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(part 1) The door is the first thing I notice: an automatic sliding door with three wide panels of glass.  When I step on the sensor mat, the third panel slides back behind the second and the second slides back behind the first, leaving a doorway at least ten feet across. It takes me a minute to remember where else I’ve seen a door like this: the children’s hospital. The ER, to be exact. Not the main entrance, but the one in the ambulance zone, where EMTs rolled gurneys bearing little bodies into the fluorescent light of the trauma... Read more »

Visiting hours ended at 8:30. I hugged my son goodbye and headed out of the adolescent unit, pausing at the locked exit for an attendant to buzz me through. Ben had been at the neuropsychiatric institute for nearly a week, following an acute mental health crisis. We visited him every day—either me or my husband or both of us. Tonight I was alone. Which meant that I was quiet as I took the elevator to the main floor and navigated the maze of hallways toward the main entrance—quiet enough to hear the crying woman before I could see her.... Read more »

Fourth and last in a series of essays about female identity. Previous posts explored this theme in the contexts of air, water, and earth. It was snowing when I drove to the hospital, and it wouldn’t be daylight for another hour at least. The only person in the lobby was the woman at the information desk. She directed me to the laboratory down the hall, where I handed over my paperwork and sat down in the empty waiting room. On the wall-mounted TV, a news reporter announced that an escaped convict had been captured. He’d broken out of federal... Read more »

(Part 3 of 4. Read the first parts here and here.) Once a year, right before our Christmas dinner, I practice the fine art of pomegranate seeding. If I’d let them my kids would eat pomegranates every day, but they’re expensive. And the juice stains. This year we have two of the fruits, spherical with thick skins of dull red. I choose one and use a serrated knife to saw through its center. The fruit falls in halves on the cutting board, revealing plump clusters of seeds separated by paper-thin pith. Juice seeps from the wound and runs down... Read more »

(Part 2 of 4. Read the first part here). Between the Washington Beltway and the Delaware coast lay 150 miles of waiting. Waiting, and watching, and sweating with boredom as my grandmother’s Oldsmobile slowly cruised Route 50. We took this road every summer, me and my brother and our Yia Yia Christine, leaving behind the Maryland suburbs for the Lynard vacation spot on Rehoboth Beach. 4 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

(part 1 of 4) A strange autumn. The gold harvest sky, usually so calm and calming, is full of unrest. Nervous pigeons cluster near the freeway overpass. Above them circle the gulls, those inland outlanders who should be pulling fish from the sea. Nameless small dark birds coalesce into rolling, chattering clouds before dropping to roost on rooftops and treetops and utility wires. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Once upon a time there was a little girl who wanted to know God, although she didn’t know yet that that’s what she wanted. Her only religious experience was sporadic Sunday mornings at the Greek Orthodox church her grandmother frequented. There, God was something apart and unknowable, a chant in a foreign tongue, a patch of colors in a high window, a swing of the censer in the distant nave. When she was a little less little, her mother began going to a different church, where the priests didn’t glitter and the windows were curtained yet clear, and there... Read more »

A good thing now comes to an end. We thank Wendy Ulrich for her fantastic guest posts, and wish her the very best. I’ve just begun reading her book, Forgiving Ourselves, and I can already tell that it will be a life-changing experience. Here are some of the chapter titles: The Spiritual Basis for Self-Forgiveness Defining Self-Forgiveness Receiving the Gift Repentance Shame and Pride Depression Anxious Perfectionism Self-Destructive Unselfishness Trauma and Abuse Though Your Sins Be As Scarlet Forgiving Ourselves as Parents Believing God Dr. Ulrich, thank you again. We hope you’ll come back and visit us soon. Be... Read more »

A few months ago I read Kate Braestrup’s excellent memoir Here If You Need Me, and I’ve been thinking about this passage ever since. My son Zach is the child of Unitarian Universalists, so naturally he didn’t know a lot about Jesus. But I heard a lot about Jesus at my Christian seminary, and a lot of it was pretty cool. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Don’t forget: Get a jumpstart on your holiday shopping by supporting the Gifts Outreach book fair at all Utah Barnes and Noble bookstores, Saturday October 13. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

I was signing copies of GIFTS at a Barnes and Noble author event when a tall, brunette middle-aged woman approached the table. She peered at me and the stack of books at my elbow with curiosity. “Do you have any friends or family members with Down syndrome?” I asked. “No,” she said. “I’ve been lucky.” Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends. Sally: Why not? Harry: What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »