HOME ALONE – A BLOG IN 3 PARTS
Tom left for Washington D.C. on June 15th for six days. It was our first time apart since the pandemic shutdown. We’d gotten used to being together, working at home, and sleeping together every night. But it was time for Tom to go and he was excited (actually ecstatic) to be launching a new film...
A BIRTHING
It feels like I’m in premature labor after a four-year gestation period. Contractions began last Monday when forty printed books were left on my doorstep one month earlier than expected via UPS delivery. The next day, BURNING WOMAN became available on Audible ahead of schedule. Although my...
A ROCK GARDEN IN SPRING
It’s spring in the Sierra foothills. Our world is coming awake after the long night of winter. I began to feel creative sap rising in me, as if I was one of the gnarly oaks on our 20 acres that were sprouting tender green leaves almost overnight. I wanted to design a rock garden....
ON THE RADIO
Listening to my interview with Linda Toren, poet, teacher, and host of A Way With Words on KQBM Radio 90.7 FM, I felt like an honored guest talking with Terry Gross. The focus was my book, BURNING WOMAN, Memoirs of an Elder, to be published by She Writes Press in June 2022. Our conversation was...
THE WEDDING
Fingers of sunlight had just begun to brush the horizon a delicate shade of pink when the hot tub called to me. Tom was still asleep. I slipped out of bed as quietly as possible, padded outside in bare feet, and sank into the warm water, steam rising in the chill air. Hearing the whispery whoo-hoo...
FULL CIRCLE
Our daughter, son-in-law and silver lab are coming for Christmas! It’s a lovely surprise. At the last minute they cancelled their holiday visit with my grandson in Heidelberg due to the Omicron surge. Tom and I planned a quiet day, just the two of us, having honored Winter Solstice on the 21st...
THE SPOKEN WORD
Tom Is producing my audiobook for BURNING WOMAN, Memoirs of an Elder. We’re in a makeshift sound studio in his office. I’m wearing headphones, reading into a microphone. Beginning on page 21, I hear my words spoken in a deep, resonant voice as it they’re bouncing off the walls of my skull. My...
BEACHED
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making plans. —John Lennon We slid our two-person kayak into Drake’s Estero and, one at a time, edged into our seats butt first, as if getting into a buoyant sports car, myself in front and Tom in back. Early morning fog, cool and moist, heavy with the...
THERAPY ON ZOOM?
I flipped my appointment book back to March 16, 2020. The page is covered in red ink circling the names of clients I needed to contact to schedule virtual sessions. Scrawled across the week’s calendar in purple highlighter is “COVID. I started with phone sessions, then FaceTime. Four months...
HELEN AND THE 7 CHAKRAS
The call came in the middle of a therapy session. I let it go to voicemail. When I played back the message, a woman’s somber voice said, “Hello Sharon...I’m a friend of Helen’s. Her dementia has gotten worse. She’s unable to care for herself and has been transferred to the memory care unit. We’re...