Category Archives: Life Lessons

The kind of life lived for red lipstick and poppy fields.

I never knew much of a woman named Dee. Sepia-stained photographs tell me she knew what it meant to stand laughing at life. Dee. She is a woman I only know from photographs and stories that slip out from behind … Continue reading

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Filed under Life Lessons, Uncategorized

No girl wants to say, “And then the grey seeped in.”

When you read this, just remember that you are hearing from a girl who believed in a Grey Kind of Love Story far longer than she believed in the exiled Sugarplum who trudged away from the ballet for a career … Continue reading

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Filed under Letting Go, Life Lessons, Uncategorized

It’s as if we’ve been granted this Immense Potential for some Remarkable Storytelling, if only we use it right.

Some people only need to be lent a single sentence to captivate us for some kind of tiny eternity. There are days when we find ourselves only two feet away from a body that will have us ripping clocks from … Continue reading

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Filed under Big Dreams, Family, Life Lessons, Live with intention, Simply Living, Uncategorized

She Be a Blessing. She Be a Lantern. She Be There: Three Ways to Be.

My mother learned how to salsa in between a table of sheer glittered tank tops and a rack of leather jackets. That’s the kind of woman my mother is and always will be, the kind to wear red flip flops … Continue reading

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“She lived a breathless life…. A rare kind of breathless life.”

I wonder if she stood at the foot of the porch, arms crossed over her chest, and said out loud to the chill that stood in the air, “My daughter will be an undertaker.”  I wonder if she debated rallying … Continue reading

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Filed under Life Lessons, Live with intention

Kaleidoscope Lifetimes: 9/11. We Remember.

I spent precisely 73 minutes, curled up on the tile floor of the New York Library-Bronx Branch, crying yesterday. Book Propped In Front Of Me. Knees Folded. Pages Playing Tear Catchers. I half expected a librarian to approach me, befuddled … Continue reading

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Filed under For a Better World, Life Lessons, Love Yourself, The Tough Stuff, Tragedy

You are my best one… You are my best one…

“They still smell pretty good but I don’t think I am going to keep all of these,” she says. 7:30am on a Sunday morning that calls those without rain boots back into their bed sheets. My eyes have barely unlocked … Continue reading

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Filed under Girl meets Boy, Happiness, Life Lessons, Plans

Wronging Wolves with Weighted Words

I toted a serious Little Girl Crush for the Big Bad Wolf. Something about all that huffing and puffing as a seven-year-old must have riled me up to the point where I slid Elvis Presley and Arthur the Aardvark over … Continue reading

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Filed under For a Better World, Life Lessons, The Tough Stuff

Do you have the chalk wedged in your waistband for the day the rain showers come?

Some sort of shove from the Divine lured me to sprint down to the corner store and purchase a pail of chalk before beginning the climb. An untouchable feeling webbed in my stomach as I pulled a stick of white … Continue reading

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Filed under Big Dreams, Happiness, Life Lessons, Live with intention, Uncategorized

And they were lucky girls, lucky to have one another in a life made for singing about bicycles built for two.

“Do you feel like switching today?” she asks me. “No Duhhhhh. I always feel like switching, Silly.” Together we reach our hands over each other’s heads and pull off the imaginary helmets of hair, like oxygen-starved astronauts devouring air for … Continue reading

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Filed under Best Friends, Life Lessons, Live with intention, Uncategorized