I remember what it was like to stare out at streets that I had never seen before.  I was sitting in a giant leather chair…surrounded by over-sized oak furniture and baristas enthusiastically shouting out drink orders to a line up of patiently waiting coffee drinkers.  A few hours later, I would be heading to the […]

My husband and I have this plant that we got just before we were married. It started out very small and sat in the kitchen window of our apartment. It’s been with us for over ten years…two moves…one cat…and two children! It has survived a lot! We came home from the holidays recently to find […]

Ten years ago, during these very same cold winter months, I invited a friend over to our house one evening. I sat across from her in our living room…my eyes fighting to look up from the floor…and I asked her for forgiveness. Several months earlier, I had hurt her. Not because of something that I […]

I am a person who feels life. Though I also see it and hear it and think it and touch it…my dominant sense in life is to feel it. Truly. Madly. Deeply. This is both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. Because your tears becomes my tears. Your pain becomes my pain. Your loss […]

Somewhere – floating around in this world – is a picture from my 11th birthday. My friends and I were all crammed on the single set of monkey bars that were behind our row of townhouses. The paint was chipping off the metal bars…the neighbors watched from their own adjoining backyards…and we laughed. My Mom […]

My final year of high school was one of the hardest years of my life. Every element of my existence was a train wreck and the fact that I even came out of it in one piece is a miracle in and of itself. The stress of that year nearly destroyed me and even now […]