A peaceful warrior on the body and body image, spirituality, politics, family and food
He woke up early the day of the race. Not too early – the training plan advised keeping as close to a regular routine as possible – just in time to down a shake with the perfect protein to carb ratio and let it digest a bit. At the race start, he enlisted a helpful… Continue reading Slow and Steady and the Race: A Fable for the Rest of Us
I visited the river after the flood. How do you like your new pathways? I asked. To the south, a whole new flow had rutted out the valley floor, laying bare roots and root systems, hidden boulders, snake dens. I don't like it, the river said. It hurts. I'm not used to flowing that way. I'm… Continue reading River Run
It’s not a hot story anymore, hasn’t been for some time. But in some ways I’m still sifting through the detritus of last fall: those ten days in late September when we shared more -- our questions and confusions, our secrets about our sexual lives, frustrations, our insecurities, our private violations – than we had in the… Continue reading New Words: A Call for Linguistic Revolution
I cried when I told my mom I couldn't muster the energy to get the house ready for her visit. A week before, when the body aches and a sore throat seethed over me, I thought surely I would recover in time. Instead, I woke up each morning feeling worse than the night before, all… Continue reading Sick
Here's something I didn't anticipate about our trip: a surprising number of visits to amusement parks. At the top of our list -- for activities in India as well as amusement parks visited -- is Wonderla Kochi. Set atop a hill overlooking Kerala's lushness, Wonderla offers and and water amusements plus the best-ever fair food… Continue reading How Was Your Trip, Part II: I Confront My Colonial Impulse on a Waterslide
This is the first of a three-part series about our family trip, with my parents-in-law, to India and Singapore, on which I reflect about the complexity of my response to the question, "How was your trip?" I'm embarrassed by the speed with which the word "grueling" comes to mind, fully aware that everything we did… Continue reading How Was Your Trip? Part I
Inner Artist What a delight to happen upon at the local library Julia Cameron's Vein of Gold, a spinoff of her very popular (cultish?) Artist's Way. Cameron is an artistic descendant of one of my writing heroes, Brenda Ueland; what Brenda was writing decades earlier, Cameron expands and enhances with accessible -- and even fun!… Continue reading Breaking Through: Winter Discoveries for Creativity and Healing
To the Editors: Ross Douthat’s Sunday piece, “The Church and the Abortion Capital,” was so rife with assumptions and logical fallacies that I began to wonder if you had run it specifically in order to discredit his argument. In perhaps the most astounding passage, he writes, “New York State still has millions of baptized Catholics,… Continue reading Damned Scribbling Women
We went to a wedding this weekend. The priest started off strong. “The Bible tells us that a husband should love his wife as Christ loved the church. There are many different kinds of love, but here, we are not talking about romantic love, as our modern sensibilities might think of marital love," he explained.… Continue reading Submission
"This is the best dessert I've ever had," my husband declared. "You have to take it away from me." Hide it somewhere, he told me. Somewhere I won't find it. Otherwise I'll eat the whole thing. Over the next few days it became a game of sorts: I would find a hiding place, he would… Continue reading Susie’s SouthForty Toffee: Christmas Disaster Averted
