Time for a Post-Pandemic Recalibration

A friend asked me recently if I’m a hugger. We met post-pandemic, are new friends and are still in that stage where these little revelations are significant. “Yes!” I enthused. Followed by a pause. “Well, I think I am.” More pausing. “I suppose I’m a hugger more in theory than in practice now.” The pandemic... Continue Reading →

Why I Didn’t Drink: A Study in Common Threads

I gravitate toward believing that at the core of our experience as humans in this beautiful and chaotic world there’s something universal. It’s less lonely that way, believing that there’s something that binds us together, a landmark that we all would recognize if we were ever privy to someone else’s interior landscape. That flash of... Continue Reading →

Surviving Shitty Election Results

I woke up at 4:25 this morning and immediately opened the AJC to look at the election results. Some of my friends spent the past week vacillating between fretting over a potential loss for Stacey Abrams and trying to be doggedly hopeful so that would be the energy that got released out into the universe.... Continue Reading →

Tequila Never Made Me Feel Like This

Every morning of my late twenties dawned with sickening dread. Every morning. I’d wake up and immediately begin the slow slide into the murky depths of shame. And fear. And regret. Anxiety gripped me like a vise, making it hard to breathe. I hated myself, pitied myself, held dear a storied mythology of myself. What... Continue Reading →

Dreaming

One of the greatest joys of being sober is doing shit you never even dreamed of... I didn't have such a great imagination when I was drinking. Sure, I could sit on a barstool & tell you I was going to run a marathon the year I turned 30 (even though I'd never run more... Continue Reading →

Secrets Are Small Soul-Deaths

A woman who carries a secret is an exhausted woman.Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés I gave up being exhausted in late 2008. For 33 years, I'd been collecting secrets (big and utterly minuscule) and stacking them precariously in various corners of my soul. Which meant I couldn't round a corner without... Continue Reading →

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