Blog

For some of us, there is an essential passage in our creative lives that, if not reckoned with, leaves us frustrated, stymied, and feeling vaguely lost like we’re searching for something we can’t quite name. We may feel we are blocked from becoming our full selves...

My mom died last week and I’m heavy with sadness. My mind is dull and my sleep is riddled with troubled busy dreams from which I emerge holding only an odd detail like the texture of the blue shag carpet from my childhood home. There was a moment when I was alone with...

I am writing this beside my mom’s bed. She is dying and her breath grows quieter and quieter. Her face is like a child’s, soft and without a wrinkle. I was with her just last week and, four days after I left, her brain stopped knowing how to instruct her body to...

I’ve been bubbling lately with an intensity unusual even for me. I’ve had a hard time sleeping. I often feel uneasy, like I’ve forgotten something important, but I have no idea what. I’ve journaled about this twitchy feeling and meditated with it; greeting my thoughts...

If there is one thing I hear constantly from the creatives and writers I work with at my recommit to your art, recenter in your heart Oasis, on retreat, or in my writer’s mastermind, it’s the lament of what didn’t happen. The cry of “I didn’t make my page count” or...

You may or may not know this, but last April I realized I’d spent four years writing a memoir that wasn’t going to work. Ever. As hard as I had worked to shape the material and find the central insight I wanted to share with you, it just wasn’t there. What was there...

Once upon a time, there was a woman who stood on the cusp of the new year and grinned. She grinned at all her past selves stretching behind her. Where once she would have judged those selves for their choices, now she bowed to them. They had brought her to this...

I received a great question from Ann who is attending one of my retreats next year: “How do you make sure that a 'nice break' from writing (for example, over the upcoming holidays) doesn't become a block to writing?  As in, how do you prepare yourself ahead of time?...

My fourteen-year-old dog Luna died last week.  She had been in failing health for two years and it was clear over the weekend she was suffering and it was time to let her go. Bob and I cuddled her that last morning and fed her bits of cheese and told her how much we...

The holidays are upon us with all their wonder and hustle, with sparkle and poignancy, and with the possibility for wonderful connections and for the sting of loneliness and missing those we have loved. It seemed a good time to offer you an oasis of inspiration and...

A reader recently asked me to write about “how to be yourself.” Oh, I thought, yes. I love that phrase, packed with so much promise, unfolding, and mystery. And packed with so much pain as we mostly live in a world that shoves and bullies us to be different than we...

I’m just back from teaching a writing retreat where 20 women worked so hard and so bravely to calm their minds and open their hearts and bring their voices forth. It is stunning what we are capable of when we give space, time and permission to our desires. We stopped...

I found myself thinking about decency after wanting to tear down a campaign sign in my neighborhood. I wanted to yank it out of the grass. I wanted to rip it apart, stamp on it, put my candidate's sign in its place. Is that what a good neighbor does, I thought,...

Last week I wrote about how I don’t know how to be angry. A week later - no surprise - I still don’t. But I am more ready to learn now because my anger is leaking out (sorry TSA person I snapped at and young man I glowered at when you got into our shared Lyft) but...

I was shaken in ways I had not expected by the hearings in the U.S. last week. I was filled with rage. I wept. I shouted at the computer. And I was very surprised. I didn’t even plan to watch. I’m surprised because I’ve traditionally been good at compartmentalizing,...

You realize it’s a choice. Your choice. You revoke permission from anyone who tries to oppress you, drain you, demean or diss you. You direct your attention toward what you want to do and how you wish to be vs. letting your attention zing wherever your mind or the...

A member of the Writer’s Oasis, my support community for creatives who use writing to think or share their voices, asked me recently how I learned to trust myself. I was delighted I could quickly make a list of all the ways I practice self-trust. Not that I don't...