Anthem
I have not written for awhile. Like all who have lost before me, I know now that surviving my girl gets harder for awhile before it gets easier.…
Learning to Use Eyeliner
A few months after Camila died, after the visitors had thinned out and the text messages and phone calls had let up, on one of those…
Surviving Rogue Waves
I live next to the Pacific Ocean. The shore is rocky, sometimes sandy but sometimes treacherous. At a few beaches, there are caution signs where the…
Holding Onto My Loss
It is common, I expect, this desire to “process correctly.” It is a stubborn ideal borne out of independence, success, and the force of personality. We…
Lighting a Candle
from “Kindness” Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow.…
The Risks of Survival
Those in the circle know we can’t predict when our feelings will be stirred, when a memory – sweet or bleak – will rise to shoot…
The Beauty of Innuendo
V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. …
Getting Rid of My Books
How many things do we keep “for our children”? How many of the multiple multitude of things – our first toy, our grade school report card,…
My Safe Place
When Camila was a girl, she often drew stories, simple narratives about a girl who had a dog or two friends or a love of dance.…
A Choice I Didn’t Make
I’m on a train staring at an ad for M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. That’s where the Seattle doctors briefly considered sending Camila after her relapse. I don’t…
A Compassionate Friend 