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Being a Gentle Warrior
We seek happiness by believing that whole parts of what it is to be human are unacceptable. We feel that something has to change in ourselves. However, unconditional joy comes about through some kind...
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Talking Myself Down from the Tree
I wanted to write something funny today, but my heart isn’t in it. I made the mistake this morning of reading the news online first and then the comments that followed. Why, oh why, do I read people’s...
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The Space Between
Thursday night, returning home from my last taekwondo sparring class, I sank deeper into the dark mood that has been shadowing me the last couple of weeks. I’ve thought unhappily about how I tied so...
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Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
It is my nature to survive, to push through barriers, to stand my ground, to lose repeatedly until I don’t, to get up every time I fall. I am fortunate in my resilience. I am fortunate in my...
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The Nostalgia of Depression
There are mornings when I wake up and I feel low. Something rotten I did years ago pops in my head and I cringe. Or I get a birds-eye view of my life and it looks less like happy mediocrity and more...
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Some Disassembly Required
My mother-in-law likes to tell me how my husband tore apart household appliances as a kid, just to see how they worked. I suspect she’s still bitter about a toaster or two. Now an electrical engineer...
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Living in the Land of Anhedonia
The gray slides over me. It is neither friend nor foe. It just is. Like the autumn leaves, my edges curl in and I get as small as possible. I pull back from friends and family. I say less. I go dark....
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What It All Comes Down To
I’ve been trying to find my way back to a state of reasoned calm, following the election and the current repetitive rhetoric still filling our airwaves. It doesn’t matter who is right or who is wrong,...
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The Quiet Desperation of the Middle Ages
It’s hard to write or talk out loud these days. I’ve disappeared on friends, but talk to strangers just to know that I still can. I dread the question how are you? because I fear that a flood will pour...
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2016: A Few of My Favorite Things, Part 2
I was trying a little exercise in gratitude with these posts, in an attempt to pull 2016 out of the crapper. Then I came down with a head cold. Welcome to crabby gratitude. Part 1 is here. The Teacher...
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That Oxygen Mask: Self-Care When You Feel Like You’re Drowning
For some people, self-care is reflexive – a function of healthy esteem and respect. I am not one of those people. On a sinking ship, I’d lower the lifeboat and wait for everyone else to get in. It’s...
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Anatomy of a Depression
It’s hard to write from a place of depression. Whatever anyone thinks they know about depression, they can really only know their own. Mine comes in many shades. This particular one is a verdant green....
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When You Only Have So Many Words and None of Them are Adequate
The Green Study is taking a break until November 15, 2017. Last year, I went to a lecture where journalist and novelist Anna Quindlen spoke about her writing practices and career. One of the things she...
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A Misshapen Valentine that I Made Myself
It was at a relative’s funeral over 15 years ago that I began to wonder about my ability or inability to love. The spouse of the deceased, an awkward and unlikable man, cornered me. He began to explain...
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The Limits of Knowing
This post is about suicide and mental health issues. I was listening to the live stream of Roxane Gay speaking in New York last night at the PEN World Voices Festival. She said “When you write and gain...
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Make of It What You Will
It’s an odd space to be in, after someone dies in the midst of a holiday season. We have, over the years, planned our rituals and meals around my mother-in-law. With her passing, it’s a time of...
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The Happy Depressed Place
Perhaps I’ve learned to cope too well with depression, that it has become this natural place within which I can comfortably reside. I felt the descent last week and knew where I was going without a...
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Human in Chair, Writing
Life has started to really take its toll on me. I’m more tired, grayer, weightier, unfocused. There was a brief respite where my ego had time to rise – to think about goals and ambitions and...
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The Troubled Path
Almost eight years ago, I published my first blog post. It came on the heels of challenges I had created for myself – training in Taekwondo, learning how to climb rock walls, pushing myself to write...
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Falling Apart, Blogging in Place
It’s been nearly a month since I’ve written here. For some people, this would be an indicator that they were being wildly productive elsewhere. For me, it runs parallel to everything else in my life....
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