Or…if you’re still breathing, you won. Now what? 12.29.2020 I live in Alaska, on a remote island, and I work in a small primary care clinic. To say I’m intensely aware of the pandemic and the impact on life is an understatement. The state has a required Covid19 testing program…

Five Years Today Five years ago, today, my life changed forever with the death of my son. I didn’t know, until the next day, that I had lived my last “normal” day. But I had. In the five years since Alex left us, I’ve experienced everything from shock to frozen…

It never goes away, but you survive. Four years ago today, I lost my son to suicide. I’ve written about the experience of child loss. I wish there was a better way to express this. My son was 30, so hardly a child. He was a child in relationship to…

It’s the beginning of another school year, and I watch the kids, getting on the bus, on the playground at lunch, happy to be with friends again. I think back to those days in my life and how little I understood. How little I knew about the stories we humans…

It’s been a long pandemic, 2020 bleeding into 2021, so unlike any experience in living memory. Many people were sent home, a year ago this week, and many haven’t made it back to normal yet. …

We don’t always have to speak our minds, do we? In our age of social connectedness, of ability to speak instantly, with few, if any, filters to mitigate what is said, it seems like there’s a daily barrage of outrage. There’s outrage at what someone says initially, or what someone…

Ten ways to take control of your life: We’re not even a month into this year, and it already feels like a dumpster fire. Usually, I’m an optimist, but ongoing political angst, the vaccine debacle, growing deaths from Covid worldwide, the discovery of new virus mutations, the frustrations of navigating…

Life is built on these. I find myself hungry for inspiration. I know it’s all around me in the actions of quiet everyday heroes. And yet, one of the realities is that these people, by their very nature, are quiet. We seldom hear their stories of courage, selfless giving, forgiveness…

It’s everywhere. For the first few months of the pandemic last year, I didn’t know anyone who had experienced Covid. Then I knew one person. Then another. Now, a year later, many people among my family and friends have had it. My mom has it now. I don’t know anyone…