from the Brink

Posted January 29, 2026

Filed under Family

This week has been a tough one. Regardless of where you stand along the political divide the latest actions by ICE have been impossible to fathom. Yet here we are, feeling the same unbearable loss we felt on a particular December 14th and September 11th and January 6th. I don’t want to write about this latest pain like I have authority nor do I want to hold you in that place of trauma but I do want to acknowledge our collective outrage and sorrow, and to remind you to do whatever it takes to find a life-raft for your own survival.

Mine is as it has been for over a year, by seeing through the eyes of someone quite precious.

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Fairytale Greed

Posted November 13, 2025

Filed under Life

If you are privileged enough not to know anyone whose SNAP benefits were cut or has been working for weeks unpaid or suffering any indignities caused by the Republican lead government shutdown, then I guess you should call yourself lucky. You clearly live in a different America than I do. Oddly enough, the Brothers Grimm fairytale, The Fisherman and his Wife was echoing around in my mind this week. According to Wikipedia, this tale of greed was collected by the brothers in 1812, and is considered an anti-fairytale due to its tragic ending. Like most Waldorf school moms, I read this story to my young children, but due to decades teaching Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse the haunting images of the angry sea in the fairytale have stayed with me as Woolf wove the two stories together. It is the Greed with a capital G of the White House that is stirring this cautionary fairytale back into my consciousness.

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Little Guy Lessons

Posted September 25, 2025

Filed under Life

Despite being born in a coastal state our little grandson found the sound of surf hitting the shore line terrifying. We spend months trying to coax him out of the car to walk across the parking lot and see the sea from afar, all to no avail. But eventually, as luck would have it, he held our hands and braved the roaring din to stand along side of us, feet in the sand, hesitant and uncertain, but there. I too have felt overwhelmed causing much self-doubt and uncertainty, even fear, not emotions I had much need for until we moved away from just about everything that made me me. But watching our little guy finally get up the guts to yell back at the formidable Pacific I thought, he’s on to something here. Time to land in this here and now and let go of fears. Time to yell back too.

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