after years of separation. She immediately returns to work and gets on with her life without mourning…
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A crisp November day in Michigan. Overcast but no snow on the ground. Dad in the driver’s seat and me in the passenger seat. Pulling out of the driveway and turning onto the dirt road. Heading off on an adventure in the red Ford pickup truck. Just my dad and I.
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“Elephants,” I thought. “No, it was a whale.” I read about her a few months ago. Her sweet baby had died and she glided through the ocean with a small body on her back, unable to let go. Her whole pod surrounded her as she carried her lifeless child for 17 days. I like to think that…
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