It wasn’t my idea to read a book about childhood sexual abuse. I didn’t read it because I suffered abuse, but because I have friends and family members who did. Halfway through the book, in a chapter called “Styles of Relating,” suddenly I was seeing myself. No, I didn’t recover repressed memories of abuse. This…
Let no one come to you without leaving better. ~Mother Teresa Mother Teresa’s words are so deeply etched on my heart that I repeat this simple phrase and let it soak into every fiber of my being anew every day: Let no one come to you without leaving better. No one. It’s a monumental task,…
Long before the emergency room doctor turned to me with sad eyes and told me my husband was gone, I knew. In fact, I think I knew he would not be revived while he was still on our bedroom floor, a half-dozen paramedics busily preparing him to be transported to the hospital. Something deep within…
“She has, you know…issues.” I hate having “issues.” The dreaded connotation underlying the word implies different, problematic, maybe even burdensome. I hate burdensome. Yet the reality is, we are born with”issues” all but written on our foreheads. Our connotation of “issues” as something negative, a problem, comes from the old English meaning “to flow out…
Two years ago I struggled with feeling disconnected from community. I felt burned out from an extended period of reaching out to others and attempting to establish deeper connections and relationships, specifically within my church. I pulled back from many of my existing relationships in an attempt at self-preservation. I believed I was cutting current…
I will never forget the moment I walked in to find my mother had taken her last breath. I stopped in my tracks on the nursing home’s linoleum floor, asking my father, who was right behind me, “Is she dead?” Slowly, I backed away, up against the wall across from her bed, as I stared…