Sleepless in the San Fernando Valley

The poet finds his departed mother on the breeze. I want mine next to me in line at Trader Joe’s. I guess that’s why I’m not a poet.

Maybe hula hooping is no big deal; or maybe being willing to be playful is what life is all about.

Lesson #1 from Heart. Soul. Pen.: I wanted to have written and published five books by now.

I laugh when I remember that I ever thought life would follow my plan.

For a genetically competitive group of wordies, we keep it a friendly game. Mostly.

I have a choice to make about my mother’s final days: whether to plant a garden of forgiveness or hold tight to my regret.

I do not think dog training is going to help. Mom training? Maybe.

When the yoga teacher said, “Today, my intention is blank.” I thought, yes!

Thirty years of friendship to celebrate twenty-five years of marriage — and oysters.

With every news alert that pops up on my phone, I feel like I might fall down.

My daughter and I had Grandma Memorial Manicures in honor of my mother who loved manicures and blouses and leopard and denim and anything…

I spent most of my mom years wandering from room to room in my white fleece bathrobe wondering what happened.

As a midlife woman and personal essayist, I have never had more to say than now.

I went down into the stacks alone and, for hours, I focused.

Before believing in leaving, try changing your beliefs.

With dieting, at least I know what I am about to bite into.

It may not go viral on Instagram, but ‘old love’ has a magic all its own.

After two years of writing this column, I have decided to move on and do ‘only what I am meant to’ — even if I don’t yet know what that is.

“You don’t have to buy a condo in trauma land,” my grief counselor told me, “just fly over and tell me what you see.”

2021 is over? I never came to terms with 2020. I can’t let go of everything I lost, including my mother.

Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it won’t.

We are alive and in good shape, more or less, so let’s celebrate that.

What if I believed that I was standing in the exact spot I was meant to be standing in right now?

If kids behaved the way our public figures do, they’d be kicked out of school and sent to a therapist.