Many people in the esoteric and native cultural worlds believe the date 11.11.11 was just the beginning of the wild ride we are on. They say a great influx of celestial energy is being infused into humanity, for the purpose of encouraging us, as a species, toward spiritual enlightenment. They believe this was a time [ Read More ]
“Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are.” Russian Proverb “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry with your girlfriends.” —Laurie Kuslansky Thick, thin, life, death, moments, decades, loves, losses. Hearts blood or chicken soup, it’s the women friends who’ve been there. Advice or a boot in the [ Read More ]
I was blessed with a family of great and merry women, who were kind enough to live into their 90s (one to 105!) so I could enjoy their wisdom, laughter and strength for much of my life… and also learn how to make great pies! I know we can’t recreate the best of our past [ Read More ]
I had a conversation with my dear 93 year old Aunt Helen shortly before she died, about how good the old days really were. Memories of my grandmother’s home-baked bread, of family gatherings, home and hearth and love and laughter, cuddling us both in remembered grace, were like a feather comforter for the spirit. “Life [ Read More ]
“How would you like to do a sacred ceremony to free you from whatever you choose not to carry with you, anymore?” my Medicine Woman friend asked me earnestly. “In tribal custom,” she continued, “when the time comes for you to become a Wise Elder it’s necessary to become whole again for the good of [ Read More ]
I wish you could all share the experience I’ve just recounted, but I realize it’s not so easy to find a Medicine Man unless you happen to live in Santa Fe or Sedona, but perhaps there’s another way to leave the past behind, if you choose to. Several people have written about this technique, but [ Read More ]
I wanted to love and be loved forever. I wanted to grow old with the man I loved. Like Yeats with Maude Gonne, we’d love the sorrows of each others’ changing faces, and it wouldn’t matter one whit if we weren’t young and beautiful anymore, because we’d laugh together at the losses and infirmities, and [ Read More ]
“Language instead of tears. Anger instead of pent-up misery. Action and change instead of acceptance and self defeat. A warrior instead of a victim.” —Nellis Wong, Poet, founder, the Women Writers Union I was married for twenty years to a man I loved far too much for far too long. It never, not even for [ Read More ]
When your worst nightmare comes to pass a second time, a bizarre numbness sets in to keep you alive. When my daughter Bronwyn died, six years after her sister’s death, I simply went underground and for two months did nothing but try to live through it. I couldn’t write or even talk about my loss, [ Read More ]
“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can decide how you’re going to live now.” —Joan Baez, Folksinger When my daughter died at thirty-five, in the midst of my grief, I had an irrational recurrent guilt that I hadn’t bought her more hot fudge sundaes. She loved them so, [ Read More ]