Perspectives
Essays on gratitude, perspective shifts, and finding meaning in the small things.
From Culture Shock to Finding “Home”: Life Lessons from Living Abroad
It has been almost 20 (!) years since I graduated from college, and since then, I have moved homes 11 times to 6 different cities in 3 states and 2 countries. The average person moves 11.7 times in their lifetime. (My lifetime total is 17.) Some aspects of moving are...
Piano
I don't know what made me do it. It could have been my emotions running high from the difficult interaction I had at work that day. Maybe it was watching (really watching) my 6-year-old rehearse a piano piece from memory. I sat down at my 20-year-old electric...
The T-Shirt Drawer
During the Kon Mari tidying craze, I went through the shirts in my T-shirt drawer and got rid of the ones I never wore, or didn't like, or that didn't "spark joy." I re-folded and arranged the survivors of the great purge, so they were standing in the drawer in neat...
Carnival in the Time of Covid
The other day, I stood whooping for beads, arms waving, with a baby on my hip, as I watched one my town's local Mardi Gras parades march past. I reached for a juice box for my youngest, and I looked up to see float riders passing by, dressed in plague doctor masks....
Why I Started Writing
I've been writing since, well, I could write. In elementary school, I wrote a book of poems about everything from penguins, to why I hated school. They were cute and pithy and terrible and by God I made those verses rhyme. In third grade, we got to write a story,...
Feet in the Grass
When I feel as if the world might pull me under, I put my feet in the grass. And since I live on a barrier island on the Gulf Coast, I can do this pretty much year round. If I have shoes or socks on, I take them off. I find a green spot in the sun and I engage in...