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What A Difference A Snow Witch Makes

January 4, 2010

I wanted this year to start with laughter and smiles and cookies and fizzy soda. I didn’t want confetti and champagne and fireworks and streamers – I just wanted smiling. I just wanted this year to start happy. I’m still trying to find the happy. Yes, my heart lifts when I hug my children and [...]

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The Never-Ending Story

December 31, 2009

The question was: what story are you telling yourself right now? (And, can you give yourself permission to change the ending?) The answer was: this year, this decade, is ending in sadness. This year, this decade, is ending and my heart is wrapped in grief. But: I can give myself permission to change the ending. [...]

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“Who, If I Cried Out, Would Hear Me?” On Twitter, Tales And Tragedy

December 21, 2009

Not all of Twitter’s stories are saving stories, sure. Some of Twitter’s stories are banal. Most of those stories, maybe, are banal. But, too, some are great and some are beautiful and some are terrible and the great stories and the beautiful stories and the terrible stories – all the saving stories – live alongside the banal stories and all of them, all of them draw us ’round the fire to hear and to share and – sometimes – to survive.

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Of Shoes And Ships And Sealing Wax And Hoarding Stuff And Things

December 8, 2009

My dad was a hoarder. When he died, they had to cut through the outside wall of his house to remove his remains. There simply wasn’t room for the coroner to get him through the packed hallway, the corridors lined with stuff. They cut a hole in the wall and pulled out the contents of [...]

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Here I Come, A-Waffling

December 7, 2009

I’m stuck. I have a whole post, one that is already written, down to a word, in my head, one that is pounding against the binding of my brain and demanding to be released. It’s a post that I’ve had written for weeks, months, and that I’ve kept tucked away, unsure about whether or not [...]

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Just Like A Prayer

November 18, 2009

I don’t believe in petitionary or intercessory prayer. I’ve written about my reasons for this at length, but it boils down to this: I don’t believe in, can’t believe in, a God who responds to such prayer. As I said some months ago, ‘why should God help us find a cure for cancer, and not [...]

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On This Day

November 11, 2009

I wrote this poem for Remembrance Day (Canada’s Veteran’s Day) when I was in third grade. I was very proud of it: I was asked to read it at that year’s Remembrance Day assembly in my elementary school, and I was the youngest of the students up on stage. I can’t remember much about the [...]

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Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Monsters

October 29, 2009

A few weeks ago, I said this about Hollywood’s defense of Roman Polanski: What message does it send to our sons when the rape of a young girl is dismissed as something that is not that bad? What message does it send to the would-be Donalds of the world? To the would-be Roman Polanskis? To [...]

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Wordless

October 21, 2009

My Dad, in another time, some time ago when he was still here and we could sit together and talk, or not talk , or (as I am doing in the background of this picture) read the paper and just not care about the passage of time because time always seems infinite until it’s gone [...]

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As Time Goes By

October 13, 2009

Jasper’s getting so big. There are moments when – in just the right light, with just the right angle – he looks like a little boy. Which he is, I suppose. He’s almost seventeen months old. He’s a toddler. He’s still not saying much, but he is a force of energy who spends every waking [...]

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