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I have this terrible habit of overfilling my time. My youngest three children all left home this semester, and rather than develop empty nest syndrome, I busied myself with patients and writing, submissions and school. One of my kids had a hard time adjusting to boarding school, so I spent some time with him and his sister on the East Coast, flying back and forth, going to early morning meetings with administrators, and generally running amok. Now that the kids are settled an

Every fall, there’s a shift. New notebooks, sharpened pencils, packed lunches. Even if you’re not the one going back to school, the rhythm of the season is everywhere. For some, it’s kids starting a new grade. For others, it’s stepping into classrooms again as an adult. Either way, the season carries a certain weight full of hope, nerves, sometimes exhaustion, and sometimes all three at once. Looking Back, Looking Forward I am of course one of the more seasoned of my classmat

In 2025, I hit a milestone that I almost didn’t believe myself: Thirty years sober. I got clean at twenty, and have never had a legal drink. That is something people tend to respond to with either admiration or confusion, like I missed some rite of passage that makes adulthood official.I didn’t. My life needed a different path. In those early years, staying sober meant holding on with both hands while also taking on plenty of odd jobs while I was at it. I learned to pick up

During my first years of sobriety I had too many jobs, struggling to keep any of them. I washed dishes, sold running shoes, and was a personal assistant to a rich housewife. I sold clothes and knives, and then, was a framer at an ultra high end framing store. Early on I was so broke I remember counting out dimes and nickels to pay for food. My fellow running shoe store workers, equally broke, advised me on the cheapest spots. At the time, I lived in an efficiency with a broke

Working in my writing studio, revising essays and tracking submissions. One rejection (and acceptance!) at a time. For months, my inbox was a wall of polite no’s. The kind of rejection that’s just part of the deal. Submit... Wait... Get a form letter... Keep going. That’s what I expected when I started submitting last fall. Shortly after beginning my MFA in Creative Nonfiction. My professors and classmates pushed me to start submitting. Not because they thought I’d get publis

100 rejections. 0 acceptances. What happens when you chase “no” instead of waiting for “yes”? Turns out... everything changes.