Mom….? What happens to you when I am no longer your daughter in your mind? When you don’t seem to know me anymore? Does it mean I no longer exist to you? Does it mean you no longer exist as my mother? Do I become, in essence, mother-less? How do I carry on then? How does ANYONE move forward when the cornerstone has been removed from the building they have depended on for shelter for all of their years? […]
SHE goes to sleep right beside you. SHE thrives on remaining close and reminding you of who you are and what you are made of as the last thing you think about before nodding off. In your heavy sleep SHE sometimes belongs to that dream state you wake up from when the alarm you set for work abruptly goes off. Lifting your head off the pillow you shrug and wonder what it was that you were just […]
With each new day of the holiday season people find themselves either, a.) simply overwhelmed at what they haven’t completed yet when they foolishly compare themselves to their neighbors, b.) joyously overwhelmed by the lights and the beauty and the magic, or c.) agitatedly overwhelmed at the sheer magnitude that a new year brings regarding responsibility or “fresh starts” with unknown resolutions due to life not lived as they’d promised the year before. Then there are […]
Thanksgiving Day, 2014 Dear Dad, This year is the very first year that I remember not avoiding your phone call. Every year of the past forty I have avoided what most consider a mundane task; and admit that I did this in several not-terribly-clever ways. All of which I was reasonably certain you could see right through, as you had the unfortunate hypervigilance of an individual with the brain wiring of a coyote. Always alert. Always defensive. Paranoid. Added to […]
MIRROR, MIRROR ON WALL, WHO’S THE MOST AWESOME ME OF ALL? Narcissism: nahr-suh-siz-em, -n 1. Inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. Synonyms: self-centeredness, smugness, egocentrism. (dictionary.com) A dedication in the book Trapped In The Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self by Elan Golomb, Ph.D. (1992), goes as follows: “To my mother, whose last words before an unexpected death were, ‘I have to learn to assert myself.'” The dedication first gave me a […]
The Wives were restless. They desperately wanted to make a big splash but something was holding them back…Charmaine? She really was different than the other girls in her sorority. Clearly, she was too kind hearted, got along with any old fish that swam down the pike and seemed to enjoy spending her free time with that marshmellowy-white colored fish, Thor. He was clearly an outsider like the others before him. It’s true. Among the girls remaining in […]
See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me. See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me. Listening to you, I get the music. Gazing at you, I get the heat. Following you. I climb the mountain. I get excitement at your feet. Right behind you, I see the millions. On you, I see the glory. From you, I get opinion. From you, I get the story. ~The Who, 1975 You know when you’re at […]
“Feel the fear, then do it anyway”. I love it. It sounds so darn simple, it might just work! I thought this for a good split second. And if it were to work, it would be the most perfect idea I’d ever come across when it comes to handling anxiety. Unfortunately, it’s way too simplistic for those of us who’s anticipatory fear is severe and debilitating. It’s almost like telling a coma patient to “just snap out of it and join us for […]
EVERYWHERE she looked…grey. The sky, an unusually beautiful deep robin’s egg blue…grey. The scarlet roses in the garden that usually gave her so much joy and affirmation…grey. The pink-cheeked family that shared a fondness for laughter and loved her silliness…grey. The home that wrapped her in a yellow glow of warmth felt cold and grey. Her job with people who relied on her fiery red passion and the calming green hued wisdom…all grey. There was no escaping this dull hum of […]
EMPTY house. Empty bed. Morning shadows peeking in from closed curtains as if to see if he had made a decision regarding his own fate yet. IT felt almost certainly that it was a one-sided relationship he’d been experiencing these last few years. Most men might not have noticed; however, he was intuitively keen-sensed and more in touch with feelings than he was able to show overtly. There was some kind of unspoken agreement that he didn’t ever remember […]
They Don't Have a Greeting Card for This 