An awakening started with a potted plant. It sat tall bedside in front of a window to capture what little light it could from an otherwise dim room. I wrote a while back on this blog about a much needed green thing during the winter. It popped from the mother plant, a small thing that pushed its head through the [...]
When I considered preparing for a book launch talk to be customary, as I had been talking about my debut novel, The Wisdom of the Willow, for some time now, it wasn’t. I had been preparing answers for questions when I realized I had been playing it safe with my writing. Over the past twenty years, I have [...]
A rusty paper clip held them together. Typed letters, faded from the dark-inked punch of typewriter keys filled lines on discolored pages rimmed in muted brown. Stories told here were pulled from a brown envelope written over forty years ago by my then college self. The pages took me back in time to settings and places where words were heavy [...]
When I’m headed out the door at daybreak, weather permitting, I tell my husband I’m leaving to be athletic. He understands this to mean I’m going out for exercise—a run, a brisk walk—along a path in the woods near my home. But sometimes my rendezvous with the natural world has nothing to do with the freedom to move my body [...]
To prepare for speaking publicly about my forthcoming novel, The Wisdom of the Willow, I plugged into a webinar courtesy of a publicist. The speaker talked to an author audience about wisdom, and making heart connections with others when we go out into the world to talk about our books, our writing, our selves. She asked if we had a [...]
They seemed to gather at once, sparrows and wrens, an occasional cardinal and woodpecker, swooping in to demand space and food. It became customary to watch the birds crowding on only four perches jutting from the tube-shaped feeder, as apparently, we’re on the same schedule for breakfast, lunch, and dinnertimes. I’d notice the flurry of activity, until one time it [...]
Vestiges of fall lay on the ground in bits of dried leaves, acorns, weakened limbs, and memories of a landscape once in vibrancy and motion. A blanket of frost covers it, encased like a tomb to be nudged by a dawning sky and the promise of sun. I was out for a hike in the early morning when I saw [...]
It’s the season of trees when their leaves, a pallet in shades of green from bright leafy flora to deep woodland, cease their infusion of growth and bleed vibrancy of color seen only in the fall. It’s a time to connect and to explore the wonder of a landscape falling softly to sleep, but not before it brings drama to [...]
I feel small. And it makes me feel imbalanced. Once feeling large and poised over the summer months with the security of sunny days, familiarity of longer lit hours, and the comfort of happy places at beaches and bike-riding, has now morphed into a perspective that is confined and maybe a little off center. I didn’t realize this until after [...]
I sunk deeper into my seat when watching her on a short Q and A video. I felt her words were directed at me, as if to say, “and you know who you are.” But I dismissed the thought because I didn’t think my publisher’s recommendation for authors to update their websites every two to three years applied to me. [...]