Stay singleminded. Focus. Be confident. Follow the heat. Run like your life depends upon it. But don’t get cocky. There’s always going to be somebody better, but strive to be the best. Follow your dreams. If your tired of giving up, stop quitting and make your dreams come true. Shoot for the moon, miss and…
The pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of knowledge. The pursuit of one date that doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out. I’m sitting in my car. These things always start in my car, at least half an hour away from my usual stomping grounds; it’s my fault for setting the search radius to…
This article is part one of a two-part series on parenting and pursuing a creative vocation. Last month I shared about my journey as a young mom to find my creative life within the limitations and challenges of parenting. Creative parents are in a time-resource bind that can feel unbreakable: not enough money for childcare…
The most magical moments of my childhood were spent alone. I would lay amongst the prickly spears of grass in the meadow near my home—never able to escape the heat of the midday sun—and always in an imaginative world of my own. Laying flat, pressed against the bosom of the earth, I would roll in…
This article is part one of a two-part series on parenting and pursuing a creative vocation. Part two will appear next month, June 2017: Retreat. Being both a mother and a creative is a catch-22. Unless you are one of those rare and mythical creatures who can make a living from your creative work in…
I have a good poker face. With three older brothers, it served me well through my childhood. I learned quickly that they wanted to get a reaction out of me. If their teasing didn’t seem to bug me, they would leave me alone. I learned to control my emotions by pushing them down, relaxing my…
THE SHIRE SITS mid-mountain on the rise, home to my sweet hobbit parents. It’s there in the woods where I learned to make camp, play house, and build four walls with my imagination into any space available. A giant evergreen grows in front, jutting out from the ridge. It used to scare me in its…
It was the mid-eighties. I went to an urban elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. My best friend Sunny had apple round cheeks and wooly pigtails tied off with bright double-ball elastics. I, with butt-length hair and bell-bottoms, was the unwitting victim of parent fashion crimes, but she loved me anyway. And I loved her. It…
My oldest daughter was born on New Year’s Eve, and, hugely pregnant at Christmastime, I was often in mind of Mary. I felt bodily what it meant to submit oneself to the creative force of the universe. I felt what it meant to live with expectation, the giddiness and fear and uncertainty. I’ve been pregnant…
Confession: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, even Twitter. I can’t stop looking. I know in my soul that it’s so many baby pictures and SNL retweets. It’s rainbow pics snapped from the Ballard bridge and last night’s dinner. But I can’t help it. What if it’s more? What if that guy I liked in ninth grade got…
BILLY COLLINS WROTE A POEM about seeking or searching, something about a gorilla he discovered while reading a book about architecture. It’s kind of about seeing details, finding something meaningful when you least expect it. I know I shouldn’t, but I see all of his poems like this, hidden deep metaphors below layers of sarcastically painted…
“The more civilized man becomes, the more he needs and craves a great background of forest wildness, to which he may return like a contrite prodigal from the husks of an artificial life.” —Ellen Burns Sherman This summer I did three backpacking trips in five weeks. I keep wondering what it is that propels me…
I was early on my first day of high school. My parents couldn’t drive me and the school district decided buses didn’t make sense when most of the students could drive themselves, so I took public transit. The city bus timetable got me to school forty minutes early. It was either that or twenty minutes late.…
“You belong. Strong people moved to this land, worked hard, and struggled so you could live, so you could belong.” Each summer my mother said this over the gravestones of her ancestors, honoring those who went before us, were buried deep under the land they loved, and left a legacy for us to live up…
Yesterday a homespun miracle happened: I cut our first artichoke. Artichoke plants take three years to bear fruit and the starts I put in the ground last April weren’t in good shape by this spring. One had died and the other was slug-eaten and sad looking. Another year, I told myself. If it lives. But…
Kindred 