After 37 years of being here, I’m no stranger to pain. I’ve tried everything; to push against it, hide from it, bury it in the ground, or exploit it for a better parking space. These days I am learning to companion it, to become a good listener, to befriend my pain as a guide, to keep in touch with it, and in doing so, to live a wide open life, exploring my own deep places, and calling to the deep within others.

I am a writer. A dreamer. A speaker and sharer. A mud wrestler with the faith of my childhood. An ongoing surviver of chronic pain and vivid loss. I am a lover of a man who makes me laugh and who pays the bills with a camera and a mother to three boys; two biological sons in the throes of teenage-dom, one adopted son, black and beautiful, who has ongoing medical and special needs).

I believe the depths of pain we feel are in direct correlation to depths of joy we can experience.

I believe analog trumps digital, especially when it involves human relationships.

I believe real is better than retouched.

I believe in the public library card, the original, sexier Master Card.

I believe many hands make light work, and shared stories make the load lighter.

I believe black lives matter, and all lives should work for justice for the oppressed.

I believe we need others in order to be the most vitally human, hope-filled beings.

I believe Ram Dass is right; We are all just walking each other home.

I believe we are loved beyond anything we could comprehend, that the Mysterious Tremendum et Fascinans is always speaking the words of a tender, faithful mother, “I love you.”

I spend my days loving my family and our neighbors, writing stories, and listening as others share theirs. Once in a blue moon I piece together some of these stories once in awhile on the dear somebody podcast (click here to listen).