Our bodies are prophets. They know when things are out of whack and they say so. (Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World) I had surgery a week ago to remove part of a herniated disc that was pressing on my sciatic nerve. The surgery went well; herniation removed, the nerve is freed, and […]

After dealing with back pain for months, I am going to have surgery. It has been hard to admit I need help. Even harder to admit that I need the kind of help that will take me out of the game for a bit. Hard to admit I am human, I am frail, I often […]

I think I was saying something irreverant when my husband quipped, "Watch out, or you will become a 'backslider.'" We both giggled a bit about this. The term has fallen out of vogue lately. I haven't heard it in awhile. But it got me thinking: who came up with this phrase in the first place? […]

I first realized my body was not my own when I was about 15. My swim coach started to weigh me alongside my teammates.  Publicly. Each of us had to stand on the scale in front of each other. Our coach recorded our weights in a little black notebook. We got on the scale prior […]

The great TS Eliot - in his play The Elder Statesman - puts it best: What is this self inside us, this silent observer, Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us And urge us on to futile activity And in the end, judge us still more severely For the errors into which his own […]

Here it is - the end of 2020. Last year at this time none of us could have imagined what this year would bring. Truth is, none of us know what lies ahead this year, either. Uncertainty is the nature of life. Rather than leaning into this reality many of us try to reduce uncertainty […]