cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
I want to hold her in my hands and look at her face. My eyes scroll over the pictures that haven’t moved from the self-adhesive plastic covered pages for years. I am looking for her. As I turn the page, I take her in and notice a tightening in my stomach. “She’s a pistol,” I…
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Sometimes, it seems like a dream – a bad dream, catalogued in three years of notes in my therapist’s office – but a dream nonetheless. Other times I wake up, my brain dull and fuzzy.
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I glanced down at my arms; the three slashes seeped blood. The large amount of aspirin I consumed thinned and accelerated its departure. I wanted to escape and run. Another locked psychiatric ward would be my fate. Only my physical screams could be heard, but these lashes were the deep wails of my internal world.…
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Only art penetrates the seeming realities of this world. There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can’t receive. – Saul Bellow During my freshman year of college, I decide to register for a drawing class. We meet every…
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We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory. –Louise Glück A few months ago, my husband and I lay under our down comforter, which felt far too heavy for a mild Florida winter. I felt empty and bored after a long day with the kids, so I roused an argument with…
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Released into the sunshine to work in pairs, we were grateful to leave the small confines of the conference room that held 10 therapists for an Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprossessing (EMDR) training. Our exercise was to identify a lie we believed and think of resources that could be internalized to counteract that as part…
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You came, I knew that you would come You sang, my heart it woke up I’m not afraid, I see your face, I am alive –Jonathan David and Melissa Helser Are you done yet? I hurled the accusation at the sky. What more do you want? How much more can I take?
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It’s 4:30 a.m. and I am already awake in the darkness of this rainy winter morning. I’ve tried to sleep later but sleep evades. I have an appointment with a therapist today. I am anxious and fretful, wondering what it will be like. Will we communicate well? Will I feel heard, seen?
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Seven years ago, I sat in a church service in California and watched a presentation put on by Celebrate Recovery, a 12-step program that was commemorating their one-year anniversary at our church.
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“You have my permission to consider all men as bastards until they individually prove otherwise.” That sentence shook me awake from my mental flight.
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