Tell the Story
Sitting across the table from my mother today, celebrating her 69th birthday, I remembered this picture of her, at 16, with her mother, Annie, then 41, standing next to a gardenia bush that was still blooming when I was a child. At 16, my mother wanted to be a doctor. She became a devoted mother […]
read moreMy maternal grandmother, Anne Ferrara Jones, died on December 28, 1997. I always think about her more than usual during this time of year. This year, I’ve been thinking about her creative, authentic and joyful philosophy of life. A little background. Her parents, Italian immigrants, died in the flu epidemic of 1918, leaving behind five […]
read moreIn February 2010 I attended a weekend workshop with John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga, who was teaching at the conference center of FIU, the same school at which I was about to defend my MFA thesis. I may not have been revising, but I told myself that at least I was on the […]
read moreWriting is writing, right? Whether I use a keyboard or a pen; Post-it note, Word document, WordPress, yellow legal pad, Scrivener, 750words.com, or a notebook, what is the difference? The speed with which ideas can be set down? A physical or metaphysical connection between hand and heart that happens only with pen in hand? Legibility? […]
read moreI started resisting the reverb10 prompts beginning with last Friday’s: Lesson Learned. There was nothing wrong with the prompt, but I decided to take the evening off from blogging to watch Thelma and Louise, which had risen to the top of my Netflix cue. I hadn’t seen it since it came out in 1991. Yes, […]
read more
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?
