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The Sorrows Begin
The sorrows began just as Kalea was turning two. At Christmas, Bill had started hinting about having another child. It was a few more months before I could even think about it. After watching our rambunctious two-year-old fall in love with her baby cousin, doing her hardest to be helpful, I decided it might not be insane to have another. Two weeks later after I passed out in a Barnes & Noble, a little blue line appeared in an EPT result window. I was shocked. I was 40 years old; it wasn’t supposed to be that easy. I thought I’d have a little time to adjust to the idea.
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Saying “Yes” with Joy
When deciding what to write about for today, I heard a line from Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, a “play for voices” that I performed in a long time ago at Williams College, run through my mind. In an interesting synchronicity, Perdita Finn was in The Misanthrope, at the same time. The two plays were alternating performances in an improbable juxtaposition of urban social artifice and simple rural earthiness.
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The Glorious Mysteries According to Zoey
Originally posted at The Way of the Rose Facebook group April 7, 2020 Novena Day 48 I had a rough day yesterday. My baby brother was admitted to the hospital with a high fever. He has a history of asthma, apnea, and more than 40 years of smoking/vaping. I also found out that my brother-in-law (who, thankfully, is healthier overall, but is in his 70s) has been feverish and coughing for several days. He was told to assume he has COVID until the test comes back. And my nephew’s wife, who has a stable but inoperable brain tumor, and her two elderly parents are all confirmed cases. All I can…
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The Sorrowful Mysteries According to Zoey
To recap for those who missed yesterday's post, I’m outlining the mysteries and what they mean for me. It might be helpful to read yesterday’s post to put this in context. Today our story continues with The Sorrowful Mysteries.
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The Joyful Mysteries According to Zoey
In case you didn’t notice, there was a snafu with timing of the guides during this novena. A misreading of the schedule (by several of us, myself included) meant that Perdita had to do some quick scrambling. She filled in on short notice and asked if I would take her slot at the end of this novena and “bring us home.”
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Join Us in the Mother of All Healing Circles
If you’ve been with us for any length of time, you probably know that we here at TMR encourage parents to listen to their “mommy gut” or, as it’s more generally known, their intuition. As security expert Gavin de Becker points out in his two books The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift, that intuition, more than anything, is what protects us times of danger, and learning to hear it can make the difference between life and death.
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When Intuition Fails
Ten years ago today I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy: Zane Brodie Hampton. He was 10 lbs, 10 oz, 23” long, five days late, and, oddly, still covered in vernix. He didn’t breathe right away, but it wasn’t long before he pinked up properly, receiving pretty decent Apgar scores. This is his story.
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Hold Fast to Dreams
Today is the birthday of Jupiter Hammon, the first African-American to publish poetry, so it’s the day that was chosen to celebrate Black Poetry and honor the contributions of all African-American poets to the world of poetry. I thought I would share with you what is still one of my very favorite poems.
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Love Thy Neighbor?
“What the World Needs Now Is Love,” written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and sung by Jackie DeShannon back in the idealistic ’60s, has been running through my head lately. As a member of TMR, I’m something of a Facebook power user. I’m there a lot. And I can’t help but notice a tremendous amount of vitriol lately targeting specific people – often people who are doing the best they can to accomplish worthy goals, like reducing the rate of autism, improving the lives of those who have autism, making sure no one dies or goes bankrupt due to lack of health insurance, or reducing the incidence of gun…
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The Bejeweled Blitz Meditation
I got a new smartphone last fall, and slowly I’ve managed to accumulate all the apps required to navigate life in the 21st century: Google Maps, The Weather Channel, the New York Times, Pandora, Scrabble, etc. One of the best things about my new phone is that it has enabled me to take up a spiritual practice I had largely abandoned: playing Bejeweled Blitz.
writer and editor
