HEART. SOUL. PEN. the online magazine

If there is one thing, above all, I could tell you, it is to like yourself more.

I had to admit I was feeling envious of my friends whose millennial kids had come running home from the city.

Eggs make me gag and now, I think I know why.

Perhaps if I looked good enough, I would fit in and be happy?

Huge crowds of mostly young people of all colors are demanding change. They will not stop demanding until the change has come.

“You think I’m going to get you sick,” she said. “I’m going to get you sick and you’re going to die.”

When I was in my twenties, I started running. I’d fallen in love with a jock in spite of my lack of athletic ability. He did triathlons…

Maybe it’s because I am more like my dad. Maybe it’s because she has supernatural patience and I do not.

Most days I’m awake before the sun is up. I like the world best in the dark wee hours, when children and the dog still sleep.

There is room for me to laugh more, to dream more. I will never do those things as skillfully as my mother, but I will try.

Hello, Dear Reader! Just about a month before we went into quarantine, I finished a draft of a new theater piece for a character I created…

He loved roller coasters. He loved planes, trains and automobiles. He loved anything transportation and my son still does at 23. I was…

My favorite scar and the best gift from my mother…

Celebrating Mother’s Day with 2020 vision on my priorities

I remember this moment, when your plump, tender-tiny hands grabbed for my neck as they so often would in those days: your overflowing…

It was the moment I finally became an adult and understood what it means to sacrifice for another.

Being the emotional backbone of this family during COVID-19 is as new and as hard as mothering once was.

The series brought back memories of my childhood growing up in an Orthodox home.

My daughter has a lot of spunk. Except sometimes spunk comes out in different ways with her parents.

I had no idea where he wanted to go. And if he knew, he wasn’t saying.

I Want To Be Mothered, Instead

Frederich Buechner said, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

Yesterday my daughter said to me, “can you drink a little quieter?” Clearly, we are getting on each other’s last nerve. It’s day 16 of our…

Grocery Shopping vs. Online Home School — the new Parent Dilemnia amidst Covid-19

I can’t.  It’s never gonna end.  My life is piling up.  Why is this happening?  I’ve lost track of time, what day is today?  Does it even…

It seemed like a normal day, a typical Sunday in our household. After breakfast, my mother and I headed to the fabric store, I was working…

My grandson was born two weeks ago. My daughter called from the hospital as she was being admitted and informed me that Cedars Sinai had…

Nothing about motherhood turned out like I planned. Somehow, I was going to have to accept this.

I was perched on a pouf like the others, when what I wanted to be doing was forbidden. My stomach rumbled, and I was caught up in…

When it comes to modern wisdom, the old philosophers might have been on to something

I love the underdog. The kid that comes to school with their clothes askew, backpack half open, papers flying out, hair mussed.

“Does it spark joy?” the now unbelievably famous book about organizing asked me. So I touched my socks, my pants, my skirts and asked…