I have four children, all adults in their twenties now, one about to turn thirty, one married, one getting married in January, and the other two in serious relationships with […]
Transitioning Through the Holidays: A Mother Learns to Let Go
Confessions of a Christmas Letter Writer
There is the art of writing letters, and then there is the art of writing Christmas letters, which hardly anyone masters. To write Christmas letters, a person will ideally have a highly-refined sense of how much […]
An Ideal Christmas
This is one of my visions for an ideal Christmas. It’s a short, happy confection, a dream apart from these dire times. I hope you take some time to imagine your ideal […]
Cutting as Cleansing
A week ago*, I cut just over twelve inches of my long, curly locks off. It wasn’t the first time I’d cut off a drastic amount of hair. The first time I […]
After the Election: Create to Cope
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down. —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale In the wake of the 2016 U.S. election—I was going to write “the election,” which has […]
When Girls Make Noise
Kari O’Driscoll’s piece, “When Girls Make Noise,” at The Manifest-Station caught my attention when I was busy with something else, almost as if it interrupted. I loved the title, and the first line spoke […]
Gratitude: The Beauty and Solace of WORK
By Susan Lilley Lately I’ve been doing a lot of bragging on Facebook and Instagram about former students doing stellar things, like performing on Broadway or publishing in top-tier magazines. But the […]
When You Need to Break Bread with Voters from the Other Side
We’re in that weird space between last week’s election and next week’s day of Thanks. And in that middle space, we’ve all had to face some uncomfortable feelings about our nation, our […]
We will define this new presidency. It will not define us.
The ballots have abeen cast and counted and the news stations have called it. The outcome of this election has shown us just how much work we still have to do. First, take […]
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