"At some point you will be knocked to the ground. Every one of us will." With that statement, Sandra Marinella starts her book titled The Story You Need to Tell: Writing to Heal from Trauma, Illness, or Loss. (2017. New World Library: CA). I came across this book last week while perusing Amazon for books …
Continue reading Write Along with Me #6: The Story You Need to Tell
We've just returned from a trip to MN, followed by a trip "back east" to Michigan and Chicago, to see family that included my first visit back to the cemetery where my sister Esther was buried last April. Bittersweet, for sure. And we saw a lot of friends. Just before those trips, I hosted a …
Morbid, right? In a sense, yes. In another, no. Around twelve years ago, my four older siblings and their spouses started planning for their funerals by buying cemetery plots. I followed their actions via our email chats. Since I’m five to eleven years younger, I saw no need to start planning. Now, unbelievably, six of …
I have her shoes, the new white Skechers she’d packed carefully in her “wear home from the hospital” bag. There’s something not right about this. We did not expect her death. We were ecstatic when we heard her surgery for cancer was successful. We were relieved when she transferred out of ICU, then greatly worried …
I’m a preacher’s daughter. A PK. I was raised in a fishbowl with guidelines on how to behave, including a sense of right and wrong. I was not allowed to swear; I was not even allowed to say gee, gosh, or heck as they were presented as shortened versions of Jesus, God, and heaven. I …
A prayer to consider on this Thanksgiving Day in the United States. I admire writer Sr Joan Chittister's courage and candor. She gave me much to contemplate. From Where I Stand: We must be thankful for memory -- the memory of the values and ideals this country has bred into us since its inception. (Click …
Continue reading A Thanksgiving Day prayer in a riven land | National Catholic Reporter
Imagine checking your emails and seeing one from yourself. A similar thing happened to me in September of 2015; I opened my blog one morning to find a comment written on a post by "Lois Roelofs." Imagine my surprise. How could that be? I had not written myself. I opened up the comment and read: …
Yes, you read that right. After eleven years of high-rise living in Chicago’s Loop, my husband and I are moving to a ground-level ranch in Sioux Falls, SD, in an area with lots of grass and evergreens near our little grandchildren. We’ve just told our family and friends. Responses have at first been shock, then …
For weeks I've been thinking about how I want to spend the rest of my life. I retired 15 years ago and have done everything I wanted to do from attending concerts and plays, volunteering at church, writing a book, and taking a few dozen writing and humanities courses. My thinking about the future started …
In four days, I only forgot to go potty once, wear my coat once, and fasten my seat belt twice. That’s a great record for this seventy-three year-old Grandma who, along with an older yet Grandpa, just completed our annual four-day babysitting stint with our youngest grandchildren, ages five and four. But, because I could …
Write Along with Me 