It’s 12:15 pm on a Wednesday and she’s asleep on the couch. Again. After two hours of this unconscious state, she will send 42 texts about, well, hard to say. With great difficulty she will then tear herself off of the couch, rearrange her tangled hair and within a split second…
I Didn’t Notice
I didn’t notice how you loved me yesterday. I prayed that you would show me, that I would see one significant sign that you are still close and that you still love me. But, I just ran errands and worked. I went shopping and bought chicken and green beans and…
The Down Side of Raising Kids You Like
Everything was all well and good until I was taking down the Christmas decorations yesterday. I have been in a blissful, protective state of denial. Denial, which gets an undeserved bad rap, allows us to move ahead in the face of certain pain or imminent failure and go confidently in…
Follow up to The Fingerprint of Talia
She has been accepted as a part of the team at Teen Lifeline. Her joy is complete. I trust she will be able to forge past her tender heart to make a difference in someone else’s. I trust her tender heart will grow stronger but not lose compassion. Or that…
Haiti’s Acting Lessons
Our resort where all the water drinking will take place! I regard theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. Oscar Wilde I regard the theatre…
The Fingerprint of Second Thoughts
“Thank you for not abusing me” she said. “You’re welcome……….it hasn’t been easy” I replied. My daughter, Talia, is training to be a volunteer on Teen Lifeline, the suicide hot line here in Phoenix. We had the above conversation more than once after the session on abuse. I didn’t plan…
Advice She Will Probably Never Hear
It’s almost time. At 7:25 AM Monday, Hannah is a senior in high school. The same Hannah that was born to a freaked out mother who didn’t think she could raise a child. Oh. My. God. If she does graduate from high school, does that mean I could raise a…
Sit, Mom, Sit.: Well-Intentioned Poster Child
Sit, Mom, Sit.: Well-Intentioned Poster Child: A circa 1880’s poster with a picture of a can-can dancer in the midst of a high kick hung above my white-canopied bed, on the green ch…
Well-Intentioned Poster Child
A circa 1880’s poster with a picture of a can-can dancer in the midst of a high kick hung above my white-canopied bed, on the green checked wallpapered walls of my girlhood bedroom. Every night, in the hours spent dreaming, these words hung over my head: Come See Karen Suzanne Can-Can Dancer…