• Notes to Self

    What Does My Unconscious Want to Tell Me?

    March 26, 2025 - By 

    What’s going on beyond the reaches of my mind? That might be the best way to phrase the question I’ve been exploring in earnest for a little more than three years now. I’ve always worked at improving myself, and little of my adult life was spent with no self-improvement “projects” underway, but in January of 2022, I took the work to new levels. Perhaps I’ll add a Bibliography page/section and share all of the books I’ve read since then. Anyway, about a year ago, I read Focusing by Eugene Gendlin, after stumbling upon the concept at a therapist’s website. The…

  • Notes to Self

    Why Am I Here?

    March 25, 2025 - By 

    When I learned that I was pregnant with my fourth child, I was very excited. My husband, children and I were living in Colorado, and it was the first winter that my mother was spending in Colorado, dividing her time between my crowded ranch in suburbia and my unmarried sister’s smaller but less crowded Tudor in Denver. Mom spent more of her time at the house in Denver, but she and my sister came to see me and the kids at least once a week. One week in January, I was especially looking forward to their visit, because I was…

  • Notes to Self

    Around and Around We Go

    December 30, 2024 - By 

    Betrayal is everywhere you turn. And most of the time, it’s so boring, no one would ever bother to write about it: the coat that slid from the hanger and lies wrinkled at the bottom of your closet; two tiny bodies that succumbed to starvation after his assurance that he checks the traps daily; coffee and doughnuts and a hearty thank-you for the repair guy who took his sweet-ass time—the one you berated me for calling. The apologies show up now and again: when the evidence is so compelling there’s no point in denial. Then there are the friends who…

  • Poetry

    Less Than a Whisper

    September 16, 2024 - By 

    His silences have become more significant than his words. Did he learn it from his mother?She’s the woman with the trick of raising one eyebrowin response to the movements of your mouth.The only time I notice her eyebrows, in fact,is when one of them is pushing itself up above the other:a microcosm of the macrocosm:her way of raising herself up above me or anyone elsewho needs putting in place. He told me last night that he wants to listen and understand me.That’s new, and I appreciate the intention and the follow through.I really do. But those damn silences.The one from…