“Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.” In today’s post, I share a few thoughts about what this Rumi quote means to me.

Happy birthday, America. You know I love you, but I don’t like you right now.

At age fifty-one, I need only take a short walk outside, and look down at my feet, to feel the lingering shame of one parent’s lesson from childhood, and the positive reframing of another. In this post, I explore how we can take the best parts of a lesson and reject the worst, to parent our own kids … and ourselves.

I feel more like a bear than a human these days. Reclusive. Solitary by choice. Wild and leery of humans. Today’s post shares how it’s been hard for me to re-enter society after the long, isolating hibernation of the pandemic … and the small steps I’m taking to forge human connection again.

That time I lost the use of an arm and was told it might take THREE YEARS to get it back.

I recently read Brandi Carlile’s scrappy and gorgeous memoir Broken Horses. But as I slid it onto the bookshelf, I couldn’t help but grumble, “You little shit.”

Whenever I sit down to write, I often overthink how to start. And when that perfect first line doesn’t come, I hesitate and second-guess myself, the resistance builds, and I get up from my desk to make a sandwich. Author Natalie Goldberg offers gentle advice to keep writers in the chair.

My quest to find strength and serenity amidst the chaos of COVID, my mom’s Alzheimer’s disease, and the biggest wildfire in Colorado history.

A forty-year-old photo inspires me to finish writing my book.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” asks poet Mary Oliver. When our kids leave home, it’s not just them flying from the nest, testing their wings. As parents, we’re fledging in our own way, too.