Stories With Heart And Soul 
With every endeavor you need a special place where you can be you. A nook suited to your temperament so you can thrive. Your mission control. My special space for writing includes a room with pin-drop silence, sunlight, and a view of our garden. Otherwise, I can’t do my best or sometimes even do at all.
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My friend Betsy prays for prosperity every day. She asked me if I was trying to prosper through writing. “Yes,” shot out of my mouth like a reflex, because I knew she was talking about money. I didn’t want to sound like a dilettante. The truth is I don’t think about writing and money together.
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I’ve always been single-minded, pooling all my energy into one goal. It’s a strategy that helped me attend a favorite college and land a dream job in advertising. When I was seven, I locked my father out of the car until he threw his cigarettes in a trash can. He begged me to let him
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They say there are no accidents. That is not true. I am a classic accident. Technically speaking, I am an only child born to Rita Marie Murray three months after her 18th birthday at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. This is not a joke. She told me I was a blue blood baby. I only
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Remember Oprah Winfrey’s amazing acceptance speech at the Golden Globes Award Show this year? It was a call-to-action for girls and women to continue the fight for equal justice. It’s thrilling to see that sexual harassment, something I took for granted when I was young, is in the light and that things are changing. I
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“I share being bipolar because it is an act of love.” This just came out of my mouth last night while I was talking to a friend of my husband. She was telling me about her daughter’s struggles without sharing intimate details, so I told her I was bipolar. This usually makes people more comfortable
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“The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.” William Wordsworth Small acts of kindness are treats for two souls, the giver and receiver. They’re my emotional bread and butter. One of my favorite things to do is offer my spot in line at the supermarket when
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Forgiveness was never top-of-mind when I thought about my mom. A list of childhood grievances sat on my heart for decades. Now I think about how hard it was to be a young, single mother with a mental illness. Rita did some extraordinary, hair-raising things when I was growing up, like throwing her boyfriend’s computer
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I woke up this morning to a night sky and headed for my rocking chair on the porch. Stars and a sliver of the moon were still shining. Looking up I wondered why we readily make wishes upon stars and struggle to believe in ourselves. We are here in the flesh with all kinds of
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My Aunt Maureen died last month. After the eulogy, we were quiet. Some of us got hives, some got bone-tired, some put their sadness in a box, storing it for another time. In my aunt’s home we returned to our safe routines, telling jokes, crazy-but-true family stories, and cleaning. We are really good at cleaning.
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