The first time I volunteered abroad, I was just shy of my 41st birthday. I was feeling stuck in my advertising career, nursing a mediocre long-distance relationship, and tired of living in cost-prohibitive San Francisco. I’d recently completed a yoga teacher training after 20+ years of practice to kick start the next chapter of my…
Twenty years ago, I wanted to apply to graduate school. I wanted to study art or writing or psychology, anything that let me continue exploring the inner struggles of humanity. It seemed as good a time as any since my Dad was newly dead, I’d recently left my son’s father, and I was turning 30.…
The classroom behind the pirate shop was incredibly stuffy and hot, but I didn’t care because tonight I was going to meet the man behind the Memoir. I had never before considered the possibility of writing a memoir. I am, after all, only 34 years old. I believe memoir writers are old, crotchety people who…
Oh, summer! I ate your nectarine that spilled across my hand, almost too sweet to finish. I resisted the urge to buy all of your dark cherries. I used your fresh watermelon juice for my margarita. It reminded me of the huge watermelon boats my mother used to make for our family cookouts. Helping her…
I am sitting in a plastic orange chair, fit for a six-year-old. My first grade class is seated in a circle because it is almost time for show and tell, which is my favorite part of the morning. It is my turn today and I am bursting with excitement. As the last of five children,…
For the Vietnam veteran who laughed at my husband and I for wearing masks outside… On Thursday, Jason and I embarked on our first mid-pandemic ‘vacation’ with a road trip to visit his Mom outside of Chicago. The last time we saw his parents was back in December when they visited us in NJ. Well…
In June of 1993, I was pregnant – again. Despite having been on the pill for years and using a diaphragm correctly, this was the third time my body tried to make me a mother before I was ready. I was slated to spend my summer working in Yellowstone National Park and my boyfriend Richard…
Most of my life, my father was a traveling salesman, working for supermarket distributors and building his own business on the side. He was busy – always on the phone or planning his next trip to some small town with an A&P or Shop n’ Save. He never seemed tired to me, though. For me,…
In June of 1992, I embarked on a month-long cross-country trip with a woman I’d met only two weeks earlier. Her name was Coco and she’d been mildly dating my on-again, off-again boyfriend while I was out of town. (Objectively, I see now that the level of sexual intermingling amongst my friends back then wasn’t…
This week of pandemic was rough. Maybe I needed a glass of wine to get those words down, but so be it. I’m not sleeping much. My dreams, like many of yours, have been absolute batshit crazy – like last night’s combo of befriending Kelly Clarkson while working at a dress shop and never being…
Read more 50 Stories, Week 9: Things That I’m Unreasonably Afraid Of (aka Anxiety 101)
