Subscribe below to receive a new post via email every Thursday.
Lately, everyone I talk to feels like they should be doing more.
There’s a sense of guilt over who we could be vs. who we are.
But all we really are obligated to do is stay alive. We’ve got to eat and sleep and bathe.
Then we have responsibilities to the people depending on us: our pets and minor children. And we need to hold up our end of the bargain in our committed relationships.
Read MoreMy little cousin and her family released their Painted Lady butterflies from their butterfly garden recently.
One of the butterflies alit on the three-year-old’s wrist and contentedly remained there for a few minutes, to the child’s fascination and delight.
“I’m being very gentle with him,” she said, because it was true.
She wasn’t reassuring her parents. She wasn’t being defensive. She wasn’t even boasting. She was affirming herself, saying the words her mother might have said.
Read MoreOne thing I’ve learned in this pandemic is that time is not my obstacle when it comes to getting things done. It’s energy.
It wasn’t hard to figure this out in the painful hours sitting at my computer, desperately trying to stay awake even after a full night’s sleep. I just didn’t have much of anything to work with, and no way that I knew of to fully make it better. I was like an old battery that couldn’t hold a charge for long.
Read MoreThere’s a sameness to these days, and I can’t remember what they were like before.
I put on my slippers and comfy clothes and shuffle downstairs in the darkness of my little house, turning up the heat as I go. I write. I eat. I think. I communicate with my team, my clients, my friends and family through various means. I eat some more. I write some more. At some point, I go for a walk outside. That’s the day.
There are moments of joy and satisfaction. Moments of connection. Moments of frustration, sorrow, and mirth. It adds up to a life.
Read MoreIt was a year ago — good old Friday the thirteenth — when everything shut down for me.
We had already made the decision the day before to shut down my schools in Atlanta, but somehow I thought Maine had a little more time. However, that Friday was my last morning at my favorite coffee shop. They were wearing latex gloves to collect the cash. The pandemic anxiety had arrived — and the virus, too, was already circulating. Life as we knew it was over, and it still hasn’t returned.
Read More
