If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward. – Martin Luther King, Jr. July 2013: Sweat beads on my brow, dripping to pool above my lips, gathering in droplets on my nose. My breathing grows…
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. – William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” I’ve had…
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. – Joan Didion The night felt full and ripe with promise. I gazed around the nursery, softly illuminated by a conch shell lit from inside like the ocean home of some watery sprite. The crib loomed silently to my left, its Beatrix Potter linens tucked away in…
The old house stretched, vast and creaking, before us. My little sister and I walked, brushing reverent fingertips across two-hundred-year-old thresholds and peeking tentative heads into music rooms and servant’s quarters. The timbre of the docent’s voice held the same rich quality as the mahogany banister, spiraling a dizzying three flights heavenwards. Without warning, the…
One of the unanticipated and under-discussed consequences of grief is improved acting ability. By this, I mean that the more time that passes since the death of your loved one, the more proficient you become at convincing the world that you are stable and functional. If you have other children, your ability to act may…
On April 16, 1879, St. Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes died at age 35. She was always a sickly child, barely surviving the cholera epidemic of 1855 and suffering from asthma all throughout her short life. Towards the end, she developed tuberculosis, culminating in a tubercular tumor on her right knee. According to the nuns who…
I spent my undergraduate years insatiably devouring mystical and sacred texts from world religions, desperately hoping to find answers to the inexhaustible questions of life. Among the most important of these questions to me was the nature and meaning of suffering. Buddhist teaching frustrated and repelled me because it advocated eliminating attachment as a way…
This past Mother’s Day, I decided to visit Lizzy’s grave for the first time. Last Mother’s day, Cecilia was only a week old and grief over Lizzy had returned full force, so it was a fairly miserable day. I’m not sure what I thought or expected this Mother’s Day to be like. What I know…
I’m reading a book about trauma and PTSD right now, and it explains why trauma causes the brain to have flashbacks with intense sensory moments rather than any linear or chronological accounting of the traumatic incident. The book is fascinating and it is helpful to look at my brain through the lens of science to…
The weather has been warm enough that the daffodils have started to bloom again. As I approach Lizzy’s birthday 13 days from now, I watch the bright yellow trumpets of the daffodils flutter in the breeze and memories, like echoes, begin to dance before me. I can see Lizzy leaning down to smell the odorless…