I attended Dr. Jordan Peterson’s We Who Wrestle With God Tour in April. It was riveting. Peterson thinks on a plane well above where most of us reside. His dialogue reveals a rich-and-provoking intellect. It demands keen listening and attentive reflection to absorb the complexity of
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Congratulations to the winners of our three giveaways honoring the one-year anniversary of When Losses Become Legacies: Juli Hawkins won the Mother’s Day giveaway, writing about her mom, “My Mom was strong, loving, always putting us three children ahead of herself, raising us mostly on her own
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This week’s edition of the Monday quote is more of an excerpt from Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, by Benjamin Dreyer. Copy chief of Random House, Dreyer is an authority on all things style. His manual is charming, entertaining, and worthy of
Read more →Goodreads is hosting a giveaway of my first book, When Postpartum Packs a Punch: Fighting Back and Finding Joy. It runs from Nov. 21-28, 2017. Enter here for a chance to win a free copy. Happy reading!
Read more →Suicide is one of the most uncomfortable topics around. If we say we lost someone to suicide, it might be perceived as a weakness, a selfish act, a stain on their character. Not so if they died from cancer or heart disease. But like other ailments, suicide is uninvited. Suicide and
Read more →I miss France. I’ve never lived there, I can barely scrape together enough French for a sensible sentence—let alone match the language’s dreamy lilt. I’ve only passed through on trips, mostly for pleasure, and once on the tail-end of a business trip. Not nearly as put-together as
Read more →How Losing My Mom Prepared Me for My Brother’s Suicide* What could be good about my mom dying when I was a kid? Not much, I thought — until I lost my brother last year. My mom has been gone for 25 years. She lived with a
Read more →Life’s most tragic stories aren’t without beauty. That’s true of postpartum depression, suicide, and all forms of heartache and loss. Redemption lurks in the mire. I started this blog because of my battle with postpartum depression, when I was 34. At 15 I lost my mom to
Read more →I knew it was waiting for me. The day my children would ask me about death–and more specifically, why their maternal grandmother died. I didn’t think it would come quite so soon. But along came the questions, at bedtime a few weeks ago. “Mama, where’s your Mommy?”
Read more →Last weekend I walked my first marathon-and-half, as part of the 2013 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. I trekked in, around and through Chicago. It was exhilarating. I was part of a $5.2 million fundraising effort, a small fish in a big sea of people sweeping the
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