Tell the Story
Maybe you’re a biological mother or an adoptive mother or a step-mother or a mother to people you work with or for. Maybe you play the role of mother to animals or a business or your parents. Regardless of the way you mother, I hope these words that I shared with my step-daughter will help […]
read moreMy stuff that matters a lot to me fits in a small carry-on. My stuff that matters a little less to me fits in a small car. Electricity and air conditioning are luxurious necessities. Order is calming. Waiting is hard. My sister is brave. Afternoon bourbon is helpful. Ribs can be cooked on Sterno. No […]
read moreSarah Payne is the exhausted writing teacher in Elizabeth Strout’s novel My Name Is Lucy Barton. Strout’s narrator says, “…recording this now I think of something Sarah Payne had said at the writing class in Arizona. ‘You will have only one story,’ she had said. ‘You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry […]
read moreOver the past few years, I’ve read fewer books than ever before, and of those books, even less fiction. I’ve said that the internet has melted my brain, wrecked my attention span. Or maybe the problem is my 50-something vision, or my glasses, or the quality of the light by my bed. I listen to […]
read moreBatterers and abusers have an uncanny knack for sizing up others’ vulnerabilities–one of the reasons we stay too long is that they underscore doubts that are already in our own heads. The most powerful ones, those most ready for the abuser’s exploitation, are the ones we worry about with private shame. A little insecurity about […]
read moreI started blogging right after President Obama’s inauguration, participating in optimism and a sense of community here and in my little corner of the early days of Twitter. Vice President Biden championed victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and the Violence Against Women Act was strong and enforced. But life–my life, your life, the life […]
read moreLife is easier, in some ways, when things are neatly divided into them/us, bad/good, never/always boxes. When those boxes crumble, when the lines between certainties blur, our assumptions and givens shake. Things get trickier and more interesting. A few box-crumbling events have happened in my world over the past few years: a friend’s husband was […]
read moreWhen Mr. Z. and I were in Paris last month, our hosts, the Scotts, took us to one of their favorite restaurants, Chez Denise. Even though my own lunch was delicious and satisfying, I openly coveted the os á moelle that the French couple next to us ordered. My companions, veterans of French food and committed to their […]
read moreWhen you live with an abusive partner, it’s hard to imagine leaving your pets with him if you move out, even temporarily. Congresswomen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Katherine M. Clark (D-MA) have cosponsored The Pet and Women Safety Act. Here’s Ros-Lehtinin with her office dog, Maya.
read moreThe Ray Rice “story” and (thanks in part to the NFL’s clumsy, clueless handling of its role) the media’s continued coverage of it is strange in a “wow” kind of way: people are talking about a sometimes taboo subject that I raise whenever I can. Sometimes talk is only gossip, or herd mentality, or meaningless Facebook likes and […]
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For years I kept secrets in silence. Then, once upon a time, I spoke and wrote them to a handful of people and began to blog anonymously. Today I tell my stories face-to-face, online, and in a memoir coming soon. Telling our stories leads to freedom, empowerment, and growth, for both the teller and the told. Is today your once upon a time, your time to tell your story?
