“I paint to let my soul know I am listening.” That’s a comment a friend posted on one of my social media pages in response to one of my blog posts. I’ve seen her work, and its beautiful and unique. It brings me joy just looking at it, probably because my soul can feel the...
When I was very young, there was a song that played often on the radio called “The Most Beautiful Girl” by Charlie Rich. The narrator had lost the love of his life through his own bad behavior and asked the listener to keep an eye out for her. If we saw her, we were to...
A friend was recently certified in feng shui, the ancient Chinese art of arranging spaces to bring about harmony and balance and increase peace and prosperity. For more than a year now, my friend has been offering me tips to improve the spaces in my home, and it’s shocking how much it has raised my...
I’ve had two songs stuck in my head for weeks now and it’s driving me crazy: “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” by Tina Turner and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Seriously, brain? Why that song? I don’t even like baseball. When I was a teenager, I babysat for a lovely family who...
This post originally ran Aug. 24, 2019 I’ve wanted to write a novel about my Mexican grandmother since I was fifteen. I’ve known all along what the first line would be: “When I was nine years old, Poncho Villa rode into town and killed a merchant in the street.” Whenever I think of that line,...
A friend and I are going chapter by chapter through the book It’s Not Your Money by Tosha Silver. We had both read it before, but not one chapter a week as the author suggests. There’s a very important section in the book where the author talks about getting rid of clutter. Casting out the...
I was chatting with an artist friend the other day whose career is taking off. I complimented her by saying she’d done everything right over the years in terms of following all the steps to achieving her desired career and being patient with the process. She said something to the effect that it wasn’t hard...
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...
This week marks the seventh anniversary of this blog. Someone asked me how I had maintained the stamina for such an endeavor and how I came up with new ideas every week. I told her it all comes down to passion and permission. In 2014, friends had been urging me to start a blog for...
When I was a little girl, my younger brother and I listened often to a beloved record of old cowboy songs. Growing up in Idaho, we had real live cowboys walking down the street and we were fascinated by them and by the outlaws of the Old West. My favorite song on the album was...