I’d had this idea to write stories about all the wonderful women and friendships in my life. It started out well but as this 50 Stories, 50 Weeks project went on and I started grad school, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do everyone justice in the next few weeks. So I’m…
Read more 50 Stories, Week 48: To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before, Part 3
When I was pregnant with Jackson, I was clueless. Yes, I knew more about what was happening physiologically in my body than most 27-year-olds, but as far as parenting was concerned, I didn’t know diddly squat. Just because we were once children, had parents, or that women have been giving birth for millions of years,…
When I was eight years old, I fell face first off a swing on the school playground. What I remember most about this incident was not the pain of picking gravel out of my face, after having scraped it against the rocky dirt below. Nor the embarrassment of having to be carried to the nurse’s…
Lately I’ve been thinking about the journey from where I began, when I was first able to grasp the concept of working for something, to where I am – having left my career mid-March (conveniently in line with a global pandemic) and about to embark on graduate school. Some people’s paths are clear from day…
Today I figured out my six degrees of separation from Taylor Swift. Like all good retrospectives, it took a long time to develop. In the fall of 1993, I was living with Richard’s brother and sister-in-law in Redlands, CA, and nannying for their two young sons. It was an arrangement that sounded good initially, free…
First, the doorbell rings. I think it is way too late for visitors and assume it is the police. My sister Jeanne is a teenager and always seems to be in trouble, at least with my father. I sneak out of bed and crack my door open to hear who it is. I hear a…
Oh, showers! There is nothing like you after a long run, a cold morning, a late night. Even better outside and unexpected. You bring me comfort. You wake me. You shake me from a funk. I remember you in Brooklyn, testing the patience of those around me. While I sauntered along the sidewalk, my neighbors…
Once upon a time, there was a girl who dreamed of moving to California. She would write in her diary at ten years old that she was going to live in Malibu, like Barbie. When she was a teenager, she would write about how she was going to live in Hollywood and make movies. And…
No man is an island… I not ashamed to say that I need my girlfriends. I need those friendships possibly more than any other relationships. While we may be culturally programmed to settle down and bear offspring, we are also inherently programmed to be social, interconnected beings. My stubborn independence is fundamental to who I…
Read more 50 Stories, Week 31: To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before, Part 2
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…
