I used to have an unconscious belief that Christmas was supposed to be about the miracles that I would see on television. It was as if everyone’s problems would find their solutions at the last minute on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. Homes would have just the right decorations, food looked as if a gourmet […]
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Advent. This year I want to enter into this practice with great intention. I realize that our programs of recovery teaches us many of the same things that we learn during Advent. I’d like to invite you to join me. Recovery is really all about relationships: to God first, self […]
We are so divided as a nation. I kept thinking that I should do something about it. I just didn’t know what I could do. Then, I began to remember the tools of my twelve-step program. If I were to think like a twelve-stepper, I would need to accept that I can’t change another person. The […]
My husband’s heart went into atrial fibrillation last week, so we spent twenty-four hours in the hospital to treat his problem. His nurse during the last few hours there, told us that even though she had become a nurse late in life, she still had one last dream to pursue: being a writer. “Oh wow, […]
When my children were very young, I watched the Oprah Winfrey show every afternoon. One day, her show featured a guest named Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher who came up with the well-known, ‘brown-eyes, blue-eyes’ experiment where kids were separated into groups based on a physical characteristic with one group treated with kindness while […]
Five days ago, the reality of our current situation hit me. I had no past experience to draw from. Fearing a stay at home order, I went to the grocery store to get a few staples. I had a plan. I was going to buy bread, but if they were out of bread, I’d buy […]
Warning! If you get on social media, do so at your own risk. After cleaning all morning, I sat down to eat lunch and went online. The pandemic has taken over the newsfeed. Opinions are all over the map. Toilet paper shelves have been emptied. Bleach is hard to find. According to some, if you […]
A few years ago, one of my friends was looking to buy a pony for the riding program at her farm. She found an ad for something that might fit in with her program online. When she arrived at the farm to check out the pony, she saw something that changed everything. There was a […]
If you grew up in the country as I did, you didn’t just wheel the trash can to the curb each week. We lived on seventy acres. The garbageman didn’t come to our home. Instead, we had a burn can. Of course things were different. We didn’t have aluminum cans. We drank Coke from glass […]
I was at work–a seasonal job–yesterday that I do each Thanksgiving/Christmas, when I was asked to deliver a customer’s purchases by cart out to the loading dock. Since Williams Sonoma sells a number of large items this is a common part of my job. I was told to look for a white Honda CRV. I spotted one […]