What Does Self-Care Really Mean?
I’m glad that Self-Care is finally a “thing.” I’m glad that when we hear that phrase now, it’s not considered selfish so much as it is believed to be self-preservational. But I hail from the former...
View Article10 Year Anniversary of My Season of Unlikely Happiness…
…Sometimes you need a dose of your own medicine… One of the blessings of writing my memoir, “This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness,” and the essay version of it, “Those...
View ArticleThe “Me Time” Medal: a week of wellness
What does it take, I wonder, to just…stop? To stop the madness of pushing buttons and swiping, clicking, scrolling from one screen to the next, taking trains, planes, and automobiles here and there...
View ArticleCome Together…Right Now.
There have been two events in the last week that have brought deep calm and hope to me where I didn’t know hope was missing. I hadn’t realized how much the news had been weighing on me. I’ve felt a …...
View ArticleThe Complete Puzzle
My kids and I spent hours and hours of our holiday this year, doing jigsaw puzzles. It was their idea. I couldn’t really get them to do puzzles when they were little, but suddenly it’s “Mom, can we...
View ArticleSent from my iPhone by Laura Munson
I haven’t lived in a city since cell phones or emails or the internet infiltrated our civilization. So as much as I long for my inner-child Chicago city fix, especially in the deep midwinter dormancy...
View ArticleThe Art of Being Led
I went to Morocco alone for a month to find “that girl” again. I’d grieved my Empty Nest for the six months I gave myself. A grief “gift,” I called it. I observed the end of this stage of … Continue...
View ArticleWriting as Living
I heard the first red-winged blackbird in the marsh today, currently under four feet of snow, and worried even as my heart soared. I love this sound, but it feels too perilous for the birds to be back...
View ArticleHaven Spring Blog Series – Part 1
Patricia Young - A Scene Writing may have brought me to Haven, but I wasn’t a writer until I left. When people ask how long I’ve been writing, it makes me smile because, to be honest, I can’t remember...
View ArticleHaven Spring Blog Series – Part 2
Stephanie Rumold I walked out of the bunkhouse and felt the smile move through my body. I love this place, I thought, inhaling the cool, crisp air, its healing tendrils stretching through me. It...
View ArticleHow to Find YOU in Empty Nest
You know when you run a life marathon, and it’s over? And you’re lying in your bed staring at the ceiling wondering how to stop running? That’s where I am. Right now. It started with the moon last...
View ArticleHow to Not Hate Writing an “About Me” Page…
There is something that has been on my list for a month, and every time it finds its way to the top, it gets somehow pushed back into the mix. Okay…fine. I somehow bury it. Maybe you can relate. It’s …...
View ArticleThe Purge: Reclaiming my office. Reclaiming my solitude.
Do you have a place in your home where you let all the things you don’t want to deal with stack up? And then ignore it for so long that you can feel its teeth in the back of your … Continue reading →
View ArticleWhy We Need a Haven
Now Booking my Fall Haven Writing Retreats in Montana… September 18-22 ( a few spots left) September 25-29 (a few spots left) You do not have to be a writer to come…just someone who is deeply...
View ArticleHow to Survive Empty Nest (AKA: Mommy Massage Money)
Now Booking my Fall Haven Writing Retreats in Montana… September 18-22 (one spot left) September 25-29 (a few spots left) You do not have to be a writer to come…just someone who is deeply longing to...
View ArticleThe “Me Time” Medal: a week of wellness
What does it take, I wonder, to just…stop? To stop the madness of pushing buttons and swiping, clicking, scrolling from one screen to the next, taking trains, planes, and automobiles here and there...
View ArticleCommunity or Netflix: (get off your couch)
So this is new: going out socially as a single entity. I’ve never really done it. Not in my daily life. I mean—yeah—to the grocery store, or kids’ sporting events, or whatever quotidian life has...
View ArticleSacred Solitude: a holiday date with your vulnerability
I write a lot about pain. I always have. Writing moves the pain through me and moves me through it. Some of that pain-processing stays in my journal, but a lot of it ends up in my newsletters, blogs,...
View ArticleWhy I Wrote WILLA’S GROVE: Finding your So Now What?
As seen on Women’s Writers, Women’s Books Book ideas are always coming to me. I’m usually working on a few at the same time and always in different genres—different ways to find the truth. That’s what...
View ArticleSpread Love (not viruses)
I have letters from my family that go back to the 1918 flu epidemic. Many of them. And they all talk about the Grippe in a beautiful, dedicated, and terrified ink script: “Dear, Son. I knitted you...
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