I love going to parties, I love hosting parties, I love being around people whether they are strangers or old friends. I realize though, that many folks would rather eat worms. Some temperaments are just not suited to gatherings and even if they are, money is tight right now and everyone is busy. Everyone is…

Has anyone ever told you to go touch grass? It’s one of my favorite things to do, and I particularly love ripping it out of the ground with my bare hands. The grass that grows inexplicably in my raised bed garden flourishes more than any of my other plants, and if I don’t pull it…

At some point every mother must let go. Since our economy makes it so difficult for young people to afford a place of their own, I’ve been able to put it off for quite a while. Last week, though, my son announced that he is ready. “Would you go with me to look at rentals,…

This month I find myself recovering from a double mastectomy with reconstruction. For reference, I look like Frankenstein’s monster and have been severely limited in my activities which, admittedly, have included a lot of scrolling. I’ve only just been able to dial back the pain killers enough to read, let alone get the February newsletter…

If you are a familiar, you know that the devil has been messing with me lately. Everyone goes through it from time to time. There’s nothing like spiraling amidst a life altering trauma that is then sprinkled with random unrelated heartbreaks. The piling on feels unnecessary but surviving, thriving even, under such attacks is the…

I would go so far as to say that most of my childhood trauma was orchestrated by my mother. I didn’t have the words until recently for malevolent parentification but have always been able to make the connections between her actions and the emotions my brave therapist finds herself regularly wading through. Even as I…

In the White Tanks Mountains, on the Waddell Trail, there is a mesquite tree down in a wash that someone decorates for Christmas every year. It must drive the park rangers crazy. I don’t know who does this but as I corner that ridge, the ornaments pop up in the middle of a stark gray…

Chemotherapy is torture. I’m not a scientist so there is no good answer within my intellectual reach but in dark moments one wonders why, in 2025, are we still poisoning people like this? It’s so easy to indulge in grim thoughts when the side effects are at their worst but it is no joke that…

After reading my latest short story, Mike said, “Wow, that’s pretty dark.”Yes, it is. He’s right, and I do have a very dark side. It’s shadowed my whole life, usually in the form of nightmares and catastrophic thinking. When the wind sets off our Ring camera my imagination can turn the weather into a home…

I spend a lot of time on hiking trails all over Arizona and am quite proud as a Gen-Xer to still consider myself competent at several of the double black diamond variety. That said, nothing humbles me faster than wheezing up the side of a mountain, only to be asked politely if I might step…