What a year, just about everyone I know is saying. Here's some of mine in 14 blog posts spanning the seasons. Thanks for being here as part of my community. I wish you all your own everyday magic. Kat on her birthday one year Loving Kat -- January 3: " Grief is like a giant sack filled with large, angular rocks and also ripped up piles of feather pillows. It’s impossible to get hold of and carry somewhere that makes sense. It’s a mess for the nervous system too as well as a

It doesn't take much to turn my inner bitch mites (great phrase from my friend Sara) upon myself. Sometimes the smallest error, flaw, or mishap sets them to biting, leaving tiny welts or itchiness for hours. To mix metaphors, maybe you've been in the same leaky boat at times also? I mean, who hasn't been brought up to be exceptionally hard on themselves or otherwise warped by the traumatic or haphazard dangers of their particular life as well as life at large? Having just tur

It's been a rough time, especially for many who had their SNAP benefits and other supports cut off as well as federal workers who faced 43 days of the shutdown upending their lives. Add to this the shock for people I know when they see how much their health insurance is rising, doubling for many people, and there's good reason to despair, freak out, collapse on the couch in exhaustion, or activate fierce hypervigilance. At the same time, I've been seeing unprecedented generos

At the 20th Power of Words conference Oct. 3-5 in Kansas City, I had the honor of giving the welcome talk, which I realized speaks to more than just people engaged in Transformative Language Arts (writing, storytelling, theater and other word arts for social and personal transformation and community building). So I share this here, hoping we all find meaning, stubborn hope, and belonging. At our first meeting, you could see how different we were by our shoes: Birkenstocks, w

Double rainbow in Ennistymon I must have been five or six when I first saw a picture of Ireland and knew I would go there one day. I'm...