From the front window and in the distance I can see waves frolicking among dark rocks and sand. I can almost smell the ozone. The living room is kissed with yellow light – so much so that the entire living room looks warm and cosy. I like what I’m seeing but don’t recognise it. Someone […]
Category Archives: Understanding
Circles only have one side
When I was at grade school, I used to glance at the younger children waiting for lunch and wonder which one was having the same experiences as me the year before. I would look at the pastel tiles on the walls, measuring out the spaces that I would inhabit. I was a scrawny child and […]
Life Lessons
If I’m right in thinking that, after we die, we meet (again) with more learned souls. We go through what happened, what didn’t happen and what we learned in the previous lifetime. At that point we can rest for a little while or we can immediately come back. I don’t think we necessarily always come […]
Mother
When I commented to my husband recently that both my mother and sister were crazy, he said “You’re from the same stock, you know.” So after I reminded him that he married me so he must be completely insane, I got to thinking. What exactly are Mom’s personality traits that I want to let go? For starters, Mom is […]
Loving my Step Children into my Life
When I first got together with Troy he told me about his children from a previous marriage. Of course, I nearly bolted when we had the conversation: I felt as if someone had clamped concrete shoes on my feet and thrown me into a lake! Troy, calmly, kept talking. I don’t know if he realised […]
Depression and Suicide
It wasn’t long after Andrea left the US that I decided that the world would be better off without me. I would go home after school and, before Mom got home, I would get a number of tablets out of the cupboard and wonder how many I would need to take to get the job done. The […]
Indentured Servitude
I first met my first husband, Brian, when I was working as a maître-d’ at a high-class steak restaurant in Champaign. Table for 3? Great! Come in and sit down. *smile* Here are your menus. Your server tonight will be Kyle. My future husband had shoulder-length blond hair worn loosely around the face. From behind […]
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion/philosophy of lists. Historically, the lists start with the enlightenment of the Buddha (aka someone who is enlightened and does not have to reincarnate again). Buddha is not a god. Buddha is someone who, over hundreds of lifetimes, achieved enlightenment. Buddha said that there are four noble truths: 1) Life is ultimately […]
Death and Belief
This story starts in 1991, on my 20th birthday: I was due to visit my boyfriend’s parents that week but Mom wanted me to stay with her: if Frank (Louise’s dad) died in the middle of the night she didn’t want Louise, aged 7, to wake up and find herself alone in the house. The […]
