I hosted one of my art salons last week, and our topic centered around the famous Martha Graham quote in which she talks about an artist’s work and says, “there is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through your action, and because there is only one of you in...
A year ago, my husband and I were visiting our daughter, and the three of us made a quick trip to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. My daughter may have read one or two of the Little House books as a child, but didn’t have much association with the author, so...
This post first ran on April 17, 2021 My book club recently reached a full consensus about a book: none of us liked it. In fact, four of the ten chose not to finish reading it. The conversation about the book was entertaining because whenever there’s agreement, people can speak freely, and some of their...
My husband laughed last night when I said, “It’s so much work just being alive.” I was describing my day, in which I’d awakened with a list in my head of all the things I was going to get done, and by the end of the day, only half of them were completed. In the...
I was listening to an interview with brilliant children’s author, Kate DiCamillo, on the On Being Podcast. She told a story of a little boy who was leaning heavily on her while she signed his book. His mother said, “Don’t lean on her, honey.” And the boy answered, “It’s okay, Mom, she knows me.” This...
My book club recently reached a full consensus about a book: none of us liked it. In fact, four of the ten chose not to finish reading it. The conversation about the book was entertaining because whenever there’s agreement, people can speak freely, and some of their comments about how much they disliked the book...
I’m working on embracing impermanence. I’ve been reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, and she reminds us that impermanence is our natural state. Babies don’t stay babies, people live and die, jobs come and go. But it’s not just reflected in the big things, it’s also the little things that happen every day....
The other day, I heard someone refer to the “burden of social proof,” and I thought the word “burden” was so fitting. See, social proof as a standalone term refers really to herd mentality. It means “the influence the actions and attitudes of the people around us have on our own behavior.” But social proof,...
Recently, I heard a new author speak about his book. He casually mentioned he was a Black/Latino writer. As he continued his story, I pieced together that his father was Puerto Rican and his mother was black. I asked him afterward if he identified as black or Latino. He said both. He said as a...
There are two lines in the book The Artist’s Way that read, “A productive artist is quite often a happy person. This can be very threatening as a self-concept to those who are used to getting their needs met by being unhappy.” Yet we, as a society, continue to hold on to the concept that...