By Four years ago yesterday, my family and I stood in an Arkansas ICU hospital room where my brother fought for his life. On the way back from burying my mother in a Tennessee graveyard, my brother and his wife were rear-ended by two semis while sitting in traffic behind another
THE Announcement – My Mom’s View
ANNOUNCEMENT (Please read, then watch the video): Nine years ago, I started a project that became transformational then seminal: Over the summer of 2007, at 37 years old, I finally came of age via doing 22 things I’d never done, like getting drunk, going dancing, getting a tattoo, and smoking
Humility: Not the First Thing
“Just stay humble.” “Don’t get too excited.” “You’re not all that.” Have you ever heard these sorts of words? In my humble opinion, I think hearing them at the beginning of an endeavor cripples accomplishment and creativity. If you want to know why my screensaver is crazy-blinged out and all
Back to Life: Weeping Salaams with Hugging and Wailing Dancing Spinning Gratitude and Pie
It was February 2012. I was about to launch the serialization of my book, The Oat Project. I got a call from family saying my mom was in the hospital. She had beaten cancer twice since 2008 but had struggled in the year before with “maintenance” chemo. She was having
The Worst Victoria Secret’s Experience Ever: An Excerpt from The Oat Project
Note: That photo up there was taken post-tattoo, post-book, long after the moment below happened. In the following, I was just trying to do and finish the project, feeling like I sucked at everything, trying to do what I said I would do, all amidst the core of being a mother.
Life: 0 to 60 in Fourteen Seconds Flat
You know how Life can go from 0 to 60 in fourteen seconds flat? I’m clocking in at 74 with an eye on 90. Before I tell you why, thank you, so very much, for walking through this life with me, for supporting my efforts as writer/photographer/singer/speaker/etc=Artist. I’m still going!
Forest Fires, Drama Queens, and Authenticity
This is an excerpt from The Oat Project, from the rock concert chapter. It may or may not make the final version (coming this summer!!!). Enjoy…and now, back to it. It’s like World Wide Wrestling. What is that fake-fighting impulse? Do we all have it in one form or another?
The Gifts of Empty
The kitchen is where my inner science geek and slapdashing artist get to dirty dance…pure alchemy. Cooking has always given me energy, yes; but it also requires a focus, effort, and sense of play that I haven’t been able to muster often over the last year and a half since
Out of the Blue, a Poem for You
Some days, writing is like a laser beam: sharp, focused. Other days, it’s like a flood: deep, dense. This day, this morning, I woke with an emotional hangover. Yesterday–my second Mother’s Day without my mother–was heavy with unexpected grief, conflict, and affection. My children saved it, of course, as did
A Story of My Mother’s Last Gifts, at The Story Project – TONIGHT
A little over two years ago, I told a story from the summer I wrote The Oat Project for a program here in Colorado Springs called The Story Project. Like The Moth Radio Hour out of New York City, it’s live, local storytelling without a script. Tonight, on this Mother’s
