My Writing

"Kiss the joy as it flies..." This is a line from a famous poem titled "Eternity" by William Blake. Someone in my Death Cafe today said she always hated that line in the poem because she wants to hold on to the joy. She wants to keep it close to her. She wants to hold it so tight that it can't leave her. But she also said she knows that isn't how joy works. That it is by nature ephemeral. That it is fleeting. That it can't be restrained or tied down or it will surely die. Tha

"Whatever" upon waking. "Oh well" upon going to sleep. This is how the lovely writer and speaker extraordinaire Annie Lamott describes her daily mantras. But, as we know, she meant something more profound. She is certainly not cavalier about her day, her work, her life. Here's what I think she meant: We do the best we can. Every day. We plan. We show up. We consider. We try to be better. We choose. We move on. Sometimes it works out well. And sometimes our efforts are not suc

“I would say that happiness is the sweetness of desiring what you have, fully aware of its fragility, its brevity and its limits. Happiness isn’t the absence of sadness, but the capacity to hold reality without needing it to be otherwise.” This quote by Stephen Grosz makes my heart happy. I have always felt that the word 'contentment' captures the sweetness of desiring what I have.  Likewise, I have always felt that the word 'acceptance' means to hold reality without needing

What if rain drops had names? When they splashed down to the ground and broke apart, would you grieve them? Would you memorialize each drop by name? There are 8.3 billion people alive on the planet right now. Each of us was born, lived, cared for (however well or badly), and will die.  Each of has a name. Let us honor all life. Let us honor all death. We die because we were born. Every raindrop existed, exists and will exist again.

When you are in a conversation with someone, do you feel connected or like you are each giving a monologue?  Shortly before his untimely...