Recently two moms I know were diagnosed with adrenal fatigue. I’ve had this myself, and I know it’s no picnic. Or maybe the kind of picnic you throw together on the fly in an effort to impress someone, where you run to Whole Foods for imported olives and chocolate truffles and then to Linens N Things for some marked-down cloth napkins, and maybe to World Market for one of those little folding tables… yeah, maybe that kind of picnic.
When I was pregnant with my first child I was enamored of the idea of using a midwife. I hired a seasoned professional named Lorna. But my son was breech and arrived via a scheduled C-section, so Lorna was replaced by an anesthesiologist, a surgeon, and a floating sea of faceless, masked nurses. I was disappointed that our preparations had been for nothing. Until I awoke one morning, groggy from morphine, to hear her arguing in the hallway with the pediatrician. She was refusing to let him give my son a shot that we hadn’t discussed.
Terminal prepositions. Are they acceptable, or is the “rule” against ending a sentence with a preposition outdated? A Merriam-Webster editor clears up the confusion.
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’ll never forget the moment I put on my first pair of glasses. I was 12 years old, and as my mom and I walked across the optometrist’s parking lot, I slipped on my new tortoise shell frames.
The tree above my head burst from a vague smear of green into hundreds of sharp-edged, clearly-shaped leaves.
Oh! I had no idea how glorious twigs and bark and knotty tree parts could be.
Write about what’s really happening with you, not the polished version of what you wish were the truth. How do you know what that is?
The first deer crossed the road well ahead of the car while my 16-year-old son was driving, It was a clear, sunny day, and we were on the back-roads of Wisconsin. I told my son that deer typically come out at dusk, so we were lucky to see one. Not long after, two more deer not only crossed ahead of us, but stopped in the cornfield and calmly watched us pass.
Ah, the country life!
The shooting deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling made headlines last week, pushing their way even into my headline. I don’t like to jump into hot political topics, but I read a riveting blog called “The Conversation We Must Have With Our White Children” by Courtney E. Martin. She said to make the reality of white privilege “a part of your daily consciousness, even when it seems tiring and burdensome.”
Story is everything! Begin your blog, article, newsletter, whatever you’re writing, with a personal story. Watch this short video to find out why.
So here’s a pet peeve of mine. I like to listen to Hay House Radio, but inevitably, when callers say to my favorite radio host (Alan Cohen) “I have a question for you…” they never ask a question! Instead they launch into a detailed story, while I wait and wait for the promised question.
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